Moving the discussion below here so I can use colors. CD-Host is green. My words are red.
Hi Randy --Good answers.
Thanks, I enjoy the discussion
Pro-choice people make it all the time. Don't like abortion? Don't have one. What is the argument? All morality is personal likes and dislikes.
Good example, that is a tough one. I would hope that this is not an argument from moral relativism since obviously that would be a stupid argument.
Pro-choice people make it all the time. Don't like abortion? Don't have one. What is the argument? All morality is personal likes and dislikes.
Good example, that is a tough one. I would hope that this is not an argument from moral relativism since obviously that would be a stupid argument.
You are being very charitable. I don't tend to assume pro-abortion arguments are not stupid. They are more sound-bytes than arguments. Still people are convinced by them.
Rather it is a more subtle argument along these lines:
1) Consent is the driving principle of sexual morality.
2) Abortion should be classified along with sexual morality and not a crimes of violence.
c) An objection to abortion is just an objection to consenting to have an abortion.
Now obviously (1) and (2) are highly contentious and most people making this argument often haven't really thought through those two underlying assumptions.
1) Consent is the driving principle of sexual morality.
2) Abortion should be classified along with sexual morality and not a crimes of violence.
c) An objection to abortion is just an objection to consenting to have an abortion.
Now obviously (1) and (2) are highly contentious and most people making this argument often haven't really thought through those two underlying assumptions.
I wonder if (1) is not just moral relativism in disguise. Matters of life and death have deeper moral issues involved than mere consent. Sex can involve the creation of a new human life. Why should we expect consent to be the driving principle unless we have bought into moral relativism at some level?
(2) is the reason that discussion of the fetus'
development is so effectual in pro-life arguments because once one
accepts that abortion is the deliberate dismemberment of proto-human,
(2) is a harder belief to defend.
I am not sure (2) is even on most people's radar. Is abortion a matter of life or a matter of sex? The sex part is over before the abortion question comes up. The sex could have been rape. It could have been consensual married sex. Mostly how a person got to that point does not matter. Mostly, people are pro-abortion regardless or pro-life regardless. That much makes sense. The central question is whether it is OK to kill the fetus. That is a life issue. I am not sure I have ever heard someone frame it as an issue of sex except when it is talked about in the context of a backup contraception method.
Were pro-choice people really
consistent moral relativists (in the very strong sense you are using it
here, and not in something like the Hegelian sense) then fetal
development would be irrelevant and unconvincing.
Since when is modern man consistent about anything? Any genocide requires arguing that the victim class is sub-human. Abortion requires exactly that premise about the fetus. You look at the pictures and you an see that is nonsense.
Since when is modern man consistent about anything? Any genocide requires arguing that the victim class is sub-human. Abortion requires exactly that premise about the fetus. You look at the pictures and you an see that is nonsense.
Given the seriousness of the sins and the number of people struggling with them they hardly mention it at all.
I just want to point out the "seriousness of the sins" is precisely what I mean by a high degree of church focus. The fact that they are considered to be serious sins... I understand your objection that you don't think the church is aggressive enough on these issues ...
Most don't consider sex to be a trivial matter. So I am not sure that saying sexual sins are serious is such a surprise. The point is the church's position has not changed in substance. In terms of the tone and frequency of the teaching it is less about rules and judgement and more about love and forgiveness. Often the church is criticized by people for guilt tripping them and talking about hell all the time. I wonder where they go to church. That kind of preaching has not been the rule for many decades now.
Mostly because people feel guilty. They like to blame the church but it is their own conscience that tells them they are doing wrong.
I don't see that. I think the data on premarital sex being wrong, homosexual sex being wrong, masturbation being wrong is pretty clear that huge and growing percentages of the population simply aren't troubled by these sexual acts.
They say they are not troubled. We have created a society where it is politically incorrect to admit you have a conscience. But many come to the church privately and admit they are troubled. There are those "whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron (1 Tim 4:2)" but they were not born that way. It is like swearing. Your conscience bothers you for a while but then it doesn't in the same way.
