Category: Abortion

“The People are Supreme”

Thus read a protester's placard. Now that is rich!

The implication is that in a democracy the people decide, not nine black-robed elitists, when the whole point of overturning Roe v. Wade is to return the question of the legality of abortion to the states where — wait for it –  the people will decide.

Democracy and Abortion Law

There is no need for me to make the point when Malcolm Pollack has made it so well:

As a detached observer, I have to ask: If the two most important things in the moral universe are Democracy and abortion law, why is it a catastrophe when the Court decides that abortion law should be determined democratically? All that the Court has said in the leaked opinion is, in effect, this:

“You folks seem to care a very great deal about the sovereignty of the people. Very well, then — if you really are fit to rule yourselves, here is a vexatiously difficult question upon which the Constitution is silent, and which, therefore, must be decided by the sovereign power of the nation. (That’s you, the People, in case you haven’t been following along, you knuckleheads!) We were wrong to take this sovereign power away from you back in ’73, and so now we’re giving it back to you.

Happy Democracy! Mind how you go.”

The response to all this, however, from the ironically named Democrats, has been to explode with anger that such an important issue might actually have to be worked out in a democratic fashion, by things like debating and voting. And perhaps that’s reasonable, because we don’t do any of that very well at all anymore; it seems that we are actually rather farther along in the great cycle of Polybius than the people running things would care to admit.

So, here we are, America: you’ve been doing a lot of yelling about “MUH DEMOCRACY” lately, and now it looks like you’re about to be served up a heaping helping of it. If you don’t really want it after all, that’s, fine — but in that case I think we’d be glad if you would please shut the hell up about it.

Addendum (5/13)

Malcolm above implies that the abortion question is "vexatiously difficult." In one sense it is and in another sense it isn't.  Clarity will be served if we distinguish these two senses. I will begin with the second.

1) I take the central abortion question to be the question whether the aborting (and thus the intentional killing) of human fetuses is morally permissible at every stage of fetal development for any reason the mother may have. (I don't doubt that there are some good prima facie reasons for permitting abortion at any stage of pregnancy in such special cases as rape, etc.)   Now if this is the question, then it has a fairly easy answer: no, abortion is not morally permissible.  For we all accept — I hope — that there is a general moral prohibition against the intentional killing of innocent human beings.  Now human fetuses are human and they are innocent. It follows that the general prohibition against the intentional killing of innocent human beings extends to pre-natal human beings at every state of gestation. More needs to be said to counter various misunderstandings and objections, but that was fairly easy, don't you think?

2) The question becomes difficult and vexing when we descend from the general level to that of a particular woman in particular circumstances who becomes pregnant, but didn't intend to become pregnant, and doesn't want to be pregnant for whatever reason (she can't afford another child; giving birth will interfere with her career plans; she wants to go to Europe, etc.) It is not very difficult to know what ONE ought to do; what is difficult is to do it. For then it is not ONE who is doing it, but YOU. 

To put it in Kantian terms, duty and inclination come into conflict at the level of the individual agent.  I know what I ought to do, but I am very strongly inclined not to do it, and if I live in a permissive society the mores and laws of which allow me to do what is morally wrong, I will probably "go the way of all flesh," follow the path of least resistance and then put my intellect to work rationalizing my decision to take the easy way out, and then make use of the decadent West's multiple opportunities for 24-7 distraction to induce amnesia  about what I did.

To Provoke a Pre-Emptive Crap Storm?

Is that why it was leaked?

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A correspondent replies:

Yes, Bill, I believe so. Someone in Sotomayor's or Kagan's office. 

It was a call to action. They weren't going to let their side be blindsided.

The leaker will either be protected or, if caught, then lionized. For them, the end of Roe is the end of the world.  Roberts will do for Roe what he did for Obamacare. The homes of Alito et al. will be picketed, their occupants threatened to revise their opinion. The enemy's been planning for this as they have for the next election.

Sadly, our political opponents are indeed enemies. If you are one of us, broadly conservative and/or classically liberal, and you do not understand this, then you are a useful idiot. One of the reasons the destructive Left is so hard to defeat, despite the obvious lunacy of so many of their assertions and policies, is because of this very large group of useful idiots.  It includes roughly half of the Republicans in government, and a large segment of rank-and-file Democrats who live in the past, or for some other reason are oblivious to the threat the 'woke' folk pose to them, their progeny, their beliefs, their security, and their way of life. If you are not on the hard Left and you voted for Biden, then you are a  useful idiot. I have noticed, however, that people do not like being called idiots; adding the qualifier 'useful' does little to mitigate their umbrage.  For they  understand that they are being called useless to the cause of the Sane and the Reasonable.

Secular Arguments against Abortion

Substack latest.

A question rarely asked is the one I raise in this article:  

Is the abortion question tied to religion in such a way that opposition to abortion can be based only on religious premises?

Or are there good reasons to oppose abortion that are nor religiously based, reasons that secularists could accept?  The answer to the last question is plainly in the affirmative.  The following argument contains no religious premises.

1) Infanticide is morally wrong.
2) There is no morally relevant difference between (late-term) abortion and  infanticide.
Therefore
3) (Late-term) abortion is morally wrong.

‘A Fetus That Was Born’

More linguistic chicanery from the Left. Obviously, a fetus that was born is no longer a fetus.  To refer to a fetus that was born as a fetus aids and abets the next murderous move: the sanctioning of infanticide as just another form of abortion, post-natal abortion. The 'reasoning' might go like this: The killing of human fetuses is morally acceptable;  a human neonate is a human fetus; ergo, the killing of human neonates is morally acceptable.

