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One of my favourite quotations, which I think of whenever I hear a loud and vehement voice, is by the Irish politician and philosopher Edmund Burke:
Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field.
I was reminded of the quote when, within moments of the United States Supreme Court overturning Roe vs Wade, hyper partisans decrying or supporting the decision went into overdrive online and in the media. The fact that the decision does not do what either side of the partisan fringe claims it does is par for course in our almost wholly irrational times. What the decision should do, however, is focus the attention of those people who, like me, stand in the middle of this debate and who want a civilised and common-sense legislative approach to an issue that, contrary to the loudest voices, can never have a definitive ethical or moral answer. In other words, both sides in this debate are right and wrong and neither side has a franchise on morality. The issue, to be clear, is too complicated and serious for the virtue signalling, cheap slogans and petty internet memes that usually accompany the subject of abortion.
The issue of Roe vs Wade is not one limited to the ethics and morality of abortion, however. It goes to the very heart of what is meant by the term democracy. Do people have the right to make decisions about their lives or should a technocratic elite make those decisions for them? Should rights be enshrined in the law to an extent that they are beyond democratic decision-making processes? Those who favour Roe vs Wade and who are horrified at it being overturned were not bothered by these issues when Roe vs Wade was legislated in 1973, even when it explicitly went against the United States Constitution, which delegates some powers to the federal government and other powers to the states. The Founders, in their wisdom, created a system that gave democratic power to the people while having as many checks and balances built into the system as possible.
The practical implications of how this works on the surface are simple to explain. Should people, for example, who support abortion, have the right to access abortion services in their state? And, in contrast, should those people who reject abortion on moral grounds have the democratic right, if a majority decides, to cancel abortion provision in their state? That’s the issue. The overturning of Roe vs Wade does not outlaw abortion in America, it returns the decision to the people in the individual states. Some states will reject abortion and some states will accept abortion. Some states will expand how abortion is provided, and some states will limit that provision. As it is, the laws governing abortion in America are far looser than they are in most First World countries, which is an irony considering the most vocal supporters of Roe vs Wade outside America are not aware that, often, their own countries have much stricter guidelines about abortion that the despised Yanks.
The issue, though, of abortion itself is a thornier problem, made even more difficult for people like myself who see clearly, I would like to believe, both sides of the subject. To put this in perspective. A live woman is more important than an unborn child. She exists, and she is part of a network of relations that have grown organically throughout her life. She is important, both to herself as an individual, and in her relationships with other people. The unborn child, though, is also important, because of what the child will become, the life as yet unlived, and the pain that the child could experience when being aborted. Partisans on both sides of this issue have relied on simplistic slogans to further their agenda, which, unfortunately, and, as usual, have influenced the less thoughtful members of society. State something enough times and rational thought goes out the window.
“A woman’s right to choose” and “Abortion is murder” are perfect examples of simplistic logical fallacies. The first falls at the obvious objection: that in multiple situations individuals do not have the right to choose another person’s death, or, not even, ironically, their own death. To give one example, it is illegal to help another person commit suicide. Also, if nobody other than women have a right to make decisions about abortion, then, if advocates of abortion are being fair, honest and principled, they should legislate that men cannot be compelled by law to provide for a child up to the age of eighteen. The current situation is a perfect example of how feminists have created a system where women know that heads they win and tales you (men) lose. (He has no right to an opinion on abortion because you’re a man; she is entitled to a portion of his money for eighteen years because of her subjective decision. Also, if she rejects direct payments from the father of the child and relies on the government to pay for the child’s welfare, she is still relying on men to pay for the child’s upbringing. Men pay most taxes).
The other argument directed at men that they shouldn’t have, to be crude, stuck it in, treats women as if they are delicate, childish creatures with no agency and who are the victims of disgusting male lust. This is at odds with the mirror image propaganda from feminists of the “strong” and lusty woman who, without a second thought, “explores” her sexuality like an Amazon humping her way to Mount Olympus. Both these ideas can’t be true at once. Although feminists, to give them some credit, I think, have been arguing for decades that the philosophical law of non-contradiction is a “male way of knowing“. Logic is male, in other words. Work that one out the next time there are calls to increase the participation of girls in STEM subjects.
The side who believes that abortion is murder is also deluded. Murder requires intention and nobody with a shred of intelligence can believe that a young girl with her life ahead of her or an older woman struggling to raise her kids (except if there’s a financial inducement), would intentionally become pregnant. Human beings are sexual creatures and the idea that a mistake, or accident, stemming from a nature hardwired into our genetics, into our social life, and into our very being, should be punished with an unwanted child, and hence an unwanted life trajectory, is wicked. We cannot force women into a life they didn’t voluntarily choose.
