Why is there such a hurry?

Near the end of my last post, I briefly discussed our culture's recent pattern of rapid changes on a series of moral issues. As the sexual revolution and other cultural developments have unfolded, we've seen major changes on moral issues (and other significant issues) happening with a lot of speed. In other contexts in life, that sort of pattern, or even one event without a pattern, would make us suspicious. Why does this man who wants you to sign some paperwork about a financial transaction keep pressuring you to do it sooner rather than later, insisting that you don't need more time to look into the details? Why is the used car salesman trying so hard to get you to buy the car so soon, and why is he so evasive in response to your questions? We consider it shameful to be misled by efforts to get us to make an overly quick decision in contexts like those. But an overly quick decision is even worse in the sort of moral context I referred to above. Yet, few people in our culture seem to have much of a sense of shame over how rapidly they've changed their positions on so many moral issues (and other significant issues) with so little justification.

It's predictable that the pattern will continue. Polyamory, incest, pedophilia, and other issues will become more prominent, and there will be an ongoing process of trying to get people to rapidly change their views without thinking much about it or doing much research. In the future, we ought to point out to people that they generally consider it shameful to behave that way in other contexts in life and that they ought to be more consistent by applying that sort of reasoning to these moral contexts as well.

For example, let's say somebody is undecided about something like abortion, same-sex marriage, transgenderism, or polyamory. He should take more time to research it rather than giving in to the pressure to change his mind too quickly. Getting people to take more time to think through these issues is good and will have a lot of positive short-term and long-term results. If we want somebody to not support a particular candidate or referendum or piece of legislation, for example, convincing him of our position isn't the only way to accomplish that objective. We can also accomplish it by persuading him to withhold his support until he's looked into the issue more.

I suspect one of the mistakes Republicans and others have made when issues like abortion and same-sex marriage are being evaluated by voters (and in non-voting contexts) is to neglect some of the options on the table. People ought to be pro-life on abortion, for example, but you don't have to convince somebody of a pro-life position in order to convince him to refrain from supporting a pro-choice referendum, piece of legislation, or whatever. Just convince him to withhold his support for either position (pro-life or pro-choice) until he's done more research. Sometimes it's appropriate to pressure people into making a binary choice. But we need to also be open to the possibility of trying to persuade people to refrain from supporting either side until they know more about the issue. To convince people to not support a pro-choice referendum, all you need to do is persuade them to hold off on adopting a pro-choice position. The large majority of people don't know much about subjects like the moral issues I've mentioned in this post. We should take advantage of that ignorance by reminding them of how hesitant they are when they're ignorant about something in other areas of life. And we should point out how the speed with which proponents of these new moral positions are trying to get people to make changes is suspicious, just as we're suspicious when people act that way in other contexts.

Dehumanizing humans

I suspect one reason some people think like this meme depicts above is because they don't have children. See declining birth rates in the US and other western nations. It's as if a baby is something "other" to them. I guess more like knowledge by description than knowledge by acquaintance. Anyway, to these people it may seem like it's an abstract debate, without significant personal stakes. That is, it's a debate between "a person with rights" vs. "a woman's right to bodily autonomy" as if "rights" is the sole or central concern, while our "humanness" is something incidental or secondary. As if "rights" are conferred by one group of human beings to another group of human beings, so it's ultimately human beings who decide which "rights" are more fundamental. They can't seem to appreciate that we're dealing with human beings who, simply by virtue of being human, have inherent or innate rights.

At best, they might see kids around them. However, they may see kids, but do they truly see kids? I know too many people or couples who "can't stand kids". Who don't wish to be around kids let alone have kids. People who are more career-minded than family-minded. (I'm referring to childless couples by choice, not childless couples who longed for children, but sadly never could have children due to infertility or other reasons.)

At the same time, it's easier to kill someone if the killer doesn't consider their victim a human being. Or considers them a lesser kind of human being. Like when Germans began to see the Jews as rats or vermin (cf. Kafka's Metamorphosis, Spiegelman's Maus). Like masters seeing slaves as their inferiors. Or like considering babies (at the embryonic or fetal stage of life) mere "clumps of cells".

People can de-God God by failing to esteem God as he ought to be esteemed, but people can also de-humanize humans by failing to esteem humans as we ought to be esteemed. Human beings aren't God, of course, but we're not a chunk of randomly assembled molecules in an aqueous solution either.

