Bud, this second one is not my fault. Bryan posted it today and asked me to give a “ruling” on it. Take comfort from the fact that it is only tangentially about abortion.
I think this the OPPOSITE of Catholicism. https://t.co/rZH0Pa6IYG
— Bryan Caskey (@BryanCaskey) January 23, 2018
Dang. I chose the coding for including the parent Tweet, but as so often happens, it didn’t show up. Here’s what Bryan was reacting to:
Catholics believe that individuals should be the sole arbiters of their moral decision making, following their consciences. This is why we, as Catholics, support public funding for abortion. #RiseUp4Roe https://t.co/cQcUXinW4x pic.twitter.com/ozhqML79o1
— Catholics for Choice (@Catholic4Choice) January 22, 2018
Here’s what I said back, warning him that my “ruling” could not be considered to have been given ex cathedra:
Right. To say you are Catholic (or Muslim or Jewish or what have you) means that you adhere to a certain set of shared beliefs — not that you make it up as you feel like it. That’s why I’m not a Democrat or a Republican — I don’t agree with them. https://t.co/DtsjF5Mbul
— Brad Warthen (@BradWarthen) January 23, 2018
See, this is why we had the Reformation. Some people (a whole lot of people) didn’t want to adhere to what the church was teaching, so they became Lutherans and Calvinists and such. It’s why Bryan, for instance, is a Presbyterian. They didn’t go around calling themselves “Catholics Against Papal Authority” or whatever. They became something else.
And back in the day, that was a major commitment. You took your life into your hands making such decisions. For instance, my ancestor Thomas Wyatt the Younger, a Protestant, was beheaded for opposing the Catholic Bloody Mary. (He made a big PR mistake: The plot against her was known as “Wyatt’s rebellion.”) Similarly, many people who stayed Catholic lost their lives under Mary’s half-sister Elizabeth.
Hans Holbein painted Thomas Wyatt’s head, years before he lost it.
Today, we can take these stands freely, without putting our lives on the line. So when you stop believing in the teachings of the Catholic church — or the Anglican or the Presbyterian or what have you — you can just glide into calling yourself something else. A lot of the American story is about people doing just that. Families that had been Catholic and then become Anglican in the old country went on to become Congregationalists, then Unitarians, then Transcendentalists, then in some cases back to be Catholic.
It’s sort of our American birthright. You don’t believe in what Church A believes in anymore? You can join Church B, and no one will chop your head off for it….
Related Posts
By the way, the Catholics for Choice are right that Americans get to be “the… arbiters of their moral decision making, following their consciences.”
They get to decide, for instance, whether they believe what Catholics believe, or if they subscribe to some other flavor.
It’s totally up to them…
Dang. Those two took longer than I thought they would. I’ll just deal with the third abortion-related post later.
To give you a preview, it’s about this: “New Trump office would protect conscience rights of doctors.”
I have several points to make:
Actually, that’s pretty much everything I wanted to say. So I guess I don’t have to write that separate post….
I don’t support public funding for abortion. That’s all I’m going to say about this issue.
Of course there a lot of things I don’t support public funding for. Especially the continued troop involvement in foreign countries. News reports are saying the Trump administration will add 1000 additional troops to the 14000 already in Afghanistan. Is there any credible reason that we need to continue to throw money down this rat hole? While it’s true that Trump hasn’t lied us into a new war like Johnson and W he is certainly secretly adding troops to an existing quagmire. Perhaps not quite as bad as Johnson and W but still this rises to the level of dishonesty by executive fiat. Pretty bad stuff and congress needs to weigh in.
Not all Catholics want to use the power of the state to enforce their religious views concerning reproduction or other matters. Many do. That’s largely what’s at stake here. Not all Christian non-Catholics want to use the power of the state to promote their religion; many do. A bunch want US foreign policy concerning Israel to support their apocalyptic theology. Others don’t. Theology should influence culture, but not determine law – or so became the consensus of the Constitutional framers.
“Not all Catholics want to use the power of the state to enforce their religious views concerning reproduction or other matters. Many do. That’s largely what’s at stake here.”
Actually, Harry, that is NOT what it’s about. But I realize folks who disagree with me will continue to say that it is, because that’s one of the major talking points of the pro-choice argument. It just happens to be untrue. They say it because “trying to impose their religious beliefs on others” is so damning in an American context. It’s a lie, but it’s a lie that, if sold, completely disqualifies the opposition without addressing its merits.
Opposing abortion is no more about a specific religion than opposing theft, the Ten Commandments notwithstanding.
You’ll note that when I talk about why Roe is a grossly unsound decision, I don’t bring up religious concepts. I could, since life and death gets us into the cosmic realm. But it’s not really necessary. Or shouldn’t be. A belief in the rule of law, and the ability to see how the “right” granted by Roe is completely inconsistent with the rest of our law, should be sufficient.
