A society’s first task
White House photo
By Linda Whitlock
The White House recently released a photo showing President Obama as he was told about the Newtown massacre. I’m not sure why such a photo was taken or why the White House felt the need to release it. Not even the president’s staunchest political foes would doubt that he was as grief-stricken at the tragic news as every other decent American.
Even someone as opposed to the president and his policies as I could see that the man in that photo — and the man who spoke at the Newtown memorial service — was genuinely brokenhearted. The president is the father of two beautiful girls, after all. He could hardly help imagining himself and his wife in the place of those grieving parents.
Whitlock is an adjunct English professor who lives in Salem.
January 24, 2013 - 6:16 AM
Did you have that same thought when Bush was showing his grief over the people killed on 9/11/01? What did he do to stop the carnage you consider the personal choice of a woman to be? What did Reagan do? What have ANY of the GOTP done, other than inconvenience, shame and demoralize women already on the bottom, what have YOU done?
Yes, I believe completely we will be judged on how we treat the least among us and in that event we will be judged harshly, some surely more than others for their self-righteous indignation that rears its head when politically convenient and then rails against the safety nets that help a mother choose life and the comprehensive sex education and reproductive services that help a woman make better choices, all with the judgmental ideation that it is all the woman’s fault that she is in the desperate situation but she should still listen to your “moral reasoning” on how to handle that situation instead of “killing” their “child” in an abortion clinic.
People who believe that “All that separates the children who died at Sandy Hook from the children who died in our abortion clinics that day is five or six short years in age” literally have no clue about life, about the life of a woman or about how the world actually works for a portion of our society. I suppose we should be grateful they are so willing to show that.
Ms. Whitlock writes eloquently and I admire her commitment to a cause she believes just. It’s wonderful that she can write in a way that is respectfully of the people with whom she disagrees.
I shall try to do the same.
The things like the discussion of abortion, I like to apply the dialectic. You have the thesis, then the antithesis and finally the synthesis. The best thing about purposely applying this technique is it forces you to turn things upside down to see another perspective.
For example, Ms. Whitlock is disappointed there have been approx. 50 million (her number) abortions in the US since it became legal. This is the thesis. The antithesis is realizing that means there have been 50 million women who have had a choice in deciding when to start a family. There have been 50 million women not forced to raise a child in poverty or alone. There have been 50 million women who could then go on to provide a better life for the children they already have or ones they would come to have.
That seems like a pretty fair trade off to me but you know what they say about opinions.
The synthesis is what is supposed to come out of the conflict between the thesis and antithesis. Frankly I don’t see what the synthesis is in this case. Perhaps it means better education about birth control. Perhaps it means greater access to over the counter medications that prevent pregnancy. Perhaps it means greater subjugation of women and the eventual outlawing of all types of birth control. I’m not sure. But whatever it is, I’m sure Ms. Whitlock will be in the “fight” pushing for her position in an eloquent and respectful manner.
Scott M. — I dig the Hegelian method.
I would suggest another one maybe:
Thesis: Individual life begins at conception and, therefore, moral imperatives apply to the fertilized cells. (“Life,” I believe, is defined by many Christians to mean “when God creates an individual human soul; by Kantians and other secular moralists, it means when an entity has the capacity or potential for rationality)
Antithesis: Individual life begins at birth (more specifically, when the fetus is capable of living outside the womb), or (more controversially) when the infant/child achieves initial self-consciousness and, therefore, moral imperative applies to the infant/child at that point.
Synthesis (my belief): Individual life is not cleanly defined and can only be individualized when the fetus/infant is physically distinguishable (and able to survive separately) from the conception/early development period. It is at this point that morality extends to the fetus.
@3 WPGHSC, I mean this sincerely because I always enjoy your writing. I’m flattered we have even this little big in common.
Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan also wrote about abortion. You can find their writing here:
http://2think.org/abortion.shtml
At Carl points out, the ability of the fetus to survive independently of the mother points in a direction we want to be careful of. As we become more technologically proficient, we’re able to keep a fetus alive and viable at an earlier and earlier stage. Perhaps someday, it would mean growing humans without the need of a mother. When and if that happens, the ‘independent life’ part of the argument would then mean destroying fertilized ovum would be entitled to full legal protections. We want to be careful about promoting that idea.
As you can see, I prefer the “tell it like it is” method. I believe that religions, especially those who practice religion that did not even allow consecrated burial for babies born, much less lost to miscarriage, has no room to dictate the precept of when life begins now. Certainly the Bible is not much help on the subject as there is scripture that values the fetus (well some of them), scripture that advises killing even the smallest of children, and scripture that measures not so much value on a fetus in utero. It is a Solomon like choice of whether the woman who is here can or should take precedence over the potential life that may end up being here. Regardless of how you personally feel over the issue, the law of this land for 40 years has been that abortion is legal and available under certain conditions.
Sophistry that tries to equate grief over an act of domestic terror with the personal choice granted under our laws is as reprehensible as believing you can hit a woman who happens to be your wife or girlfriend if you feel like it. Or a hundred other offensive comparisons someone wanted to sit down and bang out on a page.
WPGHSC, is indeed wicked smart and informed. I learn from you as well.
And as if by Providence…
“…when it came to mounting a defense in the Stodghill case, Catholic Health’s lawyers effectively turned the Church directives on their head. Catholic organizations have for decades fought to change federal and state laws that fail to protect “unborn persons,” and Catholic Health’s lawyers in this case had the chance to set precedent bolstering anti-abortion legal arguments. Instead, they are arguing state law protects doctors from liability concerning unborn fetuses on grounds that those fetuses are not persons with legal rights.”