What the AKA Jane Roe documentary gets wrong

"Deathbed Apology: Norma McCorvey’s Pro-Life Friends Tell Another Story"

Planned Parenthood coughs on pro-lifers

HORRIFIC!

A Planned Parenthood worker intentionally coughed on pro-life people praying outside.

It's bad enough PP kills babies, now it's trying to infect people with the Coronavirus.

Hey @ppact

FIRE this employee NOW and apologize to the victims.https://t.co/rtUzi0pUYx

— LifeNews.com (@LifeNewsHQ) March 17, 2020

"There are no unborn children in science"

There are no unborn children in science, Ted. There are fetuses. If you can’t get basic terminology correct, then take a seat in the back of class and shut up because the adults are talking. https://t.co/JOdRdGDeOC

— Jennifer Gunter (@DrJenGunter) February 28, 2020

1. Philosopher Kyle Blanchette responded to Gunter and her ilk months ago.

2. The basic issue is that

Same person, different location

Someone recently posted this image of their baby:

(Source)

Pete Buttigieg said:

Now right now, they [pro-life Christians] hold everyone in line with this one kind of piece of doctrine about abortion, right? Which is obviously a tough issue for a lot of people to think through morally. Then again, you know, there are a lot of parts of the Bible that talk about how life begins with breath. And so even that is something we can interpret differently.

Buttigieg suggests we determine life when the baby draws its first breath.

A 2020 presidential candidate is suggesting babies can be killed up UNTIL a baby draws its first breath.

pic.twitter.com/1VSYHyjRsv

— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) September 6, 2019

Mayor Pete assumes a baby doesn't "breathe" until the baby has been born and starts crying. I've pointed out how that's a false assumption.

First breath

Mayor Pete:

In an interview on CBS' "Breakfast Club," the good mayor suggested that not only is a full-term baby girl, who is in the process of exiting her mother’s birth canal, not yet a human being, but neither is that same child post-birth, when she is held in the doctor’s hands.

No, a beating heart, the sensations of pain and pleasure, and the ability to move her legs, arms, fingers and toes do not grant this infant personhood, dignity and the right to life.

None of these things matter, says Mayor Pete. A baby is not human, nor does it warrant any legal protection, until after it takes its first breath.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/feb/14/presidential-candidate-pete-buttigieg-insults-the-

1. Mayor Pete is morally reprehensible.

2. What is breathing? There are several ways to answer this question. I'll simplify, but I can delve into the technical details if necessary. Minimally, or essentially, I'd say breathing is gas exchange. Mainly oxygen and carbon dioxide as far as humans are concerned. Breathing is the movement of oxygen into the body and the movement of carbon dioxide out of the body.

3. Babies in the womb do, in fact, exchange gas. Hence, on this definition, babies are breathing in the womb. Of course, babies aren't breathing with fully functional lungs like we are. The main reason for this is because (at the risk of stating the obvious) a baby's lungs are still being formed in the womb. Nevertheless the baby is breathing, oxygenating, ventilating, exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide, perfusing cells and tissues and organs.

4. As such, Mayor Pete's criterion that a baby is only a human after it takes its first breath is preposterous. The baby has been breathing the entire time.

5. Mayor Pete seems to think breathing is something that happens when one can observe the diaphragm contracting, muscles moving, chest rising, and the like. However that's a mechanistic understanding of what breathing is. Breathing strictly as mechanics. But what's the purpose of our diaphragm contracting, muscles moving, and lungs working?

To put it another way, everyone needs oxygen to live, and in newborns and adults oxygen is best obtained via our lungs, but that doesn't necessarily imply our lungs are the only means by which we can obtain oxygen.

6. Otherwise, if we consistently applied this mechanistic position, then a baby or adult who can't breathe without the assistance of modern ventilators (or in the past an iron lung) is "not human, nor does it warrant legal protection". Likewise a drowned person who can be revived with CPR but whose lungs aren't currently expanding and contracting is "not human, nor does it warrant legal protection". A newborn or adult on a heart-lung (cardiopulmonary) bypass machine is "not human, nor does it warrant legal protection".

Boy with no brain

https://www.christian.org.uk/news/boy-with-no-brain-continues-to-defy-expectations/

Save unborn eagles

Christian infographics

https://www.wesleyhuff.com/infographics

Suicide by time-travel

i) Proabortionists often trot out situations where raising the child is a hardship on the mother. And there are undoubtedly situations where that's the case. 

