George Tiller, a doctor and abortion provider in Kansas, was shot and killed outside his church on Sunday. The large majority of people on either side of the abortion debate are understandably horrified by an event like this. But it sets up a rhetorical dilemma for anyone who takes seriously the claim that abortion is murder. If George Tiller really was a “baby killer” comparable to Hitler and Stalin, it’s difficult to express unmitigated sadness at his murder. So we get Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, admitting regret — but only that Tiller was a mass murderer who “did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God.”
On those rare occasions when they attempt to actually talk to each other, people on opposite sides of the abortion debate usually end up talking past each other. Supporters of abortion rights speak in the language of the autonomy of the mother, and her right to control her own body: “If you don’t like abortion, don’t have one.” Opponents of abortion speak in terms of the personhood of the fetus. (Yes, Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who! — “A person’s a person, no matter how small” — is used to teach this point to Catholic children, over Theodor Geisel’s objections.) Opposition to abortion rights can also be a manifestation of the desire to control women’s sexuality, but let’s concentrate on those whose opposition is grounded in a sincere moral belief that abortion is murder.
If someone believes that abortion really is murder, talk of the reproductive freedom of the mother isn’t going to carry much weight — nobody has the right to murder another person. Supporters of abortion rights don’t say “No, this is one case where murder is completely justified.” Rather, they say “No, the fetus is not a person, so abortion is not murder.” The crucial question (I know, this is not exactly an astonishing new insight) is whether a fetus is really a person.
I have nothing original to add to the debate over when “personhood” begins. But there is something to say about how we decide questions like that. And it takes us directly back to the previous discussion about marriage and fundamental physics. The upshot of which is: how you think about the universe, how you conceptualize the natural world around us, obviously is going to have an enormous impact on how you decide questions like “When does personhood begin?”
In a pre-scientific world, life was — quite understandably — thought of as something intrinsically different from non-life. This view could be taken to different extremes; Plato gave voice to one popular tradition, by claiming that the human soul was a distinct, incorporeal entity that actually occupied a human body. These days we know a lot more than they did back then. Science has taught us that living beings and non-living objects are the same kind of things, deep down; we’re all made of the same chemical elements, and all of our constituents obey the same laws of Nature. Life is complicated, and rich, and fascinating, and not very well understood — but it doesn’t obey separate rules apart from those of the non-living world. Living organisms are just very complicated chemical reactions, not vessels that rely on supernatural essences or mystical élan vital to keep them chugging along. Except “just” is a terribly misleading adverb in this context — living organisms are truly amazing very complicated chemical reactions. Knowing that we are made of the same stuff and obey the same rules as the rest of the universe doesn’t diminish the value or meaning of human life in any way.
There is a temptation in some quarters to forget, or at least ignore, the improved understanding of the world that science has given us when it comes to address moral and ethical questions. Part of that is a healthy impulse — science doesn’t actually tell us how to distinguish right from wrong, nor could it possibly. Science deals with how the world works, not how it should work, and despite centuries of trying it remains impossible to derive “ought” from “is.”
But at the same time, it would be crazy not to take our scientific understanding of the world into consideration when we reflect upon moral questions. If you think of a fetus as part of an ongoing complicated chemical reaction, it should come as no surprise that you might reach very different conclusions from someone who thinks that God breathes the spirit of life into a fertilized ovum at the moment of conception.
That’s why it’s equally crazy to believe that science and religion are two distinct, non-overlapping magisteria that simply never address the same questions. That bizarre perspective was advanced by Stephen Jay Gould in Rocks of Ages, but if you read the book carefully you find that his definition of “religion” is simply “moral philosophy.” Which is not what the word means, or how people use it, or how actual religious people think of their beliefs. Religion makes claims about the real world, and some of those claims — not all — can be very straightforwardly judged by the criteria of science. We do not need to invoke spirits being breathed into fertilized eggs in order to understand life, for example. And the fact that science has taught us so much about the workings of the world has enormous consequences for how we should think about moral and ethical questions, even if it can’t answer such questions all by itself.
