Conservative Credo IVb: Abortion
Life as Property
There are many ways of looking at human life; some emphasize the benevolence of the Creator; others our inheritance from and similarity to other primates. One approach favored by some liberals/libertarians is to treat life as property. But if the life of a child, born or unborn, is a property or possession, then to whom does it belong? Several answers can be given.
For the classical liberal, the answer seems obvious: we belong to ourselves, we own our own person, and from this they can derive several of their imaginary rights, e.g., the right to enjoy whatever pleasures they like, so long as they are not violating the principle of non-aggression; the right to commit suicide or sell one's self into slavery. Pro-life libertarians argue that this is the reason why no one else can decide to abort a human life. There are several obvious difficulties with this argument, the least of which is that it is patently false, certainly in the case of children. What child, a month before or after birth, can really be said to own himself? If this were true, he would be able, presumably, to pay his mother rent for space in the womb and purchase her milk. We meet the same problem we always do with liberals, their naïve faith in the non-existent autonomous/independent individual. Children, born and unborn, are completely dependent upon their parent for their very lives, and it is the rare human being who, by the age of 50, has acquired sufficient knowledge and experience to make up his own mind on any important question. If individuals really existed, then the followers of Ayn Rand would not all have to parrot her platitudes. We come into this world entirely dependent upon our parents, and as we mature we do not so much liberate ourselves from our families as we learn to depend on a wider variety of people, whether friends or teachers, employers or entertainers. This is especially true today, when people who fancy themselves individualists are utterly dependent on the international consumer economy and mass entertainment. There may be something these people regard as their personal core, somewhere deep below all their browsing and listening, twittering and texting, but even there we find a set of attitudes and prejudices haphazardly picked up from family, friends, teachers, and whatever books or films they have stumbled upon.
But, let us for the sake of argument imagine the libertarians are correct, that children are autonomous individuals possessed of universal human right including the right to life. Obviously neither fetus nor infant nor even adolescent can defend his rights in a court of law, who will undertake this task? If I, at my advanced age, can say that I own myself, it is partly because I have the wit and resources to defend my property rights to my person in court. But who speaks for the child? Why, the law of course, which means the government with its army of teachers, social workers, counselors, and prosecutors. This is always the same outcome to any libertarian argument, because in trying to liberate individuals from oppressive institutions (marriage, family, community, church), they inevitably deliver them up naked to the state.
Leftists are more honest: Since the French Revolution, they have argued that children belong not to their families but to the Patrie, whether that is a nationalist regicidal regime or a communist workers' paradise. When pro-life Christians call for a restoration of anti-abortion laws, they join hands with Jacobins and Marxists in elevating the state above people. I know that is not what they intend, but can anyone today be so naïve as to trust the US government or even state governments with the power of life and death? The end of that road is already in sight: mandatory abortions, sterilizations, euthanasia for the "unfit" who will be a burden on Obamacare.
The most common answer in our tradition is that the child belongs to his parents. In the pre-Christian world, this meant that until the father accepted the infant as both viable and his own, the baby could be exposed. Roman law went furthest in assigning to the father a potentially life-long ius vitae necisque, which, however, could only be exercised within very strict limits. To kill a son, a father had to demonstrate that the son has committed a terrible crime—had attacked his father or slept with his step-mother—and even then he was supposed to convoke a family council composed of the family's senior males. But even in Medieval Europe, parents retained rights over children, for example, over marriage.
The Christian answer must be that at least in a metaphysical sense we belong to the Creator who loves us and wants us to be perfect. It is therefore inconceivable that anyone at all touched by the Christian faith, no matter how weak-kneed or liberal, would advocate a woman's right to choose. But since our Maker is not, generally, going to exercise His rights, who speaks for God. In the Catholic and Orthodox—and to some extent the Anglican and Lutheran world—it was the Church, though secular rulers could be expected to cooperate, for example, in criminalizing infanticide. But today, who can "fill in"? Certainly not the anti-Christian governments of North America and Europe.
The obvious solution is to fall back on the ancient view. Children are the gift and property of God, but the stewardship belongs to the parents and not to social workers. The implication would be that instead of trying to beef up abortion laws in general, Christians should focus on some specific targets. If one parent has the right to terminate a pregnancy, why should not the other parents have at least a veto power. Court rulings and laws that legalize abortions for minor daughters or at least facilitate them are unpopular and could be overturned. Re-empowering parents, then, is a more important objective than any attempt to strengthen the state's control over life and over families.
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Self-ownership is the anti-Christian, self-contradictory cornerstone of libertarian ideology.
