This is part 12 of my “Think! Of God and Government” debate series with Christian author Andrew Murtagh. Read my latest post and Andrew’s reply.
Hi Andrew,
I’m looking forward to our next in-person meeting, in Indianapolis this July 1. I’m sure we’ll have a lot to discuss, especially when it comes to that notorious law that put your state in the headlines last month. Maybe that will be something we can square off about (or maybe not; you never know).
Last time, I asked about whether God is a moral epiphenomenon. It seems to me that you see God not as a divine being who communicates directly with people to tell us his wishes (think Moses coming down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments), but rather as an abstract principle of goodness whose will can only be discerned by balancing the needs and desires of human beings. This sounds closer to what I would call deism than to conventional orthodox Christianity. Or am I missing something? Do you believe that God gives people commands through special revelation?
We also spoke about the reality check inherent in non-supernatural belief systems. You said this:
A Christian who “persuades people to labor all their life in poverty and deprivation by promising them vast rewards in an afterlife” ceases to be a Christian in those actions…
OK. Do you plan to inform the Catholic church that they’re not true Christians, then, since they require their religious orders to take lifelong vows of poverty and celibacy?
Coming back to abortion, I can’t help but notice that you’ve asked me a bunch of questions, but you haven’t put forth any position yourself. I’m happy to expand on the points I made last time, but I trust you’ll return the favor by laying out your own views in the next installment.
His “deprivation argument” claims that it’s wrong to kill any human being because it deprives them of a valuable future (memories, life, experience, etc.), fetuses also have a valuable future, so killing a fetus is wrong.
This is just a restatement of my previous point that human beings have a right not to be arbitrarily killed. In general, I agree with this – for example, I’d support punishment for anyone who secretly gives an abortifacient drug to a pregnant woman – but as I said, it’s trumped by the bodily autonomy argument. I have the right to live, but not the right to use your body to sustain myself without your consent.
But “Fetus Adam” was conceived by two consenting adults, knowing full well that a developing human being will be / maybe the consequence…
The only thing that indicates consent is consent, and consent to have sex is not “implicit” consent to have a baby. If I cross a busy street where cars are driving back and forth, I may put myself in danger of being hit by a car, but that doesn’t mean I consent to be hit by a car. (Imagine the ambulance crew saying to me lying on the pavement, “You knew what you were getting into when you walked across Second Avenue! Don’t come crying to us for help now.”)
Also, since you didn’t mention it, I feel that I should: as we all know, not all pregnancies come about because of consensual sex. How does it change the situation, in your view, if a pregnancy is the result of rape?
If the cut-off is “conscious/thinking” and this means rational, self-reflecting beings, why does a newborn get special status if they don’t qualify as such?
Just as an important clarification, I believe that what matters isn’t the current existence of consciousness necessarily, but the capability for consciousness. If it were otherwise, it would be permissible to kill people who were deep asleep!
We don’t know what degree of consciousness a newborn infant possesses, since they can’t tell us about it. That’s why it’s better to err on the conservative side, once we have evidence suggesting that the large-scale brain structures responsible for consciousness are functioning. In human fetal development, this seems to occur around the sixth month of pregnancy. This is about the same time as the point of outside-the-womb viability, a fortunate coincidence.
After the point of consciousness and viability, I’d still support a woman’s absolute right, grounded in bodily autonomy, to end a pregnancy early (it’s a safe assumption that anyone who wants to end a pregnancy so late has a good reason for it). I’d just stipulate that it can’t be done through a method that destroys the fetus, if the woman’s health isn’t in imminent danger.
The issue for me here is arbitrariness.
A certain degree of judgment – arbitrariness, if you like – is inevitable in every moral decision that takes the real world into account and isn’t merely based on idealized thought experiments. It’s very rare that anything in nature comes with a convenient bright line to base our distinctions on. To avoid being pushed to one extreme or another, we have to draw the line somewhere.
For example, we grant people the right to vote at the age of 18, even though there’s nothing magic or unique about that number. (“Are you really saying that a person who’s 17 years and 364 days old isn’t qualified to vote, but a person who’s exactly 18 years is? That’s totally arbitrary! How can we base a democracy on that?”) It’s a reasonable compromise given the balance of underlying rights and interests. The same is true for the age of consent for sex, the degree of consanguinity permitted in marriage, the number of consecutive terms a politician can serve, and lots of other things – they all involve judgment calls. Abortion isn’t any different in this respect.
So, I’ve laid out my position. Now let’s hear yours. Do you believe a single-celled embryo the size of a pinprick bears the same moral weight as an adult human being? Should a woman who unintentionally becomes pregnant be forced to bear that pregnancy against her will, even if it puts her at risk of death or grave injury?
And let me add this, because it’s an important follow-up question and debates about abortion rarely address it: If you don’t believe abortion should be legal, how would you enforce that law and what do you think the penalty should be for breaking it?
El Salvador, for example, bans abortion under all circumstances. If a woman comes to a hospital and is suspected of having procured an illegal abortion (for example, because she’s seeking medical care in the aftermath of a miscarriage), she can be arrested and confined until a forensic vagina inspector can come to perform a pelvic exam on her. Would you support anything like this?
And, it seems to me, if one’s position is that an embryo or a fetus has the same moral status as an adult human, then it follows that a woman who obtains an abortion should either get life in prison or the death penalty. Is that what you’re advocating? If not that, then what?