For example, science is powerless to tell us when “personhood” begins — but it tell us something very crucial about how to go about answering that question. In particular, it tells us that there is no magical moment at which an incorporeal soul takes up residence in a body. Indeed, the concept of a “person” is not to be found anywhere in the natural world; it’s a category that is convenient to appeal to as we try to make sense of the world. But there is not, as far as science is concerned, any right or wrong answer to the question of when the life of a person begins — from Nature’s point of view, it’s just one chemical reaction after another.
At this point, a lot of impatient people declare that morality and ethics are simply impossible in such a world, and storm out in frustration. But this is the world in which we actually live, so storming out is not a productive response. Morality and ethics are possible, but they’re not to be found in Natural Law — they are the creation of human beings, reasoning together on the basis of their shared feelings and experiences. Human beings are not blank slates, nor are they immutable tablets; we are born into the world with certain wants and desires and natural reactions to events, and those feelings can adapt and change over time in response to learning and reasoning. So we get together, communicate, understand that not everyone necessarily agrees on how the social world should be organized, and try to negotiate some sort of mutual compromise. (Or, alternatively, try to impose our will by force. But I like the mutual compromise approach better.) That’s how the world actually works.
“The moment when a fetus begins to accrue the rights we bestow on post-birth persons” is something that we, as a society, have to decide; the answer is not to be found in revelation, or in faith, or in philosophical contemplation of the nature of the soul, or for that matter in the natural world. This starting point is not necessarily prejudicial to what the final answer may be; I can certainly imagine a group of people coming together and agreeing that newly-conceived fetuses should be granted all the rights of any person. I would argue against them, on the basis that the interests of an autonomous and fully conscious mother should weigh much more heavily than those of the proto-person they carry. But I can’t say that they are unambiguously wrong in the same way that an erroneous claim about logic or even the empirical world can be said to be “wrong.”
If the social and political arrangement of a group puts stress on the autonomy of its individual responsible members (which ours does, and I like it that way), deciding what the criteria are for being judged an “individual responsible member” is of primary importance. Who gets to vote? Who gets to drive a car? Who decides when to unplug the respirator? Who is of “sound mind”? Who is a person? These are all hard questions with no cut-and-dried answers. But we can be fooled into thinking that some of the answers are pretty straightforward, if we believe in outdated notions of spirits being breathed into us by God.
There are many reasons why it’s incoherent to think of science and religion as simply separate and non-overlapping. They are different, but certainly overlapping. The greatest intellectual accomplishment of the last millennium is the naturalistic worldview: everything is constructed of the same basic building blocks, obeying the same rules, without any recourse to the supernatural. Appreciating that view doesn’t tell us how we should behave, but failing to appreciate it can very easily lead people to behave badly.
My re-edit didn’t take:
“There’s plenty of data on the history of demagogues and hypocrisy but you won’t find that data in the arguments of demagogues unless you refuse to take them at face value. You look for tropes, codes, implications, tone; in short you look for structure.”
thank you and good night.
While I commend the many respondents for their well-argued and largely civil treatment of a fundamentally emotional issue, I find it curious that not one of the 76 respondents addressed the only question a woman truly faces when considering her options with an unwanted pregnancy (e.g., pregnancy from rape) or unplanned pregnancy (pregnancy from unprotected intercourse with a stranger or casual partner’). To wit: “What would I choose if the issue of choice is no longer the thrust-and-cut of academic debate, but instead a decision applied to my life in real time?” I predict that many pro-choice and pro-life advocates would pause, if only for a moment, when faced with the decision to either keep or terminate an unwanted pregnancy.
At the expense of illustrating my point esoteric hyperbole, would a woman who was ardently pro-choice perhaps soften her conviction if her partner in a casual sexual relationship were to plead that his life would be complete were he to father a child, further vowing to raise their child as a single parent? Or would a woman who was pro-life discover that her certainty on ‘life starts at conception’ was not fully robust if she were faced with the prospect of bringing her attacker’s child to full term?
These scenarios above, however facile or even hackneyed, offer an important perspective. It is a truth of good governance that lawmakers are truly effective when they temper their sanctimonious convictions with a dash of real life. Pro-choice and pro-life advocates are cautioned with that same advice.
