Answering Steve re abortion and embryonic stem cell research

In an earlier post Steve says:  “I am genuinely interested in determining what arguments can be made for the Catholic position [on embryonic stem cell research and maybe abortion more broadly] outside resort to authority.”  And, I am thankful for his continuing to press the issue.  Here is an attempt to respond. 

Pope John Paul the Great, in his Encyclical Letter, Centesimus annus, paragraph 44 says:

“[T]otalitarianism arises out of a denial of truth in the objective sense. If there is no transcendent truth, in obedience to which man achieves his full identity, then there is no sure principle for guaranteeing just relations between people. Their self-interest as a class, group or nation would inevitably set them in opposition to one another. If one does not acknowledge transcendent truth, then the force of power takes over, and each person tends to make full use of the means at his disposal in order to impose his own interests or his own opinion, with no regard for the rights of others. People are then respected only to the extent that they can be exploited for selfish ends. Thus, the root of modern totalitarianism is to be found in the denial of the transcendent dignity of the human person who, as the visible image of the invisible God, is therefore by his very nature the subject of rights which no one may violate — no individual, group, class, nation or State. Not even the majority of a social body may violate these rights, by going against the minority, by isolating, oppressing, or exploiting it, or by attempting to annihilate it.”

The history of humanity is replete with images of the powerful using the less powerful as objects, exploited for their own selfish ends.  In many cultures, if you were not a citizen, you didn’t count in any meaningful sense (you were “other”) and could be treated in less than human ways.  In the America’s Bartolome De Las Casas argued in favor of the humanity of the Indians against those who treated them as “other” and less than fully human.  The vestiges of our own sinful history of treating blacks as less than human and exploiting them as property are still very much with us.  And, we have the Nazi’s looking at the Jews as objects to be killed for their own selfish ends.

In short, humanity has shown itself time and again to have succumbed to the type of totalitarianism spoken of by the late Pope, as we have looked upon one part of the human family (one type of human organism) as less than human and, therefore, subject to exploitation.  Today, it is the tiniest and most helpless of humans who are subject to such exploitation in the name of some greater good.  The German Constitutional Court understood the problem in 1975 when, remembering the Nazi past, it said the right to life of the fetus trumps the right to privacy of the mother.

If we as a society hold human life sacred (even in some secular sense), we can’t discriminate between types or stages of human life.  We cannot conclude that some types human organisms have more worth than other types or that human organisms at some stages of development have more worth than those at other stages.

Our Declaration of Independence says that all are created equal.  And, I do think to hold the position of the Framers or to hold the position of JPII and the Church, one must be open to the transcendent, to the possibility that there is a God who created us and endowed us with certain dignity.  In broad general outlines, one can reach these truths philosophically without resort to the authority of Revelation as mediated by the Magisterium.  But, once we come to this conclusion that human organisms are sacred, we are on shaky ground when we begin to discriminate and distinguish between those human organisms worthy of respect and those who are not.

A full-fledged materialist will not buy into the above arguments because he is not open to the transcendent.  For him, values are relative.  He may discriminate between an embryo, a fetus, and a born human being, but he may also discriminate between an infant, a child, and an adult, or between a black, a white, and a brown.  Bruce Ackerman, in his book, Social Justice in a Liberal State sums up this position well.  (I don’t have the book in front of me so I am doing this from memory).  He says that “rights” belong to citizens but that citizenship is a function of politics not biology.  And, only those who have the reasoning capacity to engage in his “neutral dialogue” can be citizens in his state.  Therefore, those without the mental capacity to engage in such dialogue cannot be citizens and live at the sufferance of citizens.  To Ackerman, treating the mentally retarded well is a matter of legislative grace and not legislative duty.   

Now for my question.  How does one who supports abortion or embryonic stem cell research maintain that unborn human organisms and only unborn human organisms are not entitled to the respect and dignity afforded all other human organisms?