Tuesday, October 16, 2012
A number of Catholic Democrats, including, no doubt, a
number of MOJ readers, have long been admirers of Vice President Joe
Biden. And this is entirely
understandable. Throughout his political
career the self-described “boy from Scranton” has proudly touted his working
class background, his Catholic faith, and his Irish roots (see here). Moreover, Joe Biden has often cited his religion
as one of the reasons he pursued a career in public service, and there is no
reason to doubt his sincerity in this regard.
Still, over the years the longtime senator from Delaware has
demonstrated an uncanny knack for factual misstatements and political gaffes (see
here and here) – the not infrequent extemporaneous comment that often leaves his
political opponents shaking their heads in disbelief and his political supporters
excusing these rhetorical miscues as “That’s just Joe being Joe!” (see here).
One would expect that for the Vice Presidential Debate – the
chance to address a national audience, in a closely contested election,
following a poor showing by the President in the first debate – that Mr. Biden
would be especially well prepared to deliver a gaffe-free performance. Moreover, given the emphasis placed on
abortion at the Democratic Party’s convention (see here and here), and the
great distance between the stated positions of the Obama-Biden ticket and the
Romney-Ryan ticket on the life issue (see here), predicting a question on
abortion was about as close to a sure thing as happens in politics.
But what voters heard was not a thoughtful answer to a
question that everyone could have anticipated.
Instead what Mr. Biden delivered was another gaffe, another “Joeism.”
The problem began with how moderator Martha Raddatz framed
the question. (The debate transcript is
here, the video is here).
This debate is, indeed, historic. We have two Catholic candidates, first time,
on a stage such as this. And I would
like to ask you both to tell me what role your religion has played in your own
personal views on abortion. Please talk
about how you came to that decision. Talk
about how your religion played a part in that.
And, please, this is such an emotional issue for so many people in this
country.
Father James Martin, S.J. (here) found Raddatz’s question
problematic because it shows that “many journalists
tend to reduce all of Catholicism to a single issue,” namely, abortion.
But that is only
one problem. Another and I think deeper problem
is that many journalists have enormous difficulty seeing opposition to abortion
outside the prism of religion.
Ramesh
Ponnuru (here) summarizes this point nicely:
Martha Raddatz framed the question about abortion badly by
bringing up religion, a frame that encourages people to think about the
question in church-state terms that are both misleading and favorable to one
side of the discussion. In response, Biden said that he accepted the Catholic
Church’s alleged “doctrine” that life begins at conception in his “personal
life” but would not impose it on others.
Raddatz’s
errant framing of the issue suited Mr. Biden just fine. He plainly stated: “I accept my church’s
position on abortion as a – what we call a de
fide doctrine. Life begins at
conception in the church’s judgment. I
accept it in my personal life. But I
refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians and Muslims and Jews, and I
just refuse to impose that on others . . . .”
In describing the Church’s support for the view that life
begins as conception as part of the deposit of the faith – “de fide” – as Biden mumbled almost
inaudibly, a matter of divine revelation – Mr. Biden committed another Joeism .
. . and this one was a dandy. According
to Biden, belief in the humanity of the unborn child is equivalent to belief in
the Incarnation, the Holy Trinity, or the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist,
and as such is something that may not be enacted in law.
Although guided by sacred scripture, the Church does not in
fact ground her belief in the humanity of the unborn child solely on divine
revelation. As Ponnuru notes:
The Church does not, in fact,
teach as a matter of faith that life begins at conception. It recognizes the scientific fact that
conception marks the beginning of the life of a human organism — a member of
the human species — and teaches as a matter of morals that we have obligations
in justice to this being. Biden does not
accept this teaching, and it is not clear that he even understands it.
Indeed, the Catholic bishops of the United States would
surely be surprised to learn that their teaching on abortion – specifically the
belief that human life begins at fertilization – is a matter of faith.
In a document they issued in 1998 entitled Living the Gospel of Life (here ¶ 24) they pointedly responded to Biden’s
claim in what might be described as the verbal equivalent of an ecclesiastical
smack-down:
[S]ome Catholic elected officials
have adopted the argument that, while they personally oppose evils like
abortion, they cannot force their religious views onto the wider society. This
is seriously mistaken on several key counts. First, regarding abortion, the
point when human life begins is not a religious belief but a scientific fact—a
fact on which there is clear agreement even among leading abortion advocates.
