Notre Dame philosophy prof John O'Callaghan responds to my post on today's partial-birth abortion ruling by the Supreme Court. It is long, but well worth reading in its entirety:
It is at least a bit of good news against a background of tragic events this Easter season. I haven’t read the decision, but I am intrigued by the language of “human life” in the passage that you cite. It would suggest that the court recognizes that the unborn child is, as a matter of fact, human, perhaps even a human life, and even perhaps a human being (gasp). (Those who believe in what I like to call a “This Magic Moment” Metaphysics of Personalization might, no doubt, still argue that it ain’t a person, but we’ll leave that aside.)
But then it would seem that in the language of “values,” “value,” and “interests,” that the Supreme Court chooses to express its opinions in, your perhaps rhetorical question at the end of your entry has a trivial answer, but a trivial answer that goes well beyond the rhetorical question. If it is a question of weighing values depending upon the varying interests of the parties involved, then any decision to kill a human life that is not rash or on the spot, but a result of reasoned deliberation and choice about those interests and values, would seem to be ipso facto a “devaluing” of the human life that is killed at any stage. Socially we are just asking, “what price are we willing to pay for that particular devaluation.” The question of the particular procedure employed to kill the human life at some stage would seem to be immaterial to the case. In the language of “values” and “interests” doesn’t exercise of the death penalty by lethal injection ipso facto devalue the life of the executed, regardless of the sanitized procedure that makes it look like the executed is simply going to sleep, precisely because we are weighing “values” against one another, affirming some and “devaluing” others? And might that move towards the sanitary be itself a social anesthetic we apply to ourselves to deaden the moral pain of killing that human life? It seems to me that a social move toward more “humane” procedures may have very little to do with lessening the suffering of the one to whom they are applied, and much more to do with anesthetizing our moral and social feelings of pain in carrying out our decisions.
No doubt we can all cheer the result today; but the reasoning of many against PBA, focusing upon the gruesome nature of the procedure, might be part of the broad social problem we face. Any invasive medical procedure will typically appear gruesome to most people. Think of open heart surgery, or colectomy. But we don’t, and we shouldn’t take our sense of disgust at the gruesomeness of the procedures to be constitutive of their moral or legal status. If we did, our moral and legal reasoning would express the kind of emotivism that Alasdair MacIntryre diagnosed in After Virtue as the dominant paradigm of moral and social reasoning characteristic of advanced capitalist society, where values and interests replace goods. The great medieval historian of philosophy Etienne Gilson, echoing Nietzsche, wrote somewhere that “values are what goods become in a world in which God is dead.” And insofar as we adopt the language of “values” and emotivist type reasoning, even if only provisionally, in order to win a tactical victory, we run the risk of contributing to the larger loss.
We need to keep our eyes on the prize. The gruesomeness of the particular procedure, insofar as it bears the moral characteristics of being bad or evil, does so because it participates in the evil of deliberately destroying the good and innocent human life involved. If the medical procedure were carried out on an already deceased unborn child, as no doubt it may be if the child has tragically but naturally died in utero at that stage of development, presumably we would all recognize the appropriateness of the procedure. We think the procedure is morally abhorrent because it destroys a good, a human life. Does the Court’s decision today allow the doctor to “humanely” give the unborn child a lethal injection of some pain killer, and then, upon the judgment that it is now deceased, allow for the very same procedure to be performed upon the now dead child? Sadly, if it does, we have not advanced very far today. Presumably a less invasive and medically gruesome procedure shares just as much in the evil of killing an innocent human life as PBA does, if our moral reasoning is more than emotivist. And the reason we haven’t advanced very far today is that we haven’t moved our society toward recognizing in its moral and legal reasoning, not the devaluing of some human life, but the destruction of the inestimable good of the human life that is the child in the womb, regardless of the twitterings of the Magic Moment Metaphysicians. It is one thing to devalue an object, and quite another to destroy a good. The danger we face is that, in focusing upon the gruesomeness of the procedure, those we hope to convince that human life in the womb ought to be protected will think that we should be satisfied with this decision, and resent any efforts to push ahead.
Still there is hope today. God has given all of us the gift of reason. Justice Kennedy’s decision at least recognizes that the being killed is a human life. And with such a recognition in hand, perhaps we can begin to move our fellow citizens to reasonably consider what it is about this kind of procedure that rightly moves them to judge it to be morally abhorrent, rather than find it simply a matter of their own distaste for blood and gore.
The Court, in a 5-4 ruling, has upheld the partial-birth abortion ban. Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion. The Court did not overrule Stenberg, but found that the federal statute at issue here is narrower than the Nebraska statute. The Court also ruled that these facial challenges to the statute (as opposed to as-applied challenges) should never have been heard. An excerpt:
[The State, from the] inception of the pregnancy, maintains its own regulatory interest in protecting the life of the fetus that may become a child, [and this] cannot be set at naught by interpreting Casey's requirement of a health exception so it becomes tantamount to allowing a doctor to choose the abortion method he or she might prefer. Where it has a rational basis to act, and it does not impose an undue burden, the State may use its regulatory power to bar certain procedures and substitute others, all in furtherance of its legitimate interests in regulating the medical profession in order to promote respect for life, including life of the unborn.