You think so? I think wealth distribution is a pretty recent phenomenon.
I think we mentioned this before on the rise of Islam and how important the end of debt and slavery was. That's a great example. Going back even further Book IV of the Republic discusses the distribution of property and how this effects the nature of the good. The old testament specifically outlines the the corners of fields are community property though the interior is private property.
You can call that "wealth distribution" if you want. There is some minimal recognition of rights for the poor. To prevent them from starving. Not really creating a middle class. Often even these rules were not followed. I am not totally familiar with the slavery issue in Islam. From what I can tell Islam changed slavery. They didn't abolish it. Prisoners of war became slaves. People, if they were Muslim, were not made slaves to pay off debt. I guess if you have a culture of war that works.
You think so? I think wealth distribution is a pretty recent phenomenon.
I think we mentioned this before on the rise of Islam and how important the end of debt and slavery was. That's a great example. Going back even further Book IV of the Republic discusses the distribution of property and how this effects the nature of the good. The old testament specifically outlines the the corners of fields are community property though the interior is private property.
You can call that "wealth distribution" if you want. There is some minimal recognition of rights for the poor. To prevent them from starving. Not really creating a middle class. Often even these rules were not followed. I am not totally familiar with the slavery issue in Islam. From what I can tell Islam changed slavery. They didn't abolish it. Prisoners of war became slaves. People, if they were Muslim, were not made slaves to pay off debt. I guess if you have a culture of war that works.
Good points there is a lot of meat here.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if [(1) Consent is the driving principle of sexual morality. ] is not just moral relativism in disguise. Matters of life and death have deeper moral issues involved than mere consent. Sex can involve the creation of a new human life. Why should we expect consent to be the driving principle unless we have bought into moral relativism at some level?
Sex is our mechanism of procreation, so no sexual morality can exist that is not compatible with its procreative morality. I agree with you there. I think the Pope made that assessment in Humanae Vitae and was correct. I don't think this is moral relativism however. Even including the distinction you are making you could construct the argument this way:
A (old 1)) Consent is the driving principle of sexual morality.
B) The morality of contraception is pre-force part of sexual morality.
C (old 2)) The morality of abortion is part of the morality of contraception not part of the moral system governing violence.
None of those 3 statements are relative.
Sex can involve the creation of a new human life.
That's a key point of dispute whether sex or an extended pregnancy creates a new human life. For example the first step in starting a billion dollar company might be registering Doing Business As papers with your state. But I think it would inaccurate to say that registering DBA papers involves the creation of a billion dollar business.
I am not sure (2) is even on most people's radar. Is abortion a matter of life or a matter of sex? The sex part is over before the abortion question comes up. The sex could have been rape. It could have been consensual married sex. Mostly how a person got to that point does not matter. Mostly, people are pro-abortion regardless or pro-life regardless.
That we know isn't true. About 44% of the population believes abortion should be legal in some but not all circumstances. Among this 44% rape and incest are 2 of the 3 most commonly cited reasons. Polls differ but for the purpose of arguments lets bal park about a 30% differential for a conception to a married financially secure woman in rape vs. a conception via. birth control failure. The issue of how of the sex does seem to come up among most people. About 50-60% of the American population believes that either Abortion should be legal or illegal in all cases so among the remainder, the abortion should be legal in some cases you are looking 60-80% believe the sex is important.
Moreover among the 35% that believe abortion should be legal in all cases one of their most common reasons is that no abortion causes women to lose their sexual freedom. That is they can only have sex with men whom they would be willing to breed with.
I agree Catholic Church theory doesn't see the sex as particularly relevant. I don't agree however that this moral non-distinction is the case for most Americans, including Catholics. I can go into more detail but the alternative morality as it exists among the firmly pro-choice, and will in my next response.
OK this response might be more touchy and take us too far afield feel free to ignore.
ReplyDeleteThe central question is whether it is OK to kill the fetus. That is a life issue. I am not sure I have ever heard someone frame it as an issue of sex except when it is talked about in the context of a backup contraception method.