That being said, the middle course, the one most people like myself believe — advocates of the “golden mean”, as Aristotle said — is that abortion should be available, but only up to a certain time in the pregnancy. The exceptions to this general rule being those unusual circumstances like rape, or a medical complication where a different ethics applies. In contrast, the idea, articulated by actress, writer and social media personality Lena Dunham and shallow buffoons like Madonna, that women should “shout their abortion” is so abhorrent as to be disgusting. It cheapens human life to the level of an utterly utilitarian calculus without a thought beyond the instant gratification of a spoilt brat. There are many human actions that we don’t go out of our way to inform the world about. Having class is attempting to rise, at least publicly, above our animal selves.
The idea that life is in some way sacred is utterly indispensable for a civilised society. Its opposite notion, a common sense and rational approach to practical problems, is also indispensable. Abortion up to a certain time during a pregnancy is the only way to satisfy these seemingly mutually conflicting ideas in a way that most of the population, the non-partisan and ostensibly quiet middle, will accept.
Ignore the grasshoppers. Wait for the cattle to make a noise, they make more sense.
In other words, we, in our infinite wisdom, can decide when a life is important enough to save and when it is of less importance than the convenience of someone else. Unborn life is worth saving after a certain period, but not before. Do such ethics also apply to the sick and elderly? At what point do the lives of the elderly, with or without mental capacity, become of less importance than the convenience of their vibrant children? After all, the children did not choose to have parents.
What this author and many other “sensible” people is proposing is a class of sub-humans. They believe that unborn children are alive and not inanimate tissue, but they believe that they do not have the right to life until they have reached a certain size.
I can more easily respect those who believes that the unborn child is simply a part of the mother’s body. At least they are not openly countenancing murder (which IS the correct term for the deliberate killing of an innocent human, no matter what mitigating factors may exist).
Thank you Rebekah.
Maybe, in light of the recent SCOTUS decision, it’s time for Americans to consider a 28th amendment to their constitution. It would be called the Shotgun Amendment. Let me explain….
The SCOTUS decision, as well as protecting the rights of the unborn child, also impinges on the rights of the mother. Unless immaculate conception is possible in the US, that unborn child will always have a father.
That father, in a moral world, has the same responsibility for the life of his child as does the mother who will, under this decision, be forced to bear that child. One very simple question should be asked. Why should the total responsibility for the well being of that child be vested only in the mother?
Currently in the US, maternity leave, public support for single mothers, and services such as child care, kindergarten and preschool are patchy at best, and in some neighbourhoods, almost non-existent. These are the neighbourhoods where access to contraception for the disadvantaged segments of the population is also difficult. It’s a self-perpetuating problem and this decision will ensure it continues.
The upshot of this situation is that the mother’s life is fundamentally changed, her access to an income jeopardised, and when the child is born, she assumes total responsibility.
By any measure, this is simply unfair, and now that the state has decided that abortion is no longer an option, the situation has changed utterly.
If the state can decide what happens to a woman’s body, it would seem only reasonable and just, that some similar caveat be placed over the conduct of the other partner in the creation of that baby, its father.
The amendment (hereafter called the Shotgun Amendment) would go something like this –
Once paternity is established (and that is not difficult) the father would be compelled to contribute to the support of the child. This could be organised at a local level through paternity courts which would be established for the purpose. There would be debate about how the nature and duration of the support would be established, but working that out would not be rocket science. A contribution code could be established.
With the introduction of a firearm metaphor into the title, the NRA would love it.
They are so deeply respectful of constitutional amendments, after all.
Well said Rebekah. The real issue (and in my view the only issue) that we need to come to some agreement on, is whether a life in utero exists. Presumably most of us would agree that this happens at some point during the pregnancy. The question then is, when does ‘life’ exist? The difficulty in drawing a line at a particular timeframe post conception is being able to sufficiently justify this timeframe over an earlier date. It seems to me that life is a continuum that beings at conception and concludes (at least physically) on death. Human life may begin very simply as an embryo, but there are developmental milestones at every single point along this continuum. There is significant dependence on the Mother both in utero and once baby is born.
