It is a little ironic that some of the same people who have finally come around to recognizing that the moral, ideological, and political tenets of contemporary woke progressivism effectively constitutes a 'religion' (and one that is passionately eager to be nasty to heretics) fail to simultaneously realize or acknowledge that the positions on abortion or state coercion are likewise just as 'religious' in their fundamental character. This also includes their own positions! The apparent lack of self-awareness enriches the irony.
Some use the term 'secular' as in 'secular religion' to describe the set of ideologies without divine or supernatural elements, but this remains a critical error, as there is nothing temporal or worldly about the base-level perspective and framework which remains inescapably composed of purely metaphysical constructs.
That is, they are not derivable by resorting to any positive or empirical program without just kicking the metaphysical can upstream to logically prior assertions. One doesn't have to get a doctorate in philosophy or go full meta-ethical moral nihilist to appreciate Hume's guillotine and the intrinsic impossibility of bootstrapping any of these claims. Lots of the world's cleverest people have been trying to do this forever, and they always fail, because it's impossible. See, e.g., Arthur Allen Leff, Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law. Sam Harris also tried his hand at it (characteristically, at book length), and also failed, and to his credit, in the essay contest he sponsored about it, he named the winner to be a guy who made the same fatal counterargument to his case.
Thus, if questions of this nature are to be 'settled' as a matter of hierarchical law, it absolutely cannot be done by resort to any *Constitutional jurisprudence* which purports to be theologically neutral. Can. Not. Be. Done. Because there is no such thing as the view from nowhere, that is, every ideological view on such a question is inescapably 'theologically isomorphic' in the relevant ways.
Which is to say that there is no valid way to intellectually rank rival unfalsifiables. And thus in certain human affairs the only question is one of the exercise of power and the decision mechanism for which theological view shall dominate in any given social context. And that question, too, cannot have anything but an inherently 'religious' answer.
Yes... the phrase "those who insist that life begins at conception" implies that this idea is a fringe opinion held by a minority. It's my understanding that this is scientific fact. It's really irritating that it keeps being framed as something only religious kooks believe...
In this context it is, because the scientific facts of life don't have much legal value. Amoebae are alive. Ants are alive. But they have no legal status.
It's a moral view (which broadly considered includes religions) that certain life should be legally protected and other should not. People who are strongly pro-life want to say "this life matters and should be protected". Just as people who think "Animals are alive, therefore it's immoral to eat them" might wish to outlaw eating meat. It's a morally consistent position, but I don't know that I want it imposed by law.
Is it OK to kill animals for food? Most people will say yes, but most people would say it's not OK to sadistically torture animals. I'd think that's the kind of gray area abortion is always going to settle at. Is it OK to kill a bit of life that can't survive independently if the host body doesn't want to host it? Probably so. Is it OK to kill a bit of human life that could survive and become a person with a modicum of medical assistance and minimal inconvenience to the host body? Probably not.
Roe v Wade as based around the idea of pregnancy being a burden. So the woman has the right to remove that burden. This always sat on a quicksand of medical advances eliminating the burden.
But the physical issues of pregnancy were never the real reason people wanted an abortion.
They didn't want:
1) The responsibilities of raising a child
2) The feelings of guilt and abandonment that come with giving the child up for adoption
Medical technology can save the child but can't erase #2, and that is what a lot of people are seeking to exercise when they get an abortion.
"It's just a clump of cells".
Since what we are really talking about is guilt, morality, shame, etc the debate will never end.
The vast majority of people draw a clear distinction between human life and other types of life (animal or otherwise) and so does our law. I agree that saying it is ok to kill human life at a certain point during gestation is as much a moral assertion as saying it is not ok to kill human life at any point during gestation. But both assertions require some sort of logical coherence or reasoning behind it... and at the very least we should be able to acknowledge that it is human life, and not act as if it's a matter of faith.
But we also make distinctions between various types of human life (cells in your body, cancer cells, sperm cells, unfertilized eggs). No one is really arguing about whether fertilized eggs have human DNA or have replicating cells; they're arguing about at what point a fertilized egg becomes "a person" with moral value. Presumably you're using "human life" as a synonym for personhood, so the reason don't start by "acknowledging that it is human life" is that for many people whether the egg/fetus is a person is the crux of their disagreement.
Well I would say that a fetus is a distinct individual human being as opposed to the examples that you gave. Cancer cells, sperm cells, and unfertilized eggs can be destroyed without destroying a distinct human being. The "personhood" argument is a more sophisticated argument than I normally hear from pro-choice people, and while I personally disagree with it, I appreciate that it attempts to coherently explain why it is morally permissible to destroy certain individual human beings and not others. But unlike your argument, most arguments I hear from pro-choice people ignore the central issue entirely. This is what bothered me initially about Kling's article, the implication that the idea of a distinct individual human being is created at conception is more of a religious belief as opposed to fact. (And I'm generally a fan of Arnold Kling).
Sorry, what is a “bit of life” versus a “bit of human life”? Sounds like a euphemism and some motivated reasoning to make the conclusion easier to draw.
I’m guessing you haven’t had kids yet if you think raising a kid from birth to the age of five or even older is minimal inconvenience to the host body, whatever that is supposed to mean.
And that has never been the justification for the vast majority of abortions and most abortion rights law anyway. It’s the longer term economic and psychological costs of rearing the child to independence and not the short term wear and tear on the body.
From that perspective, banning abortion at 15 weeks or up to partial birth is irrelevant.
As noted, the "guilt" of giving up the child for adoption is, today, less than the guilt of killing the unborn baby.
Abortionist should be a worse insult, today, than racist, sexist, or homophobe; or slut. But many rationalize, by using their brans to create reasons, that it's OK.
We as a society should be shaming those selfish women who've had abortions far more than is now done. But pro-abortion Dems control most of the allowable social "shame" levers.
It's my conclusion that an human embryo at a few weeks that isn't viable on its own is probably not something we should protect, but a human fetus that's viable with minimal medical assistance is.
I've got kids, but the question of convenience isn't tied to raising children because the parent has the right to give the child up for adoption. So the only relevant inconvenience to the mother for consideration is carrying and delivering the child. To me, at least, the arguments for late term abortion don't really compute, because at that point (absent some kind of unusual medical problem), a late term abortion is a non-trivial medical procedure, just like giving birth. So I'd say at that point, the moral thing to do is to have the child and give it up for adoption.
As I understand it, that's basically the rationale in Casey (and I went to law school and read it), and it makes sense to me. In general, society should promote life. The closer to birth and viability you get, the stronger the case for limiting abortion. The further you get, the stronger the case for the mother's right to bodily autonomy.
I get that it’s your opinion, but if you want it to be the basis of a law (or lack thereof), it ought to be grounded in some moral principle that is more than this, like, just feels right, man.
Lack of independent viability is true from conception on past birth, and well into childhood. A child won’t survive after birth with only your minimum medical assistance, just as one won’t before birth or close to conception either. It’ll always and necessarily require the mother (and father, hopefully).
And that “inconvenience” only grows, which sort of
>I get that it’s your opinion, but if you want it to be the basis of a law (or lack thereof), it ought to be grounded in some moral principle that is more than this...
Well, that's entirely the point. I recognize that while my moral principle is important and correct, yours is just your dumb opinion. You clearly think the same of me. So, I think it's probably best to fall back on the supra-moral principle of let's not impose our dumb opinions on each other.
Not entirely. I am challenging you, like you should me, to evaluate our dumb opinions to make our laws (in my view, but maybe incorrectly) more just.
If you really wanted to fall back on that principle, then shouldn’t that extend to those who are copacetic with partial birth abortion? Stop imposing your dumb opinions on those who think partial birth or even infanticide are okay (cue Peter Singer)?
You clearly think at some point your opinion ceases to be dumb in this respect and is serious enough to prohibit others from taking abortion up to term or even immediately thereafter.
But you rest your case (as does Professor Kling) with an argument that amounts to it just doesn’t feel right. That really is an empty opinion and I agree it shouldn’t be the basis for a law.
The pro-life movement, while it may have its own flaws, has contended with these moral and ethical principles far more carefully than most, and didn’t arrive at their positions because it was what the cool kids thought in high school or college.
So give maybe give their views some real consideration before dismissing them as opinions for a supra-principle that no one really believes should be the foundation of civil society.
a kind of nonsensical standard: as a child is closer to term, when it is the most inconvenient for the mother (and the recovery and obligations that come after), is also when it should be banned, but in the early stages when it is not that inconvenient (sometimes not even known), bodily autonomy is supposed to win out? Shouldn’t it be the opposite under your convenience metric?
Then the argument becomes circular anyway, or question begging, because it’ll be the fetus’s rights at the early stages rapidly diminish compared to the (how much?) inconvenience for the mother. But this assumes that the fetus isn’t entitled to its own bodily autonomy, and doesn’t measure the inconvenience of the forgone life, or implicitly makes a moral judgment that it’s not important or meaningful enough.