Withdrawn.
In response to #77.
I haven’t read most of the comments, but the relevant question is one of law, not personal preference.
Being pro-choice is not being pro-abortion it’s simply saying that, up to a certain point, the state should not be in the position to interfere with the decisions of individuals.
Your question only applies in a society where abortion is legal.
It’s funny how easily religious people tell others they’re just plain wrong without providing any coherent argument (referring to some of the first few posts).
Sean is not saying “the greatest intellectual accomplishment of the last millennium is the naturalistic worldview” in the same way that you say “no, it’s NOT. It is…” and then provide your opinion. It is not just Sean’s opinion (he can correct me if I’m wrong).
The assumption of a naturalistic worldview has brought about pretty much all of scientific discoveries. And EVERY time a scientific discovery is made, at the same time it has supported that assumption more and more. If scientists didn’t assume that and proposed a supernatural explanation, what kind of discoveries would have been made?
The exact same kind of discoveries that theologians and psychics make all the time, of course.
When supernaturalists who claim naturalism and science are in some way equivalent to supernaturalism as forms of knowledge admit they think their iphones and computers, and cars and airplanes work by magic, then they’ll be intellectually honest at least.
andyo, are you arguing with me? If so you haven’t read what I wrote.
I’ll put it simply: How does a logician argue with a liar?
That’s the difference between the rationalist naturalism of the mathematician and the empiricist naturalism of the politician or the trial lawyer. Supernaturalism has nothing to do with it.
But if brooks wants an example of an irrational knee-jerk response from a science geek, we’ve just found one.
Abortion may not be murder, but it sure seems sexist to me. Why doesn’t the man have the right to abort a pregnancy? He is expected, by law, to take responsibility for a child, even in cases where it’s been proven he’s not the biological father. Yet the female can choose not to take that responsibility.
If abortion is nothing more than a medical procedure, which relieves social/financial burdon, then abortion should be the right of everyone who suffers that burdon; i.e. the dude. No matter if she wants to keep the child.
Now you may say, “It’s her body, it’s her choice”. But if she claims full ownership of the fetus on the bases of the woombs’ location inside her body, she should also have to accept full responsibility if she lets a mass of cells turn into a human being.
You may also say that aborting a child without its mothers consent will traumatise the female. But she can’t be that bothered about it if a fetus is nothing more than a soul-less growth. Removing it is a bit like getting a haircut I imagine.
Before I decide between pro-life and pro-choice, can the pro-choice camp please explain to me why only one of the two parents gets the choice.
And why, if this is her privilege, are fathers forced to subsidise the consequences of a decision which is exclusively hers. Taxpayers as well as fathers. Instead of having wellfare for families, it would probably be cheaper to make abortion free and available for everyone. Why should the taxpayer pay for a womens’ choice. That’s not democracy.
There is nothing in the pro-choice argument that I’ve heard so far, not that I’m deeply knowledgable about the subject, that explains why only women have the choice.
And if there is something unethical about man-choice, than surely, there is something unethical about either abortion itself, or the child support laws forced upon the men that didn’t get the same choice as the women did.
If a father doesn’t pay his child support, he’s a criminal, but a women has the right to erase the (potential) child itself. It’s not fair I tells ya.
seth, I was not arguing with your post. It’s some of the first few posts I was.
Absolutely ridiculous essay, Seth. Maybe you should submit it to the National Catholic Reporter instead of a science site.
Anyone who can seriously conflate science and religion such as you have done here (I’m making a slight assumption that you are indeed serious; if I’ve missed some sarcasm here, please accept my apologies) disrespects the real scientist, who would never do such a thing.
I >used< to really look up to "Discover" but not anymore, especially given the (apparent) lack of a counterpoint essay.
Abortion is not, never was and never will be murder, at any stage of gestation. That is the scientific viewpoint. Why? Because a fetus is not a human until it is separated from the mother at birth. Not being a human, a fetus cannot be murdered.
The religion viewpoint, on the other hand, is that sex is for exactly one purpose – reproduction – and any other use or manifestation is sin. Anything that in any way interferes with the single solitary religious-mandated purpose of sex is a sin. There is no science in that.