Consider cases where raising the proabortionist was a hardship on the mother. Suppose the proabortionist could step into a time-machine, travel back into the past, and preempt his/her own conception, thereby sparing his/her mother the ordeal of having to raise the proabortionist. 

That would be both contraception by time-travel as well as suicide by time-travel. Or suicidal contraception by time-travel.  How many proabortionists would step into the time-machine to preempt their conception, so as to spare their mother the onerous experience of having to raise them? How many proabortionists would commit suicidal contraception if they had that opportunity? I daresay not a single one would care enough about the hardship their existence imposed on their mother to prevent their existence from ever happening. Proabortionists are far too selfish to be suicidally altruistic. 

ii) Now, I don't expect proabortionist to admit that. Since it's just hypothetical, it wouldn't cost them anything to lie about it. But it's a way of exposing their hypocrisy.

iii) In addition, sometimes you can plant an idea which will eventually cause a person to change their mind. They may not admit it to you at the time, yet it's something that never occurred to them, but once the idea is planted in their mind, it works its way through to the conclusion.

iv) A critic might object that my thought-experiment is unrealistic. It generates a classic time-travel antinomy, like the grandfather paradox. But that's irrelevant. The point of time-travel scenarios is to illustrate a principle in a picturesque way which makes it easier to grasp and appreciate. They can visualize the principle. It gives the principle a concrete setting. But the principle doesn't depend on the coherence of the illustration. It's just a fictional story. 

Californabortion

Wokesperson

https://www.proginosko.com/2019/07/wen-ya-gotta-go-ya-gotta-go/

Planned Parenthood fires Wen

I just learned that the @PPFA Board ended my employment at a secret meeting. We were engaged in good faith negotiations about my departure based on philosophical differences over the direction and future of Planned Parenthood. My statement to come shortly.

— Leana Wen, M.D. (@DrLeanaWen) July 16, 2019

Planned Parenthood (PP) recently fired its president, Dr. Leana Wen, who is an emergency physician. My thoughts:

10 questions for pro-choice people

"Ten questions for pro-choice people" (Andrew Haslam).

What do Planned Parenthood and Islam have in common?

Non-Muslim enablers of Islam frequently defend Islam by claiming that most Muslims aren't terrorists. There are problems with that defense. For one thing, many Muslims who aren't terrorists support terrorism. In addition, the social pathologies of Islam are hardly limited to terrorism. Consider honor killings, virulent misogyny, the rape culture, female genital mutilation, pedophilia and pederasty, widespread anal sex, &c.

However, let's draw a comparison. Planned Parenthood defends itself by claiming that only 3% of its services are abortion services. That's a parallel to the defense of Islam. 

Of course, even if we grant that stat, critics of Planned Parenthood don't think the 97% of non-abortion services offsets committing massive moral atrocities every year.  From a Christian perspective, be consistent. Don't use an argument in support of Islam that you'd never use in support of Planned Parenthood. 

Informed consent

HUGE PRO-LIFE VICTORY:

The 6th Circuit today announced it will not rehear arguments in the @ACLU’s lawsuit against Kentucky's ultrasound bill...

This bill will stand, and life will be preserved. #WeAreKY #ProLife pic.twitter.com/e0lfrvsoKV

— Governor Matt Bevin (@GovMattBevin) June 28, 2019

1. Glad to see a pro-life victory.

2. As a possible aid for pro-lifers in general, let me mention two words: informed consent.

Here I'll emphasize the "informed" in informed consent.

What is informed consent? At a basic level, my understanding is informed consent is the idea that the patient ought to be given the choice to accept or decline medical treatment based on the physician (or other health care providers) providing the patient comprehensible and sufficient information to make this choice (e.g. relevant knowledge of risks and benefits of medical treatment).

In short, patients need to know what medical treatment they're receiving with their eyes as wide open as possible.

Of course, there may be exceptions (e.g. an unconscious patient with life-threatening trauma that requires immediate action), but I'm speaking in general.

At least this is my working definition, but I presume a lawyer, ethicist, and/or philosopher could improve upon it. I'd be glad to have an improved definition.

