66 Comments

The idea that life begins at conception is not a religious view.

Expand full comment
May 6, 2022·edited May 6, 2022Liked by Arnold Kling

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.

Expand full comment
founding

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.

Expand full comment

"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.

Expand full comment
founding

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'."

Expand full comment

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.

---

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.”

---

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.

Expand full comment

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.

Expand full comment
founding

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?

Expand full comment

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.

Expand full comment
May 6, 2022·edited May 6, 2022

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.

Expand full comment

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.

Expand full comment

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/

Expand full comment

“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

Expand full comment

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.

Expand full comment

“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.

Expand full comment

‘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.

Expand full comment