Of course, it isn’t. I don’t know of anything that is sufficient to get anyone on either side of this to change sides, however unassailable the arguments…
This is only problematic for you, Brad, because you ARE viewing this from the religious perspective of “life” beginning at conception.
If, instead, you viewed the situation as life beginning at birth then there is no moral issue to square. The situation is only made tricky when people choose to value the unborn ahead of the one with the uterus.
Uh Uh, Brad. You started the conversation with the assertion that Catholics can’t be believing in state funding for abortion without being out-of-bounds. The distinction between opposing abortion and opposing forbidding public funds to provide abortion is clearly a church/state issue. If abortion is a legal procedure, forbidding it based on religious grounds (eg “what Catholics believe”) is certainly a restriction of government funds use on religious grounds. A believing Catholic may certainly oppose abortion on grounds that are not religious. They also may oppose abortion personally, but oppose the state’s restricting it by financial denial of access to a safe form of the procedure. Are Catholics also doctrinally awry if they oppose military spending or military-dominated foreign policy?
“To say you are Catholic…means that you adhere to a certain set of shared beliefs — not that you make it up as you feel like it.”
Um…so let me get this straight: Are you saying that Catholics who support abortion rights aren’t proper Catholics and should leave “your” church and join one that fits their beliefs on this issue? That this issue is your litmus test for who is and isn’t a “real” Catholic?
If so, then you’re effectively calling for a mass exodus from your church. Because according to recent polls (WPost/ABC & Quinnipiac), some forty to fifty percent of professing Catholics in the US say abortion should be legal in all/almost all cases. And it’s not just abortion. According to a 2014 Univision poll, Catholics in the US and Europe said they disagree with a lot of other teachings of the Catholic hierarchy as well: same-sex marriage (54% in favor), women priests (59% in favor), allowing divorced Catholics who remarry outside the church to receive communion (60% in favor), allowing priest to marry (61% in favor), support use of contraception (79% in favor).
support use of contraception (79% in favor).
Only 79%? I would have thought it would be around 90+%. The opposition to contraception puts the Catholic Church on the same level as the Moonies and Branch Davidians. The only reason it’s not branded as a cult is because it has soooo many members.
Percentages from polls, I’m sure you realize, have nothing to do with church teaching.
Bryan’s point was that it’s a hierarchical church, not a democracy. And if someone isn’t comfortable with that, maybe they should consider a church where every week a plebiscite is taken on that week’s creed. One of the main concepts I remember from taking U.S. Social and Intellectual History before 1865 (one of my favorite courses from college) more than four decades ago is the separation of religious groups into two main types: down-from-above and up-from-below. The Roman church is the former, not the latter.
You know the old joke, “Is the Pope Catholic?” When the Pope joins the board of “Catholics for Choice,” they might have some grounds for calling themselves that. Until that happens, they’re on shaky ground trying to make themselves the judges of what “Catholics believe.”
All of that said, the Catholic Church is, by definition, universal. Like Walt Whitman, it contains multitudes. Its membership runs the gamut from doctrinal purists like Joseph Ratzinger to a confused person who is batted about by popular notions and impulses in the secular world and hasn’t thought hard about doctrine since religious ed 40 years earlier.
If everyone who goes to church — any church, of any denomination — really got technical about what he or she believes and compared it to church teachings (if the church has any), a lot of them might get up and walk out.
But Christianity is about forgiveness and recognizing imperfection, so people muddle along and stick to what’s familiar.
I suspect that most of those people who say they are Catholic and hold attitudes inconsistent with the label are cradle Catholics. Most of us converts tend to be more doctrinaire. Why? Because we chose the church. We made a conscious decision that yeah, this is what we believe. Of course, the position on abortion isn’t why I’m Catholic. In fact, the reasons have little to do with any of the things we argue about in the secular world.
And I’m sure people who hold very unCatholic views on those issues yet still think of themselves as Catholics have their own reasons that have little to do with the things measured in polls.
People are complicated and seldom wholly consistent. Again, they contain multitudes (this time using it in Whitman’s original sense). But the church is the church, and it doesn’t change because some of its members hold inconsistent views on some things…
”Most of us converts tend to be more doctrinaire.”
Sure got that right. The lapsed faithful returning to the fold together with converts tend to make the best uncompromising zealots. On the other hand, taking the view that you are more vested in your church than those who were born into it smacks to me like the sin of pride.
But you’re wrong about changing opinion not playing a role in church teachings. Changes in attitudes do alter the character of faith over time. It would be foolish to say, for example, that because forbidding women entry to the priesthood has been a tenant of Catholic faith and practice up to now, it will remain against Catholic teaching for all time. That would be an a-historical position to take. Because the Catholic Church has changed its position on a number of its teachings over the course of its history.
