Questionable conservative thinking in the United States

The Daily Signal,the blog of the conservative Heritage Foundation in the United States announced recently:

Life Wins: In Overturning Roe v. Wade, Supreme Court Issues Victory for Rule of Law.

The announcement raises three issues on the abortion issue:

1. Abortion is not a legal issue. It is a moral issue. Abortion should have no relevance to the US Supreme court. The decision is not the rule of law. The net effect of this decision is to revert the issue to the states.

2. Abortion is morally acceptable,

3. The research is clear: access to safe, legal abortion saves lives.

Abortion is morally acceptable,

This paper will set out two convincing reasons to that effect. It also sets out a number of comments by well-known writers on this issue.

First we must ask why do anti-abortionists argue that it is wrong. There is no explicit statement about abortion in the Old Testament or the New Testament versions of the Bible. Then why do Conservatives, Catholics, and many Christian fundamentalists, oppose abortion?

The Church teaches that human life is created and begins at the moment of conception. The Catholic Church sees abortion as the termination of an unborn life, and therefore, it is wrong.

Many believe that we are created in God's image, and for this reason, we cannot kill the foetus.

Even pregnancies that result from rape, incest, or present a danger to the life of the mother are, for the Catholic church, not reasons for abortion. The church allows that the woman - who is considered an innocent victim - can get treatment as soon as possible, within the 24 hours apparently required for the sperm to reach the egg, to try to prevent conception from occurring immediately after the rape or incest.

The major reason for allowing abortion revolves around the question of why is killing a person, or a foetus, wrong? Thou shalt not kill is the sixth Commandment given by God to Moses about 1440 BC. We then need to ask ourselves why God, or Moses, if it was he who wrote the ten commandments, decided that killing was wrong.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church human life is sacred because from its beginning it involves the creative action of God and it remains for ever in a special relationship with the Creator. 1 Corinthians 11:7 tells us that we are created in the image of God.

The case of Argentina, a strongly Catholic country, which recently legalised abortion, should be mentioned. The current Pope Francis, who is Argentinian, and the first pope from outside Europe since Gregory III in the eighth century, objected to the bill. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro also objected: "I deeply regret for the lives of Argentinian children, now subject to being ended in the bellies of their mothers with the state's agreement." Bolsonaro politically is far right, however, whereas the incumbent Argentine government in Argentina is to the left.

Supporters of the Argentine bill said the bill also sought to eradicate the clandestine abortions that have caused more than 3000 deaths in the country since 1983, according to official figures. This is one additional reason for supporting legalised abortion – to reduce the harm done by backyard abortions.

But if we are not entirely sure that there is a god, and therefore remove the religious reason, why then is it wrong to kill? Two reasons are offered: one is that we cause grief to those close to the killed person, to his/her family, and that is a wrong. This probably was Moses' major underlying reason (if he wrote the ten commandments).

In this first case, the mother-to-be is the closest relative. The decision to abort may be a difficult one, but it is her decision. If she makes the decision, then it is hers alone. She is the person closest to the unborn child.

Clearly also, if a child is not wanted, it is preferable to terminate as a foetus. It is the lesser of two harms.

The second reason for the moral justification of an abortion is that the killing destroys any expectations that the victim has about their own lives; be they long term or even their plans for tomorrow. In short, we have a desire to keep living, to fulfil our plans for tomorrow; or next week. To take our expectations away from us is a wrong. But foetuses, even new-borns, do not have that expectation.

This second reason for agreeing to an abortion, that an unborn child has no expectations of life, is a valid reason. In fact, a new-born does not even have a fully formed brain, not reaching that stage until into a few months into its life after birth

This is the reason of Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He asserts that we see ourselves as a continuing long-term beings. New-borns, like foetuses, are incapable "of seeing themselves as distinct entities, existing over time. They are not rational, self-conscious beings with a desire to live". Since, in Singer's criteria, personhood hinges on these factors, killing a new-born (or foetus) is not the same as killing a person.

In 1983, Singer published an article in the journal Pediatrics titled "Sanctity of Life or Quality of Life?" He contended that there is no moral burden to keep alive human infants who are born with mental retardation or other major developmental problems such as Down's syndrome. His assertion has been heavily criticised.

Does the embryo suffer? Presumably not if it is aborted before it has a nervous system; and even if it is advanced enough to have a nervous system it surely suffers less than, say, cows in a slaughterhouse.

It might be noted that a miscarriage or "spontaneous abortion" and occurs in approximately 30% to 50% of pregnancies.

The above two assertions - that it is the mother's choice, for she is the person most affected, and that the foetus has no expectations of life, does not even have a fully formed brain, are the major reasons why an abortion is morally justified, But there are other supporting arguments.

Judith Jarvis Thompson notes in A Defense of Abortion that it comes as a surprise when one first learns how early in its life the embryo begins to acquire human characteristics. By the tenth week, for example, it already has a face, arms, fingers and toes; it has internal organs, and a brain activity is detectable. She advances her pro-abortion argument:

You are in hospital about to be discharged You wake up in the morning and find yourself back-to-back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore harnessed you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, "Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you--we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.