Second, the sanctity of human life is not merely Catholic doctrine but part of
humanity’s global ethical heritage, and our nation’s founding principle.
Finally, democracy is not served by silence. Most Americans would recognize the
contradiction in the statement, “While I am personally opposed to slavery or
racism or sexism I cannot force my personal view on the rest of society.” Real
pluralism depends on people of conviction struggling vigorously to advance
their beliefs by every ethical and legal means at their disposal.
Before his election as pope, when he was head of
the CDF, Joseph Ratzinger made a similar point.
In its Doctrinal Note on Some
Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life (here ¶ 5) the CDF likewise repudiated the canard that pro-life legislation
is an offense against pluralism and an attempt to impose the Christian faith on
others:
[N]o
Catholic can appeal to the principle of pluralism or to the autonomy of lay
involvement in political life to support policies affecting the common good
which compromise or undermine fundamental ethical requirements. This is not a question of “confessional
values” per se, because such ethical precepts are rooted in human nature itself
and belong to the natural moral law.
They do not require from those who defend them the profession of the
Christian faith, although the Church’s teaching confirms and defends them
always and everywhere as part of her service to the truth about man and about
the common good of civil society.
Moreover, it cannot be denied that politics must refer to principles of
absolute value precisely because these are at the service of the dignity of the
human person and true human progress.
Mr. Biden began his response to the question on abortion by saying:
I've
been a practicing Catholic my whole life. And it has particularly informed my
social doctrine. Catholic social doctrine talks about taking care of those who
— who can't take care of themselves, people who need help.
A more informed journalist might have responded: “Mr. Biden,
I understand Catholic social doctrine impels you to support policies that help
take care of people who can’t take care of themselves. Doesn’t Catholic social doctrine include the
unborn among those who are vulnerable, who can’t take care of themselves? If so, why do you oppose laws that would protect
them?”
The problem seems to be that journalist seem incapable of
asking following up questions to politicians who advocate a pro-choice position. Is it too much to ask that journalists
rediscover or develop the knack for asking the uncomfortable questions of
pro-choice politicians?
As Mollie at Get
Religion (here) observes, there are any number of questions Raddatz could
have asked Biden by way of follow up:
[H]ow about asking him whether he could
envision any limitations on abortion at all, whatsoever? How about asking him
if he thinks it should be legal to kill an unborn child simply because that
child is a female? How about asking him if he thinks that there is anything
wrong with terminating a pregnancy because the fetus has Down syndrome?
Likewise, Raddatz might also have asked Biden about his
earlier support for a Human Life Amendment, his opposition to the Freedom of
Choice Act (something Mr. Obama supported) his support for the Partial Birth
Abortion Ban (something Mr. Obama opposed) or his support for the Born Alive
Infant Protection Act (something Mr. Obama opposed) (see here). Is it too much to ask that the stark contrast
between the President and the Vice President on the treatment of unborn human
beings be explored?
I know that we live in an era in which the Church is reaping
the poor harvest of many years of deficient catechesis. Still, is it really too much to ask that a
person who publicly identifies himself as Catholic – indeed, wears his Catholic
identity on his sleeve – should be able to state with accuracy what the
Catholic Church teaches and why when he publicly rejects that teaching as a
source that might inform his views on a matter of public policy?
Moreover, is it really too much to ask of such a person that
he explain – in a principled fashion – how it is permissible for his religion
to influence his approach to public policy on some matters but not on others?
Even if some find this too demanding, is it really too much
to ask that the Vice President of the United States know that Planned
Parenthood is the nation’s single largest abortion provider? Is it too much to ask that before he defends
Planned Parenthood that Mr. Biden know that the organization itself reported
performing 985,731 abortions over three years, from 2008-2010? (see here). Yet at a campaign rally held the day after
the debate Mr. Biden said that the Republicans want to defund Planned
Parenthood “which by law cannot perform any abortions.”