So there’s a viable alternative to your “if someone isn’t comfortable with that, maybe they should consider a church where every week a plebiscite is taken on that week’s creed” – and that’s for people to remain in the church while working to change its doctrine.
Well, good luck with that.
Here’s the bad thing about the Reformation: It caused the Church to freeze in place. Up to that time, the church had evolved over the centuries. But once the Reformation came along, if people wanted something different, they just formed their own sect. And the Church reacted to that by defining itself in terms of the thing that does NOT change. So you get the phenomenon of priests and nuns wearing clothing that in the Renaissance was just everyday, if very plain, clothing but which very much marks them as people apart in the 20th century.
Vatican II was meant to address that failure to evolve. Of course, it led to sudden evolution that a lot of people were uncomfortable with, so there was a backlash, and a reaction to the backlash, etc.
I became a Catholic after Vatican II. Sometimes I think I would never have become a Catholic pre-Vatican II. Other times, I think I would have liked to have been around then for some things — such as the Latin Mass…
I’ll stick to my UU church. They understand that values can and should adjust to the times we live in. And that’s how I believe.
I just find the “pro-life” side very sad because a) it does not accomplish it’s stated purpose of stopping abortion b) it increases the possibility of death of both mother and fetus, c) it encourages people to resort to illegal and dangerous actions, and d) it denies women the right to control their own bodies, replacing that right with the government’s right to control their bodies.
Yes, Karen, I know you and many friends see it that way, and that you’re sincere in believing it’s about “the woman controlling her own body.”
But of course you must know that the only body we are concerned with “controlling” is that of the individual we’re trying to keep alive.
There’s this whole ideology built up around control and power and a paranoia about what people who care about babies are trying to DO TO the woman.
Far as I’m concerned, it would be wonderful if the child could live and thrive without the woman. Problem is, no one knows how to make that happen. So we have this horrific situation in which the survival of the child is entirely dependent upon the good will of someone who make prefer that the child NOT be born. That’s an awful situation all around, and I can’t see anyone not knowing that. But extinguishing the most vulnerable life in the equation is in no way an ethical way out, and a society that doesn’t even let murderers be put to death without extensive due process (and without the decision being made by demonstrably disinterested parties) can’t wash its hands of the situation…
By the way, I kept putting “the woman” in italics there to acknowledge the emphasis placed on the phrase by pro-choice folks. It’s all about the woman and her rights. You’re trying to do something to the woman, controlling her, taking away her agency, etc. It’s all about the woman and what she gets to do, and how horrible, oppressive people want to take away from her and all women.
It’s a huge, heavily freighted ideological construct.
None of which bears any relation to my thought processes. The only way the woman enters my mind is as a person who’s in a really tough spot, who deserves sympathy and help and consideration — but there’s no way that ethically you can extend that to granting absolute, extra-judicial power over life and death.
Ok. So how do you punish the “criminal” (woman) who commits the crime of abortion? You see Brad unless you punish the woman you are essentially pro-choice. There is absolutely no way out of that box. None. Don’t offer some bland statement about sympathy for the mother but punish the doctor. That doesn’t cut it. It doesn’t and never will. So put up or shut up. How do you punish the criminal mother?
“there’s no way that ethically you can extend that to granting absolute, extra-judicial power over life and death.”
We’re still waiting on your answer to this “judicial” issue: how you would adjudicate between the woman’s interests vs. the fetuses’ interests. You continue to avoid the issue you yourself raise in this regard – probably because what you’re really saying without stating it explicitly is that abortions should be forbidden by law. Don’t see why you can’t come out and say openly one way or the other. Unwillingness to do so is a sign of either intellectual confusion or intellectual cowardice.
The problem with taking your supposedly “principled position” is your assumption that it can be based solely on a priori moral principle without taking into account the consequences, moral or otherwise, of applying that principle. The Prohibitionists, for example, may have been right on principle (too many drunks in the home and on the streets), but the application of that principle turned out to be a mistake.
Oh, I think the Prohibitionists were right, even though I’m someone who likes to have a drink or two in the evening.
But I can do without it, too, and I’m pretty sure that if Prohibition were in place, I would have done without. That’s one of the differences between me and my libertarian friends. I’m not that bothered by having my personal freedom curtailed by a law that overall is meant to achieve a definite social good.
And yeah, Chuckie, I know you’re “still waiting” for an answer to a question I still fail to grok.
It might be that you’re more of a concrete thinker than I am, or more detail-oriented. What I want is for the present state of things to end. The right granted by Roe is just completely inconsistent with our being a country of laws and not of men.