The difference between science and religion is that science has no such concept as faith, while religion is entirely about faith.
If abortion is murder, what do you call a miscarriage, suicide?
@mk: “So to turn the question back at you… when is it OK to perform an abortion. Never? Rarely? If rarely, when and under what circumstances?”
As long as the mother and her physician agree it is in the best interest of the patient (i.e. the mother), I believe it is always OK to perform an abortion. This is the scientific view.
The religious view is that sometimes it may be OK and at other times (probably more often) it may not be OK. This is based on “bizarre” (Seth’s word, not mine) religious superstitions about the presence of a physically undetectable entity often referred to as a “soul”.
Cedric,
There is nothing particularly “scientific” about claiming that a fetus is not human until separated from the mother’s body at birth. The cutting of the umbilical cord is just a tiny change; it is pretty unreasonable to think that the status of personhood is a discontinuous function of the amount of connecting tissue.
You don’t come across as “scientific”, but rather as “dogmatic”.
seth:
from what i can see, we probably agree on substantive points of this issue; but you are terribly unconvincing because there seems to be little discernible point to your commentary. what exactly is it you’re trying to say again?
Reality Itself is not political; Politics is political. the fact that people aren’t always rational and/or straightforward is not evidence that they cannot be. and just because scientists can be unscientific does not mean that science-as-practice is just another narrative, as (i’m not sure, but) you seem to be implying.
i think a large number of the anti-abortion bent DO believe it is murder; it’s pretty plain that Tiller’s assailant did.
@Neal J. King: I don’t particularly care if I come across as “dogmatic” to you – that’s just your personal opinion, which is another thing that religion is all about while science is not so much.
As long as the fetus is attached to the mother, the fetus is an appendage of the mother and is not a human: that’s a basic scientific fact. If the mother felt so inclined to do so, she could legally take any number of actions upon her own personal body which would ultimately result in rendering the fetus non-viable; that would be her prerogative and no one including you would have any right or ability to try to prevent it. That’s a basic scientific fact.
Once the fetus is delivered and disconnected from the mother, it exists as a separate human body which the mother could no longer affect by taking action on the mother’s own body. That’s a basic scientific fact.
Now if you want to argue about silly religious superstition or personal opinion, I guess you win because I’m not about to engage in debates or discussions which are not fact-based.
Everybody creates narratives out of facts. Most of them are absurd, if not worse.
Look up chapter 15. Ignoring the fact that the author is a defender of racial separatism, how did such a touchy subject end up in this book, by a nobel prize winning physicist?
People are irrational. The create patterns to conform to their desires. They believe their own lies.
There’s a reason we live by the rule of law and not of reason. If people were capable of reason justice would be ad hoc. But it isn’t: the justice system is a formal one. Someone guilty of a crime gets off scott free if the government doesn’t follow the rules, and that’s the way it should be. In the political world- the one one we experience- even the facts are trumped by law.
“But we have the murder weapon, with his fingerprints!!”
“They didn’t have a warrant.”
End of story. In the our legal system too, Galileo sometimes loses. And we as a society have decided that this is the logical choice.
There is no right answer to the abortion question. There’s no way to avoid the ambiguity and mess. The argument is about when the state should have a right to intervene. It’s a political discussion not a scientific one.
I’m sorry, but science bores me for the same reason the mechanics of the internal combustion engine bores me. I’m more fascinated by the animal capacity for invention and delusion. A capacity scientists have as much as anyone.
I’ve spent far too much time arguing with atheist philosophers who rage against democracy as being founded in a lie, while they stand for truth.
I don’t like Platonists.
I feel I need to add one more point, just to be clear. I am a secularist, third generation.
And rationalism began as theological argument.
Cedric,
First, I think you mean Sean, not Seth.
Secondly, I pretty much agree with your POV, but what you’re saying are scientific facts are not. They’re your opinion. You’d be hard-pressed to find a significant number of scientists that agree with those views unambiguously, and that’s because there isn’t scientific evidence that it’s “right”. Thus, no “scientific fact”. Coincidentally (or maybe not), that’s what Sean was saying.