I’m sure that statement by Mr. Biden comes as much of a
surprise to the leaders of Planned Parenthood as Mr. Biden’s claim that the Church’s
belief in the humanity of the unborn child is a belief that the Church holds “de fide” comes as a surprise to the
bishops of the Catholic Church.
But hey, maybe that’s just Joe being Joe!
As Mike picked up on the Peppard
op-ed piece in today’s New York Times
(I wonder if the Times would be
interested in publishing Mike’s posting as another op-ed?), there is need to
comment on the lead editorial which appeared in the same edition of this
journal. [HERE]
The Times continues to show little understanding of or respect for
views with which it disagrees. In the context of this editorial, the editors
conjure up the imaginary horribles that would emerge if Roe v. Wade “goes.” The editorial asserts that since Governor
Romney and Congressman Ryan are “opponents of abortion rights,” supporters of
this “right” should be worried. It was kind of the editors to suggest that the
Republican nominees have a view that “depart[s] slightly from the extremist
Republican Party platform.” But this editorial fails to consider that it is the
other party which may now have and push the extremist platform. I offer this
suggestion in view of the fact that the ability to seek an abortion is
considered a “human right” by the Times.
To reinforce its position, the sagacity of the Guttmacher Institute and the
Center for Reproductive Rights is relied upon along the good works of the “invaluable
family-planning group” Planned Parenthood. The editorial concludes by retelling
the tragedy of a young woman who died from the complications of an illegal
abortion. This is a tragedy without question, but the Times fails to consider that she might have also died from a legal
abortion. Would that have not been a tragedy? Moreover, the Times disregards the statistic that
since Roe was decided, almost fifty-million young Americans have died as a
result of “legal abortions” performed in the United States since 1973. This is
a tragedy of enormous proportion, yet the Times
is silent about it.
If the Times were genuinely interested in all the tragedies that can be
avoided by honoring all authentic human rights considerations, the worries
about Roe’s fate could disappear from
its opinion pages forever. How might this occur? Back in October of 2007, I
offered some thoughts on the matter regarding the disappearance of Roe and the consideration of
alternatives to criminalization, which troubles the Times. Here is the relevant portion of what I said then:
Let us first begin by considering the duties of the
law-maker (for us in the US, this means state legislatures, Congress, judges,
and administrative agencies) that relate to abortion. The law-maker can make a
law that criminalizes abortion, legalizes abortion, or regulates abortion. The
law-maker may say nothing about morality in positing the law (statute, judicial
decision, or regulation) made on the subject.
Moreover, the law-maker may be urged to conclude by the
lobbyist or the litigant that the law made must be divorced from moral
considerations. This argument has run a thread throughout jurisprudential
debate for some time. Two examples would be the Hart-Fuller debates and the
disagreements between the Kelsen school and the Rommen/Voeglin schools. Yet,
when all is said and done, there frequently are discussions about morality and
its nexus with the law and law-making when debates about tax laws, labor laws,
education laws, environmental laws, and criminal laws (just to mention a few)
occur. The Guttmacher Institute mentions, by the way, on its website that it
executes its mission, in part, by “testifying
before federal and state legislative bodies and in court cases.” Well, this is
participating in the law-making process, and we can readily see what their
aspirations are for law-making outcomes regarding abortion and where moral
considerations don’t fit into the process.
And what about Catholic legal theory? There is nothing wrong
or unusual with introducing moral considerations into debates that occur when
law is being made. But, for the Catholic legal theorist I think this would be
not only expected but would be compulsory. Moreover, I am confident that
Catholic legal theory would have much to offer the law-maker who is positing
law addressing the legality or regulation of abortion. And what might this be?
The moral considerations underpinning Catholic legal theory
would enable the law-maker to consider more or all rather than some of the
issues that must inevitably intersect abortion laws. Today so much of the law
in this country pertaining to abortion permits abortion—with few
restrictions—and bases the justification on Constitutional requirement (which I
submit results from an erroneous interpretation in the Roe progeny), the argument from privacy, and, more recently, the
argument from equality. The focus of abortion law seems to be on the welfare of
the mother only. This becomes patent when judges, state and Federal, scrutinize
legislation and regulation looking for the “essential” health exception clause
to protect the mother only.