For something to be owned, there has to be an owner. But as well, ownership always involves the superior-subordinate relationship between the owner and that which is owned; i.e., the property.
A human being cannot be superior or subordinate to himself.
To finish: And that is why self-ownership is a preposterous idea.
"If one parent has the right to terminate a pregnancy, why should the other parent not have at least a veto power? Court rulings and laws that legalize abortions for minor daughters or at least facilitate them are unpopular and could be overturned."
What of the woman who is old enough (in the state's estimation) to be free from responsibility to her parents, but is also young and naive enough to be unmarried and pregnant*, and simply wants rid of her child because it will put a damper on her 'social life'? Short of raising legal threshold of adulthood to a higher age, what can be done?
*(Half of all abortion cases involve women under the age of 25, two thirds of all cases involve women who are unmarried).
Let us be very clear about such questions. I am trying to establish moral priorities which might have a chance of being incorporated into law. Every child has two parents, and the male, married or not, should have at least a veto power over the abortion. If she agrees, then they might have joint custody; if she objects, then she could be required to bear the child whose disposition would then be up to the father.
On the point raised in #4, could there then also be the possibility of having to dispute and establish male parentage? In the case of many unmarried working class women, we see too often brief flings with multiple men, and it may result in some men claiming to be fathers and demanding a veto, and others claiming to be fathers and not demanding veto.
Dr. Fleming, I don't wish to drag the discussion off topic, but which classical liberals are being referred?
I have read many articles, books, and writings on liberalism, and on such civil matters like marriage, family, divorce, and other such things, little or none is ever said at all. 90% of our discussion enters sound money and banking only, another 5% on commercial matters again, and much of the rest on foreign policy matters. Talk of civil liberties is actually very rare among classical liberals. Civil liberties are pointless to discuss, since some authority, formal or informal, always exists to stop or prevent certain acts.
Whenever Rothbard did bring up family, it was only when he mentioned his loathing for intelligentsia who were against bourgeois values and family life. I have seen modern day liberals more angered at state actions when they incidentally end up usurping parental or familial authority over family choices.
Paternity can be determined these days, but, again, the issue will only arise if a man wishes to claim paternity. Such a system would have nothing to say to an unwed pregnant female when no one claimed paternity. The object, remember, is not to eliminate abortion, which in this world will never happen, but to take the steps toward reconstituting a wholesome view of parental responsibility.
There are many varieties of liberalism, ranging from conservative to moral-anarchic. But, if we start with the liberal premise that what counts is individual freedom or individual happiness, then barriers to that freedom and happiness will have to be treated as obstacles. This is the evil conclusion that JS Mill came to, and he horrified moral and sensible liberals like his disciple Fitzjames Stephen. Mill was a genius; somewhat lower down in the scale is Walter Block's defense of the indefensible. I cannot tell you how many hundreds of hours I have spent in conversation with fairly intelligent liberals who fall into this trap.
The attempt to reconcile moral conservatism with political liberalism has never seemed to work very well except as an uneasy compromise. What would work, I think, is to recognize in the liberal ideal some of the good qualities of the Anglo-American and more broadly Western character; to understand, as Hayek was tending to, that liberal "values" are not autonomous but are projected from a deeper cultural. moral, and religious sense which is more important than the liberal values in themselves, and, finally, to concede what good free-market economists have shown about market efficiency but reserve the moral imperative to subordinate efficiency to higher principles, such as aesthetic beauty, tradition, continuity, family integrity, and charity. I never had a cross word with Rothbard, because we shared a loathing for the busybodying state and both cherished an ideal of moral liberty. Where he went astray, in my view, was his embrace of human rights. On the whole, even at his whackiest, the good Rothbard did far outweighed any harm. His goodness was original, his harm simply a repetition of some of liberalism's traditional mistakes.
As to Murray Rothbard, I would have to agree with your characterization, Dr. Fleming. I never knew the man personally and my reading of his works has been limited. Some of his ideas may have been loony at times, but I don't think those define the man. He was right on a great number of things. I have his book on the federal reserve system and he does a great job of showing why this monstrosity has been such a disaster. Also, from everything I have heard or read about him, he was a true gentleman as well as a great scholar.
