Mirror of Justice

A blog dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory.
Affiliated with the Program on Church, State & Society at Notre Dame Law School.

Thursday, November 9, 2006

The New Evangelicals

By Rob Vischer

In Newsweek, former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson lays out the agenda for the "new evangelicals" and the problems they pose for the GOP (not to mention the Dems).  You should read the whole thing, but here's a taste:

Republicans will find it increasingly difficult to appeal to the new evangelicals with tired symbols like school prayer or the posting of the Ten Commandments. And candidates like Senator McCain will need to be more creative in their outreach than an uncomfortable speech at the Liberty University commencement. These activists will expect serious proposals on an expanded moral agenda—as President Bush has delivered on human trafficking and global AIDS. And they will not respond to a crude libertarianism that elevates the severe pleasures of cutting food stamps or foreign aid over the pursuit of the common good.

Joe Knippenberg is encouraged, but skeptical, hoping that "Republicans and conservatives can find a way to converse with these folks, providing some of the soundly practical ballast that Democrats and liberals who can appeal to their decency and moral energy can’t necessarily provide." 

"Soundly practical ballast" is needed from the same party that has brought us trickle-down economics and a "mission accomplished" in Iraq?  As for me, I see the new evangelicals as just what we might need to make our Seamless Garment Party a reality.

Rob

Ectopic Pregnancies: Intent v. Knowledge

By Rob Vischer

Julian Velasco responds to Karen Stohr's most recent comment on ectopic pregnancies:

Karen Stohr asks, “What grounds are you using for saying that the craniotonomy/salpingostomy constitutes the physical act of killing the baby, whereas a hysterectomy/salpingectomy does not?”  She then adds, “In order to argue that the former are grave moral wrongs, you would *also* need to argue that they are intentional killings, that death is the aim.”  I disagree with this method, but let’s play it out.

As for her first question, she seems not to appreciate the import of the use of the term “physical act” and uses it as she might use the term “act.”  As I read it, however, “physical act” means the uncontextualized act undertaken by the actor.  I would say (with Richard, I think) that there is a difference in the physical acts between the craniotonomy/salpingostomy and the hysterectomy/salpingectomy based on the directness of the action's impact.  The former, which action is taken on the baby and directly leads to the baby's death, is killing.  The latter, which action is taken on the mother and only indirectly leads to the baby's death, is merely letting the baby die.  (In order to argue that a salpingostomy is merely letting the baby die, you would *at least* have to remove the baby perfectly intact from the mother.  I do not see how the argument can be made for a craniotonomy at all.)  But even if the argument on her first question fails, then we are left with the conclusions that both are killing (not that neither is), and that both are immoral if intentional.

So we move on to intention.  I think that one need not establish that “death is the aim” (i.e., end, goal, desire, etc.) in order to establish an “intentional killing.”  That is the whole point of the principle of double effect.  One might have a perfectly noble aim and still be limited in the means they may choose to achieve it.  In a craniotonomy/salpingostomy, one is intentionally killing the baby for the sake of the mother.  The intent to kill is there, albeit an intent with respect to means, not an intent with respect to ends.  In a hysterectomy/salpingectomy, on the other hand, one is not intending the death, either as the means or as the end.  One merely knows that the death will result.  Without more, knowledge is not enough to impute moral culpability.

So even using Karen’s method, a craniotonomy/salpingostomy constitutes an act of killing that is intentional.  The death may not be desired, but there is a morally significant difference between “not desiring” and “not intending.”  On the other hand, a hysterectomy/salpingectomy at most constitutes an act of killing (and that is disputed), but certainly not one that is intentional.

Rob

Wednesday, November 8, 2006

Ted Haggard and the Evangelical Moment

By Rob Vischer

Gordon MacDonald is a leading evangelical pastor and author.  He also knows something about dramatic and scandalous falls from positions of spiritual leadership.  Back in the 1980s, while he was President of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, he confessed to an adulterous affair.  This experience makes his reflection on Ted Haggard's fall even more poignant.  Aside from grieving the suffering of Haggard's wife and children, MacDonald predicts that this will be the end of the National Association of Evangelicals as we know it:

Ever since the beginning of the Bush administration, I have worried over the tendency of certain Evangelical personalities to go public every time they visited the White House or had a phone conference with an administration official. I know it has wonderful fund-raising capabilities. And I know the temptation to ego-expansion when one feels that he has the ear of the President. But the result is that we are now part of an evangelical movement that is greatly compromised—identified in the eyes of the public as deep in the hip pockets of the Republican party and administration. My own belief? Our movement has been used.