Catholic legal theory, in contrast, begins to look at other
welfares, too. The mother’s health and welfare are surely important; but so is
the health and welfare of the child whose life will be snuffed out should the
abortion proceed. But it is also vital to recognize that the mother has other
issues that are often ignored or dismissed as long as she can be allowed to
terminate her pregnancy. What might these issues be? Well, informed consent is
a place to start. Does she really know what is about to happen? Does she really
understand what is inside her womb? Would she want to have an abortion if she
could see her child? (Ultrasound imaging would provide her with this critical
information.) Has she been provided with education about effective parenting
skills? Is pre and post-natal care available for her and her child to ensure
good health for both? Catholic legal theory would also provide for the welfare
of the father? Where is he? Should provision not also be made for encouraging
his responsibility for the life he helped promote by developing among other
things his parenting skills? It seems that the law-maker is not restrained from
including these provisions relating to these matters as well. Cannot the
law-maker provide for orphanages, foster care, and adoption services for
children whose birth parents will not or cannot properly care for the raising
of the child?
Indeed, the law-maker can provide for all these things and
more.
But the critic may well argue that the additional elements
will cost money. The Catholic legal theorist can respond by reminding the
critic that laws addressing defense, environment safeguards, historical
preservation, criminal justice, wildlife protection, etc. (all of which have
moral considerations) also cost money. But in spite of their cost, laws are
made to advance these interests and protections. Why can the law not do the
same to preserve young human life and the lives of those responsible for its conception?
This is the response of one Catholic legal theorist.
I think these points still have
merit today in 2012. I also am confident that they will have merit in the long
term, too.
If the Times, Planned Parenthood, and the Center for Reproductive were
truly concerned about human rights and human life, the death of the young woman
who died from consequences of the illegal abortion won’t be repeated in the
future and neither will the deaths of the tens of millions of children whose
lives have been snuffed out by so-called legal abortions. It is clear that Roe and its progeny remain a problem,
but it is a problem that can be remedied by laws which respect the dignity of a
woman who may face any abortion and the dignity of the young children whom the Times, Planned Parenthood, and the
Center for Reproductive Rights disregard.
RJA sj
Perhaps it’s asking too much for arguments (most especially on the topic of abortion) touching on Catholicism and politics on the cusp of an election to be coherent, but this op-ed in today’s New York Times by Fordham theologian Michael Peppard is remarkably specious. So far as I can tell (the essay conflates legal, philosophical, and canonical terms throughout, with folk political observations along the way), Peppard believes that because Congressman Ryan (a Catholic) takes the following positions, Ryan is similarly situated with regard to dissenting from Catholic teaching as Vice President Biden and should be placed on (in Peppard’s crude, frivolous phrase) “wafer watch:”
- While affirming that life begins at conception, Congressman Ryan stated in the vice presidential debate last week that the policy of a Romney-Ryan administration would be “to oppose abortion, with the exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother.”
- Ryan criticizes Roe v. Wade and holds that “people through their elected representatives in reaching a consensus in society through the democratic process should make this determination.”
Peppard seems to think that because these positions depart from an absolute pro-life moral and legal position, Ryan, like Biden, places a “distance between nonnegotiable Catholic moral teaching and civil law” and has “joined the ranks of dissenting Catholic politicians.” But what Peppard seems to misunderstand (and profoundly misstates Catholic doctrine about) is that not all positions placing a “distance between nonnegotiable Catholic moral teaching and civil law” are equally wrong. Pro-choice Catholic politicians and their apologists are right about this: there are some hard questions about the relation between morality and law in the abortion debate. But it is a profound mistake to move immediately to the conclusion, implied in Peppard’s essay, that it is impossible to make reasonable comparative judgments on law and morality (comparative judgments about how the positive law is derived in various circumstances from the natural law) in the abortion debate.
I don’t expect the New York Times to represent Catholic teaching accurately, but I would hope a theologian could have bothered to take account of the text in Evangelium Vitae that speaks to this very question:
¶73.1 Abortion and euthanasia are thus crimes which no human law can claim to legitimize. There is no obligation in conscience to obey such laws; instead there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection…
¶73.2 In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to "take part in a propaganda campaign in favour of such a law, or vote for it".