3. In any case, showing a woman seeking an abortion an ultrasound of her baby, explaining what everything means to her, and fielding any questions she has in order to obtain consent for abortion seems to me to be part and parcel of informed consent. It seems to me it's what a physician is obligated to do with respect to informed consent.

4. At the same time, intentionally withholding this same information seems to me the physician is failing to obtain adequate informed consent. As such, it seems to me the physician could be liable to a charge of negligence.

5. Suppose someone is seeking quadruple bypass heart surgery. Suppose the cardiothoracic surgeon intentionally withholds relevant information about what the surgery will involve. This could open the cardiothoracic surgeon to a malpractice suit.

I'm no lawyer, ethicist, or philosopher, but perhaps a case could be made that it should be the same for physicians and other health care providers who refuse to provide information to women seeking an abortion like ultrasounds and hearing their baby's heart beat. If so, then we can take the fight to pro-abortionists.

Free fire zone

In the past I've discussed how freewill theism generates moral dilemmas. Here's a definition:

What is common to the two well-known cases is conflict. In each case, an agent regards herself as having moral reasons to do each of two actions, but doing both actions is not possible. Ethicists have called situations like these moral dilemmas. The crucial features of a moral dilemma are these: the agent is required to do each of two (or more) actions; the agent can do each of the actions; but the agent cannot do both (or all) of the actions. The agent thus seems condemned to moral failure; no matter what she does, she will do something wrong (or fail to do something that she ought to do).

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-dilemmas/#ConMorDil

I've quoted Roger Olson as a freewill theist who concedes the reality of moral dilemmas. BW3 is another example:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/bibleandculture/2019/06/25/pros-and-cons-of-the-pro-life-issue-part-five/

BW3 uses moral dilemmas as a wedge issue to justify abortion in cases of rape, incest, or the life of the mother. It isn't clear if by the life of the mother he means situations where one must die for the other to survive or where both will die unless one is killed. If moral dilemmas are a fixture of your worldview, then the world becomes a free fire zone where anything is permissible under dire circumstances. Freewill theists rail against the morality of Calvinism but it's ironic what their own position commits them to. 

Victim mentality

1. This is my wrapup on the latest White imbroglio. A black Christian friend asked me what my opinion was of his tweet, which is why I originally commented. I did two posts:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/06/black-abortion.html

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/06/identity-politics-for-me-but-not-for.html

2. Today I watched the DL:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv0D0Zufy7M

In my deliberately limited experience of the DL, it was typical White: a self-adulation fest. Half-baked. Disorganized. Larded with layers of condescension and sneering. Defending the most defensible aspects of his position while ducking the indefensible aspects of his position. Responding to the weakest objections while ignoring the strongest objections. 

It's painful to watch these performances. Some incidental observations before getting to the main point:

3. He played a video by Taleeb Starkes, who begins by noting the victim mental: everything is someone else's fault.

The irony is lost on White. That's White's M.O. He's the voice of reason. He's the adult in the room. All his critics are immature. In my experience, White never takes takes personal responsibility for what he says or does. He always shifts the blame to someone else. And that's a mark of immaturity. 

4.He indicated that the first heard he heard "soft bigotry of lowered expectations" was a few months ago from Voddie Baucham. That's odd since George W. Bush used to say it.

5. In a truly strange turn of events, he compared light-skinned blacks and dark-skinned blacks. He say Samuel Sey is "fully black"–unlike Jason L. Rily, who is "black, too, but not as black as Samuel". Why on earth is a white Baptist elder commenting on something like that? How is that appropriate? Why does he care? 

He also noted how good Samuel Sey looks in a Coogi sweater. You have to wonder what's going on in White's head. 

6. He said 33% of prison inmates are black. While that does point to a serious problem with black criminality (among younger black men), it's a somewhat misleading comparison because a lot of that is due to incarceration on drug offenses. And it's disputable whether so many men should be behind bars for drug possession. 

7. He spent a lot of time inveighing against social justice, intersectionality, and critical race theory. That's fine since I don't support that. That's not the basis of my criticism.

8. He said there's a direct connection between the abortion rate and marital status. A disparity between unmarried women who become pregnant and married women who become pregnant.

But he didn't make that correlation in his tweet. His correlation was based on race rather than marital status. I was the one who suggested we should use marital status rather than race as the basis of comparison. He doesn't get retroactive credit for belatedly appealing to a different variable. 