I mean, I get the visceral reaction that it’s “just a clump of cells,” man, and where I once was. But that’s how everyone started, and what you still are, and will be until you pass away. And there are plenty of people who don’t have much greater of the capacities you might run to next, like feeding themselves, thinking and talking, and laughing, etc., but if you were to go kill them for their inconvenience, you’d rightly be compared to Hitler.
In any event, I also went to law school and read Casey, and the opinions are a mess: its undue burden standard is an embarrassment as constitutional reasoning, and as a practical, working approach is almost useless. Does the Supreme Court really need to be resetting Constitutional limits every decade or so as medical advances change when a fetus is viable?
"It’s the longer term economic and psychological costs of rearing the child to independence and not the short term wear and tear on the body"
I agree, but the exact same logic works for infanticide as well. On day one of the child being born you've got 18 years to go before the state says you're off the hook.
Exactly. I agree with MikeDC that it is a moral question, as is true with every law that goes on the books. That doesn’t absolve anyone from having to then think through the moral ramifications and decide on what is the right, whether the law is yes, no, or even silent on the issue.
I beg to differ. Using the biological definition, both the egg and sperm are alive before they ever meet.
For what it's worth, I draw the line at the onset of cerebral activity (10-12 weeks), when intelligence begins, because that's when I think one becomes capable of moral agency and thus is "human" or "a person."
Biologically, this is the simple, correct answer. However, sperm cells and some skin cells are alive, but they aren't independent organisms, and no one would think the deserve legal rights. A fertilized egg is an independent living organism. The question of when it deserves legal rights is the question that isn't strictly biological.
Legal concepts, as well as most others except for some scientific ones, are sharp: something either has a legal right or not, either is a person or not, either is alive or not, and so on. This is a useful and indeed an indispensable mental tool, but reality seldom contains such razor sharp boundaries. The ancient sorites paradox - one grain of sand is not a heap, but a bucket of sand definitely makes a heap, so when does a bunch of sand grains become a heap? - exemplifies this problem, but has a much wider applicability. We are not used to thinking about human beings and persons as entities which are built up bit by bit from stuff which definitely is not a human being or a person, and which also degrade bit by bit (except in certain limited instances such as recognizing differences between children and adults), but we are forced to confront the "continuity" of the reality being cut up by our definitions when discussing questions such as are when a person ceases to have (full) legal rights which comes up in cases of persistent vegetative state, dementia etc., as well as whether a fertilized egg has rights, human genome modification, and many others. I don't know if it's possible (or desirable) to replace, or perhaps complement, our existing sharp definitions with "continuous" definitions such as those used in exact sciences, but as long as our capabilities, as well as perceptions and expectations, don't stay exactly the same from generation, we'll keep coming up against the limitations of our sharp definitions.
One thing about the abortion debate is that it confuses the heck out of christians why the progressive view is what it is.
In every single other issue, the progressive view tends towards more rights and protections for the weak and innocent. With expanding definitions of who deserves rights. Progressives are even in favor of animal rights.
But on this one issue, they go full Moloch. I can't emphasize how utterly delegitimizing it is to the entire progressive project.
Of course it is. If you reject the idea of God, souls, etc. as nonsense, then you have to decide when a human fetus is a “human life” for moral/political/legal purposes without resort to any magical mystical proprieties arising in the fetus in any given moment. The science of human reproduction does not provide any clear cut answer to when a human life begins, but the idea that it begins at conception is pretty extreme and certainly not the “scientific” answer.
One possibility is the “born alive rule”, which applied in English common law. But now that we know viability occurs earlier, that seems like a more reasonable place to draw the line. Of course there is some sense in which even a fully viable fetus is still not a “full” person. If you have a situation where you have a choice between saving the mother’s life and the fetus, that is not a hard call for me: we are saving the mother! I say this as someone with children and a wife who has miscarried (and no, that 10 week fetus was not one of our children, but it was of course a sad experience).
Back to the original point, I’ve never come across anyone who is an atheist and thinks life begins at conception and even early abortion is therefore murder. Coincidence???
I know this is a charged topic, but I think you're capturing the libertarian angle that I haven't really understood before that I'm writing about (but like everything else I do, haven't finished).
In every other country, abortion rights are basically established by legislation. In that respect, the Supreme Court is seems poised to say, effectively, that "we're just like everywhere else". Our rights can be taken or given by a 50.1% majority.
Previously, abortion (and other court defined constitutional rights) had the super-majority levels of protection defined by the Constitution.
The American method is clearly less democratic, but also clearly much more libertarian. Individual rights are protected from legislative majorities. In practice, this made abortion a matter of individual conscience, rather than public morality.
In this respect, I interpret this outcome as a very significant libertarian defeat, and yet, I've not seen anyone make this case.
A second thought I've had is somewhat in conflict with this, but not mutually exclusive. And thought is that, while in theory we worry about cycling, we don't actually see cycling in legislation. In Europe, abortion seems to usually be a non-issue. It'd be better if that were true here. Maybe putting the decision before the legislative body is what settles an issue, and deciding it non-democratically through the courts is what creates polarization and ongoing political strife.
I don't see pro-abortion as being libertarian in any way.
If the fetus has rights, then its rights are being violated. Most libertarians think the police should prevent murder, including the murder of a child by the mother. Even if the mother feels she has good reasons for the murder.
Saying that the mother has more rights than the fetus seems as fraught as saying whites have more rights than blacks.
Yes, it's arbitrary to say who has rights, but it is what it is. Clearly lots of people see the fetus as having rights. They even seem to have some concept of it developing more and more rights over the course of pregnancy.
Most cosmopolitan or intellectual libertarians seem to take a pro-abortion stance, but I've seen no such tilt amongst small-L normie libertarians.
Ultimately, I think a lot of it just gets back to a general view of sexual and family morality. Many cosmo libertarians are probably more pro divorce or pro adultery too. Bryan may want people to have more kids, but I feel like your average cosmo libertarian has low TFR.
> I think that the libertarian approach is to leave the decision to the parents. If someone asked me my personal opinion about aborting a viable, late-term baby, I might lean against doing so. But I would not want my opinion hard-coded into law. I would rather trust parents to come up with the right decision for their circumstances.
I don't think libertarians necessarily have to agree on this though, since it's also consistent if you think abortion is always bad and therefore should be banned (like murder).
I would consider these dubious from a libertarian perspective, but it's also reasonable to think the exceptions are so obvious that even the government can get them right, or that abortion is so bad that it's better to ban it even though that will also hurt some innocent people who need them.
I think "Leaving individuals to their own stance" is a pretty obvious line of libertarian argument. It's pretty much the definition of libertarianism. Both intellectual and populist.
Because that's what libertarianism means. You maximize individual freedom of members of the polity. Maximal freedom is the end.
Conservatism, at heart, means to maximize the well-being of the polity by applying things that are proven to do so (which tend to be codified in religion and morality for the same reasons). It entails imposing some cultural preferences, certainly more than a purely libertarian position would.
The definition of libertarianism is maximizing liberty, minimizing violence, and enforcing the non-aggression principle. Even AnCap extreme libertarians who don't want government want some mechanism to prohibit violence.
Abortion, especially with a healthy developed pregnancy, is about the violent execution of an innocent baby. That violates the non-aggression principle.
As a libertarian, I see this as bad in one way (there will be more bad abortion laws) but good in another (the Supreme Court ruling is correct). Personally, I think devolving more power back to the states is good since I think there should be limitations on how much California can dictate laws to the rest of the states, even if sometimes California would pick the right laws.
A related hypothetical would be if a dictator took over the US and disbanded the FDA. Yes, on one level it's good that the FDA is gone and thousands of lives will be saved, but will it be worth it long-term?
It's still kinda libertarian that, as a practical matter that will be hard to stop with law, after Roe is repealed any pregnant woman who wants a surgical abortion can hop on a bus to get one, and can get grants to pay for it. Or she can just go DIY and get miscarriage pills, also cheap or free. Meanwhile, the judiciary withdraws from ground it ought never to have invaded in the first place.
Especially with the advent of safe and well-understood pills, it's still shocking to me that surgical abortions exist in more than a handful of situations.
The pharmaceutically-induced miscarriage experience is often painful, prolonged, and traumatic - especially when confronted with the remains all by oneself - and in rough proportion to how far along the woman was in her pregnancy. It's not just that many people simply don't have the guts to do this things alone - similar to the source of demand for assisted suicide - but that surgical procedures can be much quicker, less painful, and there is an understanding that abortionists will go to great lengths to shield these women from exposure to the gory details of the procedure and also to help with emotionally shepherding them through the experience so they feel better about their decision. So, I can appreciate how many pregnant women wanting abortions would prefer to go that route. And, while an overnight bus trip is not quite as cheap or easy as pills, it's still pretty cheap and easy, which is a fact most of us have validated by our own direct experiences in pursuit of what are usually much less weighty purposes.
I don’t understand your position that each person should get to decide when a life can and can’t be ended. Couldn’t you just as easily say “If someone asked me my personal opinion about robbing banks, I might lean against doing so. But I would not want my opinion hard-coded into law. I would rather trust bank robbers to come up with the right decision for their circumstances.”