We seem to be distracted arguing the red herrings (the logical fallacies) rather than being able to have meaningful debate of this core concept. In particular, we are presented with the classic straw man fallacy, along the lines of the issue being “men telling women what they can do with their own bodies/uterus”, the argument from consequences (which the author uses here) which suggests that a women shouldn’t have to ‘suffer’ the consequences that result from accidental conception, false dichotomy which claims that women who don’t have access to abortion clinics will be ‘forced’ to attempt an abortion by their own means and ad hominen abusive attacks against (virtually) anyone who doesn’t agree with the ‘pro rights’ position.
‘ Having class is attempting to rise, at least publicly, above our animal selves’
There is the always silent ‘secular’ mirk that really the opponents of abortion and euthanasia are all a bunch of Catholics and a few others who really need to live in the practical world.
One of the things I find attractive about the CC is that it is the only international organisation that defends human life from conception to natural death.
Once you decide that there are some lives that are dispensable then ‘who are we to judge’, when someone commits suicide or has an abortion.
The legislation just follows the mores of Catholics like Biden,
Suicide which is permissible in law in cases where death may occur in 6 months, becomes an act of self actualisation, the pinnacle of human achievement.
Something not shared by animals.
Now that the NT is putting up euth legislation again, hopefully the Senate will get things a bit better.
There should be an automatic exemption for aboriginals.
One case described to me was as follows.
In a certain State jurisdiction an aboriginal, first national if you will, was discharged from a base hospital with major respiratory compromise after being treated.
He was found by a person of my acquaintance who clinically examined him and found him in respiratory collapse.
The person returned him to outpatients and demanded he be treated, on the grounds that if he were a dog the vet treating him would have been hauled before the Board for unprofessional behaviour and prosecuted.
So ,what was the outcome?
Rather than complaining the person wrote up the clinical examination and assessment and put this concept to the hospital.
From a position of deep medical knowledge, the following were the terms.
If I see another case like this discharged to this Aboriginal community I will release my findings and the names of those who treated this man.
A sort of sword of Damocles.
It is in this context that the Indigenous population of WA were dead set against state euthanasia legislation.
Even stray dogs have safe havens, no kill pounds.
The Senate needs to make sure that no kill hospitals are enshrined in federal legislation.
People entering waive their ‘rights’ to be euthanised.
The ethos of the hospital is caring and committed to excellence in palliation.
It will then attract those with a secure desire to treat suffering and disease.
They are then not going down the path of killing the patient to cure the disability or disease.
Extra funding is directed to making sure this happens.
It is gratifying that the NSW parliament has passed extra funding for this area of expertise and that both Govt and Opposition agree.
Hopefully Pat Dodson senator for WA, will have input.
Thank you Lewis,PB.
Using abortion as a method of birth control? A level of human debasement guaranteed to bring destruction to the sancity of God given human life and which is heralding the poisoning of humanity.
Psalm 139:13-16 gives us the truth of God’s wonderful gift of reproduction and appeals to our conscience:
For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
And thank you, STJOHNOFGRAFTON .
Not all abortions are equal … not all abortions are for mere convenience. A compassionate, multi-pronged law would consider different circumstances and formulate different laws. If we make exceptions for abortion in some cases (like rape or threat to the mother’s life, etc) then we cannot claim abortion to be morally wrong, murder of a human, etc. Nuance is needed. If we recognise the many circumstances in which abortion is sought, we realise that a single ‘cover-all’ law is insufficient and will forever cause angry division.
Seems to me that adoption is chewing its cud silently in the shade.
The human tragedy of abortion pivots around one fallacy: namely that sex exists solely to gratify human pleasure. The moment sex as the means for procreation became a distant secondary consideration everything recognisably human disintegrated: abortion, euthanasia, cohabitation, sodomy, same sex marriage all under a a rainbow umbrella.
PDenton
Me thinks that the author, in trying to have a foot in both camps, has done him/herself a serious injury.
I think Rebekah Meredith, Andrew Urban, and the majority in Dobbs are all correct in believing that abortion is extremely morally complex. For example, I suspect that we would all agree with Andrew that there will be occasions when we would permit abortion, at least in the very early stages of the pregnancy : rape and when the mother’s life is in jeopardy for instance. But the unborn infant is also a precious human life with his/her own intrinsic claim to a right to life, certainly in the very late stages of gestation if not before. In Dobbs the old common law position is discussed and it seems the “quick” foetus (ie when he/she first moves in the womb) was the best evidence of a life that attracted the law’s recognition and protection. The minority in Dobbs do not acknowledge any entrenched constitutional right in the unborn infant to life, despite the 14th amendment protecting “life” as well as (the mother’s)” liberty”. The minority also use (at least to Australian ears) very aggressive language against the majority accusing them of hypocrisy and being cavalier, tantamount to accusing them of mala fides. This aggression seems unwarranted to me and suggests an arrogant, wilful blindness to any worth residing in the other life necessarily destroyed by the choice to abort him/her. Pro-choice extremists have convinced many that a viable, healthy infant may be killed at the mother’s whim moments before birth, or even in the moments after birth. Dobbs, which merely returns the moral complexity to the people to decide, is a welcome check on this slippery slope slide to callous killing of the helpless and innocent.