Cedric said:
“Abortion is not, never was and never will be murder, at any stage of gestation. That is the scientific viewpoint. Why? Because a fetus is not a human until it is separated from the mother at birth. Not being a human, a fetus cannot be murdered.
“As long as the fetus is attached to the mother, the fetus is an appendage of the mother and is not a human: that’s a basic scientific fact. If the mother felt so inclined to do so, she could legally take any number of actions upon her own personal body which would ultimately result in rendering the fetus non-viable; that would be her prerogative and no one including you would have any right or ability to try to prevent it. That’s a basic scientific fact.”
Cedric, I think the opinion that a fetus is not human until you cut a measly little cord is pure nonsense. When a baby is born and is still connected to its umbilical cord, it has its own DNA, it cries, has two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth, two arms, two legs, a beating heart, and a brain. If that is not a human being, I don’t know what is. Are you married, Cedric? Suppose your wife was pregnant, and was in labor. When she gave birth, suppose that before the doctor cut the umbilical cord your wife got out a knife and stabbed and killed your baby. Now, according to your position, you have no right to be angry with her, for she was well within her right. She shouldn’t be charged with anything.
“The religion viewpoint, on the other hand, is that sex is for exactly one purpose – reproduction – and any other use or manifestation is sin. Anything that in any way interferes with the single solitary religious-mandated purpose of sex is a sin. There is no science in that.”
For some religions, this is true, but not for all religions (eg. Catholicism).
“If abortion is murder, what do you call a miscarriage, suicide?”
If killing an 80 year old person is murder, what do you call an 80 year old having a heart attack and dying, suicide?
Miscarriage does not equal the fetus killing itself. Heart attack does not equal old man killing himself.
“Once the fetus is delivered and disconnected from the mother, it exists as a separate human body which the mother could no longer affect by taking action on the mother’s own body. That’s a basic scientific fact.”
Cedric, if you were unconscious, and you needed blood, and I was beside your hospital bed, and a (grown) tube made out of my own tissue was connecting my body to yours in an effort to transfer blood from my body to yours so that you can life (a hypothetical experiment, of course), are you a human being? Is it ok if I kill you in that situation because you are just an appendage of my body? According to your position, I am perfectly justified.
What if you and I were conjoined twins? Can I consider you an appendage, and kill you because you aren’t really a separate human being?
I don’t know Sean. It seems to me that you’re dismissing the importance of the soul to those of a religious persuasion. Furthermore I suspect that many of weak or non-existent religious beliefs would cop to believing in a soul, since that concept can be separated from any specific religion and is often used in non-religious ways.
When a person says, “so-and-so has an old soul” I don’t attach any religious meaning at all to the phrase. That’s just an example of how the concept of soul can be meaningful and relevant to us. Maybe that’s too far off the mark; let’s move on.
When you say “… if we believe in outdated notions of spirits being breathed into us by God…” you irrevocably part ways with a huge number of people.
Think of it this way. Most religions believe in an afterlife of some type. It’s the soul, they say, that lives in the afterlife. Even religions based upon reincarnation have to move “something” from one life to the next, and that something is the soul.
Now this sets up a nice narrative arc, with a beginning and an end. If when you die, your soul leaves your body and goes to the afterlife, when does your soul inhabit the body? The easiest and most straightforward answer is at conception. I don’t think I’m being facile or misrepresentative here. It’s internally consistent logic to the religious frame of mind.
On a slightly different topic, when you say “…We do not need to invoke spirits being breathed into fertilized eggs in order to understand life…”, I think you again commit an act of departure with most religions. Religion, as I see it, rarely tries to “understand” life in the mechanical sense. They aren’t much interested in ‘the neck bone connects to the backbone, which connects to the thigh bone’. And, when religions have tried to explain the physical universe, the results have not been great.
The great religions of the world are typically concerned with much higher order issues. Things about which science often has little or nothing to say. What is moral? What is immoral? What is the nature of morality itself? Philosophy can probably address some of those issues too, but I’m ill-equipped to delve into that subject area.