Have you ever been called for jury duty, and undergone voir dire? There’s a careful process in place to avoid jurors who have a connection to the case or the parties or in any way might have a conflict of interest. We take that kind of care with mere matters of property disputes. Yet with so much more at stake with abortion — an irrevocable life-and-death decision — we allow the most interested, involved person on the planet complete power to make the call.
Do you not see how off this is? You seem to be a thoughtful person, so I would think you would. I can understand people who are more emotion-based having trouble following me. For instance, lots of people think it’s perfectly fine to let the family of a murder victim decide whether the prosecution should seek the death penalty. And yet those are the last people who should get to make such a call.
If you want to know specific procedures I would put in place as a substitute for this state of affairs, you’re just going to keep being frustrated, and then accusing me of dishonesty or intellectual cowardice, when the fact is that I’m not hiding anything from you — I have no such procedure in mind. I just know that this state of affairs is unconscionable. And worse, it can’t be changed — Roe prohibits us from choosing any other system.
I know that in some countries such procedures exist, or have existed, but I don’t recall specifics because I haven’t read about them in decades. But I remember broad concepts, because that’s the way I think.
I remember being particularly impressed by an observation made by a communitarian writer — I think it was Mary Ann Glendon — about the difference between the United States and European countries.
The difference was this: As with so many other issues, in America we couch abortion in terms of inalienable rights — the right to an abortion (or the right to privacy from which it flows) vs. the right to life. This makes agreement or compromise utterly impossible.
European countries, or some of them at least, are not so hobbled. They manage to make provisions for abortion without making it an absolute, individual right.
OK, it was Mary Ann Glendon. And here’s an excerpt from a 1988 interview with Bill Moyers:
Of course, for me, being pro-life is part of an overall outlook that involves human dignity, that involves a strong pro-human social services structure helping people not only live, but have good, worthwhile lives. As Glendon observes later in the interview:
Absolutely. It’s easier for Europeans to think in terms of there being no “right” to an abortion because they provide the basic social infrastructure to support the mother and child.
Which is also a value I hold dear and advocate for, most dramatically in the case of single payer.
Now, I can anticipate your next objection: Obviously, in our insane political system that will NEVER provide the European social safety net, we MUST make abortion a right.
No, I can’t go along with that. Because there is always a chance, a hope, that we can change politically. Dum Spiro Spero. There is no chance of someone who was aborted coming back to life. Erring, if one is to err, in favor of preserving life is a moral imperative.
I will never be able to make the cold calculation that so many make, of deciding whether someone else’s life is “worth having.” Neither I, nor anyone else, should have that power…
You may think I’m impractical, since I don’t have a preference for exactly what would replace the present state of affairs. Perhaps so. People on the other side of the issue might accuse me of the same thing.
For instance, let’s go back to this part of what I wrote above:
Sounds like I want to do away with Roe. And I do. It has been enormously destructive to our society in so many ways having nothing to do with abortion — such as its use as a litmus test to increase political polarization, and the absurdly outsized role it plays in presidential elections (judicial selection is important, but there’s no way it should loom THIS large in a job with so many other responsibilities).
But when it does come to judicial selection, I believe it is completely wrong to choose according to how we think a justice would rule on Roe or any other issue. I believe a qualified nominee (someone with the skills and experience for the job) should be confirmed, regardless of whether nominated by George W. Bush or Barack Obama. (And this is related to the same respect for the rule of law that causes me to be appalled at the power over life and death that Roe affords.)
Nor will I vote for president according to what sort of justices a candidate would nominate. (And you’ll see me rail against those who would.)
Many pro-life activists would cry out, “Then you’re not pro-life! If you wouldn’t do absolutely anything to overturn Roe, you’re no opponent of abortion!” But I am. I just happen to believe in many other things that I regard as important as well….
Brad, I agree with your views maybe 60% of the time, and I appreciate your clear explanation and defense of the views that you hold that I disagree with. But this:
Oh, I think the Prohibitionists were right, even though I’m someone who likes to have a drink or two in the evening.
It’s like I don’t even know you anymore.
“I’m not that bothered by having my personal freedom curtailed by a law that overall is meant to achieve a definite social good.”
There but for the grace of God go I.
“Have you ever been called for jury duty, and undergone voir dire?”
Is that the thing they do with the finger?
If you want to know specific procedures I would put in place as a substitute for this state of affairs, you’re just going to keep being frustrated, and then accusing me of dishonesty or intellectual cowardice, when the fact is that I’m not hiding anything from you — I have no such procedure in mind.