I don't agree that's the central issue. I was responding to a slightly different argument, but I wrote a post where I did frame contraception / abortion in a way that kept the focus on the woman's fertility rate Why Natural Family Planning (NFP) is a non answer. The argument focuses on the high conception rate among couples in their prime reproductive years who desire frequent sex. So if you want an example of such an argument I happen to have a good one I'm familiar with.
You look at the pictures and you an see that is nonsense.
We aren't addressing personal beliefs here, but I'm pro choice. I look at the picture and I don't see a fully formed human. I got pine trees in my yard and pine tree seedlings in my yard. I give a lot of thought to cutting down pine trees I give almost no careful consideration to uprooting seedlings. I give them a different level of dignity.
You are obviously correct is whether fetus are subhuman but I (obviously) don't think the negative position is obviously false. This might be going to far afield but bringing the issue back, it is quite possible to think deeply about moral issues in a consistent way and disagree with Catholic morality on this topic.
this response in 2 parts
ReplyDeleteMost don't consider sex to be a trivial matter. So I am not sure that saying sexual sins are serious is such a surprise. The point is the church's position has not changed in substance
Hmmm... I'm not sure I agree about this. I would say there has been some substantial "development" over time on these issues which do change things and depending on how clearly you want to look at these issues perhaps outright contradiction.
Taking abortion as our first example since this is the topic, I'd argue the church in the last two centuries has drastically changed their position to essentially preaching traducianism (fertilization creates an intellectual soul) which is something they used to consider an outright heresy. There is no question that Catholics in the 1830s widely preached that human life began at quickening (the mother being aware of fetal movement) not at conception. In keeping with this they considered restoration of menstruation, what we would today call drug induced abortion, to be an issue of health not morality prior to this point. There is no question that cessation of breathing not cessation of brain activity was considered critical as part of the very definition of life (not just a means of determination) and that definition was seen as biblical i.e. breath of life...
Going back a few generations further the church saw marriage as fundamentally about property and the creation of legitimate heirs not about sex. So for example prior to Trent it was not seen as immoral for a priest to enter into a relationship of concubinage but gravely immoral for him to marry. In fact the church explicitly classified "clandestine marriage" that is marriage not contracted in the presence of a priest as a relationship of concubinage an thus unbinding on the woman even if she had engaged in sexual relations. The whole doctrine of concubinage has been dropped.
(end part 1)
(part 2)
ReplyDeleteAlong with that the whole moral classification of children into:
uxor -- This was the child of a wife and had full legal rights
spurii -- Literally spurious or bastard children that had no legal claim on the father. For example the product from a man's relations with a prostitute
naturales -- This was the child of a concubine and the father and they had moral claim and if the father so choose at any point legal claim. Note such a child could never reach the status of full heir but for example might be able to claim the right to remain even if his father and mother had dissolved their relationship or require enough money to sustain his mother's household (analogous to paying child support)
is completely gone.
Doctrine like courtly love, unmarried men or newly married men developing a sort of romantic sexual infatuation with an older or their age woman is gone completely.
By the same token encouragement towards spiritual marriage (i.e. chastity within marriage) hasn't been a major theme in 700 years. The idea that forsaking sex within marriage is a path towards mystical enlightenment and holiness is never preached.
Finally on the issue of virginity, I think the church has almost entirely replaced with a doctrine of chastity. The idea that marital sex does permanent irreversible spiritual harm is never taught and never written about. I can't see much difference between the current church's position in practice and the one that Jovinian was excommunicated for.
If you look at the debate at the time:
Jerome -> Hard right position, marriage is a vastly inferior state and sex acts permanently damage one's relationship with God.
Augustine -> Moderate position, marriage is an inferior state
Jovinian -> Liberal position (a kind of I'm personally opposed to marriage and procreation but I think if done properly its harmless to one's eternal welfare).
Can you really argue the church is not to the left of Jovinian, more consistent with Jovinian than Jerome and Augustine?