A welcome ruling from Justice Kennedy, to be sure. Not to say that there isn't still a whiff of his "sweet mystery of life" reluctance to state obvious truths as truths. Consider this:"No one would dispute that, for many, D&E [dilation and evacuation] is a procedure itself laden with the power to devalue human life." Now I know that many people disagree over whether the mother's interests should outweigh the state's concerns with the D&E procedure's "devaluing" of human life, but is it really beyond the pale to recognize, as a matter of fact, that the procedure is "laden with the power to devalue human life?"
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
For those following the controversy over Muslim taxi drivers who refuse to transport passengers carrying alcohol, the airport commission here in the Twin Cities has voted to crack down on any driver who refuses to carry a passenger for reasons other than safety. The first offense will result in a 30-day suspension, the second offense will result in a two-year revocation of the driver's license.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Our fearless leader, Mark Sargent, has a must-read essay in the new issue of Commonweal titled "Vengeance Time: When Abuse Victims Squander Their Moral Authority." An excerpt:
SNAP’s public campaign to expose priests who have merely been accused-or sometimes cleared-of abuse has a vigilante air about it. In their eagerness to effect justice as they know it, SNAP may in fact be disrupting the rule of law. Likewise, the Philadelphia prosecutors’ diatribe against the archdiocese (and the front-page coverage in the Philadelphia Inquirer) served as a kind of public theater in which the prosecutors cathartically worked out their rage at not being able to indict the archdiocese and Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua. The public, emotional, and absolutist character of all these actions expresses not only great anger and frustration, but also the desire to abase and punish. It’s vengeance time.
To be sure, the bishops have brought these theatrics of vengeance on themselves. For an institution famous for its rituals and emphasis on repentance, the church has offered precious few rituals of penitence as a way of acknowledging its fault, recognizing the harm it has done, and seeking forgiveness both from God and those it has wronged. Victims have often said (probably to their lawyers’ alarm) that they would have been content with an opportunity to tell their stories, an acknowledgement of responsibility, exposure of the malefactors, and a genuine apology. The Cultrera brothers’ remarkable documentary Hand of God, recently broadcast on PBS, dramatically shows how a victim first sought only some recognition of the injuries he suffered at the hands of one of the Boston Archdiocese’s worst offenders. He sued for monetary damages only after Bishop John McCormack, one of the guiltiest diocesan officials, flat out lied to him and treated him with peremptory condescension.
No wonder the extraordinary proposed settlement of the Diocese of Spokane bankruptcy requires Bishop William Skylstad not only to publish the names of all credibly accused priests (which has already been done elsewhere), but also to appear at the pulpit in every parish where an abusive priest served, and provide every victim an opportunity to speak out publicly in the parish where he was abused. What’s more, Skylstad must publicly call for eliminating statutes of limitations on sex crimes against children. In the absence of voluntary gestures of penitence, victims and their advocates are extracting public humiliation.
It is not enough to say, however, that bishops, priests, and the church are finally getting what they deserve. The vengeance game is a dangerous one. When the original offense is terrible, we feel empowered to do terrible things in response. Blinded by our righteous rage and convinced of our moral superiority, we may do things we later regret.
I've posted a short essay of mine from the current Journal of Catholic Legal Studies titled "Subsidiarity and Suffering: the View From New Orleans." Here is the abstract:
The principle of subsidiarity often stands accused of being infinitely malleable and unhelpfully abstract, suiting whatever purposes an actor already has in mind. This essay seeks to discern the core of subsidiarity's real-world meaning by considering its implications for the rebuilding of post-Katrina New Orleans. Analyzed, as it must be, in light of the web of Catholic social teachings from which it arises, subsidiarity reminds "compassionate conservatives" that the meaningful empowerment of local communities will often be illusory, absent an active role for the federal government. At the same time, Catholic social teaching challenges the individualist premise of modern liberalism by insisting that subsidiarity's ultimate objective is not an individual's achievement of autonomy for autonomy's sake, but the facilitation of authentic human flourishing. In this regard, we must ensure that federal funding furthers local bodies' long-term viability and self-sufficiency. To the extent feasible, the lower body should take the lead in articulating plans and priorities for a given community's recovery, subject to the higher body's checking authority, and that authority should itself be grounded in subsidiarity—that is, it should be exercised with the aim of fostering the self-sufficiency of local communities.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Perhaps it's not that far off.
Over at PrawfsBlawg, Paul Horwitz comments on Monica Goodling and Regent's religious identity (see our previous discussion here and here). An excerpt:
But one may fairly worry -- for the school's sake, not ours -- about the high-wire act involved in living out a religious mission in the political realm. This administration's highest desideratum seems to be personal loyalty to the President. I confess to the view that personal loyalty is either not a virtue at all, or not a very high virtue. But even if I am wrong about that, it is a quality that may come into tension with higher and broader values that I take it that Regent graduates at their best should personify. The school itself understands this on a personal level, I think; the Globe story quotes one student saying of Goodling that she is a poor representative of Regent because "you should be morally upright. You should not be in a position where you have to plead the Fifth." Whether its administrators always take a similar view, or whether they ultimately are seduced by the lure of power itself, is another question. It seems to me that the school might seek other numbers besides the number of its graduates serving in the administration. What about boasting about the number of whistle-blowers it has produced? Or the number of people who have stood in the way of senior officials and said "no" to unwise or immoral ideas? Or the number of people who have resigned in protest from some high position? I am thus sympathetic to the school's stated goals of sending its graduates to live out a Christ-centered life in public service, but hope they will spend as much time celebrating their martyrs as they do those who have gained influence in high places.