-Brad
Uh yeh, maybe not dishonest but certainly intellectual cowardice. You just can’t hide behind a curtain of intuition by regurgitating utterances about the sanctity of life. You must answer this question otherwise you are just pro-choice with a whole lot of meaningless rhetoric:
A 17 year old girl is raped by her senile grandfather and she gets pregnant. Further tests show the child will have Downs syndrome. At 6 weeks the girl buys the ingredients to make a miscarriage inducing drug. She takes it and ends the pregnancy. Should that girl be prosecuted for murder or at the least manslaughter with jail time? If you answer NO then you are pro-choice. If you answer YES then you are pro-life. There is no mushy middle here. It’s either yes or no.
I know that’s harsh but once you launch into this protecting the sanctity of life screed this is the way you have to address this issue. And by the way why did you bring this up? All it does is get people riled up. Folks, including me, can’t talk about this issue dispassionately. You see Brad I’m absolutely certain I’m correct on this. Very rarely am I as certain on an issue. Because I answer NO on the above scenario.
“Oh, I think the Prohibitionists were right, even though I’m someone who likes to have a drink or two in the evening.”
Ummmmmmm, no. They were wrong and it wasn’t even a matter of sin, morality, or even ethics. It was because their entire outlook was wrong. Americans drank almost two bottles (of hard liquor) a week back in 1830. With alcohol in every gas station we don’t consume anywhere near that much today. People drink because they want to drink, not because they have it. Alcoholism isn’t a product of access, it’s people largely self-medicating.
You can have government as strong or as weak as you want, but if it’s tilting at windmills you are only getting more or less windmill tilting.
The Prohibitionists were right to want what they wanted — which was an end to the social ills posed by the state of affairs that you described: “Americans drank almost two bottles (of hard liquor) a week back in 1830.”
This led to such problems as men failing to work and beating their wives and children. Which is why the temperance movement was so closely allied with the women’s suffrage movement. Like today’s #metoo campaign, this was about women seeking to escape the consequences of men’s bad behavior.
But I agree with what you say after that: “People drink because they want to drink.”
This reminds me of an argument I’ve had with my libertarian friends. They like to say, “We tried Prohibition, and it didn’t work,” usually with regard to the war on drugs or some such.
It’s not a completely erroneous observation, but I see it another way: It’s not so much that it didn’t work or couldn’t work, but that in the end, America didn’t WANT it…
Since there is pretty strong evidence that medical marijuana provides benefit to people with a wide variety of ailments; and there is a great burden to society to prosecute and incarcerate people who use marijuana (as well as a disproportional enforcement for black citizens), wouldn’t it be a definite social good to decriminalize pot at a national level? Surely you can see that the benefits might outweigh the risks? It’s not going to create a whole new group of potheads — and even if it did, the donut, Dorito, and Dominos business would boom. This is one issue that those with a “I know what’s best for you” people still try to hold onto by using scare tactics (Reefer Madness busybodies).
Also, I’d love to hear how allowing gay marriage would somehow NOT be a definite social good. Who would be harmed by that?
“I’m not that bothered by having my personal freedom curtailed by a law that overall is meant to achieve a definite social good.”
But there’s the rub: banning abortion doesn’t achieve an overall social good. It’s overall social effect is likely to be negative, not positive.
“This makes agreement or compromise utterly impossible.”
Compromise is made impossible because certain faith groups – the Catholic church and evangelical churches – insist that a fertilized human egg should have the same legal right as a fully developed human being. But that’s not the view even of every faith group – nor is it evident that the standard set by faith groups should be the determining factor in formulating secular law.
“What I want is for the present state of things to end.”
Ok, then, what’s the shape of things to come under your preferred scenario? I keep asking and you keep dismissing it as somehow not your responsibility to say. But that’s an irresponsible position to take – if, as seems to be the case, you believe current law should be overturned and abortion outlawed. It’s your responsibility then to say how the matter should be handled. Twisting history to make Prohibition out to have been a social good shows how much the tail is wagging the dog of your argument.
Yes, I’ve not only been called for jury duty, I’ve served on a jury – in a murder trial. And believe me, a murder trial definitely focuses your attention. Not so much because of the details of the crime, but because of the great and humbling responsibility it places on you. And it’s that sense of responsibility that I’m not seeing in your position on abortion. As I said, full responsibility involves a balancing of interests. That occurs now – and it occurs in accordance with the rule of law you believe is missing. In fact, the balancing is incorporated into current practice under Roe. Because the law restricts a woman’s right to choose based on specified criteria. So Ms. Glendon is simply wrong; there are restrictions. The rule of law does come into play – through those criteria. Just because the law doesn’t operate the way you want it to doesn’t mean it isn’t operating.
So, no, I do not see anything “off” in the current state of affairs.