So IMHO none of the subtle doctrines regarding Catholic sexuality have survived the modern age. The Catholic church has whole heartedly embraced the sexual morality of Victorian Protestants including the cult of maternity. So no I disagree entirely that on close examination the church's position has not changed.
Lots of great comments. Almost too good. Not sure I have the time to do them justice.
ReplyDeleteSex is our mechanism of procreation, so no sexual morality can exist that is not compatible with its procreative morality. I agree with you there. I think the Pope made that assessment in Humanae Vitae and was correct. I don't think this is moral relativism however. Even including the distinction you are making you could construct the argument this way:
A (old 1)) Consent is the driving principle of sexual morality.
B) The morality of contraception is pre-force part of sexual morality.
C (old 2)) The morality of abortion is part of the morality of contraception not part of the moral system governing violence.
This is very Catholic. Contraception is linked to abortion. In fact, not linking them is already buying into the error that sex and procreation are not intrinsically linked. They are also similar questions in terms of determining what is sacred and must be left alone and what is ordinary and can be manipulated.
I am still not clear on how (1) becomes different from moral relativism. That is that no sexual act is immoral by it's very nature. That it is a person's reaction to the sex act that makes it moral or immoral.
Sex can involve the creation of a new human life.
That's a key point of dispute whether sex or an extended pregnancy creates a new human life. For example the first step in starting a billion dollar company might be registering Doing Business As papers with your state. But I think it would inaccurate to say that registering DBA papers involves the creation of a billion dollar business.
I don't think it is disputed at all. It a question of when in the process have we entered the sacred territory. For example, we agree that arousal is a part of the process. But becoming aroused and choosing not to engage in the sex act is not a problem. We have not entered that sacred space yet. On the other hand, changing diapers is also part of the process. But by that point I hope we agree that the sacredness of the human life must be respected.
The point is the question of new human life is central. To assume that consent it all that matters is to assume that the proximity to procreation is irrelevant.
That we know isn't true. About 44% of the population believes abortion should be legal in some but not all circumstances. Among this 44% rape and incest are 2 of the 3 most commonly cited reasons. Polls differ but for the purpose of arguments lets bal park about a 30% differential for a conception to a married financially secure woman in rape vs. a conception via. birth control failure. The issue of how of the sex does seem to come up among most people.
You are right about the polling numbers. I was just thinking of people I have actually seen defend their position. They tend to ignore what kind of sexual act produced the pregnancy. I am not sure how you would defend saying abortion is OK when a woman has been raped and not OK when she hasn't. It seems like naked sentimentalism. People can be sentimental to pollsters but not so much when they know they will be asked to defend their position. Or maybe that is just the people I tend to encounter. Like the guy who didn't know anyone who voted for Reagan.
I don't agree that's the central issue. I was responding to a slightly different argument, but I wrote a post where I did frame contraception / abortion in a way that kept the focus on the woman's fertility rate Why Natural Family Planning (NFP) is a non answer. The argument focuses on the high conception rate among couples in their prime reproductive years who desire frequent sex. So if you want an example of such an argument I happen to have a good one I'm familiar with.
ReplyDeleteI read your post. You need to understand there are a lot of things that are called NFP. Technology has improved so couples are a lot more successful if the use a form of NFP that uses better medical information. Your failure rate is way higher than what I have seen and I think that is why.
I also wonder about why you inserted the phrase "who desire frequent sex." Doesn't everyone? There are times when fertility can't be definitively discerned for weeks and even months. Are you assuming couples would not abstain for this long? If you are that would raise your failure rate.
Abstaining from sex does prevent pregnancy. NFP can allow couples to understand the likelihood of pregnancy when they do engage in sex. But the answer is abstaining when you have serious reasons for avoiding pregnancy.
I also don't agree with what you said about energy consumption and keeping fertility at 1-3 children per woman. Who cares about vague notions like standard of living. We don't need energy to have a good life. We need to love God and love each other. You can live very fulfilling lives and still have what the experts would call a low standard of living.
If a Catholic society wanted to avoid a population increase they would have fewer people marry. Marriage would still be about procreation. Just a higher number of people would live as consecrated celibates. They would improve society in other ways while those called to marriage would continue to have large families.
