Winning on the Edges [Jay]

Two new articles by Dahlia Lithwick at The Slate and Sarah Kliff at Politico draw attention to the recent trend of state legislators passing bills that challenge aspects of Roe v. Wade without making a direct attempt to overturn that dreadful piece of judicial reasoning. What is interesting to me is how both articles recognize that losing the Gonzales v. Carhart decision has changed the playing field for the pro-abortion side.

Because some still insist that Carhart was somehow a pro-choice victory and that recognizing it as an advancement for the pro-life cause demonstrates that you are not really pro-life, it is helpful to look at what is happening. The pro-aborts LOST on Carhart and they know that. They are afraid of LOSING again and so they will not challenge these incremental moves all over the country for fear that it will lead to another judicial LOSS.

From Kliff's article:

_Oklahoma is likely to be the next state to ban abortions after 20 weeks, on the basis that the fetus can then feel pain, with Gov. Mary Fallin expected to sign a law imminently. Idaho and Kansas passed similar “fetal pain” laws last week. Nebraska’s law has been on the books for a year, and legislators in 14 states have introduced similar measures, according to the Guttmacher Institute, with bills in Alabama, Iowa and Indiana moving forward at a rapid clip...

It could lay the groundwork for the next challenge to Roe v. Wade — a battle they believe they can win.-

And although Nancy Northrup, President of The Center for Reproductive Rights, claims that they are not challenging because they see the new restrictions as lower down on their list of prioritites, this seems like empty bravado. They acknowledge that these new laws will restrict the access for some women to abortion and that the laws challenge particular aspects of Roe/Doe, and yet the Nebraska law has been on the books for a year and has gone unchallenged. Does The Center for Reproductive Rights not care that a small percentage of women are being denied their Constitituonal right to choose abortion? Are they really unconcerned that some women have lost their reproductive rights? How is that possible? It is the name of their organization for goodness sakes!

Perhaps they have other motivations for ducking this fight. Again, from Kliff's article:

-Abortion rights supporters also have reason to approach the Supreme Court with caution: The last abortion challenge to rise to the Supreme Court ultimately restricted abortion access. Carhart v. Gonzalez (2007) upheld the national Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, passed by Congress in 2003 which bars providers from using a late-term procedure called “dilation and extraction..."

Reproductive health groups widely disagree with this reading of Gonzalez, contending that the court will uphold the viability standard it has used for decades. Nevertheless, NWLC’s Borchelt concedes that it did “open the floodgates” for anti-abortion groups to test out new, more restrictive bans, with hopes of bringing one to the high court...

Equally alarming to abortion rights supporters: Gonzalez was written by crucial swing-voter Kennedy, who had previously supported abortion rights in other cases, like 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

“We would hope Justice Kennedy would stay with his position in Planned Parenthood,” Northrup said. “That being said, we lost the case in [Gonzalez] and would join Justice [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg in saying we’re ‘alarmed’ at the view of women that was reflected in that decision.”-

Maybe Kliff is just exagerrating. Lithwick is an unapologetic defender of abortion as a constitutional right, so surely she will balance this take with some pro-choice optimism. From Lithwick:

-Opponents and supporters of abortion appear to have taken the position that Roe v. Wade is no longer the law of the land.-

Maybe not. Later in the article:

-The risk of challenging these clearly unconstitutional laws and then losing at the Supreme Court is evidently so high, according to Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, that it's not worth taking. As she explained last week to Rachel Maddow, the fear that Justice Samuel Alito would vote to overturn Roe is so deep that reproductive rights groups may be opting to leave the state bans in place. And, as she conceded in that interview, wherever unconstitutional state abortion bans go unchallenged, they become law.-

Lithwick quotes an article in San Diego City Beat by D.A. Kodolenko. In the article he says:

-This is a dangerous Catch-22. In order to keep in place the existing federal law protecting a woman’s right to choose, pro-choice organizations are limited in what they can do about the spate of new anti-abortion laws being passed in states dominated by anti-choice conservatives.



What we’re witnessing is a stealth campaign to make an abortion illegal or as difficult to obtain as possible in as many states as possible, and it’s working.-

I am grateful to every pro-lifer that reminds us all that the ultimate and only true goal is the end of abortion. It is also helpful to remind ourselves that small steps legitimately get us to our destination, though not as fast as any of us would like. No pro-lifer will ever be truly happy until we live in a culture that recognizes the value of all human life and sees it as virtuous to protect those least capable of protecting themselves even when it requires that we sacrifice in order to do so. Even so, we ought to be able to enjoy moments of progress.

If the other side can be believed, we are making progress. We can press on knowing that we are making a difference.

Down Syndrome Post Removal [Jay]

There was a post on the blog that was about a young man that I met yesterday that had Down syndrome and the startling abortion statistics as it relates to that chromosomal condition. I was contacted and asked to pull it off the blog because of the possibility of future publication. I apologize for the inconvenience and will repost it at a later date or update our readers on where to find it if it is indeed published elsewhere. Thank you for understanding.

