There's a sense in which prolife arguments are too idealistic. We try to prove that the baby is human. The baby is a person. Abortion is is wrong. Abortion is murder.
The problem is not with the argument but the audience. Moral arguments suffer from a build-in limitation because they only work for people who are prepared to do the right thing. Moral arguments appeal to duty, conscience, and empathy. But what if someone just doesn't care?
It's like attempting to reason with a sociopath. There's no foothold. The argument has no leverage with someone who acts from ruthless self-interest.
Many men and women are quite prepared to commit murder if they can get away with it. Human history is a history of murder. Murder on a vast scale. Many people will commit murder no compunction.
The reason we have laws in the first place is that you can't rely on human goodness. So it's necessary to create a disincentive.
As I often explain and document, consistent atheism is nihilistic. And abortion is a case in point.
Take the claim that the baby is just a clump of cells. Most atheists are physicalists. They think adult human beings are just a clump of cells. And they think this life is all there is.
Given that outlook, if you get in my way, and I can murder you with impunity, that's exactly what I will do to you. There's no doubt in my mind that you're fully human. I couldn't care less.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't argue against abortion. But we need to appreciate that there are limits to the effectiveness of moral and rational persuasion. Many people are morally hardened.
That's also why we need to go beyond prolife arguments to argue for Christianity. Without a larger framework regarding human significance and responsibility, prolife arguments don't make sense in isolation. In a godless universe, life is worthless.
One of the ironies of abortion is that in many cases, if they went ahead and had the child, natural parental bonding would kick in. But they don't let that happen.
Well said, though sad.
ReplyDeleteAs an illustration of this. I've heard some pro-abortionists argue just because the embryo is genetically unique doesn't necessarily mean it has a right to life. They argue that'd be committing the naturalistic fallacy. For example, weeds and insects are genetically unique, but they don't necessarily have a right to life.
However, this seems to assume a more nihilistic view about humans. Given Christianity, human life isn't reducible to medical and scientific facts like genetic uniqueness. We're far more than that. We also have a soul or spirit. But, of course, secular nihilisits don't believe that.
It may also be a good idea to legally require pregnant women to have perfectly safe and harmless non-invasive ultrasound to see images of their baby and handheld dopplers to hear their baby's heartbeat if they are considering abortion. I think that has been tried in the past, but pro-abortionists successfully blocked it. For example, I believe the current governor of Virginia, Ralph Natham, himself a pediatrician, successfully labeled such an ultrasound a transvaginal ultrasound as an "invasive" procedure, making it sound like women and babies were going to be in danger, which is false. Nevertheless, we shouldn't give up, but keep trying. All these procedures are safe for both mother and baby, we just need to improve the PR.
DeleteThe Jewish atheist Nat Hentoff was a great pro life advocate from his perch at the Village Voice. But Steve is correct. Without Christianity, pro-life don't make much sense. That's why Hentoff was a curiosity at the Village Voice. He convinced few of his liberal friends.
ReplyDeletePagan peoples have never felt many moral qualms about infanticide; take,for example, this memorable opening to the "300" film:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH2M5rh1gvE
The only way someone can exercise the "right" to abort a child, is by they themselves not having been aborted. Without the preservation of life, there would be no ability to choose in the first place. As the golden rule goes - do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Therefore, just as you want to have the choice to abort, requiring your life to be preserved, then by the same token, the unborn child must be endowed with the same right to abort, which requires that their life be preserved.
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