I really don’t think that’s the libertarian position.
Yes some questions like these are harder to decide than others. And my personal view would not be that life begins at conception (I think the European model that sets it at the first trimester is pretty good). But I just can’t understand how “everyone gets to decide who they can kill” is your answer when the question gets hard.
"If someone asked me my personal opinion about aborting a viable, late-term baby, I might lean against doing so. But I would not want my opinion hard-coded into law. I would rather trust parents to come up with the right decision for their circumstances.
"I would not stretch the principle of parental choice to have it apply after a child is born. I want to see the state protect the born."
This is a baffling position to me. Imagine someone performing an abortion procedure on a newly delivered baby. It would be a horrific crime, and roughly 100% of people would agree the perpetrator should be jailed for life, if not executed. Now step back in time by 15 minutes, shortly before delivery. Assuming the mother's life is in no danger, does the abortion go from "horrific crime" to "nobody's business but the parents'"? I don't see how.
Now, as you move further and further back in time, a logically consistent argument could be made that abortion moves from "horrific crime" to "disturbing crime" to "morally troubling" and eventually reaches "no big deal." But the point along that continuum where you decide that abortion is nobody's business but the parents' surely comes before delivery - and probably well before - even if it comes after conception.
Re: "Starting around 1963, in a span of about 15 years, the norms concerning premarital sex went from 'You shouldn’t' to 'It’s OK' to 'You should.' Laws against abortion were anachronistic."
The FDA approved "the pill" (oral contraceptive) in 1960. Are laws against abortion anachronistic if there exist various forms of safe, affordable, reliable contraception? The pill and other modern technologies of contraception are substitutes for abortion.
(And everyone knows that there are ways to have mutually gratifying sex without coitus; i.e., without risking pregnancy.)
After the pill etc. (i.e., already well before Roe v. Wade), it became plain that "the purpose of laws restricting abortion was to 'protect the unborn'."
You're right that using contraception instead of abortion is the obvious way to prevent both abortions and unwanted pregnancies, but unfortunately the anti-abortion movement in the US also generally opposes teaching people to use contraception at an age where it would be useful.
I think I might just be misreading the original comment anyway. I was reading "The pill and other modern technologies of contraception are substitutes for abortion" as a claim that contraception completely replaced the need/desire for abortion as soon as it existed, but in practice the same people and places that restrict abortion tend to also restrict information and access to contraceptives at the times when they'd be most useful (for teenagers), and because of that contraception can't completely replace abortion.
I must confess I don't understand the pro-choice side. I understand why some people want abortions, but I don't understand people who are pro-abortion. When I see pro abortion protestors or read their statements they are unhinged and crazy in the service of something that in the best of circumstances is a tragedy. I just don't understand where any *positive* energy for abortion as abortion comes from.
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Starting around 1963, in a span of about 15 years, the norms concerning premarital sex went from “You shouldn’t” to “It’s OK” to “You should.”
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The best answer I can come up with is that abortion is a proxy battle over sexual norms and childbearing norms. There is a significant portion of the country that has rejected the above. They were of course right to do so, post-60s sexual norms are a complete disaster that destroyed the family. The religious right was correct.
Furthermore, there is a huge divide on whether or not to have kids and how many. All of my pro-life friends have 3+ kids. Anyone I've ever known that was pro choice had two or fewer, usually fewer.
That's why many pro-life people don't have a problem with IVF, or why they will make exceptions for rape or whatever. You're correct that if it's about "when life begins" these exceptions make no sense. But if it's about "is the action you're taking morally good or not" then using IVF to bring life into the world if obviously morally good.
"I would not stretch the principle of parental choice to have it apply after a child is born. I want to see the state protect the born."
How about when my wife was in labor and I could see the tip of the head coming out but the baby was still in the womb? Is abortion OK then? Didn't we even have a debate over that very issue, "partial birth abortion".
Of course any line is going to be "arbitrary". Birth is arbitrary. Many societies had legal infanticide.
Anyway, I think we already know where this is going to settle. Abortion will probably remain legal for much of the first trimester nearly everywhere. Most people who really want an abortion will still get one during that time period. Some portion of people who wait a long time to make the decision, and also don't want an abortion bad enough to go on a roadtrip for a few days, will have kids rather than aborting them. But based on the above they never really wanted abortions that bad anyway. It's exactly those marginal cases where it makes most sense for society to signal its support for life.
The pro-death ghoul brigade thinks this will cause a lot of blowback, but I just can't see it. Anyone damaged enough to vote based on this was going to vote D anyway.
Examples of pro-abortion fervor I can't understand.
Many of my friends volunteer at Crisis Pregnancy Centers back in Maryland. Apparently one of them was vandalized by a pro-abortion mob following the leak. I simply can't understand where this energy comes from.
Perhaps it was worth permitting a little damage to be done to the institution of the family, so that people could enjoy greater liberty and flourishing in their romantic lives. The collective decision was to let a hundred flowers bloom and allow people to explore new ways of living. Many of these explorations have been and will be failed experiments, but being open to them unchains the human spirit in a way that I'd rather not roll back.
The argument that life begins at conception (and so abortion and IVF are both murder) is simply more compelling and logically coherent than the argument that says having kids is morally better than being childless, and so those who want to be childless must be punished or forced to have kids they don't want.
"permitting a little damage to be done to the institution of the family"
Half of all children at some point end up in a home where they don't have two biological parents to raise them.
That's not "a little damage".
The TFR of the developed world is sharply below replacement and dysgenic.
When I put these two things on one side of the scale and I put "greater liberty" on the other side, its absolutely clear to me which side has the better of the argument. It doesn't even seem close to me, one side is just dead wrong.
*flourishing in their romantic lives --- I'm not convinced that current sexual norms lead to flourishing romantic lives. In fact most seem dissatisfied. Broken equilibrium seems more apt.
"imply more compelling and logically coherent"
Coherent may be true, compelling I don't know. People actually seem pretty comfortable with the mushy middle on this.
"says having kids is morally better than being childless"
Parents are morally superior to the childless. There are a few situations where having children is impossible or inappropriate, but I would believe we were closed to an optimal equilibrium on this if TFR was at replacement.
"so those who want to be childless must be punished or forced to have kids they don't want"
You could always just not have sex or use birth control. It's really not that difficult.
Anyway, I think most people will allow abortion early on for those that clearly want it bad, but to the extent that the decision is marginal and late in the pregnancy I don't think its that shocking to make it slightly more inconvenient to obtain.
It seems like your real enemy here is no-fault divorce, not abortion. (I doubt prohibiting abortion would decrease the percentage of kids who live with single parents!)
Now I will defend no-fault divorce to the end, even though I grant it's had some undesirable outcomes. If people don't want to have enough children to keep society healthy, they should be given incentives, but "carrot"-type incentives rather than "stick"-type punishments. People deserve to be as free as possible to make fundamental choices about the shape their lives take.
Like I said before, many people will inevitably be unhappy as they experiment with new ways of living. But the new equilibrium has at least one big advantage: in today's world, if you fall out of love, you break up. In my experience there is nothing that robs life of joy more than being stuck in a relationship with someone you don't love anymore.
The one friend of mine I know has had an abortion was on the pill when she conceived. Birth control malfunctions are more common than people think.
Judging by the near-total abortion bans about to take effect in 13 states, you are mistaken about whether abortion will be allowed early on for those who want it bad.
My view on divorce is shaped by what I've seen. Data wise I've come to the conclusion that about 2/3rd of divorces are probably mistakes, let's call them no-fault ennui divorces. People think they will solve problems they will not, and they cause more problems then they think. They are emotional decisions they later regret and would have been better off if they waited and had to jump through more hoops.
I think of Eat, Pray, Love when I think of those divorces.
The other 1/3, where there is some kind of concrete abuse or neglect going on, are indeed better for there to be a divorce. But those could have been obtained in the at-fault era too.
I don't really care so much about divorce law as divorce norms. I think there should be strong cultural norms against divorce. People should feel shame, guilt, and remorse at most divorces. Friends and family should advice against divorce. At least in the 2/3rds of cases outlined above.
As to love, love evolves. I've found that when you look back on the hard moments of a marriage from the other side you realize a kind of lasting joy that is much more satisfying then the ephemeral joys of dating and infatuation.
Lastly, I think successful marriages are a lot easier when people don't screw around before marriage. Data backs this up. And personally I've seen a lot more success when people date to marry then when they date to "experiment".
The pro-life folk have more kids - maybe 10 vs 2 at the grandchild level. Adds up over the decades.
Ultrasound has made far more pregnant women feel like mothers, sooner.
Women can, and should, choose adoption. Our society should give more support to birth mothers who give their children up for adoption.
Many women who have had abortions regret it; those that don't often don't talk or think about it much.
Pro-life Republicans have long been willing to accept higher gov't welfare for unmarried mothers, and less slut shaming, in order to reduce the number of abortions for economic reasons.
Re: "I would rather trust parents to come up with the right decision for their circumstances."
Arnold, Does this mean that a pregnant woman, who wishes to have an abortion, and the abortion clinic, which will provide the abortion, must obtain formal consent from the father?