And just to add as a footnote: I don’t know how things were in Europe decades ago, when you last checked into it. But in most of Europe today the laws on abortion are essentially the same as ours. To quote from Wikipedia: “Most countries in the European Union allow abortion on demand during the first trimester. After the first trimester, abortion is allowed only under certain circumstances….” There may have been a time when certain restrictions applied – like mandatory pre-procedure counseling – but a lot of those have been eliminated over time. And since abortion is widely available across Europe, those living in countries where it’s more severely restricted or banned (like Poland or Ireland) can easily travel to where it’s legal.
Chuckie, you and I would probably have a more fruitful discussion over coffee or something. We both have a tendency to seize upon a point and run off on a long refutation of it, whether we fully understood the initial point or not. It’s easier to check such digressions in person.
Who knows how many times I’ve failed to understand what you’re saying before arguing with it. And in this reply of yours, you’ve done it a couple or three times yourself.
First, I really was talking about Prohibition with the thing about having my freedom curtailed (and maybe one or two other things I’ve argued with libertarian friends about here, such as, say, blue laws, or the TSA), not trying to make a point about abortion — although it’s reasonable to assume I was.
There were two problems with this paragraph:
First, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop in your point about what prevents compromise. When I talk about the impossibility of compromise, I point to the rights-based positions of both sides, which preclude each other. You blame only one side. Surely you don’t think that fully describes the picture.
Second, I realize that in our pluralistic country it’s advantageous for your side to describe the pro-life side as being a position arising entirely from religious belief, and therefor merely some sectarian quirk that no one else needs to heed. But I don’t see it as adequately describing what’s going on at all. I don’t oppose abortion because the Pope told me to. Time and time again, I state my arguments, and it’s not at all necessary to get into religious precepts for me to make my case to my own satisfaction, if not to yours. My respect for the rule of law, and my devotion to the concept of ours being a nation of laws and not of men, are quite sufficient for me. In fact, I suppose I could just as well cite the works of Mario Puzo in discussing the salient points (since The Godfather and The Fourth K and possibly other books of his are all about the tension between the impersonal rule of law and the personal).
I say “What I want is for the present state of things to end,” and I make it clear repeatedly that what I mean is that this situation in which the most interested person on the planet unilaterally decides a matter of life and death, which flies in the face of the rest of our body of law. It’s intolerable. But you assert that I “seem” to be advocating outlawing abortion. Would I like to live in a country where abortion doesn’t occur? Certainly. Most pro-choice people say they, too, want it to at least be rare. And if we lived in a society in which women and their children were properly supported by a safety net, it would be rarer than it is. But I think doing away with this constitutional right the courts discovered in 1973 is a big-enough mountain to climb right now — and in fact, I don’t see how we’re going to climb it. But if we did, if we could, then the discussion that Roe interrupted could resume, and we could as a society start to work out the specifics that concern you.
“Just because the law doesn’t operate the way you want it to doesn’t mean it isn’t operating.” This has nothing to do with my preferences. It has to do with consistency. You did get my point that the problem is that in no other legal area do we allow an extremely interested individual to make such a momentous decision unilaterally, right? I consider that a very important principle in our system of justice. Don’t you? I don’t think it’s just some personal quirk of mine.
Here, I could use some elaboration on what you’re saying: “Because the law restricts a woman’s right to choose based on specified criteria.” Are you talking about the third-trimester restriction? In fairness to Ms. Glendon, she took that into account: “no regulation of abortion at all in view of protecting the fetus until the sixth month.”
Before that, it seemed fair for her to speak in terms of a RIGHT. And that’s the thing that perhaps I failed to communicate in terms of the difference between us and Europe. This, which you quote from Wikipedia, is consistent with what she’s saying: “Most countries in the European Union allow abortion on demand during the first trimester. After the first trimester, abortion is allowed only under certain circumstances…”
The difference is that here we speak in terms of a RIGHT, and in Europe it’s more about what the government ALLOWS.
This is a huge difference, and very significant to us communitarians. To return to my first observation above, the insistence upon individual RIGHTS by both sides militates against us being able to compromise or achieve any sort of consensus on the issue in America.
Blue Laws: Keeping people from buying underwear on Sunday since 1802.
TSA: Spending billions of tax dollars to make travel difficult for millions of people who have 0.00000% chance of being terrorists because a few bad guys carried box cutters onto planes without locks on the pilot’s cabin door. And now generating thousands of false positive readings every day for “suspicious” items like 4 ounces of shampoo or a package of fudge. I sure am glad I am not on your side in trying to defend that idiocy.
Who woke Doug up? 🙂
See what I mean, Chuckie? My Prohibition reference was to a bunch of topics we argue about constantly here…
It’s not really an argument if you don’t have any thoughts that refute the other side — or when you look like a hypocrite by selectively deciding when to apply your “definite social good” excuse whenever it meets your desire to control other people’s lives to meet your “big daddy” agenda.
