I learned a lot from this column, for which I thank you--first about the role of the ultrasound and technology in pregnancy generally, and second about the fact that no matter how we try to make comparisons of pregnancy and fetuses to other parts of human existence, a fetus is sui generis.
Everything to do with pregnancy brings up the political issue of rights versus obligations. Western societies have devolved into millions endlessly bruiting about their "rights," with hardly anyone seriously discussion what, if any, obligations they have. Nowhere does this show up more than in arguments over abortion.
Once a society untethers rights from obligations, as we have been doing ever since Machiavelli shoved morals out the door, rights have been devolving into sheer power struggles. In the old days, rights and obligations came tethered, and since a fetus could obviously have no obligations, it followed that it had no rights. Only with the rise of rights do we see the claim that a fetus has rights bubble up.
Even so, everyone has always recognized that a mother has obligations to a fetus (not necessarily to give her life for it, but some sort of moral consideration for its existence). Today, we're in a serious moral quagmire because abortion brings to the fore two irreconcilable claims to rights--the woman and the fetus--coupled with a society that shows no interest in obligations it might have to that potential child.
Except, that is, when it comes to abortion, where a huge swath of conservative Christians and others claim that women have obligations but no rights.
Permitting women to make the decision of whether to carry a pregnancy to term is the most just way to go forward. It still leaves the moral element in play, for it leaves with pregnant women what to do with what they actually alone face: Both an obligation and their rights tethered together.
Anything else is just more Machiavelli--i.e., permitting the State to have even more power over individuals.
The question of what makes a being or thing a person cannot be answered by pointing to our decision to care for that being or thing. Decisions are themselves rational responses, and so the puzzle simply reasserts itself: how ought we to circumscribe the domain of things worthy of being cared for? Moreover, if we agree that personhood is just not the sort of thing that can be read off of a brain or nervous system, we also ought to agree that personhood is not the sort of thing that can be read off of a cultural practice; surely, the latter view is just as crass and reductive as the former.
Another excellent post, thank you. The abortion issue does seem to exacerbate the gap between meaningless matter (the “is”) and the meaningful realm of human values (the “ought”). Is this a kind of version of the perennial Leibniz’s gap? Is it that for Christians arguing pro-life positions, that all matter is suffused with meaning (God’s), that the fetus is inherently meaningful? I especially liked the bit on baptism and symbolic recognition and makes me think of the idea of endowing a name to a fetus, which I can conceive as being a coercive pro-life political strategy. The potential in a name holding out the hope of a human being, is it not something we also see through, positing futures and paths and a destiny? When something is named, it becomes elevated to personhood, as the totem of a clan is an ur-person out of which names themselves emanate, sketching the limits of a domain. Both pro-life and pro-choice groups seem to have their totems, whose domains overlap. The one, refusing to name, the other, naming too hastily perhaps. Sorry for this free association that muddles your clear argumentation, but it got my gears turning. Lots to think on. Thank you again.
Highly illuminating thinking along highly original lines -- what we've come to expect from JEH. One quibble: Smith limits the category of persons who should be concerned about surveillance of their bodies to those who "travel illegally for an abortion where it is still legal, or get an illegal abortion where they reside." This leaves out pregnancies that end in miscarriage -- roughly one in extreme abortion restrictions, every miscarriage will need to be investigated as a potential crime. There's no guarantee that cops, prosecutors, and courts will get things right. I worry that this will discourage women from seeking early prenatal care for fear that, in case of a miscarriage, they will be prosecuted.
More generally, I think that the total absence of consideration of miscarriage in the abortion debate is a serious lacuna.
Since the decision overturning Roe, everyone is shouting slogans and nobody seems interested in discussing, or even acknowledging, the moral complexities of abortion. Your Hinternet is an island of reason in a sea of emotionalism. Thank you!
"As it happens I think the Roe v. Wade decision was horribly wrong, and yet another symptom of the decline of participatory democracy in the United States." It's fair that you should be expected to justify this assertion. The reference to "participatory democracy" suggests that you assume that we have no rights that aren't demanded of the State, to which we otherwise submit, but it isn't quite clear.