We aren't addressing personal beliefs here, but I'm pro choice. I look at the picture and I don't see a fully formed human. I got pine trees in my yard and pine tree seedlings in my yard. I give a lot of thought to cutting down pine trees I give almost no careful consideration to uprooting seedlings. I give them a different level of dignity.
ReplyDeleteSeedlings are more like babies then they are like fetuses. So I think your analogy proves too much.
Killing an adult human is not something that we should give a lot of thought to. Killing an adult is something we should not do. We should not even think about it because that might lead to doing it. We understand that it is not our place to decide whether or not someone's life should continue no matter how much thought we give it.
This applies to humans who are not fully formed as well. We apply it to children. We apply it to the handicapped. Why don't we apply it to fetuses? For many it is because they are scientifically ignorant. They don't know how similar an unborn child and a baby are. My son was delivered by cesarean section at 33 weeks. If we had killed him at 34 weeks that would be murder. What about if we had not done the C-section and had an abortion at 34 weeks? What is the moral difference? If you know the science you have to say there is none.
The other reason people are pro-choice is political. It is hard to stand up for life in today's political world. It takes moral courage. Not everyone has moral courage. It took moral courage to defend Jews in Nazi Germany. Most people did not do it.
Taking abortion as our first example since this is the topic, I'd argue the church in the last two centuries has drastically changed their position to essentially preaching traducianism (fertilization creates an intellectual soul) which is something they used to consider an outright heresy. There is no question that Catholics in the 1830s widely preached that human life began at quickening (the mother being aware of fetal movement) not at conception. In keeping with this they considered restoration of menstruation, what we would today call drug induced abortion, to be an issue of health not morality prior to this point. There is no question that cessation of breathing not cessation of brain activity was considered critical as part of the very definition of life (not just a means of determination) and that definition was seen as biblical i.e. breath of life...
ReplyDeleteYou are right that there has been development. That is to be expected. Catholic thought is a growing concern. Just like God allows us the joy and dignity of discovering scientific truths He also allows us to discover deeper and fuller insights into faith and morals.
We are talking a bit about different time frames here. When I said church teaching on sex has not changed I was thinking of the period since WWII. Vatican II did deepen our understanding of many things. That is where the doctrinal excitement has been the last 50 years. It has not been around sexual morality. That has been addressed only because society has had something called the sexual revolution. The church has been responding to that. It has not been initiating the conversation. That was my point.
To you point. Abortion and contraception have always both been condemned as immoral. What is abortion and what is contraception? That has changed based on new science. Science once thought quickening was a big event. It doesn't anymore. Now we understand that conception is the huge event. The church has changed accordingly. But it did not change behavior from moral to immoral. It changed it from the gravely immoral behavior of contraception to the even more immoral behavior of abortion. That is because science has now shown the fetus to be human right from conception.
The same is true about cessation of breathing versus cessation of brain activity. The parts that were in the realm of science have developed a lot. The theology reflects that but the essence of the theology has not changed.
Hi Randy good discussion. I left the last 3rd of your article and you cut out a bit of mine. So I'll feel free to jump back to older points and you feel free to do the same since I agree we have lots and lots of points and the table right now.
ReplyDeleteLet me start with the big one, the science of quickening. I'm going to present a series of facts and then a conclusion you let me know if you disagree.
A first time mother feels fetal movement at 18-20 weeks. As a mother gets more experienced (i.e. around the 3rd child) she can feel fetal movement as early as 15-17 weeks. This was well known throughout human history. In particular because more experienced women experienced fetal movement earlier yet don't give birth earlier nor it was generally understood that fetal movement might be occurring earlier than the mother was able to detect it.
With our new scientific knowledge we know the involuntary movement begins at week 11, and voluntary movement begins at week 18. Aquinas speculated based on the early mother phenomenon that movement began somewhere in the 2-4 mo (10-18 weeks) range, which is essentially correct. So I would disagree there is fundamentally new knowledge. A bit more precision, yes, but I don't see a fundamental shift in our level of knowledge.
