Robert George's Response to Post on Abortion as a Moral Tragedy

Here is Robert George's thoughtful and thought-provoking reply to my post on abortion as a moral tragedy:

Thanks for your lastest posting explaining why you are presenting as a point of agreement between pro-life Democrats and Republicans the proposition that abortion is a moral tragedy.

One problem, as I see it, is that the shared belief that abortion is a tragedy, and even a moral tragedy, is a point of agreement between pro-lifers (irrespective of party) and most people (though, to be sure, not all) who regard themselves as pro-choice. I know almost no one that believes that abortion is a good thing. Most pro-choice politicians and many activists even go so far as to say that they are "personally" opposed to abortion. (I don't know a single Catholic pro-choice politician who fails to say this or something very much like it.) Such people oppose abortion, even while supporting its legality and in most cases even claiming that abortion is a woman's right, because (one must assume) they regard it as not a good thing. They wish, no doubt sincerely, that women contemplating abortion would choose a different option.

To say that abortion is a "moral tragedy," and to mean by saying it that abortion is not to be taken lightly and, indeed, that it is not a good thing (and even a morally bad one), is not necessarily to embrace the pro-life position. What makes pro-life Democrats (like Ben Nelson) pro-life, and distinguishes them from their self-identified pro-choice colleagues (like Teddy Kennedy), is that they say more than that. A central feature of what they perceive as bad about abortion--a feature with direct implications for the question of whether abortion may legitimately be permitted by a political society--is that abortion is a grave injustice against a vulnerable member of the human community. So, they believe, not only is it the case that there is no right to abortion; the child in the womb has a right to be protected by public authority against deliberate acts of violence.

In my own experience with pro-life Democrats (for many years I was one of the breed myself), they don't disagree with pro-life Republicans about the injustice of abortion or the right of the unborn child to legal protection against direct killing or other forms of unjust homicide. So the fundamental point of agreement is much richer than what is captured by the idea that abortion is a moral tragedy.

Perhaps it will illuminate things to consider how (1) pro-choicers (of either party), (2) pro-life Republicans, and (3) pro-life Democrats would respond to the following question: Is the embryonic or fetal offspring of human parents a human being possessing inherent dignity and a corresponding human right to the equal protection of the laws? Pro-choicers would say "no." (Some would say--absurdly--that the human embryo or fetus is not yet alive; others would say--almost equally absurdly--that the embryo or fetus, though a living being, is not yet human; still others would say--incorrectly, in my view, though not absurdly--that the embryo or fetus, though a living human being--i.e. an individual member of the species Homo sapiens--is not yet a "person" bearing a right to life. A few would say, with the philosopher Judith Thomson, that the fetus is, or may well be, a person with a right to life, but may legitimately be evicted by a pregnant woman from her body as a sort of uninvited guest, even if fetal death is a certain consequence.) Pro-life Republicans would give the opposite answer: they would say "yes." How would pro-life Democrats come down? Would they answer "no" or "yes"? (Note that the question--the central question dividing those of us who are pro-life from those who are pro-choice--logically does not admit of a third possible answer; if the answer is anything other than "yes," it must be "no.") My guess is that most pro-life Democrats would say "yes." I would be surprised if there are many self-identified pro-life Democrats who would answer the question by denying that the child in the womb is anything less than a human being with equal fundamental human rights.

I think that many, if not most, pro-life Democrats would agree with pro-life Democrat (and Notre Dame dean) Mark Roche, who argued (in an article written, ironically, to encourage Catholics to support pro-choice Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry) that "history will judge our society's support of abortion in much the same way we view earlier generations' support of torture and slavery - it will be universally condemned." We condemn earlier generations' support for slavery not (merely) as a moral tragedy, but as a grave injustice of extraordinary magnitude. In the days of slavery, however, there were people who were personally opposed to slaveholding, and who would not themselves own slaves, who nevertheless supported "the peculiar institution" as a "necessary evil" or a "tragic necessity." (Indeed, there were even some slaveholders--such as Jefferson--who viewed slavery as a moral tragedy.) Of course, those who held this position could not be counted as abolitionists or supporters of racial equality. (Some, I'm sure, hoped for the day when social conditions and economic developments would cause slavery's extinction. Among these, perhaps, were people who favored economic reforms and other public policies aimed at eliminating the cause of slavery without using the corecive force of the law to ban it.) At the same time, among those of whatever party who fully believed in racial equality and who viewed slavery as a profound injustice that no decent polity could permit, it would not capture their fundamental point of agreement to say that they shared the view that slavery was a "moral tragedy." As in the case of pro-life Democrats and pro-life Republicans today, their fundamental agreement was, I believe, richer than what is captured in that phrase.