???
I say X, and you argue with Y.
I didn’t say I was for Prohibition. I said if it happened, I could go along with it.
And if you go back to the first time we EVER argued about Blue Laws, the context was that while I wasn’t pushing to have them, I thought it would be nice — I could use a real day off from economic activity. So I was sorry to see them go.
I have in no way pushed an “agenda” of any kind whatsoever with regard to these things.
The contrast between you and me is that while I’d be sort of OK with Prohibition, and even feel a little bit nostalgic for a time when there was a day when you couldn’t get anything “done,” those things send you and other libertarians up the wall. Which I’ve always thought was kind of ridiculous, an overreaction to something that’s no big deal (in the blue laws case — Prohibition was kind of a big deal).
And THAT drives y’all nuts — that I’m NOT outraged by such things.
But at no time have I campaigned for Prohibition OR blue laws. Everything positive I’ve said about Blue Laws has been pretty much a matter of just trying to talk y’all down off the ramparts…
I used to work at a newspaper, back in the 70s and early ’80s, that actively pushed to get rid of Blue Laws. And I think that was the beginning of the arguments you and I have had about them.
At the time, I thought, “What’s the harm?” But I was the news editor, not the editorial page editor, so it wasn’t really my place to argue with the editorial position of the paper. So I didn’t. But I found the arguments for getting rid of the law unconvincing.
That wasn’t a real full-fledged blue law. It was pretty limited, and the ways it was limited were pretty inconsistent. So it wasn’t worth fighting to keep even if I had felt strongly about it. The one bad thing about it was that it drove our largest advertiser out of business, because it encouraged a national chain to come in and drive him into the ground. Which was a shame…
You shouldn’t need an argument to get rid of a law. You should have an overwhelming argument to implement it. Because every law has a cost – enforcement and prosecution. Finite resources should not be expended on things that do not provide a clear benefit that outweighs the costs. Blue laws, the “war on drugs”, banning gay marriage… all these activities cannot be proven to benefit the good of society as a whole. If they were beneficial, people wouldn’t fight to overturn them.
Gay marriage. Harmful to society? Yes or no?
Medical marijuana. Harmful to society? Yes or no?
“Chuckie, you and I would probably have a more fruitful discussion over coffee or something.”
If that means both of you enjoy writing walls of text that most won’t bother to read then I’d agree.
I won’t belabor this much longer, but lemme just say:
1) The Prohibition example was a good one, actually, because it demonstrates the unintended negative social consequences that can flow from pursuing what might otherwise seem like a good principle. And as I said, the same applies, I believe, to banning abortion.
2) The reason I single out the Catholic Church and evangelical churches specifically is because they have an institutional weight, also known as “power,” to organize and mobilize to affect policy in a way that individuals or an amorphous movement do not. In any discussion of policy making, the power factor always has to stand front and center.
3) You see an inconsistency in allowing a woman to decide on her own whether to abort a pregnancy, or as you put it: it’s contrary to the rule of law as otherwise applied. But, again, like I keep repeating, the balancing of interests you think is missing has been decided THROUGH law in the form of the system we have in place under Roe and subsequent statutes and rulings. Besides, the proposal you seem to suggest sounds unworkable in a practical sense, because I don’t see any way to square the thing you want to see squared. (You want to force legal consistency onto the unique circumstance of pregnancy.) If the state’s interest were to fully vest from the moment of conception, that equates to taking away a woman’s choice from the beginning of the pregnancy and would effectively be the same as a ban.
4) “The difference is that here we speak in terms of a RIGHT, and in Europe it’s more about what the government ALLOWS.”
I believe many in Europe DID and DO speak in terms of rights as well. Though I think the broader point made, on both sides of the Atlantic, has to do with dignity, not rights. In any event, rights don’t exist outside of law – so the distinction you’re drawing is one without a difference. A RIGHT only extends to what the law ALLOWS.
5) While I would agree that a stronger social safety net would be a good thing, all told, if that’s your alternate scenario for lowering abortion rates, you may want to look at comparative international statistics. Because they show that Sweden, Norway and other strong welfare states have comparable (or in some cases higher) rates of abortion than the US.
You don’t get it Brad. You aren’t saving anyone’s life. Those who feel the need for abortion will try to get one any way they can. For the poor that means either do-it-yourself (usually a form of self poisoning) or else resorting to an illegal, unqualified abortionist. In either case, it’s all too likely that both mother and child will die. If both survive the mother will probably try again. So, the great likelyhood is that more are dying as the result of making abortion illegal, than would die if we simply made sure that everyone had access to safe contraception and knew how/when to use it. Very few women take abortion lightly. I’ve phrased this gently. Dying from an illegal abortion is all too often a slow and horrible death. And it’s most often inflicted on the poorest, least educated girls and women.
