[Post moved. rg.] I appreciate Rob's post, and the very engaged, and engaging, comments it has prompted. I avoid comparing our abortion regime to the Holocaust, but not because I have any doubts that our abortion regime involves monstrous injustice. For me, the reluctance reflects more my dislike, as a general matter, of the promiscuous use of the term Holocaust, a dislike that, in turn, results from a sense that, in some quarters, the true magnitude of the evil that was the Holocaust is downplayed or denied.
Whether we use the word though, I suspect Rob would agree that there are ways -- non-trivial ways -- in which our abortion regime is like the legal regime that authorized and facilitated the Holocaust. And, there are some similarities between the theoretical premises underlying the former and those underlying the latter. ("Some lives are not worth living," for example.) We can, to be sure, also identify distinctions -- it strikes me that the actions of someone who (intentionally) shoots a 12 year old are almost certainly accompanied by a more culpable mental state than the actions of (to use Rob's example) a vulnerable woman who aborts her unborn child at, say, 8 weeks. Is the mental state of, say, a doctor who performs a late-term, elective abortion on a child with Down's Syndrome clearly, or always, less culpable, than the state that, I imagine, accompanied the actions of many of those who caused deaths in the gas chamber? I'm not sure.
Like Rob, I do not regard (maybe this is a failing on my part) women who have had abortions as "murderers", but that could be because "murder" is a term of art, which has, built into it, a finding of a highly culpable mental state, a state that I suspect is lacking in the vast majority of abortion, because I suspect that most women who have abortions do not believe they are causing the death of a human being. (But, I also suspect, some do.)
What makes the abortion / Holocaust analogy (which, again, I do not use) work, at least to an extent, it seems to me, is that both regimes depend on a legal declaration that some human beings are not, unlike other human beings, to be protected from lethal violence (public or private). Now, our abortion regime (in Roe, anyway) does not usually admit that it is doing this; but sometimes (e.g., when it permits late-term abortions for reasons not involving serious health risks to the mother) it does (doesn't it?).
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Another reader joins the conversation:
I don't like the Holocaust analogy simply because the United States government isn't exactly doing anything affirmatively (except, under some Democratic initiatives, directly funding abortions). It's not comparable to Nazi Germany, where Jews were rounded up by the government and hauled away to slaughter. If anything, a nation like China, performing forced abortions on its people, comes much closer to the Holocaust term than in the United States. Additionally, Jews were affirmatively blamed for something, unjustly, but blamed nonetheless. In contrast, no one really blames a fetus for anything except for being an unfortunate byproduct of a sexual affair.
In contrast, I find many strong parallels in the slavery analogy. Of course, Prof. Kaveny simply proves the point that not all analogies are perfect--they are only as good as their limited means. But the two most salient points of the slavery metaphor strike at the core of the abortion debate. First, the courts effectively took the matter of slavery out of the legislative process. (Granted, Dred Scott didn't forbid states from outlawing slavery, unlike Roe, and other such inconsistencies.) Certainly, we can debate about why majority rule and the legislative process could be good in some instances and bad in others, but the unmistakable parallel is significant. Congress could not decide to outlaw slavery in the territories or to outlaw abortion. It's simply not an option. Second, the courts essentially wanted to wash their hands of the question of what is a human life, and, in the process, defined human life in a limiting fashion--slaves and the unborn were simply not human. . . . I know that it's often used as a rhetorical point, but I think the slavery analogy does have some merit.
Notre Dame law and theology prof Cathy Kaveny responds to our series of posts on abortion and the Holocaust, particularly to the question of whether "progressives" have a better analogy to offer:
I agree with you on the analogy to the Holocaust. Here's what I did in a Commonweal column on the topic; I think the slavery analogy falls for obvious reasons (e.g., the unborn aren't persons, but they're not chattel property either).
