{"id":2048,"date":"2022-05-12T15:19:13","date_gmt":"2022-05-12T15:19:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2022\/05\/12\/democracy-and-abortion-law\/"},"modified":"2022-05-12T15:19:13","modified_gmt":"2022-05-12T15:19:13","slug":"democracy-and-abortion-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2022\/05\/12\/democracy-and-abortion-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Democracy and Abortion Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is no need for me to make the point when Malcolm Pollack has made it so well<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

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:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cYou folks seem to care a very great deal about the sovereignty of the people. Very well, then \u2014 if you really are<\/em> 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\u2019s you, the People<\/em>, in case you haven\u2019t been following along, you knuckleheads!) We were wrong to take this sovereign power away from you back in \u201973, and so now we\u2019re giving it back to you.<\/span><\/p>\n

Happy Democracy! Mind how you go.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\u2019s reasonable, because we don\u2019t 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, here we are, America: you\u2019ve been doing a lot of yelling about \u201cMUH DEMOCRACY\u201d lately, and now it looks like you\u2019re about to be served up a heaping helping of it. If you don\u2019t really want it after all, that\u2019s, fine \u2014 but in that case I think we\u2019d be glad if you would please shut the hell up about it<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Addendum<\/em> (5\/13)<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/em> reason the mother may have. (I don't doubt that there are some<\/em> 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<\/em> 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?<\/span><\/p>\n

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. <\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading “Democracy and Abortion Law”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[313,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion","category-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2048\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}