“Libservative” Demi at Pilgrim’s Progress doesn’t appreciate it when pro-choicers say “every birth should be a wanted birth.”
Am I “wanted” now? Was my life worth having?
I wonder if people realize how very devastating these “arguments for choice” can be to someone like myself, someone who so narrowly escaped the butcher knife almost 46 years ago? No, they don’t get it. Maybe they were “wanted children.” So I guess that means that their lives are somehow more appropriate than mine.
Sometimes I feel like I should apologize for even being here.
Look! My husband loves me, and he thinks I’m the best thing that ever happened to him!
Look! My students benefit from my knowledge and expertise, and my principal reeeally likes the way I do lesson plans on Excel spreadsheets (complete with automatic date-stamp on the tab code in the header!! I figured that one out all by myself!)
So now… may I stay? Am I “useful” enough? Am I “wanted” enough? May I stay?
That’s just a small sample of a very eloquent post. There’s a lot there that’s disturbing to pro-choice ears; most of us don’t want to think of ourselves as insensitive or hurtful. (Then again, since Demi suggests that Nazis during the Holocaust were on “higher moral ground” than pro-choicers today, perhaps she shouldn’t be quick to criticize other people’s insensitivity.)
I’m also disturbed about Demi using her position as a high-school teacher to preach pro-life thought to her students, which she does “every chance I get,” but I suppose that’s okay as long as she’s teaching at a private school.
The traditional abortion debate boils down, I think, to two questions. First, what kinds of self-sacrifice can be legally forced on parents for their children? (I seldom hear pro-lifers suggest that parents be legally forced to donate their lungs if their born child requires it to live. But logically, a born child of a father who refuses to donate his lung will be no less dead than a ten-week embryo whose mother gets an abortion; if we’re willing to legally force the latter, we should be willing to legally force the former).
The other question – which is more relevant to Demi’s post – is this: Is there an important moral distinction between preborn humans (zygotes, embryos and fetuses), and a born person such as Dani or myself? Or – to put it in short form – are zygotes, embryos and fetuses people?
Demi’s post uses a rhetorical trick that pro-lifers are fond of: Pretend that the “personhood” question is, rather than a major disagreement between people of good will, already settled. Assume that there is no difference between a zygote and Demi herself. And then – because pro-choicers say that zygotes have no right to life – Demi pretends we’ve said that Demi herself has no right to life.
It makes for a very stirring post – but lousy logic. Demi isn’t even debating the question; instead, she skips arguing the key question, assumes an answer, and based on that assumed answer pats herself on the back for being so very morally superior compared to us worse-even-than-the-Nazis pro-choicers.
Yes, it’s true; if we assume that pro-lifers are right about everything, then pro-choice thought is terribly immoral. (But then again, if we assume that pro-choicers are right about everything, then pro-life thought is likewise terribly immoral.) I don’t think it gets us anywhere to point this out over and over again – and that’s really all Demi’s post does.
* * *
Here’s my concern: Why are pro-lifers so uninterested in asking “in the real world, what policies are associated with the world’s lowest abortion rates?” You’d think this would be an essential question for anyone who thinks abortion is a terrible moral wrong. Yet I’ve almost never seen a pro-lifer consider the question.
I’ve said this before. It deserves being said again. Without exception, every country in the world with a very low abortion rate has either legal abortion, or bans so toothless that abortion is effectively legal. But what those countries (Belgium, West Germany, The Netherlands, etc) also have are cultures that strongly promote effective use of birth control, and that have strong social support programs that support poor parents – not just before birth and in the first year of infancy, but for life.
The abortion debate in the US can go on forever. We can have yet another round of clever, heartfelt essays like Demi’s, implying that the other side is immoral; or, if we want a better debate than that, we could argue for the millionth time about how to define personhood. But that will never get us anywhere. I will never, ever convince Demi that there is a fundimental moral difference between herself and a seven-day-old embryos; Demi will never convince me that it is sane, when running into a burning building and having a choice between saving a three-year-old child or a petri dish containing 10 seven-day-old embryos, to rescue the petri dish instead of the child.