I consider myself "pro life" and have generally supported efforts of the states to put limits on abortion. However, you are correct in pointing out that we can never eliminate abortion in this life. We fought a war to "end" war and in the process ushered in a horrific bloodletting, setting the stage for another horrific bloodletting just twenty years later. I am afraid if the goal of the "pro life movement" is to eliminate abortion they may find to their shock and chagrin that they have actually ushered in a more widespread abortion bloodletting than exists now. Efforts to eliminate evil, or tyrants, or "oppression" seem to always end with the opposite effect of that intended. Original Sin is a reality and as long as it is with us (forever in this life) there will be wars, abortions, murders, etc. I believe it was Chesterton who said that Original Sin was the most obviously true and easiest to prove of all Christian doctrines. You are correct in pointing out that abortion is not the problem, it is a side effect of the problem. It is the Garden of Eden story over and over. As long as we believe we are gods we are going to have the wrong understanding of the state and of marriage and family and family authority, etc. Reconstituting a "wholesome view of parental authority" would go a long way toward creating a society in which abortion would be viewed more as an aberration rather than as a constitution right.
Thank you Thomas Fleming for your well thought and worded comments,
as well as others on this subject. To be blunt, some think they
are here only for the "fun of the game". Culture at times is war
but there is water to douse the fire.
The libertarian Walter Block has proposed that women can rent out their wombs for babies.
RE:#7 and "end of's." We have "The End of History" and "The End of Racism" so maybe some bright, aspiring young neocon will write "The End of Abortion."
Or the "End of Neo-conservatism?"
I'd read that one!!
Referring to #9
And another libertarian associated with the Mises Institute propose that mothers have a right to sell their children, and that homosexuals have the right adopt.
Even worse, this libertarian bills himself as a Traditionalist Catholic.
I have found it readily apparent that libertarians have very few children, starting with Ayn Rand. I would guess that Scott Richert has fathered more children than the whole staff of REASON or the faculty of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. When your life is centered around the cult of the individual, it doesn't leave much room for anybody as dependent as children.
I have a related question for Dr. Fleming. What about the state's control over marriage? Since government at all levels seems hell-bent at penalizing people for being married, should the Church consent to perform sacramental marriages for people who don't want to get a marriage license?
Walter Block, as polite and honest as he is, is a good reminder for me as why I am grateful to Dr Fleming for making me rethink my adherence to purist libertarian ideology.
One favorite of mine that some posters over at the LvMI message boards floated (NOT an official LvMI position, mind you) was that children have the right to run away at any time, and that its OK for 7 year olds to have sexual relationships with older men. While there are many good and sensible libertarians, as Dr Fleming has noted, too many subscribe to the absolute cult of the individual.
Fr. Allen @15, you have touched upon an important issue, that I believe was brought up in previous posts as well as this one. The family is being ripped apart by the state, starting with the duties and mysteries of marriage. We also have separated across generations within families. Multi-generational families used to live together. Now, many kids don't really know their own grandparents due to financial calls to jobs in new cities and living in a world of instant, flash communication. How many remember their great-grandparents?
These are horribly broad strokes; there are real exceptions at every turn.
The only problem with your supposition is that it would probably spark a "movement". That aside, why wouldn't the Church consecrate the will of God?
I genuinely like Walter Block and have always regarded him as a consistently sincere man. His mistake is that of all ideologues, and that is, to take one reasonable approach to human life and push its conclusions to the point that it is no longer not only not reasonable but destructive. One can do the same thing with the desire for order or family autonomy or beauty, but those are qualities or institutions that are good in themselves, while "individual" liberty is only a means to an end, that is, a life in which one can make correct moral choices. Libertarian principles appeal to both good and bad instincts: to our healthy desire for control over our own lives and liberation from a meddlesome state, to our evil desire to do only what we wish to do and to give way to our basest inclinations.
Fr. Allen raises a very important question to which I cannot give a satisfactory answer. In principle, the Church should not care a straw for the state's license, but in an ordered society we must beware of encouraging anarchism. I do think, however, that the Church's moral theologians should be moving the argument in this direction. I also think that all churches should begin to crack down on marital irregularities but no with such speed as to do more harm than good.
Re-empowering parents, then, is a more important objective than any attempt to strengthen the state’s control over life and over families.
This can be done underhandedly, too, though: for example, it is possible to redefine abortion as a legally unlicenceable medical procedure and abortifacients as prohibited to sell or prescribe, all on sanitary grounds. That would, of course, require a measure of prudence and political savvy manifestly lacking in the average American anti-abortion political activist. But perhaps I am too harsh on Americans: since the French Revolution the Right, even at its best, has never in any Occidental country been terribly brilliant at intriguing. Given the terminal condition of this civilisation, that needs to change, and fast.
At least the idea of re-empowering parents avoids much of the current controversies about abortion which make headlines and drain the energy of any movement. It would be a realistic first step in the right direction, that of saving something of our civilisation. It may also be possible to win over those who would object to it because it doesn't eliminate abortion entirely by pointing out that at least it would a practical means to reduce the number of abortions overall.