Anyhow, great article, very thought provoking.
seth:
i agree that there is not one simple answer to be found here. but:
“we live by the rule of law and not reason”.
poe-tay-toe, poe-tah-to. what is the law, if not a form of meta-reasoning? but it’s evident you buy completely into your own hand-waving, so no doubt these keystrokes are wasted….
“I’m sorry, but science bores me for the same reason the mechanics of the internal combustion engine bores me.”
indeed, the mind is more complex and mysterious than any atom or artifice. subjectivity is an eternal mystery that resists the hard sciences. but keep in mind that your apathy where the material world is concerned is the convenient (for you) result of millions of hours of decidedly rational thought and hypothesis-testing, without which most of us would likely not exist. so despite your boredom with the stubborn solidity of the physical world, it is fortunate indeed that some have felt differently.
You don’t seem to understand how the legal system works. It works on the assumption that we are irrational (or self-interested if you want) and that objectivity is impossible. It’s first of all a formal system of behavior regulation, not a formal system for determining truth.
If you want to defend the grandeur of science go ahead. But if you want to claim moral grandeur then join me in demanding that every project funded by the USG, including NASA be able to account for the lives saved as a result of its activities. If you want moral seriousness “Gee Wizz! I wonder what Neptune is like!”
just doesn’t cut it.
Science is not a value it’s a tool.
Do you mean Descartes?
oh please. don’t tell me what i do and don’t know, you self-righteous.. er, yeah. but i’ll leave you to your soap-box.
Seth said: “If you want moral seriousness “Gee Wizz! I wonder what Neptune is like!”
just doesn’t cut it. Science is not a value it’s a tool.”
I’m sorry? Such discoveries as the fact that every living thing on earth is descended from a single common ancestor and that humans do not inhabit a privileged cosmological position do not influence your moral outlook at all?
I can imagine a slightly different history in which our system of commonly-agreed-upon morals descended from science rather than religion; a great deal of modern history is the former replacing and modifying the dogma of the latter.
Since when is Descartes the founder of rationalism? Or do you mean “modern rationalism?”
I get my morals from the need to get and long and an understanding of the need for a rule of law as opposed to men. We makes rules and then we follow them even when they lead to decisions that do not follow from the truth, but which preserve a sense of formal and thus moral balance, When we want to change them we or our elected representatives go through all sorts of convoluted rituals to make sure we accept the new terms. My interpretation of this logic requires me to be a defender of the decision by the US Supreme Court in Miranda v. Arizona. But I am also not a defender of the decision by the Catholic Church in Galileo v. Holy Trinity
Think about that for a few minutes. There’s a bit of a disjunction, but I think it’s necessary. OTHERS DO NOT.
I’m repeating myself. If you were a bit more empirically minded wouldn’t have to.
My politics and philosophy are based on empirically inquisitive rationalism: I reason about what I experience. Modern arch rationalism has given us the formal logic as philosophy and philosophy as science, economics defended as formal[!] science and the absurdities of Chomskian linguistics, and to be honest the absurdities however well-intentioned of Chomskian moral philosophy. His philosophical anarchism is as based on wishful thinking as his linguistics. He’ll go down in history as a great amateur reporter of fact who spent his professional career attacking their importance. Go figure.
Don’t get me started on dualism and transubstantiation
“I can imagine a slightly different history in which our system of commonly-agreed-upon morals descended from science rather than religion; a great deal of modern history is the former replacing and modifying the dogma of the latter.”
The function of religion is social. ‘Truth’ is not the point. But when science is seen as undermining community then religion is defended ideologized as truth in a defensive response.
Science is about desire for unknown facts, that’s all. When the facts are known they go back to being the same thing they were when no one cared about them. A driven scientist may discover penicillin but what kind of imagination does it take to wonder if over-prescription might become a problem?
The telos of science is the telos of enthusiastic and unified group purpose, and that makes you dumb.
After the Huygens probe landed one of the project managers, describing her near ecstasy as the data began coming in referred to her relation to Titan as akin to love. This was said seemingly without self-consciousness or irony.
I was more fascinated by the wide-eyed, childlike expression on the woman’s face than by the rocks.