¶73.3 A particular problem of conscience can arise in cases where a legislative vote would be decisive for the passage of a more restrictive law, aimed at limiting the number of authorized abortions, in place of a more permissive law already passed or ready to be voted on. Such cases are not infrequent. It is a fact that while in some parts of the world there continue to be campaigns to introduce laws favouring abortion, often supported by powerful international organizations, in other nations--particularly those which have already experienced the bitter fruits of such permissive legislation--there are growing signs of a rethinking in this matter. In a case like the one just mentioned, when it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects.
So we have two positions:
(A) A Catholic politician may voice opposition to abortion while advocating (arguing for, voting for, taking public positions in favor of) legislation that restricts abortion further than the current legal baseline (or judicial rulings restricting abortion) but falls short of an absolute prohibition. The object of such legislation (or judicial rulings) is to restrict abortion, while tolerating exceptions to a prohibition on abortion in order to bring about restrictions. This position is affirmed by ¶73.3.
(B) A Catholic politician may voice opposition to abortion while advocating (arguing for, voting for, taking public positions in favor of) legislation permitting abortion (or judicial rulings recognizing an expansive right to abortion). The object of such legislation (or judicial rulings) is to permit abortion. This position is rejected by ¶73.1 and ¶73.2.
Peppard’s entire essay rests on a conflation of (A) and (B) in order to make those who hold (A) seem as much "bad Catholics" as those who hold (B). Alas, the "Catholic position" to which Peppard refers throughout his essay teaches otherwise.
Oh my. I'm in big trouble. My friend George Weigel tells me that Michael Winters at the National Catholic Reporter has declared (ex cathedra, I assume) that Grant Gallicho at Commonweal has "exposed" me for . . . sanctimony! (It was in my post criticizing the statement by Catholic liberals branding Paul Ryan as a Randian enemy of Catholic social thought.) Well, there it is. I have been exposed. The magisterium of liberal Catholicism has spoken. I am condemned. Woe is me. How does one stand up under an assault by such formidable personages? I mean, Michael Winters. And Grant Gallicho. Perhaps I should recant and throw myself on the mercy of the tribunal:
Paul Ryan is a Randian enemy of Catholic social thought! Paul Ryan is a Randian enemy of Catholic social thought! Paul Ryan is a Randian enemy of Catholic social thought! He really does want to dump old ladies in wheelchairs off cliffs. He really does want to dump old ladies in wheel chairs off cliffs! He really, really, really, really, does.
As the Cowardly Lion said: "I do believe in spooks. I do believe in spooks. I do, I do, I do, I do believe in spooks."
Sorry for not responding earlier to the comments to my post
Abortion at the Democratic Convention and at the Upcoming Debates (here). Thanks to everyone who read my original post
and responded. With the exception of one
(bizarre) comment, this is precisely the sort of spirited yet respectful
dialogue that MOJ seeks to inspire. What
follows is my reply to several of the commentators. I place this reply in a separate post because
it is rather lengthy, and as a way of encouraging others who might not have
followed the comments thread to be included in the conversation. It will be interesting to see how abortion
comes up in the second presidential debate this evening.
Eapen Chacko: There
are two main sources of abortion statistics:
the Guttmacher Institute and the Center for Disease Control (see here,
here, and here). There are problems with
each: the CDC’s data is incomplete
whereas the Guttmacher Institute’s figures consist not only of hard numbers but
of estimates. (See here at footnote 203).
Each of these sources includes some of the information called for in the
questions you pose, but not all of what you seek. As Michael New points out (here), abortion
providers should be subject to much stronger reporting requirements than those currently in place.
Paul Horwitz: To
begin with, I didn’t take your first comment as disingenuous. I took it as a request for clarification made
by a friend engaged in serious conversation and acting in good faith.
In saying that “The humanity of the developing child is not a moral or theological
position, but the conclusion of science” I meant that the judgment as to
whether a given thing is a human being is a matter of scientific, empirical
judgment, not normative judgment (whether philosophical or religious).
Obviously,
the two kinds of judgment can bleed into one another. A person’s moral and religious beliefs may
influence the empirical conclusions that one reaches, but they need not.