I learned a lot from this column, for which I thank you--first about the role of the ultrasound and technology in pregnancy generally, and second about the fact that no matter how we try to make comparisons of pregnancy and fetuses to other parts of human existence, a fetus is sui generis.
Everything to do with pregnancy brings up the political issue of rights versus obligations. Western societies have devolved into millions endlessly bruiting about their "rights," with hardly anyone seriously discussion what, if any, obligations they have. Nowhere does this show up more than in arguments over abortion.
Once a society untethers rights from obligations, as we have been doing ever since Machiavelli shoved morals out the door, rights have been devolving into sheer power struggles. In the old days, rights and obligations came tethered, and since a fetus could obviously have no obligations, it followed that it had no rights. Only with the rise of rights do we see the claim that a fetus has rights bubble up.
Even so, everyone has always recognized that a mother has obligations to a fetus (not necessarily to give her life for it, but some sort of moral consideration for its existence). Today, we're in a serious moral quagmire because abortion brings to the fore two irreconcilable claims to rights--the woman and the fetus--coupled with a society that shows no interest in obligations it might have to that potential child.
Except, that is, when it comes to abortion, where a huge swath of conservative Christians and others claim that women have obligations but no rights.
Permitting women to make the decision of whether to carry a pregnancy to term is the most just way to go forward. It still leaves the moral element in play, for it leaves with pregnant women what to do with what they actually alone face: Both an obligation and their rights tethered together.
Anything else is just more Machiavelli--i.e., permitting the State to have even more power over individuals.
The question of what makes a being or thing a person cannot be answered by pointing to our decision to care for that being or thing. Decisions are themselves rational responses, and so the puzzle simply reasserts itself: how ought we to circumscribe the domain of things worthy of being cared for? Moreover, if we agree that personhood is just not the sort of thing that can be read off of a brain or nervous system, we also ought to agree that personhood is not the sort of thing that can be read off of a cultural practice; surely, the latter view is just as crass and reductive as the former.
Another excellent post, thank you. The abortion issue does seem to exacerbate the gap between meaningless matter (the “is”) and the meaningful realm of human values (the “ought”). Is this a kind of version of the perennial Leibniz’s gap? Is it that for Christians arguing pro-life positions, that all matter is suffused with meaning (God’s), that the fetus is inherently meaningful? I especially liked the bit on baptism and symbolic recognition and makes me think of the idea of endowing a name to a fetus, which I can conceive as being a coercive pro-life political strategy. The potential in a name holding out the hope of a human being, is it not something we also see through, positing futures and paths and a destiny? When something is named, it becomes elevated to personhood, as the totem of a clan is an ur-person out of which names themselves emanate, sketching the limits of a domain. Both pro-life and pro-choice groups seem to have their totems, whose domains overlap. The one, refusing to name, the other, naming too hastily perhaps. Sorry for this free association that muddles your clear argumentation, but it got my gears turning. Lots to think on. Thank you again.
Highly illuminating thinking along highly original lines -- what we've come to expect from JEH. One quibble: Smith limits the category of persons who should be concerned about surveillance of their bodies to those who "travel illegally for an abortion where it is still legal, or get an illegal abortion where they reside." This leaves out pregnancies that end in miscarriage -- roughly one in extreme abortion restrictions, every miscarriage will need to be investigated as a potential crime. There's no guarantee that cops, prosecutors, and courts will get things right. I worry that this will discourage women from seeking early prenatal care for fear that, in case of a miscarriage, they will be prosecuted.
More generally, I think that the total absence of consideration of miscarriage in the abortion debate is a serious lacuna.
Since the decision overturning Roe, everyone is shouting slogans and nobody seems interested in discussing, or even acknowledging, the moral complexities of abortion. Your Hinternet is an island of reason in a sea of emotionalism. Thank you!
This was enlightening and nuanced. Two aspects I haven't seen in the Roe commentary. Thanks for it. Where are the first two figures from?
"As it happens I think the Roe v. Wade decision was horribly wrong, and yet another symptom of the decline of participatory democracy in the United States." It's fair that you should be expected to justify this assertion. The reference to "participatory democracy" suggests that you assume that we have no rights that aren't demanded of the State, to which we otherwise submit, but it isn't quite clear.
wish you had extended your discussion of personhood to include corporations