Kaczor on Why Consciousness is Not value-Giving [Scott]

When critics of the pro-life view assert that consciousness bestows value and a right to life on human beings, you should immediately ask: 1)“Why is that value-giving? It sounds ad-hoc to me. 2) What do you mean by consciousness? That is, do you mean one must be able to immediately exercise it or do you mean something else?” The question—“What do you mean by consciousness?”—sets up this soundbite from Christopher Kaczor:

Requiring actual consciousness renders us non-persons whenever we sleep. Requiring immediately attainable consciousness excludes those in surgery. Requiring the basic neural brain structures for consciousness (but not consciousness itself) excludes those whose brains are temporarily damaged. On the other hand, if potentiality for consciousness makes a being a person, then those sleeping, in surgery, or temporarily comatose are persons, but so also would be the normal human embryo, fetus, and newborn.

Jay's Worldview Chapel Talk

I recently had the opportunity to give a basic talk to a high school co-op (9th-12th grades) about why students should study worldview. I edited out some of the direct interaction with the students because there was no sound system so it is difficult to hear them and there is an original edited copy that I had to chop up for YouTube so I lost a word or two here and there. Otherwise, I thought I would share it for those interested.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Should We Treat our Close Genetic Siblings the Same? [Serge]

I hope the boss enjoyed his stay in our fair state at the best university in the nation. As a follow up, it is only in places like the University of Michigan where ideas such as the Great Ape Project can be conceived. Since academia believes that human are really no different than other apes, the Great Ape Project believes that we should give advanced primates the same type of "human" rights that we now deny to human beings in the fetal stage of development. Here is a page describing the gorilla, which shares 97.5% of our DNA, as a peaceful vegetarian who shows great emotion.

Should we grant gorillas the same human rights as we do newborn humans? If we do, I believe we have a big problem. You see, in the wild, gorillas travel in packs of a dominant male and many females. When the male dies or gets beaten in a fight, the new dominant male tends to do something that the peaceful description of these animals neglected to mention. The new male will brutally kill all of the infants that the other male had fathered. Gorilla infanticide is widely known and is not in dispute.

This may be related to high rates of infanticide documented among mountain gorillas at Karisoke. Infants deprived of protection by an adult male are almost certain to be killed and as a tactic to protect against this, females join new groups in the absence of a silverback (Watts 1989). Until recently, infanticide had only been recorded among mountain gorillas; direct evidence now exists for eastern lowland gorillas and indirect evidence has been recorded among western lowland gorillas (Stokes et al. 2003; Stoinski pers. comm.).

So, if we grant gorillas the same rights that we have as human beings, should we not hold them to the same moral standard as we do a human being that would exhibit this behavior? If a human man began a new relationship and the first thing he did when he moved in was to kill all of the children who lived in the house we would consider him a moral monster of the highest sort. However, when one of our "closest genetic relatives" exhibits this behavior we don't treat them the same way. If they are deserving of human rights, we should this be so?

Still think there is little difference between human beings and other animals?

Humans no Different than Animals? [Scott]

I’m speaking tonight at the University of Michigan. One objection I’ll almost certainly get during the Q&A will be that the unborn are human but not persons.

Whenever I hear this, I ask, “What’s the difference? Do you mean there is a class of human beings whom we can set aside to be killed while others can’t be? And who exactly qualifies not to be killed?”

The answer as to who qualifies will inevitably be ad-hoc and disqualify many people outside the womb. Once that point becomes clear, my interlocutor will try and turn the tables on me. “So why do you assume that humans have more value than animals? Isn’t that ad-hoc?”

Setting aside for the moment that if all animals (including humans) are equal, this undermines the case for elective abortion rather than strengthening it, do our intuitions really suggest that species membership is morally irrelevant? For example, is there really no difference between a man who kills the family dog to feed his starving son and one who kills the son to feed the dog? And if humans are no different than animals, why are we outraged at Michael Vick who clubbed pit bulls to death for losing fights? Isn't it because we expect better of him as a man?

Truth is, while it’s commonly asserted that species doesn’t matter, it’s seldom argued for. Indeed, our intuitions scream otherwise.

As Christopher Kaczor points out, there’s a moral difference between a hit-and run involving a squirrel and one involving a newborn, even a mentally disabled one. And while some people are vegetarians out of respect for animals, “there’s still an important difference between eating a hamburger and a Harold burger, even if Harold, due to his mental handicap, was no more intelligent than a cow.” Indeed, our condemnation of cannibalism rests on the assumption that differences in species are morally relevant, as does our condemnation of sex between humans and animals.

At this point, a clever critic of the pro-life view might bring up human-animal hybrids. Imagine we have a monkey with 60 percent monkey DNA and 40 percent human DNA, and the brain of a human. Imagine further this chimp shows signs of having a rational nature, like his human counterparts. Doesn’t that defeat the claim that having a human nature is an all or nothing proposition?

As Kaczor points out, the animal-human hybrid objection is a non sequitur. Suppose creatures of mixed origin are indeed manufactured. If that happens, “then we shall have to debate about whether they should be included in the category of persons. But the debate about such creations need not undermine the moral conviction that all human beings—anyone who arises from human parents—should be accorded equal rights.”

Finally, writes Kaczor, a mentally disabled girl and her dog may be equally incapable of reasoning, but this condition in the girl is a tragedy but inconsequential for the dog. That’s why we take heroic measures to help her develop this skill while not giving it a second thought for Fido. In short, species matters.

Watch This [Scott]

This short video by Tripp Almon clarifies the moral logic of the abortion debate.