Searching for Oskar Schindler

<Cross-posted to the League of Ordinary Gentlemen>

I considered titling this post a more academic "Rejoinders to a Utilitarian Framework for Evaluating the Morality of Abortion" but thought better when I realized how many lines that would take up.  

First, I'd like to say thank you to Erik Kain at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen for agreeing to guest-post my recent offerings on abortion to that excellent blog and allowing me to receive excellent feedback from its excellent commentariat (167 responses as of press time).  

I'd also like to thank Jeremy Stangroom for setting up a forum to examine this and other difficult ethical dilemmas with some philosophical rigor and for engaging my argument and providing the kind of feedback that allowed me to refine it for publication.  Now on to the rejoinders:

1.  The first concern, raised by many many commenters, which I would like to address here is that the pro-life movement is generally dastardly and underhanded and engages in rhetorical bait-and-switch, moving of goalposts, demonizing their opponents, and all sorts of other trickery and tomfoolery.

This is true.  Some of them do, and these elements usually command a disproportionate amount of media attention, just as some in the pro-choice camp debate dishonestly as well and are well-publicized for it.  One of the many fundamental problems with the abortion issue in the United States is in the way it is construed: one side hates life, the other side hates choice.  This leads to one side arguing as if life is the only consideration when de facto it isn't and one side arguing that choice is the only consideration when de facto it isn't.  I constructed my matrix under the assumption that both positions were valid (by virtue of being widely held) and that any thoughtful, democratic examination of the issue required weighing the concerns of each party against each other.

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A Utilitarian Framework for Evaluating the Morality of Abortion

<This post is cross-posted to the League of Ordinary Gentlemen.>

Jeremy Stangroom is a British author, philosopher, co-founder of The Philosopher's Magazine Online - one of the premiere philosophy publications on the Internet - and the director of Philosophy Experiments - where users can participate in a variety of interactive thought experiments.  One of the more popular experiments is called Whose Body Is It Anyway; it is about the taboo taboo, touchy touchy subject of abortion.   

I strongly recommend completing the experiment before continuing to read this blog post.

The Whose Body Is It Anyway experiment thus far has had two particularly interesting results: the first is that opposition to abortion tends to come disproportionately from the religious:

(B)y far the biggest predictor of whether a person is going to be opposed to abortion is religious belief. So, for instance, 83% of people with no religion support the right of a woman to have an abortion, compared to only 37% of Christians.  

The second interesting result - a significant result indeed - is that people opposed to abortion tended to be generally inconsistent in their attitudes towards the medical seriousness of miscarriage:

Near the beginning of Whose Body Is It Anyway?...you’re asked to rank the following medical issues in order of seriousness (focusing only on numbers of deaths): cancer, multiple sclerosis, miscarriage, stroke, heart disease and housemaid’s knee. Then, if it turns out that you’re against abortion, the activity complains if you haven’t ranked miscarriage as being a serious medical problem (since, for example, in the United States alone there are estimated to be more than a million miscarriages each year).

I have many problems with this interpretation, but let's focus on only the most substantial ones - those related not to the particulars of the way in which Mr. Stangroom framed his experiment but to the issue itself: first, miscarriage is a natural phenomenon, similar to death by old age, whereas abortion is the direct and predictable result of human action, such as euthanasia. 

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Going There - Part II

An intractable disagreement? A friend of mine observed that the abortion debate mirrors the fundamental differences between the left and the right.  In his words: "the left is often vague for fear of being too restrictive, or to provide flexibility. the right seems more comfortable with absolutes. left = life begins at some point...not sure when to exactly define it, but the mother's health and choice in the matter is important. the right = life begins at conception...don't kill babies."  I agree with his analysis of the issue.  

What we call the "left" and the "right" have very different positions on abortion, but even more revealing is the fact that we pay attention to these positions and discuss the issue of abortion in terms of these positions, which each define themselves as victims of the evil actions of the other side.

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Going There - Part I

abortion laws in the U.S.I always try to follow Ernest Hemingway's advice to "write what you know."  And I know very little about abortion: I will never know what it is like to have a human growing inside me; I will never have to decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy; I will never have to choose between bringing a child into the world in unfavorable circumstances and not allowing that child to exist.  But, that doesn't mean that I can't have a position on abortion.  It doesn't mean Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, and Tim Pawlenty all can't have positions on abortion.  Just because I'm not a soldier doesn't make my position on the Iraq War less valid.  Just because I'm not a medical researcher doesn't nullify my opinion on stem-cell research.  And just because I'm not a woman doesn't mean I have nothing to say on the topic of abortion, which I'm going to attempt to tackle as neutrally and fairly as possible:

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Crossing the Line

Repent Amarillo's Spirtual MapThe internet is abuzz with reports of an extreme Christian group in Amarillo, Texas that has used aggressive measures to punish sinful behavior to prevent their town from becoming a "demonic stronghold."  Repent Amarillo's views of what constitutes immorality are no different than many other Christians, but their methods are on the extreme fringe.  In an expose entitled "He Who Cast the First Stone" the Texas Observer recounts a year of intimidation against a private, middle class swingers club:

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The Silent Good Times Roll

If you listen to the mood of cultural zeitgeist right now, you'd think the world was slipping inevitably towards calamitous anarchy.  The economy is in decline, our cultural values are eroding and America's place in the world is in doubt even as we are confronted with a multitude of problems: two wars, climate change, pandemic disease, Islamic terrorism, the rise of China and a looming deficit, debt and entitlement problem.  While this analysis contains some of substance, this granular reality obscures a larger truth: things in the world and in America are better than at any time in history, perhaps excepting five years ago when we had all of this plus a housing bubble.  This relatively brief moment of crisis has not weakened the core strength of American society, culture and economy and the arc of history continues to bend towards increasing societal welfare.

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Joe Lieberman or Arrow's Impossibility Theorum in Action

Joe Lieberman's recent promises to kill Health Care reform if it includes either a public option and opt-in Medicare haven't made him very popular on the internet or my email in-box.  It doesn't help that pretty much everyone left of center hates him already; he is Benjamin Linus as far as I'm concerned: not trusting him isn't enough, just having him around means he's probably going to ruin it for everyone.  The health care bill was already such a mess that I've avoided writing about it because it just depresses me and now Tricky Joe steps in and kills two of the more interesting parts of the bill.  However, rather than simply bemoan Lieberman's existence, I thought I'd point out that this is a tailor made example of Dr. Kenneth Arrow's Impossibility Theorum.

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