The pro-choice argument fails when it is observed the only thing blocking a fully developed baby from enjoying life outside the womb is a person determined to kill it before the baby can exit the birth canal. And with recent pro-abortion laws teasing that a mother cannot be prosecuted for the death of her baby up to 30 days after birth, we can clearly see the issue with moral clarity.
I do believe that there are behaviors that are clearly morally wrong but for the sake of liberty these actions should not be prosecuted by the government. Many behaviors involving relationships and intimacy fall under this umbrella. For example, we should not have government prosecute parents for simply being mean to their children, but rather we require an act of physical harm, abuse or neglect. If we were to prosecute parents for being mean, the entire parent / child / family framework would be demolished.
Many aspects of human reproduction need to be shielded from government overreach. Yet this understandable bias does not eliminate the jarring reality that in America, profiting from the killing of babies is a big industry. Do we just shut up and do nothing about this? If so, where is the moral argument against any depravity favored by the vocal participants?
For this reason I support legal restrictions on late term abortion. If a woman cannot figure out she is pregnant and what to do about it in 5 or 6 months then she loses the claim "my body, my choice". After some point in time, it is no longer just the woman's body, but also the body of a developing baby. What this time is can be settled politically.
Now, if the people want a Constitutional amendment making abortion absolutely legal in the first 3 months of pregnancy then I am not strongly opposed. What I cannot support is the willful blindness to moral depravity on the basis that addressing the issue makes people uncomfortable.
Regarding 1950s attitudes toward abortion, I'd suggest a look at Henry Morton Robinson's "The Cardinal", a New York Times bestseller written in 1950.
In the novel, the protagonist's pregnant sister will die unless a late-term abortion is performed. However, although such abortions are legal, the Catholic Church forbids them. With the sister unconscious and unable to give or withhold consent, the protagonist must choose. He makes the decision required by his faith, and the sister dies. Two decades or so later, the ensuing infant has grown up to become a brilliant pianist, and the protagonist, listening to her play, muses along the lines of "This was the child whose skull would have been brutally crushed..."
Admittedly, the sister'd got pregnant out of wedlock, so she nominally fits the description of "women who wanted abortions" in Dr. Kling's first sentence. But much earlier in the book, there'd been a general condemnation of such necessary-to-save-the-mother's-life abortions, with no suggestion that the women involved had got pregnant in unauthorized ways. If Robinson's fiction accurately depicts the Church's position, it appears that they, at least, were motivated by the desire to "protect the unborn", and that that argument wasn't a post-Roe invention.
Libertarian thought doesn't generally condone murder or homicide. This includes a parent murdering a child. This extends to living, healthy unborn children. Unborn children have some libertarian right to not be murdered.
Life begins before conception: both sperm and egg are alive, like some skin cells or blood cells are alive. A fertilized egg is also an independent organism which sperm cells and skin cells are not. This is basic biology, not religion.
Roe seems to be "Or you could have laws that permit abortions, but with certain exceptions codified in the law" at the federal level. Given most people live in the gray area, this is probably the best that there can be.
Brett Stephens lays out why the decision is radical, not conservative, and not prudent. Who in their right mind believes our society needs more logs on the fire? Abortion is already at very low historical levels.
EN Brown lays out the reasons why the legal arguments don't hold much water. Lots of Supreme Court decisions are full of motivated reasoning. Alito chooses to read rights narrowly instead of broadly to reach his conclusion. And ignores common law history when identifying practices "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition".
From an applied libertarian perspective, handing lawmaking back to the states results in easily identified negative consequences. Libertarians can easily identify how the government uses the criminal justice system in ways that are unjust and punitive. With these new state laws it's easy to see how women will be poorly treated. As they are even today.
Dismantling "Roe" would be radical, but necessary surgery to repair a flawed legal framework. The meaning of "Roe" is the Supreme Court decides the legal question, not just of abortion but of bodily autonomy for all states and territories. The more the court decides on the various tests of the question, the more standing it loses with everyone.
Consider this predicament. Because of Roe, we got Griswold and with Griswold we got gay marriage. We would have had gay marriage legalized legislatively, but the Supreme Jesters couldn't wait. And now every year some faction of the country is drumming up the next legal challenge to have the Supreme Court grant a new "right" of sexual freedom. If you are a reasonable, Ivy league lawyer, do you really aspire to have your notable achievement being who can have sex with who and the role of the government in regulating that activity?
I don't think that is what high judges want to be spending their energy deciding.
Let the states decide. We are seeing that Federalism worked for Covid - although I wish more restrictions were blocked I can at least be grateful not every state was California. It is only because of impatience that we ended up with bad legal precedence and the Supreme Court claiming the ultimate moral authority on matters it had no business deciding.
Not sure why you are replying to me. Griswold was 8 years before Roe. We'd all be better off if the Supreme Court had figured out how to say people have the right to privacy. Who sleeps with who and who marries who isn't the business of the state.
“But before Roe, I do not think anyone would have told you that the purpose of laws restricting abortion was to ‘protect the unborn.’”
This is so plainly ahistorical of a view, along with much of the other reasoning in the post that others have noted, that I think Professor Kling probably hasn’t given very serious thought to this issue in very long time.
What do you suppose the purpose of the rules on the books banning abortion were for then? A casual look can give you some pretty good historical reviews. Start here, perhaps, or email Ramesh Ponneru.
A unique version of a human begins with a cancer mutation rearrangement of genetic materials. Another rearrangement begins with the combination of a living egg and living sperm. In either case, life didn't begin and the statement that "life begins at conception" is pure religious belief based upon the concept of the soul. Forcing ones religious beliefs on others is a common but very unethical behavior.
This isn’t correct—the cancer mutation will not continue to grow as a human in a fully and independently self-directed manner. A properly fertilized egg will, outside of an external intervention.
A fertilized egg or the cancer do not grow in a fully and independently self-directed manner. Both are 100% dependent upon the host to continue growth. The cancer and the fertilized egg both have to avoid being destroyed by the host immune systems. Both have methods for avoiding destruction. The cancer being very similar to normal cells, hides using various methods.
The egg utilizes some natural defenses that work the same way the parasitic wasps that put eggs in caterpillars work. They add bacteria or virus that contain these genes to block the caterpillars immune system. Very similar genes entered the mammal genetic line, probably by horizontal gene transfer (genetic engineering by nature), are turned on by the developing placenta from the egg to prevent immune reactions. Being just another evolved mammal, our eggs have the ability to turn on these genes and prevent rejection, just like parasites do.
Each individual human life, with their unique DNA, begins at conception. That's what every biological scientist will say. The sperm and ovum are "alive" before conception, but they're not the new person. Protecting anybody from murder has to start somewhere - why at birth rather than conception or somewhere in the 9 months (~40 weeks) between?
“For ordinary voters, watching Republicans genuflect to religious conservatives will be like watching Democrats unable to separate themselves from Wokeism”
Except that Democrats do not actually uh pass any laws against celebrating Cinco de Mayo when not Mexican or requiring dismissal of university professors who use the wrong pronoun or instruct teachers to teach CRT. Those are things that “happen” only on Fox News.
‘In the 1950s, the women who wanted abortions had become pregnant selling sex, having sex outside of marriage, or having premarital sex.’
You left off young married women, old before their time, worn out by multiple births and work, impoverished, simply unable to feed another mouth, with no life beyond washing, ironing, cleaning, cooking, child rearing… and having more babies.
Gee you got me there. I have to been able to talk to all of them, but just guessing: religious prohibitions; unable to afford the procedure; who looks after the kids whilst she’s in hospital and recovering?; husband/parents wouldn’t agree; procedure not legally available - maybe you have limited knowledge but contraception was illegal in some Countries (like Ireland for example, until recently) - that enough to keep you going?
Okay maybe, but all of those apply to abortion too. E.G., the idea that a woman couldn't get her tubes tied due to her Catholic beliefs so she went looking for an abortion instead? I can't imagine that was a common scenario.
The idea that life begins at conception is not a religious view.
It is a little ironic that some of the same people who have finally come around to recognizing that the moral, ideological, and political tenets of contemporary woke progressivism effectively constitutes a 'religion' (and one that is passionately eager to be nasty to heretics) fail to simultaneously realize or acknowledge that the positions on abortion or state coercion are likewise just as 'religious' in their fundamental character. This also includes their own positions! The apparent lack of self-awareness enriches the irony.
Some use the term 'secular' as in 'secular religion' to describe the set of ideologies without divine or supernatural elements, but this remains a critical error, as there is nothing temporal or worldly about the base-level perspective and framework which remains inescapably composed of purely metaphysical constructs.
That is, they are not derivable by resorting to any positive or empirical program without just kicking the metaphysical can upstream to logically prior assertions. One doesn't have to get a doctorate in philosophy or go full meta-ethical moral nihilist to appreciate Hume's guillotine and the intrinsic impossibility of bootstrapping any of these claims. Lots of the world's cleverest people have been trying to do this forever, and they always fail, because it's impossible. See, e.g., Arthur Allen Leff, Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law. Sam Harris also tried his hand at it (characteristically, at book length), and also failed, and to his credit, in the essay contest he sponsored about it, he named the winner to be a guy who made the same fatal counterargument to his case.