And the reason I'm hitting this point first is because the rest of your case hinges on the idea that Aquinas was in such serious error about the facts that we can feel free to ignore this opinion on the morality and instead adopt the more current / fashionable view. Because I read Aquinas as perfectly consistent with current scientific knowledge and the current view as not being based on a shift in science at all but rather an institution that simply changed its mind about moral / supernatural matters that is Aquinas argued that humans went through 3 stages: vegetable soul, animal soul and then human soul. The current Catholic Church effectively denies these earlier stages exist. The pro-choice position essentially agrees with Aquinas. And I'd argue this debate is not one that science has given us much new information on at all.
That is because science has now shown the fetus to be human right from conception.
And this is where we get to the crucial point. I'd disagree. Moreover I'd argue that this is not a question science is even capable of answering. "What is human" is a moral question not a scientific question. For example, whether harvesting the organs for transplant of a person who is brain dead but still engaging in biological functioning is murder or not is not a scientific question because fundamentally "murder" is not a scientific act but a moral / legal one.
Virtually everything else in your response hinges on this point, that we've over the last two centuries acquired some knowledge that totally changes the moral dimensions, so if you agree I think this is the point that needs to get focused on first.
I am still not clear on how [Consent is the driving principle of sexual morality] becomes different from moral relativism. That is that no sexual act is immoral by it's very nature. That it is a person's reaction to the sex act that makes it moral or immoral.
ReplyDeleteSSC is a well accepted non-religious morality of sex. A sex act is moral if it meets the 3 criteria:
a) Safe = That is it doesn't expose either party to excessive danger. There needs to be focus on best / safe practices to ensure the maintenance of health for both parties. And wherever there are unavoidable risks the parties need to be fully aware of the risks and consent to those risks.
b) Sane = The people offering consent are capable of good judgement. That means no permanent (like retardation) or temporary (like drug use) mental impairment. This is the rational man standard, that a rational man confronted with this sexual choice would make the sexual choice of the parties involved.
c) Consensual = Even if a person views an activity as safe as sane they still need to desire to partake of it at that time with that partner.
I'd argue that SSC is non-relative but situational moral standard. That is it establishes moral absolutes about sex, but those absolutes can only be applied in the context of consent. It is very similar, to contract law in our society. Sex is seen as essentially a contract between private parties.
And I don't think consent as a criteria is necessarily that controversial. Most religious conservatives would agree that marital rape can occur (i.e. is definitionally possible) and is immoral.
In keeping with this contract view of sex, the SSC criteria says that if an individual engages in SSC actions they become responsible for consequences while if SSC is not met the other party is responsible for the consequences. So for example if a woman decides she loves her husband enough to have sex with him knowing he has AIDS and contracts AIDS she is responsible. If a woman has sex with a man not knowing he has AIDS and contracts AIDS she is not responsible.
Again this is similar to how we view lots of health related issues. For example as a society we treat liver failure as a result of excess drinking much differently than liver failure as a result of contagious disease.
If we apply this to the situation of a conception due to rape to Rita vs. a conception due to birth control failure for Francine.
Francine doesn't want the health effects of hormonal contraception (safe) and so uses a diaphragm with spermicidal gel. She understands there is a risk of conception. They engage in sex. They understand they've increased the risk of pregnancy but did so for sane reasons to compensate for other another risk (i.e. hormonal effects). This act meets the SSC criteria. Francine and her husband are capable of raising the child. Many moderates would view an abortion in this situation as immoral, she consent to a higher chance of conception.
Conversely Rita does not consent. The rapist did not consult with her before failing to use a condom. Thus many moderates would believe that an act of violence took place and just as she is allowed to use violence to avoid the rape, she is allowed to take strong measures to correct for any consequences of the rape. Rita, because she lacked any moral agency, did not engage in sex and is free to treat the health risks of conception with the SSC criteria. Pregnancy is not safe, bearing a rapists baby is not something that any rational person would do and she did not consent.