The reason I think the abortion debate is so hard is that no one analogy works very well. (Pro-choicers highlight Thomson's argument, which talks about the duty to provide life support in terms of an unconscious violinist). In general, all the analogies conceal as much as they reveal. That's why I avoid them, or use them cumulatively. (An old, but interesting article on the topic is Lisa Cahill's "Abortion and the Argument by Analogy," HORIZONS 1982 (if memory serves)).
Moreover, I don't think slavery and the Holocaust are being used precisely as analogies in most pro-life discussion--i.e., as points of factual comparison to illuminate moral reflection in the manner of the common law. I think they are being used as part of a rhetoric of prophetic denunciation. And, as you know, in my view, that's the basic divide: I don't think that there is any way for the "casuists" on this to convince the prophets of their good faith. The rhetoric of "fire and strength," to invoke Matthew Arnold, doesn't have much use for the rhetoric of "sweetness and light." So I don't think there's much point in, casuists trying to convince (most) prophets of their good faith. That's why I think they need to and start their own, constructive projects.
Earlier today I posted a collection of responses to my post objecting to the use of the term "Holocaust" to describe legalized abortion. Another MoJ-er suggested that the conversation might be furthered by breaking the responses out into separate posts, and so I've done that here and below. To begin, here is Notre Dame law prof Julian Velasco's response (he is at a conference and so apologizes for any choppiness in his comments):
Your comments improperly minimize the horror of abortion. If the fetus is a person, as the Church teaches, then abortion is objectively, instrinsically, and gravely evil. I was particularly disturbed by your assessment that killing a 12-year-old is worse than killing an unborn child. By that logic, one could argue that killing someone in a coma is not as bad as killing a healthy person. By extension of the argument, one might argue that killing a person with many loved ones is worse than killing a loner because of the additional pain and loss that the others will feel (i.e., "even more reasons to protect [him]").
Unfortunately, hiding behind "hard choices" can complicate even straightforward moral issues. If abortion is murder, it doesn't matter whether it was a "hard choice." Mercy killings and many other homicides -- even honor killings, I imagine -- may involve "hard choices," but are still horribly wrong. The circumstances may (or may not) affect the moral culpability of the actor, but not the evil of the act itself. And besides, there's a difference between "hard choices" and "no other choice." In the United States, at least, abortion rarely, if ever, involves "no other choice."
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John O'Herron writes:
I think your last post on MOJ identifies a common societal discomfort with the pro-life movement. But, I think, your concern I think is misplaced. I don't think calling abortion a Holocaust is particularly helpful or meaningful and that is why I avoid it. I am 100% pro-life and feel at home but resist using the language. I believe that communication in the pro-life movement is essential and should be better. Calling it a Holocaust doesn't carry much meaning and, like you say, makes people think critically of us rather than positively. But if the issue in abortion is that it takes a human life, abortion is at a minimum, just as evil as the Jewish Holocaust.
Taking the life of a 12 year old is not worse-it only seems worse because we can see, and no one disuptes, their humanity. While people dispute the humanity of a baby in the womb, they are wrong. Objectively speaking, both are equally human and killing one is as evil as killing the other. Is the morality of an act measured by how the victim senses that act? Or do we judge the morality of the act from the nature of the act and the intent of the actor? That is why you, and the "we" you identify with, are wrong to call those who try to physically stop the killing of unborn life "extremists." It is uncommon but not extreme-is it human or not? If its a human why is it extreme to go to such lengths?
Now, to be sure, there are other ways to fight for life and those ways can be, and often are, more useful and effective. I know personally of dozens of cases where physical intervention has saved human lives. The hard choices and moral considerations you mention are what make it harder to identify abortion with the Holocaust. But in terms of the objective destruction of human life, the slaughter of innocent Jews and others has much in common with the destruction of children in the womb. Why are gas chambers worse, morally speaking? Because they were public and killed adults? They didn't even come close to killing as many humans as abortion does. I think your failure to recognize these commonalities and distinctions lead you to fall into the perception trap rather than recognizing the nature of the two acts.