There are hints that the movement—once cobbled together by Billy Graham and Harold Ockenga—is beginning to fragment because it is more identified by a political agenda that seems to be failing and less identified by a commitment to Jesus and his kingdom. Like it or not, we are pictured as those who support war, torture, and a go-it-alone (bullying) posture in international relationships. Any of us who travel internationally have tasted the global hostility toward our government and the suspicion that our President's policies reflect the real tenants of Evangelical faith.

And I might add that there is considerable disillusionment on the part of many of our Christian brothers/sisters in other countries who are mystified as to where American evangelicals are in all of this. Our movement may have its Supreme Court appointments, but it may also have compromised its historic center of Biblical faith. Is it time to let the larger public know that some larger-than-life evangelical personalities with radio and TV shows do not speak for all of us?

Rob

The Catholic Court at St. Thomas

By Rob Vischer

If anyone is looking for things to do in the Twin Cities on Friday, be sure to stop by our symposium on "Catholicism and the Court: The Relevance of Faith Traditions to Jurisprudence."  Here is the schedule of speakers.

Rob

Tuesday, November 7, 2006

Gender Choice

By Rob Vischer

From today's New York Times:

Separating anatomy from what it means to be a man or a woman, New York City is moving forward with a plan to let people alter the sex on their birth certificate even if they have not had sex-change surgery. . . .

At the final public hearing for the birth certificate proposal last week, a string of advocates and transsexuals suggested that common definitions of gender, especially its reliance on medical assessments, should be abandoned. They generally praised the city for revisiting its 25-year-old policy that lets people remove the sex designation from their birth certificate if they have had sexual reassignment surgery. Then they demanded more freedom to choose.

Michael Silverman, executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, said transgender people should not have to rely on affidavits from a health care system that tends to be biased against them.

In case you're confused by all this, allow Joann Prinzivalli of the New York Transgender Rights Organization to clear things up.  She hails the "move away from American culture’s misguided fixation on genitals as the basis for one’s gender identity," a fixation that is "based on an arbitrary distinction that says there are two and only two sexes."  In reality, she explains, "the diversity of nature is such that there are more than just two, and people who seem to belong to one of the designated sexes may really belong to the other.”

Rob

Abortion and "Improved Outcomes"

By Rob Vischer

A group of economists has posted a new paper, Abortion and Selection.  Here is the abstract:

The introduction of legalized abortion in the early 1970s led to dramatic changes in fertility behavior. Some research has suggested as well that there were important impacts on cohort outcomes, but this literature has been limited and controversial. In this paper, we provide a framework for understanding the mechanisms through which abortion access affects cohort outcomes, and use that framework to both address inconsistent past methodological approaches, and provide evidence on the long-run impact on cohort characteristics. Our results provide convincing evidence that abortion legalization altered young adult outcomes through selection. In particular, we find evidence that lower costs of abortion led to improved outcomes in the birth cohort in the form of an increased likelihood of college graduation, lower rates of welfare use, and lower odds of being a single parent. We also find that our empirical innovations do not substantially alter earlier results regarding the relationship between abortion and crime, although most of that relationship appears to reflect cohort size effects rather than selection.

Rob

Friday, November 3, 2006

One More Time on Ectopic Pregnancy

By Rob Vischer

In response to my continuing questions, Notre Dame law prof Julian Velasco argues for a meaningful moral distinction between removal of the embryo and removal of the tube in which the embryo is located:

There is a general rule -- thou shalt not kill.  There is no doubt that removing the baby is killing it.  The only question is whether removing thetube is the same as killing the baby.  My argument is that knowing the baby will die as a result of my actions is not the same thing as killing the baby; thus, removing the tube is not the same as killing the baby.  But if I am wrong, then the answer is not that killing the baby is fine, but rather that removing the tube is wrong (because it is killing the baby). Furthermore, even if I am wrong with respect to the last sentence, then there may be an exception for the extreme case of ectopic pregnancies, but that would not be proof that either the embryo is not a baby or that abortion is generally acceptable.

BTW, I understand that it is the embryo's growth within the tube that threatens the mother's life, and it is the embryo's growth within the tube that I am trying to stop.  But I insist that not all means of achieving that goal are acceptable.  Directly killing another (the baby) is not acceptable under any circumstances (IMHO).  But removal of a body part is.  That removal is neither directly killing nor intending to kill the baby; it is only done with knowledge that the baby will die as a result. Without more, is not enough to impute moral culpability.

For an entirely different perspective on these issues, check out Eugene Volokh's forthcoming article on a constitutional right to medical self-defense.

Rob

Thursday, November 2, 2006

Is Acting on the Embryo Morally Dispositive?