It
is one thing to determine whether a particular mineral is gold (Au) or pyrite (“fool’s
gold”). It is quite another thing to
determine that gold ought to be highly valued and sought after and that “fool’s
gold” ought not be. It is one thing to
say what a thing is and quite another
thing to say how it ought to be treated. Scientific judgment involves a different
methodology and different set of premises than normative judgment. Further, I do not believe that all
definitional questions in science are “inevitably value-laden.” They surely can be, but they need not
be. Recently, astronomers engaged in a
public debate as to whether or not Pluto should be classified as a
“planet.” Was this value-laden? One could imagine an analogous debate as to
whether a given storm constituted a “hurricane” or recently discovered plant
constituted a new species. Scientists
are of course subject to the same failings that we all suffer from – the
intrusion of ego, ambition and pride, among them. But we can, I think, also envision the discernment
of criteria and the exercise of scientific judgment in which these extraneous
factors are not present.
In
referring to the “humanity” of the entity in the womb, I am referring to it’s
status in the eyes of science – the judgment of what kind of thing it is, not
how it should be valued. Surely
“humanity” can refer to a host of other qualities – and that may be what you
had in mind – but that is not what I meant.
Although you express some skepticism as to whether science
concludes that the entity in the earliest stages of human development is a
human being, there is substantial scientific literature that suggests otherwise
(see here).
Now, it is also the case that currently, under American law,
every being recognized as a “human
being” also enjoys the benefit of law.
Indeed, every human being so recognized also enjoys the status of a
legal “person” – the status of a rights-holder who enjoys immunity from certain
forms of government coercion and the benefit of government protection from
other persons. The status of legal
personhood sets an entity apart from things that have no special dignity and
that can be disposed of or otherwise manipulated by those in power. There are of course exceptions in our legal
history to the full inclusion of all human beings within the category of legal
persons – the institution of slavery and cases like Buck v. Bell come readily to mind – but these are not the kinds of
comparisons that proponents of abortion are anxious to draw.
And that is why so many supporters of abortion resist the
conclusions of science – why many are in fact anti-scientific. They know
that under our law, all human beings presumptively enjoy the status of legal
persons. By denying the humanity of the
unborn child they seek to avoid making the argument that a certain class of
human beings should not enjoy this presumption and the protection it affords.
Even if they lose this argument (i.e. the argument for the
exclusion of certain human beings from the protective status of legal
personhood) proponents of abortion may still argue that abortion should be
permitted (e.g. Judith Thomson’s well-known violinist argument – see here) but
that argument is problematic as a matter of moral philosophy, and its
conclusion is even more difficult to reach in law.
David Nickol: (Comment
1): I agree that Romney’s position on
abortion – allowing an exception in the cases of rape, incest, and fetal
abnormality – does not fit neatly with what I suggested in my original post. And, I should add, I would not subscribe to those
exceptions myself – only the life of the mother where the state has no interest
in choosing the life of one innocent human being over another. In such a case, the only good that the state
can hope to realize is the autonomy of the mother. This is not so in any of the other three
traditional “hard” cases. The life of the mother and the life of the unborn child can both be preserved, and, in
that instance, the child’s interest in life outweighs the mother’s interest in
autonomy. There is no inconsistency in
principle in the law recognizing both the status of the unborn child as a human
being and a legal person and an exception to the general ban on abortion where the life of the
mother is at stake.
Politics and political persuasion are not simply about
consistency of principle (that is supposed to be the virtue of law!). For Romney to make the inconsistency in his
position (i.e. his opposition to abortion based on the humanity of the
developing child and his acceptance of exceptions for rape and incest) palatable
or at least understandable he must, I think, make a political argument – that
only a tiny percentage of the over 1.2 million abortions performed each year in
this country involve these “hard cases” and that the country has not reached
the point where it is open to limiting abortion in those cases, but that it is
open to more restrictions in the vast, vast majority of cases where abortion is
sought.
Articulating this may be somewhat awkward (as there is indeed an inconsistency as at
work) but no more so than President Obama explaining his opposition to
third-trimester abortions and sex-selective abortions . . . But wait a minute. The President doesn’t oppose those things does
he! Romney could, I think, exploit
this. The point is that consistency of
principle may be a political disadvantage given where the country is on the
subject and in the context of a political (as opposed to a scholarly) debate.