Rather than rehash those questions, I’d like to ask Demi: Will there ever be an abortion ban in the United States that vastly lowers our abortion rate?
Can Demi point to a single case, anywhere in the world, where banning abortion has turned a country with a high abortion rate into an abortion rate comparable to Belgium’s?
If the primary purpose of the pro-life movement is to punish women who get abortions, then the pro-life strategy we’ve seen in this country makes sense. But if the primary purpose is to make the US abortion rate as low as possible, then it would make a lot more sense to look instead at strategies that have actually worked in the real world. And the pro-lifers, by and large, have demonstrated no interest in that.
Demi and I have common ground here. Demi’s a Kerry-voting, gay-marriage-favoring, pro-welfare pro-life liberal. She’s more open to solutions that will actually lower the abortion rate than most pro-lifers are. Nonetheless, it’s hard not to notice, reading through her blog, that she seems to loathe pro-choicers (especially pro-choice men) a lot more than she loathes right-wing pro-lifers.
Now, I’d rather not loathe anyone, but I’m not perfect in that regard, so I can’t expect Demi to be either. But I would point out that pro-choice lefties like me are not the people standing between the USA and a low abortion rate. Banning abortion does not, in practice, lower abortion rates by a large degree. What would lower abortion rates to a large degree would be free birth control, high-quality, high-quantity education about birth control, and generous state support of single and poor parents. And what’s standing between the US and these steps to a much lower abortion rate are Demi’s pro-life allies, most of whom would rather have a high abortion rate than take effective steps to reduce it.
NancyP, great points. Actually, I was not arguing against the notion of soul per se. I do believe in the soul myself, I do have religious beliefs, if undefined, non-dogmatic, doubtful, agnostic, you name it, but I was raised a Catholic and I still do believe life in the spiritual sense has no beginning, no end. Can’t explain why I believe that or how; I keep logic for the fields it can apply to, and just try not to think about the “heavy” metaphysical questions as they tend to do my head in. But I have spiritual beliefs. Thing is, those spiritual beliefs, mine or anyone else’s, dogmatic or not, including the belief there is no soul and no gods, are not the business of the the legal system of a secular democracy. Metaphysics, spirituality, religion, faith are not the framework in which abortion legislation itself has been passed. Or, any legislation at all.
Because there is no way to substitute the legal and ethical concept of “person” with that of “soul”, and still get to keep a legal system of secular democracy. Which is what guarantees a common ground for everyone.
So my problem is not the notion of ensoulment itself (though I have a metaphysical problem with anyone dogmatically claiming they can fix a timeline when that happens, but that’s another matter).
My problem in this debate is using “ensoulment” in place of “personhood” to make the legal, scientific (pseudo-scientific, since the concept of “soul” is not in the science department either) and ethical case against all abortions (public ethics, ethical and legal principles for everyone – as opposed to private morality of the question “what would you personally do”). I also replied on Jake’s blog about this.
No modern legal system defines abortion as murder. Because no modern legal system defines the person as the “soul”.
The theory that a soul is deposited as soon as egg and sperm fuse is a relatively recent one theologically
True, and fascinating.
Argh, I skipped a part – to clarify, what I meant by No modern legal system defines abortion as murder. Because no modern legal system defines the person as the “soul” is this:
– if we start arguing by changing “person” to “soul”, then, because “soul” is not a scientifically or legally defined concept, but only a matter of spiritual beliefs, because the soul is by definition immaterial, from a meta-physical realm, we will be able to make all kinds of claim about *any* stage of development having a soul.
As Jakes himself says, some people do project a form of “ensoulment” onto the eggs and sperm too. You can go back all the way, in an endless labyrinth, until we get to the insanity of arguing that is “murder” to not “offer” eggs and sperm the “chance” to develop into zygotes that will develop into embryos that will develop into foetuses that will develop brains and lungs and hearts and legs and nervous systems until they finally develop into baby human beings. If we interrupt the process at any stage, we are “preventing ensoulment”.