Thus, if questions of this nature are to be 'settled' as a matter of hierarchical law, it absolutely cannot be done by resort to any *Constitutional jurisprudence* which purports to be theologically neutral. Can. Not. Be. Done. Because there is no such thing as the view from nowhere, that is, every ideological view on such a question is inescapably 'theologically isomorphic' in the relevant ways.
Which is to say that there is no valid way to intellectually rank rival unfalsifiables. And thus in certain human affairs the only question is one of the exercise of power and the decision mechanism for which theological view shall dominate in any given social context. And that question, too, cannot have anything but an inherently 'religious' answer.
Yes... the phrase "those who insist that life begins at conception" implies that this idea is a fringe opinion held by a minority. It's my understanding that this is scientific fact. It's really irritating that it keeps being framed as something only religious kooks believe...
"Unless you hold to the view that life begins at conception...." This is another rare instance of Arnold being intellectually flabby.
Of course each human life begins when their specific individualist DNA is created, as they are conceived with the marriage-combining of sperm & ovum.
Does such one celled life deserve gov't protection as human rights? If not full rights, how much, and when?
Alternate more awkward phrase:
>>hold to the view that full human rights should be protected from conception <<
Human life starts at conception, with one cell. Where is the start of human rights?
In this context it is, because the scientific facts of life don't have much legal value. Amoebae are alive. Ants are alive. But they have no legal status.
It's a moral view (which broadly considered includes religions) that certain life should be legally protected and other should not. People who are strongly pro-life want to say "this life matters and should be protected". Just as people who think "Animals are alive, therefore it's immoral to eat them" might wish to outlaw eating meat. It's a morally consistent position, but I don't know that I want it imposed by law.
Is it OK to kill animals for food? Most people will say yes, but most people would say it's not OK to sadistically torture animals. I'd think that's the kind of gray area abortion is always going to settle at. Is it OK to kill a bit of life that can't survive independently if the host body doesn't want to host it? Probably so. Is it OK to kill a bit of human life that could survive and become a person with a modicum of medical assistance and minimal inconvenience to the host body? Probably not.
Roe v Wade as based around the idea of pregnancy being a burden. So the woman has the right to remove that burden. This always sat on a quicksand of medical advances eliminating the burden.
But the physical issues of pregnancy were never the real reason people wanted an abortion.
They didn't want:
1) The responsibilities of raising a child
2) The feelings of guilt and abandonment that come with giving the child up for adoption
Medical technology can save the child but can't erase #2, and that is what a lot of people are seeking to exercise when they get an abortion.
"It's just a clump of cells".
Since what we are really talking about is guilt, morality, shame, etc the debate will never end.
The vast majority of people draw a clear distinction between human life and other types of life (animal or otherwise) and so does our law. I agree that saying it is ok to kill human life at a certain point during gestation is as much a moral assertion as saying it is not ok to kill human life at any point during gestation. But both assertions require some sort of logical coherence or reasoning behind it... and at the very least we should be able to acknowledge that it is human life, and not act as if it's a matter of faith.
But we also make distinctions between various types of human life (cells in your body, cancer cells, sperm cells, unfertilized eggs). No one is really arguing about whether fertilized eggs have human DNA or have replicating cells; they're arguing about at what point a fertilized egg becomes "a person" with moral value. Presumably you're using "human life" as a synonym for personhood, so the reason don't start by "acknowledging that it is human life" is that for many people whether the egg/fetus is a person is the crux of their disagreement.
Well I would say that a fetus is a distinct individual human being as opposed to the examples that you gave. Cancer cells, sperm cells, and unfertilized eggs can be destroyed without destroying a distinct human being. The "personhood" argument is a more sophisticated argument than I normally hear from pro-choice people, and while I personally disagree with it, I appreciate that it attempts to coherently explain why it is morally permissible to destroy certain individual human beings and not others. But unlike your argument, most arguments I hear from pro-choice people ignore the central issue entirely. This is what bothered me initially about Kling's article, the implication that the idea of a distinct individual human being is created at conception is more of a religious belief as opposed to fact. (And I'm generally a fan of Arnold Kling).
Sorry, what is a “bit of life” versus a “bit of human life”? Sounds like a euphemism and some motivated reasoning to make the conclusion easier to draw.
I’m guessing you haven’t had kids yet if you think raising a kid from birth to the age of five or even older is minimal inconvenience to the host body, whatever that is supposed to mean.
And that has never been the justification for the vast majority of abortions and most abortion rights law anyway. It’s the longer term economic and psychological costs of rearing the child to independence and not the short term wear and tear on the body.
From that perspective, banning abortion at 15 weeks or up to partial birth is irrelevant.
As noted, the "guilt" of giving up the child for adoption is, today, less than the guilt of killing the unborn baby.
Abortionist should be a worse insult, today, than racist, sexist, or homophobe; or slut. But many rationalize, by using their brans to create reasons, that it's OK.
We as a society should be shaming those selfish women who've had abortions far more than is now done. But pro-abortion Dems control most of the allowable social "shame" levers.
Shrug. It's just like, my opinion, man.
It's my conclusion that an human embryo at a few weeks that isn't viable on its own is probably not something we should protect, but a human fetus that's viable with minimal medical assistance is.
I've got kids, but the question of convenience isn't tied to raising children because the parent has the right to give the child up for adoption. So the only relevant inconvenience to the mother for consideration is carrying and delivering the child. To me, at least, the arguments for late term abortion don't really compute, because at that point (absent some kind of unusual medical problem), a late term abortion is a non-trivial medical procedure, just like giving birth. So I'd say at that point, the moral thing to do is to have the child and give it up for adoption.
As I understand it, that's basically the rationale in Casey (and I went to law school and read it), and it makes sense to me. In general, society should promote life. The closer to birth and viability you get, the stronger the case for limiting abortion. The further you get, the stronger the case for the mother's right to bodily autonomy.
I get that it’s your opinion, but if you want it to be the basis of a law (or lack thereof), it ought to be grounded in some moral principle that is more than this, like, just feels right, man.
Lack of independent viability is true from conception on past birth, and well into childhood. A child won’t survive after birth with only your minimum medical assistance, just as one won’t before birth or close to conception either. It’ll always and necessarily require the mother (and father, hopefully).
And that “inconvenience” only grows, which sort of
makes this
>I get that it’s your opinion, but if you want it to be the basis of a law (or lack thereof), it ought to be grounded in some moral principle that is more than this...
Well, that's entirely the point. I recognize that while my moral principle is important and correct, yours is just your dumb opinion. You clearly think the same of me. So, I think it's probably best to fall back on the supra-moral principle of let's not impose our dumb opinions on each other.
Not entirely. I am challenging you, like you should me, to evaluate our dumb opinions to make our laws (in my view, but maybe incorrectly) more just.
If you really wanted to fall back on that principle, then shouldn’t that extend to those who are copacetic with partial birth abortion? Stop imposing your dumb opinions on those who think partial birth or even infanticide are okay (cue Peter Singer)?
You clearly think at some point your opinion ceases to be dumb in this respect and is serious enough to prohibit others from taking abortion up to term or even immediately thereafter.
But you rest your case (as does Professor Kling) with an argument that amounts to it just doesn’t feel right. That really is an empty opinion and I agree it shouldn’t be the basis for a law.
The pro-life movement, while it may have its own flaws, has contended with these moral and ethical principles far more carefully than most, and didn’t arrive at their positions because it was what the cool kids thought in high school or college.
So give maybe give their views some real consideration before dismissing them as opinions for a supra-principle that no one really believes should be the foundation of civil society.
a kind of nonsensical standard: as a child is closer to term, when it is the most inconvenient for the mother (and the recovery and obligations that come after), is also when it should be banned, but in the early stages when it is not that inconvenient (sometimes not even known), bodily autonomy is supposed to win out? Shouldn’t it be the opposite under your convenience metric?
Then the argument becomes circular anyway, or question begging, because it’ll be the fetus’s rights at the early stages rapidly diminish compared to the (how much?) inconvenience for the mother. But this assumes that the fetus isn’t entitled to its own bodily autonomy, and doesn’t measure the inconvenience of the forgone life, or implicitly makes a moral judgment that it’s not important or meaningful enough.
I mean, I get the visceral reaction that it’s “just a clump of cells,” man, and where I once was. But that’s how everyone started, and what you still are, and will be until you pass away. And there are plenty of people who don’t have much greater of the capacities you might run to next, like feeding themselves, thinking and talking, and laughing, etc., but if you were to go kill them for their inconvenience, you’d rightly be compared to Hitler.
In any event, I also went to law school and read Casey, and the opinions are a mess: its undue burden standard is an embarrassment as constitutional reasoning, and as a practical, working approach is almost useless. Does the Supreme Court really need to be resetting Constitutional limits every decade or so as medical advances change when a fetus is viable?