I see “moral reasoning” all over this one!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/23/catholic-hospital-argues-_n_2534383.html
This commentary is the work of a moral scold riding her usual hobby-horse, nothing more and nothing less.
And as for being respectful of those with whom she disagrees, sorry, I just don’t see that reflected in the piece in question. There isn’t any acknowledgement that someone might have a valid reason for thinking that an embryo might not be the same as a six year old child, which is her essential thesis. She presents no argument as to why she thinks they are, doesn’t acknowledge any historical perspectives that might apply. She just makes her assertion and tars those who deign to disagree as those who condone brutal killing, unwittingly or not.
Once you demonize your opponents in this manner, rational discourse becomes impossible, and murdering those who provide the service in question much easier to rationalize.
I sometimes ask those who equate an embryo with a child this question:
If a building were on fire, and you could save either 25,000 embryos or a six year old, but not both, which would you save? Most don’t answer. A few have admitted to saving the child. As yet, not one has said the embryos.
Has anyone else seen this report on the Huffpo?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/24/new-mexico-abortion-bill_n_2541894.html?1359040877
The legislator has introduced a Bill in an attempt to stop a woman that was a victim of rape or incest and becomes pregnant from having an abortion. She’s introduced this bill to deter sex offenders from coercing the victim into having an abortion as this would tamper/destroy evidence of the rape or incest.
The funny thing is, this would give the woman and/or her doctor a criminal record in addition to the rapist.
Ms. Whitlock writes well. She’s a bit of a broken record on the abortion issue, but that’s okay. It’s not her fault either that Cal Thomas beat her to the same space with the same argument by only a single day.
I love the thesis-antithesis-synthesis approach.
Thesis: Life begins at conception. Abortion is murder.
Antithesis: Life begins at birth. A fetus is property, owned entirely by its host, to do with as she pleases.
Synthesis: Life begins when the fetus is viable outside the host as determined by the best current medical science.
50 million children is a lot of children. As a nation we don’t seem to be able to afford the children we already have. The same legislators railing against abortion are the ones who want to slash government programs that prevent pregnancy in the first place or that help poor families take care of their kids. You can’t have it both ways.
#3
1. Morality is a man-made concept.
2. In your subjective, very fine line of consciousness/morality, where would you place partial-birth abortion?
3. Where would you place immediate infantacide?
4. Assuming no “self-consciousness”, i.e., no empirical experience, what is the moral imperative of 2 or 3?
When it comes to the matter of how to deal with unplanned pregnancies, allow me to paraphrase Winston Churchill:
Keeping abortion as a legal option is the worst policy we can pursue…except for all the others.
@12 Steven K, I like that and am going to steal it!
#12 and #13, that’s a cute line but this debate doesn’t need cute lines. What people like Ms. Whitlock do not seem to understand is that it would be much easier to acclimate to the “first task” as she defines it, if we weren’t completely neglecting the next 20 tasks on the list when it comes to childhood health and safety, education, poverty, etc. The first task can’t be the only task.
There is a balancing act here. The big problem as I see it is that either the fetus or the pregnant woman ends up essentially reduced to the status of property. I just think the external viability criterion is a reasonable place to draw that line. Will that line move as technology advances? Yes, and that’s okay.
The gun freaks always say that if we made guns illegal, only criminals would have them. The exact same thing is true of abortion.
@2 Scott M. Thank you for your kind words about my writing and the respectful tone with which you disagree.
I’ve made my case in the paper, so I’m not going to argue it again in this forum. But I will make one point. Fifty million abortions don’t equal fifty million women. Many, many women have multiple abortions. According to a 2006 report on the Guttmacher website, “the proportion of women having abortions who were undergoing a repeat procedure increased rapidly following the legalization of abortion, more than doubling between 1974 and 1979 (from 15% to 32%). Levels of repeat abortion increased at a slower pace between 1979 and 1993 (from 32% to 47%) and have remained stable since then.”
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2006/11/21/or29.pdf
Those repeat abortions surely didn’t all happen because the women involved didn’t know anything about contraception or have access to it.
Again, thanks for your generous words and respectful spirit.
#15 Linda, I’m glad you participate in this forum, and I totally agree with you that it would be a bad idea to reiterate your arguments again as they were stated with sufficient clarity in your newspaper column.
I’m not sure how you’re interpreting the statistic of repeated abortion increasing after legalization. I think the conclusion one might like to draw is that women started to see abortion as a convenient form of contraception after it was legalized, which (depending on your perspective) seem like the abuse of a dubious privilege or the simple exercise of one’s liberties. I suppose there might be women who subject themselves to higher levels of risk for pregnancy because they cannot afford good contraceptives or the medical care to help manage them, and the abortion becomes a last-resort solution. To me it just doesn’t ring true that a woman would consider an abortion to be in the same category as birth control pills or condoms. If they do, or if they do not understand the risks of pregnancy under various conditions, then we need better education on this subject in our public schools. There is absolutely no reason why public school health education should not be very explicit, at the level of “Our Bodies Our Selves.”
If wisdom-tooth extractions were illegal and you suddenly made them legal, then you’d probably see a significant increase not only in overall incidence but also in people who have more than one wisdom-tooth extraction procedure.
Let’s not forget also that some changes in statistics come about because of subtle regulatory changes, as well as improvements in technology generally, that make such things easier for the Government to track.
Sorry, Scott, I don’t consider the protection of human life as tyrannical in any context. I consider it far more hideous to violently deny that right, no matter what the excuse. But I appreciate your viewpoint.