I wonder how knowledge of the fact that readily available abortion causes the decline of population and the eventual demise of a people can be turned into a matter of policy, designed, in the long run, to reduce the numbers of abortions and stabilise a population, some of it, perhaps, being implemented in the manner that NGPM describes above?
Re-empowering parents, then, is a more important objective than any attempt to strengthen the state’s control over life and over families.
This is the bigger picture, which often gets lost in the shuffle. Much of the issue is not abortion per se, but the greater social forces at work. Modern society has done much to destroy the power of the family, as well as many other institutions which historically have counter-balanced the power of the centralized state. If nothing else, no-fault divorce and the sexual revolution have produced a wave of single parent families, thereby creating a demand for state services from child protection to daycare that used to be performed by families. Men, especially, are increasingly being taken out of the lives of their children and replaced with government agents.
The pro-life movement needs to see the bigger picture instead of obsessing over abortion. I think, though, that there are too many people out there with a vested interest in centralizing state power. So the family is treated as per the old radical slogan as the "central institution of oppression in bourgeoisie/patriarchal society." It's in the state's interest to break up families, despite all the politico sloganeering about "family values."
Since government at all levels seems hell-bent at penalizing people for being married, should the Church consent to perform sacramental marriages for people who don’t want to get a marriage license?
True enough. Many people are refusing to get married over very real concerns about the punitive alimony/child custody/support laws enacted by the cult of the omnipotent state, and omnipotent indeed as it reaches right into the very center of what used to be the most private of affairs.
Perhaps the churches could start a new form of marriage which does not require the government to get involved?
@20: My vision involves a bit of savvy and a bit of sedition. The first step is to quiet down on references to "human life" and chip away at legally acceptable abortion procedures on the grounds that even theoretically "safe" ones are rarely carried out in ideal conditions, especially for abortion-on-demand, i.e., abortionists are often at the bottom of their medical school classes and well-known for shady conduct; Norma McCorvy will attest to the horrors one will witness in there (it is not just infanticide).
Gradually we can step up to what you are talking about, but in the current culture I am afraid such arguments will not fly, either because people are not convinced there IS a population problem or, being a part of the problem, they just don't want to think about a grim future.
@15 Fr. Steve Allen - My husband and I heard the words, I as a
licensed and ordained minister of the word.... They were reflected
on for 30 + years and have been by this time set to rest.
@21 Burke 101 - God has His own law when it comes to reproduction
and miscarriages. In our days anything other would appear as
meddling, reducing or reforming that. Babies born in the U.S. are
lost in early infancy with natural birth assisted by a doctor in
a hospital. When parents plead for assistance in a case of a four
wk. old and 8 wk. old's health challenges delivered by the same doctor in the same hospital, much went unsaid and protocol appeared
to be the first consideration. Both children were blessed with
recovery.
The only way to deal with any of this is keeping on keeping on.
Other comments are appreciated.
I have not thought through the following proposal and, therefore, submit it to critique of its moral foundation, which might be just too sandy; yet, here it is.
There are any number of older people who have lost their spouses to death who have found another person of interest. They, however, do not marry one another because the state would penalize their property or the pensions which they get from the deceased spouse. A large number of them "shack up" and are found, for that reason, "to be living in sin."
However, a church marriage of the sort mentioned @ 21, sans the state, might be a solution. I know a couple whose spouses died young who lived together for fifteen years, had and raised two daughters together, and who became major contributors to the community, i.e. they practice charity with their wealth. Their difficulty was that the inheritance laws as it related to children of the previous marriages would have nullified any claims which they had, wealth which they had helped produce, had they gotten married. When the children of their previous marriages turned eighteen, the legal problems disappeared and they were promptly married.
A non-state church solution would have been a solution to their problem.
Dr. Peters, @24 raises a point that I found interesting when I was doing my dissertation research on citizenship in Illinois. When Illinois was the Wild West, ministers and priests were rarely found out on the frontier, and may have only visited some of the locales every few years. The result was that while Illinois does not recognize common law marriages, it was not uncommon for a couple to have several children before being married. I would have to go back and research this more carefully, but it is my understanding that marriages recorded in a family bible are generally considered valid.
The point about inheritance is important, as well. When I read through the copies of the Illinois Statutes, I was struck by how quickly the size expanded, and how much of this expansion was related to laws on inheritance. Life was hard and short here for many years, and dealing with estate issues must have been a real chore for what few attorneys were working in early Illinois.