"It’s the longer term economic and psychological costs of rearing the child to independence and not the short term wear and tear on the body"
I agree, but the exact same logic works for infanticide as well. On day one of the child being born you've got 18 years to go before the state says you're off the hook.
Exactly. I agree with MikeDC that it is a moral question, as is true with every law that goes on the books. That doesn’t absolve anyone from having to then think through the moral ramifications and decide on what is the right, whether the law is yes, no, or even silent on the issue.
I beg to differ. Using the biological definition, both the egg and sperm are alive before they ever meet.
For what it's worth, I draw the line at the onset of cerebral activity (10-12 weeks), when intelligence begins, because that's when I think one becomes capable of moral agency and thus is "human" or "a person."
Biologically, this is the simple, correct answer. However, sperm cells and some skin cells are alive, but they aren't independent organisms, and no one would think the deserve legal rights. A fertilized egg is an independent living organism. The question of when it deserves legal rights is the question that isn't strictly biological.
Legal concepts, as well as most others except for some scientific ones, are sharp: something either has a legal right or not, either is a person or not, either is alive or not, and so on. This is a useful and indeed an indispensable mental tool, but reality seldom contains such razor sharp boundaries. The ancient sorites paradox - one grain of sand is not a heap, but a bucket of sand definitely makes a heap, so when does a bunch of sand grains become a heap? - exemplifies this problem, but has a much wider applicability. We are not used to thinking about human beings and persons as entities which are built up bit by bit from stuff which definitely is not a human being or a person, and which also degrade bit by bit (except in certain limited instances such as recognizing differences between children and adults), but we are forced to confront the "continuity" of the reality being cut up by our definitions when discussing questions such as are when a person ceases to have (full) legal rights which comes up in cases of persistent vegetative state, dementia etc., as well as whether a fertilized egg has rights, human genome modification, and many others. I don't know if it's possible (or desirable) to replace, or perhaps complement, our existing sharp definitions with "continuous" definitions such as those used in exact sciences, but as long as our capabilities, as well as perceptions and expectations, don't stay exactly the same from generation, we'll keep coming up against the limitations of our sharp definitions.
One thing about the abortion debate is that it confuses the heck out of christians why the progressive view is what it is.
In every single other issue, the progressive view tends towards more rights and protections for the weak and innocent. With expanding definitions of who deserves rights. Progressives are even in favor of animal rights.
But on this one issue, they go full Moloch. I can't emphasize how utterly delegitimizing it is to the entire progressive project.
Of course it is. If you reject the idea of God, souls, etc. as nonsense, then you have to decide when a human fetus is a “human life” for moral/political/legal purposes without resort to any magical mystical proprieties arising in the fetus in any given moment. The science of human reproduction does not provide any clear cut answer to when a human life begins, but the idea that it begins at conception is pretty extreme and certainly not the “scientific” answer.
One possibility is the “born alive rule”, which applied in English common law. But now that we know viability occurs earlier, that seems like a more reasonable place to draw the line. Of course there is some sense in which even a fully viable fetus is still not a “full” person. If you have a situation where you have a choice between saving the mother’s life and the fetus, that is not a hard call for me: we are saving the mother! I say this as someone with children and a wife who has miscarried (and no, that 10 week fetus was not one of our children, but it was of course a sad experience).
Back to the original point, I’ve never come across anyone who is an atheist and thinks life begins at conception and even early abortion is therefore murder. Coincidence???
I know this is a charged topic, but I think you're capturing the libertarian angle that I haven't really understood before that I'm writing about (but like everything else I do, haven't finished).
In every other country, abortion rights are basically established by legislation. In that respect, the Supreme Court is seems poised to say, effectively, that "we're just like everywhere else". Our rights can be taken or given by a 50.1% majority.
Previously, abortion (and other court defined constitutional rights) had the super-majority levels of protection defined by the Constitution.
The American method is clearly less democratic, but also clearly much more libertarian. Individual rights are protected from legislative majorities. In practice, this made abortion a matter of individual conscience, rather than public morality.
In this respect, I interpret this outcome as a very significant libertarian defeat, and yet, I've not seen anyone make this case.
A second thought I've had is somewhat in conflict with this, but not mutually exclusive. And thought is that, while in theory we worry about cycling, we don't actually see cycling in legislation. In Europe, abortion seems to usually be a non-issue. It'd be better if that were true here. Maybe putting the decision before the legislative body is what settles an issue, and deciding it non-democratically through the courts is what creates polarization and ongoing political strife.
I don't see pro-abortion as being libertarian in any way.
If the fetus has rights, then its rights are being violated. Most libertarians think the police should prevent murder, including the murder of a child by the mother. Even if the mother feels she has good reasons for the murder.
Saying that the mother has more rights than the fetus seems as fraught as saying whites have more rights than blacks.
Yes, it's arbitrary to say who has rights, but it is what it is. Clearly lots of people see the fetus as having rights. They even seem to have some concept of it developing more and more rights over the course of pregnancy.
Most cosmopolitan or intellectual libertarians seem to take a pro-abortion stance, but I've seen no such tilt amongst small-L normie libertarians.
Ultimately, I think a lot of it just gets back to a general view of sexual and family morality. Many cosmo libertarians are probably more pro divorce or pro adultery too. Bryan may want people to have more kids, but I feel like your average cosmo libertarian has low TFR.
I agree with Arnold here:
> I think that the libertarian approach is to leave the decision to the parents. If someone asked me my personal opinion about aborting a viable, late-term baby, I might lean against doing so. But I would not want my opinion hard-coded into law. I would rather trust parents to come up with the right decision for their circumstances.
I don't think libertarians necessarily have to agree on this though, since it's also consistent if you think abortion is always bad and therefore should be banned (like murder).
I would consider these dubious from a libertarian perspective, but it's also reasonable to think the exceptions are so obvious that even the government can get them right, or that abortion is so bad that it's better to ban it even though that will also hurt some innocent people who need them.
I think this is an issue that distinguishes conservatives from libertarians.
I think this is also an issue that distinguishes cosmo intellectual libertarians from small-L normie libertarians.
When there is no obvious line of libertarian argument to come down on one side or another, people default to their cultural preferences.
It would probably be more honest in that case to claim having a stance on such issues as an individual rather then as a libertarian.
I think "Leaving individuals to their own stance" is a pretty obvious line of libertarian argument. It's pretty much the definition of libertarianism. Both intellectual and populist.
Because that's what libertarianism means. You maximize individual freedom of members of the polity. Maximal freedom is the end.
Conservatism, at heart, means to maximize the well-being of the polity by applying things that are proven to do so (which tend to be codified in religion and morality for the same reasons). It entails imposing some cultural preferences, certainly more than a purely libertarian position would.
The definition of libertarianism is maximizing liberty, minimizing violence, and enforcing the non-aggression principle. Even AnCap extreme libertarians who don't want government want some mechanism to prohibit violence.
Abortion, especially with a healthy developed pregnancy, is about the violent execution of an innocent baby. That violates the non-aggression principle.
As a libertarian, I see this as bad in one way (there will be more bad abortion laws) but good in another (the Supreme Court ruling is correct). Personally, I think devolving more power back to the states is good since I think there should be limitations on how much California can dictate laws to the rest of the states, even if sometimes California would pick the right laws.
A related hypothetical would be if a dictator took over the US and disbanded the FDA. Yes, on one level it's good that the FDA is gone and thousands of lives will be saved, but will it be worth it long-term?
It's still kinda libertarian that, as a practical matter that will be hard to stop with law, after Roe is repealed any pregnant woman who wants a surgical abortion can hop on a bus to get one, and can get grants to pay for it. Or she can just go DIY and get miscarriage pills, also cheap or free. Meanwhile, the judiciary withdraws from ground it ought never to have invaded in the first place.
Especially with the advent of safe and well-understood pills, it's still shocking to me that surgical abortions exist in more than a handful of situations.
The pharmaceutically-induced miscarriage experience is often painful, prolonged, and traumatic - especially when confronted with the remains all by oneself - and in rough proportion to how far along the woman was in her pregnancy. It's not just that many people simply don't have the guts to do this things alone - similar to the source of demand for assisted suicide - but that surgical procedures can be much quicker, less painful, and there is an understanding that abortionists will go to great lengths to shield these women from exposure to the gory details of the procedure and also to help with emotionally shepherding them through the experience so they feel better about their decision. So, I can appreciate how many pregnant women wanting abortions would prefer to go that route. And, while an overnight bus trip is not quite as cheap or easy as pills, it's still pretty cheap and easy, which is a fact most of us have validated by our own direct experiences in pursuit of what are usually much less weighty purposes.
I don’t understand your position that each person should get to decide when a life can and can’t be ended. Couldn’t you just as easily say “If someone asked me my personal opinion about robbing banks, I might lean against doing so. But I would not want my opinion hard-coded into law. I would rather trust bank robbers to come up with the right decision for their circumstances.”
I really don’t think that’s the libertarian position.
Yes some questions like these are harder to decide than others. And my personal view would not be that life begins at conception (I think the European model that sets it at the first trimester is pretty good). But I just can’t understand how “everyone gets to decide who they can kill” is your answer when the question gets hard.