But since we cannot by definition ascertain the moment of ensoulment, it could be any moment. Even ovulation contains the first seeds of that which will lead to ensoulment.
That is simply not rational. Not scientific. That is not how the laws work. That is why the concept of “person” is defined in a different way. Legally, we all become persons the moment our birth is registered (well, obviously, we are already protected legally as persons even if our parents forgot the burocratic part). We all die as persons, to the law, the moment our death is pronounced. The law cannot pronounce dead that which is not yet born and not yet anywhere close to being a person (for science and bioethics).
So the law could never apply the definition of “murder” to abortion.
That’s why the religious fundamentalist argument to ban abortion is so dangerous and dishonest. On the first level, because of the disregard for any real ethical nuances and for the rights of the woman; on the big picture level, because it is one trojan horse intended to completely disrupt the nature of the legal system and remove its secular foundation. I do not for a moment think they will ever succeed in this, not in our lifetimes, or our children’s, or children’s children. No, it’s all one big political game in which there are pawns and the players who profit, as usual. Ideology, religion, used as tools. But the effort itself, no matter what its end will be, is damaging to our culture because it introduces, surreptitiously, the demand to legitimise a completely different framework for the law from the one our culture and civilisation (“our” as in, anyone living in a modern non-theocratic legal system anywhere in the world) was based on and on which it works, so imperfectly and messily, but it works.
Well, that was a longer “clarification” (and more rambling) than I intended. Sorry about that, just couldn’t stop “ensouling” my keyboard…
I fully agree that the law must be kept secular. At the same time, it is worthwhile to show a diversity of religious viewpoints such that it becomes clear that people of good conscience hold differing views. I am concerned about the takeover of “religion” by a narrow group and this group’s delegitimatization of everyone else as “immoral”. I really do think that the anti-abortion, anti-sex, anti-gay crowd is winning some undecideds who want to feel “moral”. As soon as a viewpoint is no longer identified as primarily sectarian, and becomes a strong majority viewpoint, it is no longer perceived as having a religious basis and is ripe for being included in ostensibly secular law.
“Personhood” under the law also encompasses corporations and municipalities, so it’s definitely not something that requires ensoulment.
mn, thanks for raising the level of discourse.
I wholeheartedly agree that casting the debate in terms of ensoulment is inappropriate when the goal is to determine rules that govern a secular society, that is, laws that will be enforced by secular governmental authorities.
However, as Nancy P. says, if the concept of ensoulment helps those who are religious (or not) to work out their own views on when abortion would be appropriate for themselves or like minded individuals, far be it for me to say that it’s not a legitimate inquiry.
Just don’t expect that debate to have any greater resonance in shaping public policy than, say, the belief on whether transubstantiation accompanies the eucharist, a concept over which Europeans essentially fought brutal wars for the better part of two centuries. Indeed, I have begun reading a history of the Reformation and every page gives me concrete understading as to why our founders felt so strongly about separating such issues as “ensoulment” from the arena of legal adjudication.
The concept of personhood is no doubt difficult, and it is a natural reaction to focus on the potential for personhood that a fetus has, which clearly distinguishes it from a person at the end of life, whose potential has been exhausted. Nonetheless, the potential of one being to become a person shouldn’t excise the rights of one who already is a person — of course this is starkest in the debate over whether rape victims should be permitted to have an abortion, or where the mother’s health is at risk as a result of her pregnancy — where the usual fallback arguments that “she knew what she was in for” don’t work.
Unfortunately, if you accept (as most do) that abortion is okay under these circumstances, you cut off at the knees the logic underlying the pro-life position, which is that no one has the right to kill a being with a separate DNA sequence no matter how dependent it is on the mother for its continued existence, and no matter how or why it got there, and further, no matter what threat it poses to the mother’s her continued existence — which is asserted to have no greater value than the fetus’s.
One of the reasons why it’s so important to frame the debate in terms of its “extreme examples” is that it lets you clarify what you truly do feel about the status of the fetus vis a vis the mother. No one would ever advocate the murder of a child who was conceived in rape but has already been born. That they are okay with abortion in cases of rape, up to a point, and threat to the health of the mother pretty much at any point, evinces an instinctive understanding of the difference between a pre-viable or pre-conscious fetus and a child.