By Rob Vischer

Here is the Finnis, Grisez & Boyle article referenced by Karen Stohr (thanks to Antonio Manetti for the link).  And here is a helpful excerpt from their discussion of the moral distinction between a hysterectomy and craniotomy:

[T]he hysterectomy is performed "upon the woman," the craniotomy "upon the fetus." We reply: this difference does not show that craniotomy is direct killing. A counter-example makes this clear. All those acts of self-defense of the kind that Aquinas shows need involve no intent to kill and no direct killing are nonetheless performed "upon" the person killed.  And in general, the fact that an act is done to (or "upon") X for the sake of Y, or to Y for the sake of Y, provides no criterion for distinguishing between what is intended and what is accepted as a side effect.

This underscores my own (much less educated) skepticism toward the lines drawn on the issue of ectopic pregnancy.  If we're going to invoke Kevorkian, the remove the tube / remove the embryo distinction seems akin to attaching moral significance to the difference between Kevorkian assisting a suicide by lethal injection and assisting a suicide by bulldozing the victim's house while she is inside.  The death is certain to result in both cases and the actor's intent is, as far as I can tell, identical.  So why does it matter if I bring about the death by acting upon the person or by acting upon the container in which the person is located? 

Rob

Wednesday, November 1, 2006

Evolution and Imago Dei/Original Sin

By Rob Vischer

Regarding evolution's implications for our belief that humans are created in God's image, Matt Donovan writes:

When I was a grad student at BC and studying under some of Bernard Lonergan's students, we were often referred to Lonergan's notion of "naive realism" -- the prevailing modern bias of equating the real with the material. There seems to be a lot of naive realism going around these days, perhaps inspired by the recent publications from Richard Dawkins and E.O. Wilson, among others.

To be sure, that we are made in God’s image is an important teaching in the Judeo-Christian tradition, but it is perhaps not as anthropomorphic as one might suspect. The most obvious scriptural source for the teaching, of course, comes from the two creation stories in Genesis. The first story uses the language of "God creat[ing] man in God’s image." But the second story gives us more detail about the process of that creation. And according to Gen. 2:7, that process is two-fold.

First, "God formed man out of the clay of the earth"; that is, one could say that he created our physical, chemical, and biological make-up out of the earthly matter he had already created. (By the way, for a fascinating evolutionary account of creation in the Genesis stories, see Leo Strauss's "On the Interpretation of Genesis" and "Jerusalem and Athens" in part VI of Kenneth Hart Green's collection, "Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity"). But second, and perhaps more importantly, God "blew into his nostrils the breath of life" such that "man became a living being"; that is, one could say that man becomes distinctly human only after being directly enlightened with the immaterial spirit of the divine.

This accounts, in part, for the traditional Judeo-Christian anthropological construction of man as mind or spirit embodied. And as Aristotle noted, it is intelligence or rationality that distinguishes human beings from other biological beings. In other words, being "created in God’s image," seems to be intimately connected to being endowed with his spirit; that is, being endowed with intelligence -- the pure immaterial intelligence that God is. Put another way, unlike the reductionist (or naive realist) anthropology of, say, modern scientific materialism, the Judeo-Christian doctrine regarding the "Imago Dei" puts forth a more transcendent anthropology that takes into account -- perhaps emphasizes -- the immaterial, spiritual, or rational element of man’s make-up.

Today's conversation around these latter realities of the human condition seems to me rather inadequate for the most part.

On my related question regarding evolution and original sin, Matt Festa recommends Edward Oakes' article, Original Sin: A Disputation, along with helpful follow-up questions and comments from First Things readers.

And another (anonymous) reader recommends Peter van Inwagen's work on evolution and the Fall.  The reader believes that, in van Ingwagen's view, "God caused an ape or some other sort of non-human animal to be distinctively human, and that was Adam."  In the reader's view, "for my money, just give up on evolution." 

Rob

Salpinegectomy v. Salpingostomy

By Rob Vischer

Prof. Karen Stohr offers the following additional comment on our ectopic pregnancy discussion:

I'm watching the continuation of this discussion of ectopic pregnancy with considerable interest. Let me just point out, though, that the sources that Professor Myers cites on the management of ectopic pregnancy are far from uncontroversial. There is considerable dispute over whether it is possible to draw a philosophically sound distinction between salpinegectomy on the one hand, and salpingostomy and methotrexate on the other hand. How one draws the distinction depends greatly on what one takes an intention to be, and how intentions relate to action descriptions. One can accept the basic framework of double effect and yet disagree with May et al on the management of ectopic pregnancy, on the grounds that the particular account of intention upon which he relies is philosophically problematic.

For a quite different take on the moral structure of procedures such as salpingostomy, see this article by that mighy triumverate, Grisez, Finnis, and Boyle: "'Direct and Indirect': A Reply to Critics of Our Action Theory" _The Thomist_ 65 (2001): pp. 1-44.

Rob

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