9. He tardily admitted that one of the factors spiking the abortion rate in the black community is Planned Parenthood, with its white eugenicist past. But once again, that's an issue which I raised in my response to him, not something he originally volunteered. 

Having said that, he denies that it's the "'central cause" of the high abortion rate among black mothers. But that's the framing fallacy. Why assume the abortion rate is reducible to a "central cause"? 

10. He whined about how Twitter only allows you to express yourself in 280 characters. I suspect some people deliberately use Twitter for plausible deniability. If they say something indefensible on Twitter, their loophole is to complain that Twitter is a poor medium for complex analysis. You can't expect a tweet to have detailed qualifications.

But no one is forcing White to use Twitter to discuss the abortion rate in the black community. He could easily write a longer, more qualified statement on Facebook or the Alpha  & Omega blog. So that's a lame excuse. 

11. Now let's get to the nub of the issue. He acted like his tweet was unassailable because the statistic is demonstrably accurate or approximately accurate. He citied articles to back up his claim. 

i) But that's an evasion of the real issue. Speaking for myself, it's not the statistic itself that's controversial, but the statistic in combination with White's explanation for the statistic. What he posits to be the "central cause". He attributes that to "fatherlessness, sexual license, and rebellious sexual ethics". Moreover, fatherlessness isn't really a separate category or variable but reducible to "sexual license and rebellious sexual ethics" since he goes on to say, in the DL, that "Planned Parenthood doesn't force black man and women to fornicate". So according to him, fatherlessness reflects sexually active irresponsible men. 

ii) The logical implication of his statistic in conjunction with his "central cause" is that black men and women are sexually libertine/rebellious at upwards of 3.5x the rate of white men and women. 

iii) In addition, that plays into the old, damaging, defamatory stereotype of black men as oversexed animals. As a recall, that was a justification of antebellum slavery and postbellum Jim Crow laws. Black men had to be kept under heel. 

Furthermore, I believe that stereotype fueled lynchings. If you think black men have a raging, out-of-control libido, then that makes black men presumptive racists. That was the thinking of the lynch mobs, was it not? And that dangerous prejudice continues right up through Dylann Roof  ("Y’all are raping our white women!"). 

It's striking that James White has such a tin-ear for what his explanation entails. And he's impervious to correction by layers of smug impenetrable superiority. 

Identity politics for me but not for thee

I posted on this once before:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/06/black-abortion.html

But now I'd like to make some additional, related observations:

i) James White is a critic of identity politics. And that's fine. Identity politics should be opposed. The problem is when he unconsciously uses identity politics to further his own argument. 

ii) Now a critic of identity politics could use identity politics in a tu quoque argument. Let's assume identity politics for the sake of argument, then draw some conclusions or parallels that should make proponents of identity politics balk. But that's not what White is doing where. 

iii) Likewise, judging individuals by group association isn't fallacious if particular beliefs or behavior are intrinsically related to that affiliation. For instance, it's proper to make assumptions about a Klansman, since that's what the KKK stands for. It's proper to judge a Democrat politician by the party he represents, since his party has official ideological positions.  

iv) It is, however, fallacious and unjust to associate individuals with group membership behavior when that's an adventitious association or incidental feature of their affiliation. Since there's no intrinsic relationship between abortion and race/ethnicity, making invidious comparisons between black mothers in general and white mothers in general vis-a-vis abortion unthinkingly buys into the tactics and assumptions of identity politics. 

v) Moreover, that's not an isolated example. James White seems to have a blind spot in that regard. Remember this incident?

http://razorskiss.net/2016/03/james-white-dashcam-post-archive/

Once again, that's a classic example of White's subconscious identity politics. He stereotypes the black teenager by reducing him to a statistic. He slots the teenager into a standard narrative. What could be more prejudicial? Typecasting the teenager based on a single fleeting encounter, backfilled by statistics. 

Perhaps White would say he's not making assumptions about the teenager just because he's black but because he flipped off the police. Well, I daresay lots of teenage boys of all different racial or ethnic backgrounds are antagonistic towards the police. Would White posit the same backstory for all of them? 

vi) It's especially ironic because it reveals a subliminal double standard. On the one hand, White bends over backwards to disassociate Muslims in general from support for jihad, honor killings, a rape culture, &c. On the other hand, he has the opposite reaction when it comes to black Americans.