Jarvis Thompson then points out that such an imposition on you may go on for much longer, years in fact, and is an excessive demand. It is your right to be unplugged and freed to go about your life. Hers is a make-believe story, a practice much favoured by philosophers, but it nevertheless does give us an insight into this question.This writer believes, however, that the overriding moral obligation is not to kill the violinist, but for far different reasons than if a foetus was the victim

Bernard Gert in his Moral Disagreement and Abortion,argues that "all of the standard positions on abortion are morally acceptable." It is "an unresolvable moral issue". Gert, a moral philosopher known primarily for his work in normative ethics, was born and raised in the United States.

Gert's article devotes most of his discussion to denying that there is an answer to every moral question. Gert uses the analysis of setting the speed limit on a highway. A higher speed has the benefit of enabling us to reach our destination more quickly, freeing time for what may be useful pursuits; a lower speed saves more lives. However, his example is poorly argued. It is similar to the anti-lockdown or anti-vax arguments in the Covid -19 pandemic. A speed limit needs be posted. Constructing a road without a posted speed limit is the least acceptable of all options. It is possible to determine accident and fatality rates with different speed limits, using data from other highways, or the evaluation of different trials on this highway. Governments have an obligation to set traffic rules, line marking, traffic lights, speed limits. Otherwise chaos reigns supreme. We can relate this analysis to those who refuse to wear masks or claim that the social distancing rules infringe on their freedoms. Yet we all believe we should obey the posted speed limits. And that we should stop at red traffic lights. So why do many of us claim that the social distancing rules are infringing on our freedoms? We can, in short, decide what is morally acceptable. The overriding rule over the centuries is that we should choose the option that does the least harm – in the case of an abortion, that choice in most cases does the least harm.

A contributor to pro-choice America (The National Abortion Rights Action League, March, 2019), also give a powerful reason supporting abortion: "My daughter Laurel (named already whilst still in the womb) was diagnosed in May 2012 with catastrophic brain malformations that were overlooked until the 35th week of my dearly wanted pregnancy. During counselling, doctors told me that Laurel would never talk, walk, hold her head up, or swallow. Instead, her short life would be defined by pain, seizures, and full-body muscle cramps. Eventually, she would choke on her own bodily fluids. After a single injection and a couple of hours, my baby was laid to rest in my womb.

We can also apply the theories of John Rawls who many people consider the greatest moral philosopher of the 20th Century in his A Theory of Justice, to the abortion question. Remember abortion is currently a public policy issue, following Donald Trump's appointment of conservative jurists to the Supreme Court. Rawls' first advocacy is that the greatest possible amount of liberty is provided to members of society, limited only by the notion that the liberty of any one member shall not infringe upon any other member. To deny a woman who seeks an abortion is to infringe on the freedom of that woman.

The second and third of Rawls' guidelines do not appear to apply in the case of abortion, (that inequalities are only to be allowed if the worst off will be better off than they might be under an equal distribution, or if they preclude a person from public office).

Read up on backyard abortions. Many countries, even today, have a horrific history. Legalising abortion will minimise the harm done. Not harming others Would be the dominant or overriding ethical guideline

Finally, most of the world accepts abortions The reasons why the US has such a controversy is the dominant place of religion in US life. Research by the National Opinion Research Centre at the University of Chicago shows that 60% of people in the United States believed in God. This compared with 18% in France,17 % in Great Britain and 25% in Australia. The highest beliefs were 62% in Poland (which is 90% Catholic, and 84% in the Philippines (86% Catholic).

On the other side of the picture, atheistic beliefs (do not believe in a god) are 3% in the US as against 18 % in Great Britain and 23 % in France. Atheistic believers in Australia are 22% of the population.

The Pew Research Organisation on July 31, 2018 noted, as would be expected of a nation with high beliefs in the existence of God, that Americans are far more religious than adults in other developed nations. More than half of American adults (55%) say they pray daily, compared with 25% in Canada, 18% in Australia and 6% in Great Britain. (The average European country stands at 22%.). According to the Pew Research Center, approximately three-quarters of white evangelical Protestants – 77% – say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, while 63% of white Protestants who are not evangelical say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Interestingly, attitudes of Catholic laity are more narrowly split – 55% favour legal abortion in all or most cases, while 43% say it should be illegal in all or most cases.

The fuss in the US on overturning Roe vs Wade in the US is essentially a religious issue. Similarly in Ireland. A coalition of civil society groups that successfully campaigned to have Ireland's strict ban on abortion repealed wrote in Time magazine May 6, 2022, that Roe v. Wade really set off alarm bells among the extremely conservative, right wing Catholic cabals in Ireland.

As such, the issue of abortion should be left to religious believers. It has nothing to do with law. Or the US Supreme Court.