But I must also lodge a protest against certain conservative extremists who think 'fetus' a dirty word. They think that the use of this perfectly good word somehow denigrates pre-natal humans or strips them of their right to life.  It does no such thing.

Language matters!  It is the foolish conservative who allows the leftist to hijack the terms of the debate.

Why Did Trump Get the Religious Vote?

A re-post from two years ago. Cognate question: Why do leftists keep asking the title question?

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Why did Donald J. Trump receive the support of evangelicals and other religious conservatives?

After all, no one would confuse Trump with a religious man.  Robert Tracinski's explanation strikes me as correct:

The strength of the religious vote for Trump initially mystified me, until I remembered the ferocity of the Left’s assault on religious believers in the past few years—the way they were hounded and vilified for continuing to hold traditional beliefs about marriage that were suddenly deemed backward and unacceptable (at least since 2012, when President Obama stopped pretending to share them). What else do you think drove all those religious voters to support a dissolute heathen?

Ironically, a pragmatic, Jacksonian populist worldling such as Donald J. Trump will probably do more for religion and religious liberty in the long run than a pious leftist such as Jimmy Carter.*  

Mr. Carter famously confessed the lust in his heart in an interview in — wait for it – Playboy magazine.  We should all do likewise, though in private, not in Playboy. While it is presumptuous to attempt to peer into another's soul, I would bet that Mr. Trump is not much bothered by the lust in his heart, and I don't expect to hear any public confessions from his direction.

But what doth it profit a man to confess his lust when he supports the destructive Democrats, the abortion party, a party the prominent members of which are so morally obtuse that they cannot even see the issue of the morality of abortion, dismissing it as a health issue or an issue of women's reproductive rights?  

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*My prediction, made on 19 January 2017, proved correct. In response to Trump's speech at the March for Life the other day, Bernie Sanders tweeted the vicious Orwellianism, "Abortion is health care." Way to go, Bernie, you have further galvanized our opposition to you and what you stand for.

Note that at the present time no House Democrat is pro-life. The Dems have take a hard Left into the mephitic precincts of lunacy and evil. 

Were You a Part of Your Mother?

Here

Elselijn Kingma

Mind, Volume 128, Issue 511, July 2019, 609–646.

Abstract

Is the mammalian embryo/fetus a part of the organism that gestates it? According to the containment view, the fetus is not a part of, but merely contained within or surrounded by, the gestating organism. According to the parthood view, the fetus is a part of the gestating organism. This paper proceeds in two stages. First, I argue that the containment view is the received view; that it is generally assumed without good reason; and that it needs substantial support if it is to be taken seriously. Second, I argue that the parthood view derives considerable support from a range of biological and physiological considerations. I tentatively conclude in favour of the parthood view, and end by identifying some of the interesting questions it raises.

I don't have time now to study the above, but I will have to eventually, and then maybe write an evaluation.

Related: The Woman's Body Argument

Why Are We Discussing This?

Here:

. . . members of the media were mostly interested in my finding that 96% of the 5,577 biologists who responded to me affirmed the view that a human life begins at fertilization.

It was the reporting of this view—that human zygotes, embryos, and fetuses are biological humans—that created such a strong backlash. 

Why is this being discussed? There is simply no reasonable question as to when an individual biologically human life begins.  It begins at fertilization. That is not to say (but neither is it to deny) that normative personhood begins at conception.  That is a further and much more difficult question. It  is the question about when a biologically human individual becomes a rights-possessor, where one of the rights is the right to life. 

Consider a fetus, using the term in the narrow sense as above. If it is the offspring of biologically human parents, then, self-evidently,  it is biologically human. What else could it be? Bovine? Porcine? Lupine?  Not even Wolfman Jack was lupine in his pre-natal existence.

You don't need to be a biologist to know that biologically human parents have biologically human offspring. You also don't need to be a biologist to know that in the typical case human fetuses are living organisms. What else would they be? Dead? Is every birth still birth?  You would have to be profoundly ignorant to think that a biologically human being begins to live when it takes its first breath.  One does not come into existence as a human individual when one is born.

Don't ask: When does life begin?  This question is insufficiently specific to be tractable.  It is ambiguous as between phylogeny and ontogeny, and as between human and non-human.  Presumably you are not asking when life first appeared on Earth. Nor are you asking when human life first appeared on Earth. Define your terms and formulate the question precisely. These are interesting questions, but they are not relevant to the abortion debate.

Ask this: When does an individual biologically human life begin?  The answer is clear: at conception. There is nothing to discuss and you don't need no stinkin' survey of 5, 557 biologists to know the answer! (And what's with the dissenting 4%?)

Ask this: When does an individual biologically human life first acquire rights? There is much to discuss here, and the answer is not obvious.

See the entries in my Abortion category for my answer to the last question, especially those having to do with the Potentiality Argument.

The Orwellian Left and Abortion

For leftists, words are weapons. Nothing new here. If you have been paying attention, however, you will have noticed that their weaponization of language is becoming increasingly Orwellian.

Case in point: OPPOSITION to abortion is now 'racist.' 'Racist' has long been a verbal cudgel in the hands (mouths?) of leftists, elastic in its meaning, but now an Orwellian twist is added. It makes some sense to say that abortion is 'racist' because it disproportionately affects pre-natal blacks. But to say that OPPOSITION to abortion is racist is just insane.

Not only is truth not a leftist value, sense isn't either. Being a lefty means not having to make sense.

The Democrats are now a hard-left party. So I ask one more time: Why are you still a Dem?