This moderate position view abortion as a negative. A negative substantial enough to overrule Francine's objections but not such a strong negative as to overrule Rita's legitimate rights. The pro-choice position is that abortion is even less of a negative and thus the negatives of pregnancy are high enough and statistical consent is not strong enough that Francine retains her rights to terminate like Rita.
I read your post. You need to understand there are a lot of things that are called NFP. Technology has improved so couples are a lot more successful if the use a form of NFP that uses better medical information. Your failure rate is way higher than what I have seen and I think that is why.
ReplyDeleteThe .6-1.8 numbers I was giving in that post were from 2006 with people receiving a full complement of support: a doctor initial evaluation, professional how-to training, frequent support, Q&A access.... A best possible case scenario and perfect use.
The 7.5% chance monthly is people who have access but don't follow instructions well. The 24% is typical use that is they mostly do what they are told but sometimes deviate.
I also wonder about why you inserted the phrase "who desire frequent sex." Doesn't everyone?
No many couples don't engage in frequent sex. They may have other lovers, their primary outlet might be masturbation, either party may have health problems that makes sex difficult or painful. To pick a well known example from Monica Lewinsky's testimony Bill Clinton likely suffers from Peyronie's Disease. Men with this condition generally only want to engage in oral sex or masturbation since for them vaginal sex is painful or impossible. Almost all contraception is very successful for these sorts of couples.
Are you assuming couples would not abstain for this long? If you are that would raise your failure rate.
I'm not assuming anything. I'm looking at data. If they fail to abstain x% of the time and concieve y% because of that then add (xy/100)% to the failure rate regarding NFP failure and typical use. That doesn't influence perfect use, but typical use is the number we care about.
I also don't agree with what you said about energy consumption and keeping fertility at 1-3 children per woman. Who cares about vague notions like standard of living. We don't need energy to have a good life. We need to love God and love each other. You can live very fulfilling lives and still have what the experts would call a low standard of living.
Not for long. If the median woman is having 10.5 kids at an average age of 30 (i.e. one child every 2 years 18-40) then population is growing 400% every 30 years. That's about 4.75% annual growth in population. Assuming that the one time jolt of introducing that many children only halves global output we are down to about $31t in global output. At about $1000 / yr /person you start having starvation and disease problems. If energy is growing at only 2% per year then living standards are falling 2.75% per year or falling by 14/15ths per century. I want you to think about what your standard of living would be like at 6.6% of your current salary. And then remember you live in the first world, in a rich country what's happening in Bangladesh or Mali?
So within 100 years most of the population is starving to death or dying from exposure and the "holocaust" of abortion will pale in comparison to what's God's methods of birth control: war, famine, disease and sanitation failure will do. That situation just a century out is totally unacceptable even if you only care about preserving life and not the quality of life.
Math is amoral. If humans choose to breed like rats then they will die like rats.
If a Catholic society wanted to avoid a population increase they would have fewer people marry. Marriage would still be about procreation. Just a higher number of people would live as consecrated celibates. They would improve society in other ways while those called to marriage would continue to have large families.
A decrease in marriage decreases fertility greatly no question. It does to some extent decrease sexual activity but not nearly enough. A society with huge numbers of semi to fully sexually active people who aren't socially and/or legally permitted to be pregnant is not going to lead to less abortion.
I don't have much time but I will address what you call the central question.
ReplyDeleteThat is because science has now shown the fetus to be human right from conception.
And this is where we get to the crucial point. I'd disagree. Moreover I'd argue that this is not a question science is even capable of answering. "What is human" is a moral question not a scientific question.
Science can say that a fetus is a living thing right from conception. Not only that science can tell us the species. It is homo sapien. So we are left with two choices. Just accept that it is human or try and dream us a new category for something that is alive and the same species as humans but not human.
When you take the second option you open the possibility of anyone anywhere doing the same thing with a people group they don't like. It can be based on race or on disability of age or anything else. Once we say being alive and being a member of the homo sapien species is not enough. Once we say we can add arbitrary criteria to the definition of what counts as human then anybody's human rights can be denied.