(Comment 2): You say: “To say that a zygote is human or to
say that an embryo or fetus is a human being is to make quite a different
statement than to speak of ‘the humanity of the developing child.’" I suppose this could be the case, but the
statements are identical in meaning if by “humanity” one means “human-beingness,”
that is, the quality and empirical status of being a human being, a member of
the species homo sapiens. This is
precisely how I used the term, and as such, there is no difference in
meaning. Perhaps you mean something
different in speaking of “the humanity of the developing child” and saying that
“an embryo or fetus is a human being.”
If so (and I take this to be the case) please explain.
Furthermore, you say that I am “asserting personhood” on the
part of the entity in the womb by “ascribing humanity” to it. As before, here it is critical to be precise
in one’s use of terminology. I use
“human” and “humanity” in a purely descriptive sense to refer to an organism
that is a member of the human species.
Personhood, in the relevant sense is a legal category that grants the entity
that enjoys this designation certain rights.
The term “person” could be used in a descriptive sense, referring to a
organism that exhibits certain characteristics – structures like a beating
heart, or functioning brain, or level of achievement, like self-consciousness
or the exercise of reason. But in its
origins and in its current usage “person” is not a scientific category but a
philosophical or theological one.
Descriptive theories of personhood are often used to argue
for the contents of legal personhood (e.g. entities that can presently exercise
the capacity for reason, but not those that cannot). The problem with this approach is that the
selection of descriptive criteria seems patently arbitrary – often they are
constructed backwards, taking into account the effect that recognition of one
entity’s personhood would have on another (i.e. the child on the mother), and
adjusting the definition accordingly to protect the favored entity and exclude
the disfavored one (see for example Jed Rubenfeld’s essay here).
By contrast, the judgment of science is that a
human zygote, embryo and fetus is, respectively in each stage of its
development, a human being – an unbroken continuum marked by characteristics in
growth that, by convention, we refer to as different stages of development. And these stages are different in the sense
of being distinct, but they are neither separate nor independent. These stages are not different in kind from
later stages in the life cycle of the same human organism such as infancy, adolescence,
and middle age. As former MOJ
contributor Richard Stith wrote in a great essay (here) organic growth is different in kind from mechanical
change. In the case of the former,
self-directed change takes place without loss of identity, whereas in the case
of the latter, change takes place by way of addition or annihilation and
replacement directed by that which is external to the thing changed. Put another way, the development of the human
embryo or any organism is quite different from the construction of a house of
the manufacture of a car on an assembly line.
The entity in the womb is alive. It exhibits a radical discontinuity with the
gametes that joined to form it, and with each of its parents -- a human father
and a human mother. (As commentator Anonymous
notes, in procreation human parents do not generate non-humans). It is not a “part” of either its mother or
its father. Rather, it possesses the
genetic constitution, functional integration and material continuity of a
distinct, new, human organism. As such,
it is a human being, albeit one in the earliest stages of human development.
Bill Collier: You
correctly note that the texts used in American medical schools make this
empirical judgment clear – the entity developing in the womb is a human
being. And, as you also note, this point
is conceded by some of the more intellectually honest advocates of abortion. You mention Singer and Boonin. I would also add popular writer Naomi Wolfe
who in her famous New Republic
article (here) decried pro-choice “rhetoric
about abortion in which there is no life and no death, [where] we entangle our beliefs
in a series of self-delusions, fibs and evasions.” Not suffering from these delusions herself,
Wolfe concludes that “Sometimes the mother must be able to decide that the
fetus, in its full humanity, must die.”
Like you, I have some respect for those like Wolfe who have
the integrity to admit that what is killed in abortion – the identity of what
they believe the law should authorize killing – is a human being. I
strongly disagree with their normative conclusion – that abortion can be moral
and should be legal – but I respect their acknowledgement that the life that
abortion terminates is a human life.
question whether there continue to be intentionalists out there swimming against the tide (do see Patrick Brennan's very good piece responding to Lee Strang's fine work), Jeff Pojanowski kindly called my attention to Richard Ekins's work on intent-based theories of interpretation. 
