You see, the issue under discussion concerns the popular belief that religious conservatives aim to impose their beliefs upon others (and the implication that others do not generally impose their beliefs upon religious conservatives). The fact is, religious conservatives are being imposed upon all the time, and are simply trying to participate in the system as do their ideological opponents.
When those adversaries marginalize them with barbaric arguments, what they attempt to do is take away their power to effectively participate. In short, their arguments amount to a grand ad hominem: “Don't listen to them, they are religious nuts.” This is barbarism and it is pervasive in our society. To confront it, some people resort to barbarism themselves– they use bombs and guns. Others do not use such weapons, but when their adversaries are killed, they secretly rejoice. It is a dangerous situation to have so many people rejoice when a person is killed.
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Now you claimed abortion is the same as the issues you mentioned in that we all must support them with taxes. (This is an entirely different argument than that under discussion). In one sense you are correct. But there are differences that essentially set abortion apart from the issues you mentioned.
Consider artificial life support or heart transplants, for example. One may reject these for religious reasons, but the motive for using them is to support life, this, without infringing upon the life of organic entities. Here, there is neither logical breach nor a breach in natural ethics. Simply claiming “if he cannot survive on his own, he should die” is but a metaphysical statement.
Concerning the death penalty we rely upon the old argument that natural ethics permits us to attempt rectifying all unethical disparities. This is to say that should an organism that is being attacked have power to utterly destroy its attacker and actually uses the power, then logical parity exists because the attacker had made an illogical claim against the organism's entire life. Laying aside mitigating factors, the attacked organism can indeed make a reasoned claim against its attacker's life. All it needs is power to execute the claim. There is no breach of natural ethics here. If I steal an apple, a logical disparity exists and it can only be rectified by my return of at least the value of the apple. If I take all one has (i.e. one's entire life), a logical disparity exists and can only be rectified by my giving of my entire life. Arguably my life is not worth as much as yours, but this is a mere subjective determination. I speak here of a logical exchange-- apple for apple, life for life. If I take two lives, then I must give at least all I have-- my one life. Such exchanges rectify logical disparities and no ethical breach occurs by them. One may say the death of a murderer can never bring back the victim and therefore we should abolish the death penalty, but this is really a subjective statement (and a very bad argument). As far as law and reason are concerned, such deaths force murderers to pay what they can for what they have done. Where the state is concerned, this is very important.
Now abortion cannot be so easily dismissed. As I have here said many times, one principle we civilized humans have universally accepted as “reasonable”, is the principle that claims must be supported by fact. The person making a claim is compelled by reason to support his claim not by subjective arbitrary determinations, but by objective fact. Fact is the ticket allowing passage into the mind of reasonable men. If one fails to support one's claim with fact, then the reasonable man, by virtue of his reasonable nature, is forced to reject the claim out-of-hand. If we follow this principle, and hold diligently to it, then fact will take us only where it leads, and if it never leads in a certain direction, we will never find ourselves proceeding in that direction.
Now considering the entire course of human history, abortion is a relatively recent phenomenon. There was a time when humanity developed, irrespective of allegedly reasoned claims against the lives of unborn children. This is not to say that no claim against such lives ever existed prior to legalized abortion, but rather that the claims were made and enforced by use of illogic (i.e. barbarism). The warrior who killed a pregnant female and destroyed her unborn child did not do so having proven the expendability of the child. He did so merely because he had taken into his own hands the ruling principle of all relations: Might makes Right. When humans take into their hands this principle, it amounts to simple animal barbarism.
Whenever abortion is applied to humanity, those who make the application claim, by implication, that the human conceptus is expendable. To reasonably make this claim, allowing its acceptance by men of reason, the abortion supporter has the logical obligation to support it with fact; and we see it does not require the most perceptive reader to understand that here is where reason compels one to reject Abortion Doctrine. It is not by fact that the abortion supporter proves the expendability of the conceptus, but by arbitrary determinations informed by ever shifting public sentiment. The abortionist aborts the conceptus not because he can prove the claim implicit in abortion, but simply because he can.
The point is this: no principle exists to ethically justify abortion. This is a fact. There exists millions of people (and this is logically what they are) who have unfulfilled reasoned claims against the entire lives of millions of others who now live.
Abortion is nothing but an arbitrary claim against human life. If we accept such arbitrary claims, then they become the logical basis for any “reasoned” claims against any human life. Once we accept the abortion supporter's illogic, then we must logically accept any other claim against human life should it arise. For example, should our country move the last two inches from Partial Birth Abortion to the abortion of neonates (as some well-respected people now advocate), no one would have a moral obligation or logical grounds to speak against it. The reason is because there is no proof that the distinction between the unborn 9 month old child and the born 9 month old child is material to his right to life. As euthanasia grows in popularity and is eventually applied to defective neonates, then to “unwanted” neonates, no one would have an obligation or grounds to speak against it. Indeed, no one would ever have the obligation to defend anyone because arbitrary assaults against sectors of humanity would already be codified into law. It would be upon this barbarism that all claims against human life are made logically possible.
Now of course we won't necessarily accept all claims made against human life, but we cannot reject such claims by use of reason. We must reject them only by “feelings” and convention. These things change. It is the logical inconsistency extant in society's acceptance of abortion that allows other claims against life to be accepted over time. Those making the claims can and even now do use them to erode society's resolve against them. If we can kill the conceptus, then on what basis can we proscribe killing the eight-week old fetus? If we can kill the eight-week fetus, then why not kill it at four months? If at four months, why not at eight or even nine months? If we can actually deliver the thing, save for the head, and then kill it, why not kill it just after we have delivered the head? If here, why not there? Any claim can be made against human life, and over time the logical inconsistency can be used to eventually enforce it. This is why it is inevitable that euthanasia will be legalized. It is a claim against human life, and we have no reasonable argument against it. Even notions of viability are powerless, because they are arbitrary.
I am no absolutist on abortion, and could reasonably argue that, as in the case of a mother and daughter both of whom are drowning, and a husband who can save only one of them, the husband can save the mother without causing a moral breach. Nevertheless in cases where no other force but a human one determines the death of the child, then principle requires we condemn it for what it is-- pure murder.
It is murder because humanity is indivisible, found all along a smooth continuum. The conceptus, the four week old fetus, the 10 month old child, the 16 year old teen, the 90 year old adult all exist on a smooth continuum of human development, and there is no place on that continuum to which one might point to reasonably claim a lack of humanity exists. It is all humanity. I do not have to prove it is humanity, any more than I need prove you are humanity. I merely need leave you and it alone and you will do your respective things. The onus is on those who make claims against your life or the lives of unborn children to prove you are expendable. If you make no claims against the entire lives of others, then no one can prove your expendability. Should they kill you, then they will have done it simply because they could. This is pure murder.
We see that unlike the issues you mentioned abortion presents an ethical breach. Of course this will not matter at all to people wanting abortions, but I would feel a whole lot better were I not forced to pay for such clear barbarity. |