There was only one sperm and only one egg that could have ever created me. The actions and intent of the creators of those two unique gametes are what mattered.
The religion/belief/desires of the rest of humanity was totally irrelevant to the destiny of those two gametes.
If the owners chose not to allow those gametes to meet, it was nobody else’s business, whether it was through abstinence, timing, barriers — whatever. None of your business.
If those gametes did get together, whether through planning or chance, it should have been no one else’s business. But, in 1939, the choices were limited.
For my daughters, it is still no else’s business what they do with their gametes, whether they suppress their release, prevent their travel, repel invaders or any other method of preventing fertilization. And if such methods fail, it is still none of your business that they then choose to do, and it matters not what motivates government’s attempts to limit their choices.
I don’t care — and I am sure my daughters don’t care — what religious views influence your opposition (or indifference) to abortion. It’s none of your business.
Yes, it is.
Whether to allow killing is most definitely the business of every citizen with a conscience in a free society. That is something that is most definitely accepted everywhere else in our law.
But to change the subject:
This is why I would be afraid of time travel into the past, especially my own past. I would be terrified of returning to the present time and finding one or more of children or grandchildren no longer exist.
Now, back to the original topic…
The mystery of that unique specialness of the individual, and how that individual came into being, is a thing that overawes my mind. And it would do so regardless of my religion. If I were a Baptist or a Jew or Muslim or atheist, the awe I would feel at the unique power of what has come into being once those gametes got together fills me with the sense that neither I NOR ANYONE ELSE has the power to interfere in irreplaceable life that has begun. (In fact, if I were an atheist, believing that this life is the only one we get, I’d probably hold this view more strongly than I do as a believer.)
The respect for life I have is independent of religion. Or, if it’s related, it’s more like I have the religious beliefs I do BECAUSE of the awe for life that I had long before thinking of becoming a Catholic….
“This is why I would be afraid of time travel into the past”
Great, now one more thing to worry about…
Only two things scare me, and one is time travel into the past.
What’s the other?
What about your disgusting self-righteousness when you talk about abortion?
“This is why I would be afraid of time travel into the past, especially my own past. I would be terrified of returning to the present time and finding one or more of children or grandchildren no longer exist.”
Really? Since only one sperm and one egg could have created that child or grandchild whose potential non-existence terrifies you, how can you allow any egg to remain unfertilized? Would you suffer if such potential to fill you with awe were unrealized?
I’m not following you there. Don’t see how you get from my quoted point to what you ask at the end there.
It occurs to me that maybe what I said about time travel wasn’t clear. Could be.
But it sounds like you got it when you wrote “Since only one sperm and one egg could have created that child or grandchild whose potential non-existence terrifies you…”
Right. It seems like the SLIGHTEST change in the past could prevent that sperm and that egg from getting together, so the person I love and cherish would not come into being.
I just don’t understand this part, or where it comes from, or that it has to do with what I said: “how can you allow any egg to remain unfertilized?”
I have been part of the discussion about the morality and legality of abortion since 1970, and I think I have heard just about every argument about that special little life facing extinction. Sidewalk “counselors” shout at women approaching clinics, telling them they may be killing the “person” that will find the cure for cancer — and variations on that theme.
Of course, many of these same people would have “counseled” that woman a short time earlier to abstain from sex if she did not desire a child. Neither those counselors, nor apparently you, recognize that the world will be deprived of a cure for cancer under either scenario, if the “counselor” truly believes in what she (and it usually is she) is shouting at the woman approaching the clinic.
Our society respects a woman’s right to abstain from sex, whether by prosecuting sexual assault, by valuing chastity and other ways. If the cure for cancer was potentially in the womb of the woman approaching the clinic, that same potential was in the egg that would have died unfertilized in the alternate scenario.
That is why I am unswayed by those “in awe” of the egg an instant after fertilization, but indifferent — or even hostile — an instant before.
Yeah, yeah; spare me the importance of that lucky sperm that won the race. We men make ’em and waste ’em by the billions without a second thought. Maybe a different sperm would result in a school shooter, or….
In my ideal society, the woman in whose body that egg resides — whether fertilized or not — decides what happens. Not me. Not you, Not McMaster, nor Trump. She decides.
“This is why I would be afraid of time travel into the past, especially my own past. I would be terrified of returning to the present time and finding one or more of children or grandchildren no longer exist.”
Are you thinking of this movie?
I’m not familiar with that one. But if it has Bill Nighy in it, it must have some redeeming value…
You’ll like it. I’ll send it over.
Go away – or start ur own bitch-fest, Bill. We like BABIES here. Even when they grow up to be ugly people. They all have value here, Bill.