Pro-nonsense v. anti-nonsense

True to form, Reppert is lining up a row of straw men for ritual immolation. Beware of smoke inhalation.

http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2009/08/pro-choice-vs-pro-abortion.html

“The strategy that seems to be at work in some of the pro-life responses to my attempts to a) make sense of the highly difficult abortion issue…”

Begs the question of whether abortion is a highly difficult issue. Like many moral issues, it may on rare occasion present some tricky borderline cases, but this hardly means that abortion in general is a highly difficult issue.

“And b) understand how those views relate to the issue of voting, is to conflate all deviance from the standard pro-life position into the most extreme version of the pro-abortion view possible.”

Given that Obama has taken the most extreme version of the pro-abortion view of any electable candidate for president–no conflation is necessary.

“What results is a kind of pro-life purism, either you are for us or you are against us.”

Is Reppert going out of his way to misrepresent “some of the prolife responses” to his chronic vacillation on the subject? Wouldn’t be the first time.

Just to set the record straight, this is what I said about the last election:

I said a Christian could, in good conscience, vote for McCain, vote for a third-party candidate, or sit out the election. What a Christian could not do in good conscience was vote for abortion.

That’s not a “purist” position in terms of voting. It actually involves a fair amount of latitude.

“The pro-life position here means a) fetal life has the same value as life after birth…”

Is that how he defines prolife “purism”? I agree with (a). But he seems to be using “purist” as a pejorative adjective.

“b) therefore all abortions are murders.”

A logical consequence of (a). I have no problem with that definition. But I guess that makes me a “purist.”

Reppert evidently thinks it’s better to be a moral impurist than be a moral purist. Or does he think it’s better to be a logical impurist rather than a logical purist?

“c) Roe v. Wade was wrong, not because the Court failed to affirm the right of the fetus to life, but because it overstepped its boundaries and affirmed the right of the pregnant woman to privacy”

Once again, I like that part of the definition. Keep in mind, though, that you don’t have to be a prolife “purist” to take that position. Proabortion social libs and legal scholars like Laurence Tribe and Richard Posner agree that Roe v. Wade was bad law.

“d) the way to fight against abortion is to vote for Republican candidates, who will not only have a more restrictive executive abortion policy, but will nominate ‘strict constructionist’ or ‘originalist’ justices to the Supreme Court who will reverse Roe and empower states to enact abti-abortion legislation.”

i) That oversimplifies the issue. There’s more than one way to fight abortion. We should employ all legitimate methods at our disposal.

ii) Not all Republicans are prolife.

“Any skepticism about any of these propositions makes one a fellow traveler of Peter Singer and George Tiller.”

If you’re skeptical about (a), to take one example, then how do you stake out a coherent mediating position? On what principle basis do you oppose Peter Singer?

“But you can push pro-life purism even further.”

Especially if you’re eager to erect a straw man.

“I suppose if you follow the logic of ‘abortion is murder’ to its logical conclusion, you would have to make abortion a capital crime and try both the pregnant mother and the abortion doctor for murder. I don't see any pro-lifers advocating that.”

i) To say we “have to make it” a capital crime assumes that we have the power to do so. In a republican democracy, there are limits to what we can legislate, even if we ought to have such laws. We only “have to do” the best that we’re capable of doing.

ii) There is also a question of objectives:

a) If the objective is to punish abortion, then making it a capital offense would be appropriate.

b) If the objective is to deter abortion, then we might pursue a more pragmatic strategy. To deter abortion, it might be sufficient to try the abortionist for murder–among other things.

Then there are situations where the father puts the woman up to it. That makes him equally culpable. Sometimes more so.

iii) Making abortion a capital offense might have some deterrent value (assuming juries would convict). However, that’s not politically feasible for the time being. So you settle for the best you can get. Obama is not the best we can get. Pelosi is not the best we can get.

“Unfortunately, when you vote, you've got to consider all the issues.”

Since Obama was wrong on the same issues that McCain was wrong on, while also being wrong on the issues McCain was right on, that consideration hardly weighs in favor of Obama.

In any case, that’s now a moot issue. Hopefully we can do better than McCain the next time around. That wouldn’t be hard. However, it would be hard to do worse than Obama.

“I am sure there were plenty of people who voted for Obama who held their noses when it came to his views on abortion. But if your overall political sympathies are closer to Obama than to McCain, I can't see holding your nose about everything else in order not to hold your nose on abortion.”

In other words, Reppert is appealing to his other ideological deficiencies to justify his ideological deficiencies on abortion.

“Many people who are, strictly speaking, pro-choice, hate abortion.”

That’s a throwaway line.

“They want to see the number of abortions brought as close to zero as possible.”

Then why did Reppert cast his vote to empower the baby-killers? Give them carte blanche? Is that a way to lower the abortion rate?

“To call them friends of baby-butchers is the triumph of ideology over common sense.”

Reppert voted for the most militantly proabortion candidate in the pack. Also, by putting a Democrat in the White House when Democrats already control Congress, which further gives them a chance to change the balance of power on the courts, that removes any check on proabortion extremism.

And it’s not as if Obama’s political agenda is notable for its compensatory virtues. Reppert voted for the worst electable candidate, and urged his readers follow him over the moral abyss.

So, yes, that makes him complicit. He had better options, but opted for the greater evil.