"If someone asked me my personal opinion about aborting a viable, late-term baby, I might lean against doing so. But I would not want my opinion hard-coded into law. I would rather trust parents to come up with the right decision for their circumstances.
"I would not stretch the principle of parental choice to have it apply after a child is born. I want to see the state protect the born."
This is a baffling position to me. Imagine someone performing an abortion procedure on a newly delivered baby. It would be a horrific crime, and roughly 100% of people would agree the perpetrator should be jailed for life, if not executed. Now step back in time by 15 minutes, shortly before delivery. Assuming the mother's life is in no danger, does the abortion go from "horrific crime" to "nobody's business but the parents'"? I don't see how.
Now, as you move further and further back in time, a logically consistent argument could be made that abortion moves from "horrific crime" to "disturbing crime" to "morally troubling" and eventually reaches "no big deal." But the point along that continuum where you decide that abortion is nobody's business but the parents' surely comes before delivery - and probably well before - even if it comes after conception.
Re: "Starting around 1963, in a span of about 15 years, the norms concerning premarital sex went from 'You shouldn’t' to 'It’s OK' to 'You should.' Laws against abortion were anachronistic."
The FDA approved "the pill" (oral contraceptive) in 1960. Are laws against abortion anachronistic if there exist various forms of safe, affordable, reliable contraception? The pill and other modern technologies of contraception are substitutes for abortion.
(And everyone knows that there are ways to have mutually gratifying sex without coitus; i.e., without risking pregnancy.)
After the pill etc. (i.e., already well before Roe v. Wade), it became plain that "the purpose of laws restricting abortion was to 'protect the unborn'."
You're right that using contraception instead of abortion is the obvious way to prevent both abortions and unwanted pregnancies, but unfortunately the anti-abortion movement in the US also generally opposes teaching people to use contraception at an age where it would be useful.
If there was a logical argument being made about the correctness or incorrectness of the pro-life position, it wasn’t clear.
I’m sure you also realized that many contraceptives actually induce an abortion of a fertilized egg, right?
I think I might just be misreading the original comment anyway. I was reading "The pill and other modern technologies of contraception are substitutes for abortion" as a claim that contraception completely replaced the need/desire for abortion as soon as it existed, but in practice the same people and places that restrict abortion tend to also restrict information and access to contraceptives at the times when they'd be most useful (for teenagers), and because of that contraception can't completely replace abortion.
I must confess I don't understand the pro-choice side. I understand why some people want abortions, but I don't understand people who are pro-abortion. When I see pro abortion protestors or read their statements they are unhinged and crazy in the service of something that in the best of circumstances is a tragedy. I just don't understand where any *positive* energy for abortion as abortion comes from.
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Starting around 1963, in a span of about 15 years, the norms concerning premarital sex went from “You shouldn’t” to “It’s OK” to “You should.”
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The best answer I can come up with is that abortion is a proxy battle over sexual norms and childbearing norms. There is a significant portion of the country that has rejected the above. They were of course right to do so, post-60s sexual norms are a complete disaster that destroyed the family. The religious right was correct.
Furthermore, there is a huge divide on whether or not to have kids and how many. All of my pro-life friends have 3+ kids. Anyone I've ever known that was pro choice had two or fewer, usually fewer.
That's why many pro-life people don't have a problem with IVF, or why they will make exceptions for rape or whatever. You're correct that if it's about "when life begins" these exceptions make no sense. But if it's about "is the action you're taking morally good or not" then using IVF to bring life into the world if obviously morally good.
"I would not stretch the principle of parental choice to have it apply after a child is born. I want to see the state protect the born."
How about when my wife was in labor and I could see the tip of the head coming out but the baby was still in the womb? Is abortion OK then? Didn't we even have a debate over that very issue, "partial birth abortion".
Of course any line is going to be "arbitrary". Birth is arbitrary. Many societies had legal infanticide.
Anyway, I think we already know where this is going to settle. Abortion will probably remain legal for much of the first trimester nearly everywhere. Most people who really want an abortion will still get one during that time period. Some portion of people who wait a long time to make the decision, and also don't want an abortion bad enough to go on a roadtrip for a few days, will have kids rather than aborting them. But based on the above they never really wanted abortions that bad anyway. It's exactly those marginal cases where it makes most sense for society to signal its support for life.
The pro-death ghoul brigade thinks this will cause a lot of blowback, but I just can't see it. Anyone damaged enough to vote based on this was going to vote D anyway.
Examples of pro-abortion fervor I can't understand.
Many of my friends volunteer at Crisis Pregnancy Centers back in Maryland. Apparently one of them was vandalized by a pro-abortion mob following the leak. I simply can't understand where this energy comes from.
Though I supposed I could take a dark view:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FR_c38hWUAAXOSV?format=jpg&name=900x900
Perhaps it was worth permitting a little damage to be done to the institution of the family, so that people could enjoy greater liberty and flourishing in their romantic lives. The collective decision was to let a hundred flowers bloom and allow people to explore new ways of living. Many of these explorations have been and will be failed experiments, but being open to them unchains the human spirit in a way that I'd rather not roll back.
The argument that life begins at conception (and so abortion and IVF are both murder) is simply more compelling and logically coherent than the argument that says having kids is morally better than being childless, and so those who want to be childless must be punished or forced to have kids they don't want.
"permitting a little damage to be done to the institution of the family"
Half of all children at some point end up in a home where they don't have two biological parents to raise them.
That's not "a little damage".
The TFR of the developed world is sharply below replacement and dysgenic.
When I put these two things on one side of the scale and I put "greater liberty" on the other side, its absolutely clear to me which side has the better of the argument. It doesn't even seem close to me, one side is just dead wrong.
*flourishing in their romantic lives --- I'm not convinced that current sexual norms lead to flourishing romantic lives. In fact most seem dissatisfied. Broken equilibrium seems more apt.
"imply more compelling and logically coherent"
Coherent may be true, compelling I don't know. People actually seem pretty comfortable with the mushy middle on this.
"says having kids is morally better than being childless"
Parents are morally superior to the childless. There are a few situations where having children is impossible or inappropriate, but I would believe we were closed to an optimal equilibrium on this if TFR was at replacement.
"so those who want to be childless must be punished or forced to have kids they don't want"
You could always just not have sex or use birth control. It's really not that difficult.
Anyway, I think most people will allow abortion early on for those that clearly want it bad, but to the extent that the decision is marginal and late in the pregnancy I don't think its that shocking to make it slightly more inconvenient to obtain.
It seems like your real enemy here is no-fault divorce, not abortion. (I doubt prohibiting abortion would decrease the percentage of kids who live with single parents!)
Now I will defend no-fault divorce to the end, even though I grant it's had some undesirable outcomes. If people don't want to have enough children to keep society healthy, they should be given incentives, but "carrot"-type incentives rather than "stick"-type punishments. People deserve to be as free as possible to make fundamental choices about the shape their lives take.
Like I said before, many people will inevitably be unhappy as they experiment with new ways of living. But the new equilibrium has at least one big advantage: in today's world, if you fall out of love, you break up. In my experience there is nothing that robs life of joy more than being stuck in a relationship with someone you don't love anymore.
The one friend of mine I know has had an abortion was on the pill when she conceived. Birth control malfunctions are more common than people think.
Judging by the near-total abortion bans about to take effect in 13 states, you are mistaken about whether abortion will be allowed early on for those who want it bad.
My view on divorce is shaped by what I've seen. Data wise I've come to the conclusion that about 2/3rd of divorces are probably mistakes, let's call them no-fault ennui divorces. People think they will solve problems they will not, and they cause more problems then they think. They are emotional decisions they later regret and would have been better off if they waited and had to jump through more hoops.
I think of Eat, Pray, Love when I think of those divorces.
The other 1/3, where there is some kind of concrete abuse or neglect going on, are indeed better for there to be a divorce. But those could have been obtained in the at-fault era too.
I don't really care so much about divorce law as divorce norms. I think there should be strong cultural norms against divorce. People should feel shame, guilt, and remorse at most divorces. Friends and family should advice against divorce. At least in the 2/3rds of cases outlined above.
As to love, love evolves. I've found that when you look back on the hard moments of a marriage from the other side you realize a kind of lasting joy that is much more satisfying then the ephemeral joys of dating and infatuation.
Lastly, I think successful marriages are a lot easier when people don't screw around before marriage. Data backs this up. And personally I've seen a lot more success when people date to marry then when they date to "experiment".
Glad to hang out a bit here, tho I've already made some points on my site (fan of FIT, with links to others I like, too) :
https://tomgrey.substack.com/p/time-for-roe-to-go-let-states-decide?s=w plus
https://tomgrey.substack.com/p/demographic-destiny-doomed-roe
The pro-life folk have more kids - maybe 10 vs 2 at the grandchild level. Adds up over the decades.
Ultrasound has made far more pregnant women feel like mothers, sooner.
Women can, and should, choose adoption. Our society should give more support to birth mothers who give their children up for adoption.