Speaking as an outsider, at least as one outside of matrimony, I think the idea of Christian marriage without state intervention is an excellent one and should be explored more fully. That is what we had initially, why not reclaim it?
Leon/Lone Racer, under the sobriquet "Lone Patriot" makes the following comment:
Submitted on 2010/06/09 at 10:03pm
A thoughtful and meaty article, pregnant with all sorts of implications for social theory. One lacuna, however, is the lack of mention of eugenicist concerns, if only to (try to) dispose of them.
If the`’individual’ is something of an ontological fiction, as Dr. Fleming seems to suggest, if one’s personal identity is in significant part historically situated and corporately formed, then why shouldn’t society, through its enforcement mechanism, the State, have some control over who shall breed? Even arch-liberal JS Mill thought reproduction should be more regulated than mere commerce (a point I strongly second).
Perhaps abortion must be disallowed in a Christian community, but why shouldn’t seriously morally defective people, at least violent criminals, be forcibly sterilized? Their reproduction could be held to be an act of inherent reckless endangerment!
And if some pair of sociopaths should elude sterilization, and get pregnant, and then voluntarily wish for an abortion, why in the world would even the Christian society try to stop them – especially if that society is poor, or in collective danger, and cannot easily afford another dysgenic mouth to feed?
These are serious questions; I know many, including otherwise liberals, as well as staunch conservatives, who support abortion precisely for eugenic reasons.
This is not a difficult question to answer. The first answer is that no government, Christian or not, should have the power of life and death for eugenic purposes. It is a violation of the natural order of things. The natural power over a child's life resides with the parents and not with strangers. To turn the question upside down, one might imagine individuals assuming the right to carry on foreign wars privately. The Vikings, it is true, did just that, but that was because there was virtually no state in Norway or Denmark. Great Viking kings like Harald Bluetooth, his son Sweyn Forkbeard, and the Norwegian Harald Sigurdsson all tried to control Viking activities and use them for national purposes. It was thus that Sweyn and his son Canute became kings of England.
I have spoken so far only in the abstract and generally about states. Modern states are far more dangerous since they have usurped vast powers that properly belong to families. What else are compulsory school laws, public education, and child protection statutes if not a usurpation of familial authority? Of all states that might have been trusted with such patriarchal authority, the modern state would be the worst.
A second approach to this question is that eugenics policies are entirely unnecessary in a natural order. We are in fact subsidizing dysgenic breeding habits by paying unwed mothers, usually of the lowest moral and intellectual type, to have babies, and then we subsidize their offspring with free schooling, food, housing. If the child has defects, those are also paid for by the taxpayers. Before even beginning to consider any eugenics policy, why not simply end our dysgenics policies known collectively as the Welfare State. Leon's concerns would quickly disappear, at least to the point that he would not consider granting such nightmarish power to a government that is doing its best to destroy its people.
"Perhaps abortion must be disallowed in a Christian community, but why shouldn’t seriously morally defective people, at least violent criminals, be forcibly sterilized?"
Sterilization is nothing less than mutilation, and by its nature a particularly disgusting form of mutilation.
Extremely violent criminals with no apparent potential for changin should be executed. That, if memory serves me right, was the principal explanation for the major chute in crime in Britain in the years leading up to World War I.
"If one parent has the right to terminate a pregnancy, why should not the other parents have at least a veto power."
It was from the moment this question first suggested itself to me that I mark the beginning of my turning away from support for the "right" to abortion. I eventually realized that if the abortion decision is left to women, they are then not only taking control of the lives of the babies currently in their wombs, but of the whole destiny of mankind. Women, under the regime of on demand, no questions asked, no male consent needed abortion, become the sole gatekeepers to life, the sole determiners of the size, genetic inheritance, cultural allegiances, historical memory, even geographic distribution of future generations. For men to acquiesce in this matter is, I think, the most abject of all the many surrenders we have made since the collapse of Christendom.
If we want to legislate a veto power, so that both parents' consent is necessary for an abortion to proceed, we must have an answer to the inevitable objection that the state is forcing the woman into 39 weeks of involuntary servitude. (Men who object to being "made" to be fathers can be laughed out of the courtroom.) How can this work without increasing the enforcement power of the state? Would it be feasible to extend the existing laws providing penalties for child abuse and neglect to cover the child's life from the official determination of a positive pregnancy test?
Personally, I believe that abortion is only a symptom, and not the root problem. The spirit of death walks large in our land in many other ways. The murder rate is approaching that of West Africa, the suicide rate is approaching that of the former East Germany, and drug overdoses must mean that our melting pot society is less than happy.