By the way 1735099, I would be very surprised if any state in the US or Australia did not require a father to pay maintenance to both mother and child, as indeed he ought.
Two sides to the debate? hardly. One side wants to murder, and *proves* it, by seeking to destroy those who oppose them. Have a look at how many pro-life venues have been trashed in the last week.
Murder requires intention? It can take a split second of madness to drive a knife into someone; one you were already holding while eating or working. And then realise too late what you’ve done.
To kill a baby requires an appointment at an abortery, travel, filling out forms: it is utterly premeditated, not only murder, but the worst form of murder.
doconnell – 4th July 2022 – “Me thinks that the author, in trying to have a foot in both camps, has done him/herself a serious injury.”
Both funny and accurate!
You make two points against the prohibition of abortion but both are misguided. I deal with each in turn.
1. You write: “The side who believes that abortion is murder is also deluded. Murder requires intention and nobody with a shred of intelligence can believe that a young girl with her life ahead of her or an older woman struggling to raise her kids (except if there’s a financial inducement), would intentionally become pregnant”.
This is wrong because you are talking about the intention to get pregnant whereas the question is about the intention to kill the unborn child. The mens rea in the case of abortion as homicide is satisfied because of the intention of both mother and doctor to kill the unborn being growing inside the woman.
2. You also claim that “Human beings are sexual creatures and the idea that a mistake, or accident, stemming from a nature hardwired into our genetics, into our social life, and into our very being, should be punished with an unwanted child, and hence an unwanted life trajectory, is wicked. We cannot force women into a life they didn’t voluntarily choose”.
This is false because every community makes provision for the adoption of unwanted children. New born children are the most popular for infertile couples who want to adopt, and there is always a ‘shortage’ of young newborns.
Additionally, civilized people are those who can control their desires and urges, especially the bodily ones, such as the sex drive. In my book, the Age of Aquarius was the age of barbarism, and every abortion is a barbaric act. That said, there is of course a big difference between a woman who gets an abortion because she conceived during a rape and one who does it so a pregnancy does not disturb a planned holiday.
The way I see it, there is no non-arbitrary point or change during the 9 months of pregnancy before which abortion is manifestly justified if the tiny creature, from the moment of conception, is a human being. It is obviously not a person with language and sociability, but it is a being which is quite different from both father and mother, and it is obviously human.
But Christopher, would you ,say, draw a distinction between a mother who decides immediately to abort a pregnancy the result of rape and a mother, also raped, who leaves the abortion to the very last moments of the pregnancy ?
Declan Mansfield recommends to us a “middle ground” in the abortion debate. To set the scene he represents the public reaction to the overturning of Rowe v Wade as an ill-informed racket emanating from “partisan fringe groups.” The “decision does not do” what these groups claim. Whilst this is true of the (literally) screaming feminist left, and of their water-carriers in the mainstream media, it is clear that Mr Mansfield has not been listening carefully. No-one in the pro-life movement, as exhilarated as they were by the decision, was under any illusions about what it meant. Such groups immediately produced patchwork maps of the federation showing the States in which abortion immediately became illegal with the fall of Roe v Wade, those in which such legislation was pending or intended, and those in which abortion provisions were to be strengthened. A constant theme was that, in many States, the hard work was just beginning.
Nonetheless, if one is to present one’s position as “the middle course, the one most people like myself believe — advocates of the ‘golden mean’, as Aristotle said,” the distance at which the “extreme” positions must be pitched is more or less predetermined. And so, Mr Mansfield presents his two extreme opposing positions as “a woman’s right to choose” and “abortion is murder” respectively, and proceeds to criticise them.
“The first falls at the obvious objection: that in multiple situations individuals do not have the right to choose another person’s death,” he notes. Another criticism is that one line of feminist argument “treats women as if they are delicate, childish creatures with no agency…”.