Many women who have had abortions regret it; those that don't often don't talk or think about it much.
Pro-life Republicans have long been willing to accept higher gov't welfare for unmarried mothers, and less slut shaming, in order to reduce the number of abortions for economic reasons.
Re: "I would rather trust parents to come up with the right decision for their circumstances."
Arnold, Does this mean that a pregnant woman, who wishes to have an abortion, and the abortion clinic, which will provide the abortion, must obtain formal consent from the father?
The pro-choice argument fails when it is observed the only thing blocking a fully developed baby from enjoying life outside the womb is a person determined to kill it before the baby can exit the birth canal. And with recent pro-abortion laws teasing that a mother cannot be prosecuted for the death of her baby up to 30 days after birth, we can clearly see the issue with moral clarity.
I do believe that there are behaviors that are clearly morally wrong but for the sake of liberty these actions should not be prosecuted by the government. Many behaviors involving relationships and intimacy fall under this umbrella. For example, we should not have government prosecute parents for simply being mean to their children, but rather we require an act of physical harm, abuse or neglect. If we were to prosecute parents for being mean, the entire parent / child / family framework would be demolished.
Many aspects of human reproduction need to be shielded from government overreach. Yet this understandable bias does not eliminate the jarring reality that in America, profiting from the killing of babies is a big industry. Do we just shut up and do nothing about this? If so, where is the moral argument against any depravity favored by the vocal participants?
For this reason I support legal restrictions on late term abortion. If a woman cannot figure out she is pregnant and what to do about it in 5 or 6 months then she loses the claim "my body, my choice". After some point in time, it is no longer just the woman's body, but also the body of a developing baby. What this time is can be settled politically.
Now, if the people want a Constitutional amendment making abortion absolutely legal in the first 3 months of pregnancy then I am not strongly opposed. What I cannot support is the willful blindness to moral depravity on the basis that addressing the issue makes people uncomfortable.
Regarding 1950s attitudes toward abortion, I'd suggest a look at Henry Morton Robinson's "The Cardinal", a New York Times bestseller written in 1950.
In the novel, the protagonist's pregnant sister will die unless a late-term abortion is performed. However, although such abortions are legal, the Catholic Church forbids them. With the sister unconscious and unable to give or withhold consent, the protagonist must choose. He makes the decision required by his faith, and the sister dies. Two decades or so later, the ensuing infant has grown up to become a brilliant pianist, and the protagonist, listening to her play, muses along the lines of "This was the child whose skull would have been brutally crushed..."
Admittedly, the sister'd got pregnant out of wedlock, so she nominally fits the description of "women who wanted abortions" in Dr. Kling's first sentence. But much earlier in the book, there'd been a general condemnation of such necessary-to-save-the-mother's-life abortions, with no suggestion that the women involved had got pregnant in unauthorized ways. If Robinson's fiction accurately depicts the Church's position, it appears that they, at least, were motivated by the desire to "protect the unborn", and that that argument wasn't a post-Roe invention.
Libertarian thought doesn't generally condone murder or homicide. This includes a parent murdering a child. This extends to living, healthy unborn children. Unborn children have some libertarian right to not be murdered.
Life begins before conception: both sperm and egg are alive, like some skin cells or blood cells are alive. A fertilized egg is also an independent organism which sperm cells and skin cells are not. This is basic biology, not religion.
Roe seems to be "Or you could have laws that permit abortions, but with certain exceptions codified in the law" at the federal level. Given most people live in the gray area, this is probably the best that there can be.
Brett Stephens lays out why the decision is radical, not conservative, and not prudent. Who in their right mind believes our society needs more logs on the fire? Abortion is already at very low historical levels.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/03/opinion/abortion-supreme-court-conservative.html
EN Brown lays out the reasons why the legal arguments don't hold much water. Lots of Supreme Court decisions are full of motivated reasoning. Alito chooses to read rights narrowly instead of broadly to reach his conclusion. And ignores common law history when identifying practices "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition".
https://reason.com/2022/05/04/alitos-draft-opinion-that-would-overturn-roe-is-a-disaster-of-legal-reasoning/
From an applied libertarian perspective, handing lawmaking back to the states results in easily identified negative consequences. Libertarians can easily identify how the government uses the criminal justice system in ways that are unjust and punitive. With these new state laws it's easy to see how women will be poorly treated. As they are even today.
https://reason.com/2021/10/14/woman-convicted-manslaughter-miscarriage-abortion-oklahoma-brittney-poolaw/
Dismantling "Roe" would be radical, but necessary surgery to repair a flawed legal framework. The meaning of "Roe" is the Supreme Court decides the legal question, not just of abortion but of bodily autonomy for all states and territories. The more the court decides on the various tests of the question, the more standing it loses with everyone.
Consider this predicament. Because of Roe, we got Griswold and with Griswold we got gay marriage. We would have had gay marriage legalized legislatively, but the Supreme Jesters couldn't wait. And now every year some faction of the country is drumming up the next legal challenge to have the Supreme Court grant a new "right" of sexual freedom. If you are a reasonable, Ivy league lawyer, do you really aspire to have your notable achievement being who can have sex with who and the role of the government in regulating that activity?
I don't think that is what high judges want to be spending their energy deciding.
Let the states decide. We are seeing that Federalism worked for Covid - although I wish more restrictions were blocked I can at least be grateful not every state was California. It is only because of impatience that we ended up with bad legal precedence and the Supreme Court claiming the ultimate moral authority on matters it had no business deciding.
Not sure why you are replying to me. Griswold was 8 years before Roe. We'd all be better off if the Supreme Court had figured out how to say people have the right to privacy. Who sleeps with who and who marries who isn't the business of the state.
This is the wrong web site for your fantasies. I guess not all comments on this blog are posted in a manner to generate productive discussion.
“But before Roe, I do not think anyone would have told you that the purpose of laws restricting abortion was to ‘protect the unborn.’”
This is so plainly ahistorical of a view, along with much of the other reasoning in the post that others have noted, that I think Professor Kling probably hasn’t given very serious thought to this issue in very long time.
What do you suppose the purpose of the rules on the books banning abortion were for then? A casual look can give you some pretty good historical reviews. Start here, perhaps, or email Ramesh Ponneru.
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2021/04/abortion-is-unconstitutional
A unique version of a human begins with a cancer mutation rearrangement of genetic materials. Another rearrangement begins with the combination of a living egg and living sperm. In either case, life didn't begin and the statement that "life begins at conception" is pure religious belief based upon the concept of the soul. Forcing ones religious beliefs on others is a common but very unethical behavior.
This isn’t correct—the cancer mutation will not continue to grow as a human in a fully and independently self-directed manner. A properly fertilized egg will, outside of an external intervention.
A fertilized egg or the cancer do not grow in a fully and independently self-directed manner. Both are 100% dependent upon the host to continue growth. The cancer and the fertilized egg both have to avoid being destroyed by the host immune systems. Both have methods for avoiding destruction. The cancer being very similar to normal cells, hides using various methods.
The egg utilizes some natural defenses that work the same way the parasitic wasps that put eggs in caterpillars work. They add bacteria or virus that contain these genes to block the caterpillars immune system. Very similar genes entered the mammal genetic line, probably by horizontal gene transfer (genetic engineering by nature), are turned on by the developing placenta from the egg to prevent immune reactions. Being just another evolved mammal, our eggs have the ability to turn on these genes and prevent rejection, just like parasites do.
Each individual human life, with their unique DNA, begins at conception. That's what every biological scientist will say. The sperm and ovum are "alive" before conception, but they're not the new person. Protecting anybody from murder has to start somewhere - why at birth rather than conception or somewhere in the 9 months (~40 weeks) between?
“For ordinary voters, watching Republicans genuflect to religious conservatives will be like watching Democrats unable to separate themselves from Wokeism”
Except that Democrats do not actually uh pass any laws against celebrating Cinco de Mayo when not Mexican or requiring dismissal of university professors who use the wrong pronoun or instruct teachers to teach CRT. Those are things that “happen” only on Fox News.
That quote, aside, this is a reasonable a discussion of abortion I have seen.
‘In the 1950s, the women who wanted abortions had become pregnant selling sex, having sex outside of marriage, or having premarital sex.’
You left off young married women, old before their time, worn out by multiple births and work, impoverished, simply unable to feed another mouth, with no life beyond washing, ironing, cleaning, cooking, child rearing… and having more babies.
The first tubal ligation was performed in 1880. Was there something preventing these women from getting one once they hit the "worn out" mark?
Gee you got me there. I have to been able to talk to all of them, but just guessing: religious prohibitions; unable to afford the procedure; who looks after the kids whilst she’s in hospital and recovering?; husband/parents wouldn’t agree; procedure not legally available - maybe you have limited knowledge but contraception was illegal in some Countries (like Ireland for example, until recently) - that enough to keep you going?
Okay maybe, but all of those apply to abortion too. E.G., the idea that a woman couldn't get her tubes tied due to her Catholic beliefs so she went looking for an abortion instead? I can't imagine that was a common scenario.