So the pro-abortion position is really anti-science. Pretending science has this unanswerable question involving what it human. It is only unanswerable because you don't like the obvious answer. Who counts as human? Everyone. Every human person, no matter how weak or how strong, no matter how young or how old, no matter how productive or how burdensome, no matter how welcome or how inconvenient. Nobody is a nobody; nobody is unwanted. All are wanted by God, and therefore to be respected, protected, and cherished by us…
The last bit comes from here:
http://www.equip.org/hank_speaks_outs/richard-neuhaus-on-abortion
Randy --
ReplyDeleteI think we have gotten off point a bit. The original argument was one whether the pro-choice position was utilizing moral relativism in its assessment. You latest post is essentially a series of assertions, you are using the "say it louder" type argument. Catholic theology is going to be much more conducive to moral questions than the utter amorality of science. I'm going to chase you down the rabbit hole because I think you believe these things are true and they are preventing you from seeing that you actually picking criteria arbitrarily.
Not only that science can tell us the species
First off, species is considered by science to be a cultural not a scientific classification. It is determined by breeding patterns. That is genetically compatible animals that don't breed with one another are not considered to be part of the same species. You might have learned the capable of producing fertile offspring definition but that is now considered outdated because it was impossibly to apply consistently. Moreover, and most importantly, species classification is not applied to individuals but to communities. For example individuals can be infertile and thus not capable of producing fertile offspring at all with anyone.
So no in a quite literal sense science can't tell us the species of the "preborn". Moreover biologists who do taxonomy classify young into two phases embryo when species are not fully differentiated and fetus when they are. This change happens in homo-sapiens at the 8th week. So if we are going to rely on the species definition the cut off would be, 8 weeks not conception. This incidentally is precisely what Catholic doctrine held in the 14th century, that at the 8th week the child was "fully formed" and thus inducing labor beyond this point was abortion. E
Experimentally this cutoff is verified daily in drug manufacture. Cloning works on this very process. Because of there are undifferentiated cells you can grow human DNA inside bacterial cells.
My guess is that at this point you are going to drop "species" and the key cultural and biological components and then go to the genetic argument. Which is going to also fall apart.
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ReplyDeleteOnce we say we can add arbitrary criteria to the definition of what counts as human then anybody's human rights can be denied.
Which is precisely the argument that PETA makes. They draw the line as what counts for rights as being able to attempt to avoid pain and thus argue that essentially all animals are entitled to rights. They see your "human" as arbitrary. And they have a 2600 year history of being able to apply this doctrine consistently.
Ahimsa, the idea that it is immoral to commit violence, and thus to eat meat, strikes me as morally consist. I may not agree but at least I find it plausible. Frankly, if we are talking about what is obviously true pretending that cell clump without a brain, getting nutrition from absorption not digestion, and unable to respond to stimulus deserves the full protection of homicide laws while an adult dolphin does not deserve any meaningful protection doesn't strike me as obvious, as you had claimed, in any sense.
Going in the other direction up till about 60 years ago people who liked your species definition had strong miscegenation laws. If whites and blacks formed a single breeding group then there were part of the same species. If they didn't breed they were two species. The species definition was key to justifying racial slavery and racial discrimination historically. Similarly this is why German anti-Semites thought breeding with Jews was a race crime, and clarifies what they meant by it. So just to be clear, the species definition does not even produce the ethics you were aiming for.
Who the society is going to protect is a choice the society makes. The choice is unavoidable there is no obvious natural cutoff. "Everyone" is by its nature meaningless. We as a society have to choose what we value. Right now we are moving towards a consensus on valuing intelligence. So in a widespread way catching dolphins in tuna nets is immoral, even though the whole point of the tuna nets is to kill tuna.
I applaud legal protections being applied to higher primates. We, the human culture, will create a network of protection which will protect and reinforce our goals as a culture.
As an aside, this post and your previous one contradict. I agree we should aim for a society where people are respected, protected, and cherished. To do that requires the very living standard you dismissed in your previous post. Without enough energy per capita they can't be fed much less cherished.