Mr Mansfield then pivots 180° the opposite extreme; to wit, that abortion is murder. I will quote the argument in its entirety, lest I be suspected misrepresentation by omission.
Murder requires intention and nobody with a shred of intelligence can believe that a young girl with her life ahead of her or an older woman struggling to raise her kids (except if there’s a financial inducement), would intentionally become pregnant. Human beings are sexual creatures and the idea that a mistake, or accident, stemming from a nature hardwired into our genetics, into our social life, and into our very being, should be punished with an unwanted child, and hence an unwanted life trajectory, is wicked. We cannot force women into a life they didn’t voluntarily choose.
The first clause is beyond reproach. But the “intention” is universally taken to mean the intention to take a human life, exclusive of judicial, policing or wartime exigencies. Not here. Mr Mansfield, to his credit, has already dismissed one of the standard absurdities of the pro-death crowd; that the unborn child is not a human person. “The unborn child…is also important, because of what the child will become, the life as yet unlived, and the pain that the child could experience when being aborted.” So the second condition of the definition–that a human life is taken–is met.
By constructing his other extremity around “abortion is murder,” Mr Mansfield has boxed himself in. To extricate himself, he points intention in a different direction. The emotional core of his argument is the supposed tragedy of the unintended consequences of an unintended pregnancy. His problem is that his laudable integrity, shown in his refusing to dehumanise the unborn child, collides with his own definition of murder. A full stop after “Murder requires intention,” and his argument collapses, so he must plunge ahead and hope to invoke the sympathy of his readers for the “young girl,” who sounds for all the world like one of those “delicate, childish creatures with no agency.”
Again to his credit, My Mansfield does not rush to the pro-death gang’s first line of skirmish–cases of pregnancy arising from rape and incest. He stays close to the day-to-day reality of abortion. This is a world in which the connection between sex and pregnancy has been almost completely severed. Sex is part of “our social life.” It’s just part of the getting-to-know-you ritual for men and women who have expressed some level of interest in one another; on a par with delving into the other’s taste in politics or movies. In this world, an unplanned pregnancy is a system failure, a punishment, threatening an “unwanted life trajectory.”
It is not, though. It is the system working as designed, as everyone had known since the rise of human self-consciousness. The introduction of the most potent psychotropic drug ever to gain mass acceptance–The Pill–has in 60 years almost completely destroyed our understanding of what it is to be human; of what it is to be a man or a woman. However, that young girl does have agency. So does the Mum for whom that new baby is financially or emotionally undesirable. They chose sex. Is their responsibility diminished by reason of insanity? Of invincible ignorance? Did they place losing bets on the spurious understanding that the odds of becoming pregnant were vanishingly small?
Only the baby has no agency, responsibility, or guilt in any of these circumstances. What crime has the baby committed that carries a death sentence? The only crime is being inconvenient to the mother, the father, or both.
Before even setting up his goalposts at opposite ends of the field, Mr Mansfield has laid his cards on the table. “[F]or people like myself who see clearly, I would like to believe, both sides of the subject…[a] live woman is more important than an unborn child.”
Were this statement on a par with, for example, “The Prime Minister is more important than I am,” it would still be false except on some utilitarian calculus. The comparison between the Prime Minister and me is understood to be specific in scope and limited in its implications. It is not a statement about our intrinsic worth. Mr Mansfield’s claim is universal; it applies to every pregnant woman and every baby in the womb. What is truly startling about this claim is that it is supposed to justify the intentional killing of the less important by the more important.
Consider what wide applications such a useful principle might have. Consider how vital it would be to have friends of friends on the Importance Tribunal.
Back in the seventies, when abortion was first being legalised, it was hedged about with “safeguards.” Abortion was only to be available when there was a grievous threat to the mother’s health, it was only to be available early in the pregnancy, and so forth. That initial opening led, with logical and psychological inevitability, to the very recent legislative barbarism in our State Parliaments. Perhaps Mr Mansfield is too young to remember, but his “middle course,” his “golden mean,” does not even take us back that far. The only reason needed to take this less important life is the desire to do so.
There is no way out of the logical quagmire of abortion, neither for the heavily pregnant woman who has written on her exposed belly, “NOT YET A HUMAN,” nor for Declan Mansfield, whose equivalent motto might be, “A less important human.” Ugly terms have been applied, in quite recent times, to less important humans in order to justify and to incite murder. But the sheer number of the abortion dead of the past 50 years–a triumph of modern medicine–puts all the Utopians of recent history to shame.