That it’s not a bright line that separates the two doesn’t matter. The law is full of bright lines that, in reality, are only trying to make the best of blurry concepts.
Please forgive this bit of shameless self promotion, but it might be helpful to read the post on my blog called How to talk to a Christian. There is a very real difference in the intellectual process someone like Demi uses to reach her conclusions and the process used by some of us. Demi has been told by some authority that a fetilized egg is life. She assumes this to be true because someone – the church, probably – said so. She doesn’t question authority. She doesn’t think critically. She has faith.
Wouldn’t a reasonable person want to reduce the number of unwanted births? Yes, but she is not using reason. She is repeating someone else’s position. That someone probably thinks use of birth control is wrong; that sex outside of marriage is wrong; that all babies have a mommy and daddy in a stable, loving, heterosexual union or the people involved have no business having sex. Who do they think they are?! Who do we think we are questioning conventional wisdom/traditional values/the position of the church?!
That’s why we have such trouble talking to them. We are trying to use reason where no reason exists.
Other common emotional backgrounds for very vehement anti-abortion sentiment is difficulty conceiving, or a personal history of abortion as a teenager unable to resist pressure from family or boyfriend to abort. Demi tells a history of being an unplanned and apparently unwanted child. I don’t think that being an adopted child has a high correlation with anti-abortion sentiment, since adoptees are on both sides of this issue.
People bring their emotional backgrounds to religion, and have their emotions reinforced, or altered. People bring varying amounts of reason to religion as well.
Morgaine, I believe Demi is pro-gay rights and pro-gay parenthood. Though she does seem to be more interested in punishng women for having sex through enforced pregnancy–that’s what I’m getting from her posts.
Yeah, you can accuse Demi of a lot of things, but mindlessly following church doctrine isn’t one of them, I think. And although I am very pro-choice, I don’t think it’s useful to dismiss anti-choice people as irrational or uncritical.
She does do that punish-women-for-having-sex thing, though. I think anti-choicers kind of have to, because very few of them have the courage to admit that their stance is cruel. Since they can’t own their own cruelty, they have to blame the people on whom they’re inflicting suffering.
I shouldn’t have gone so long, an excellent discussion this is turning out to be. I agree with so much of what Nancyp said in comment 99. I’d like to respond, but its travel week, so it might have to wait till later this week.
I will have to agree with Sally and Nancy in their disagreement with Morgaine. Having had been a very devout Mormon for nearly two decades, it seems to me that positions, including political positions, based on faith are not so easily reduced to blind following. Though I believe that some portion of a religious person’s faith might dictate that kind of unthinking decision making and some people of religious faith might actually blindly follow as described (some of the people, all of the time, all of the people, some of the time :) ). for the most part my experience is that religious faith is very similar to political or ‘life’ ideologies we all hold.
Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Communists, Libertarians or what have you all have members that base their positions on a particular ideology (for example: Libertarians: Individual Freedom) and hold to that ideology (and the whatever ‘authority’ they choose be it Fidel Castro Ayn Rand, George Bush, etc) no matter what the facts on the ground are telling them. The ideology supplants reason and critical thinking.
Most partisans are not this way, but most are some of the time (I know I’ve had my moments) and some are all of the time.
Relgious belief acts very similarly for many people. I don’t see a need to separate out those of religious faith as people who think differently than the ‘rest’ of us.
Before you disagree with me, read the article I talked about on my blog. I don’t believe that all religious people function on the same level. I’m talking specifically about a majority of people who never develop abstract thought in the way some people, most of whom have had more varied experiences or higher education, do. If you know where they are coming from, it’s easier to address their arguments. If you don’t use the same framework they are using, you might as well be speaking a foreign language.
It’s not just about blindly following church doctrine. It’s an ethno-centric/religio-centric position that is aquired, not created. It’s about not examining the tenets of whatever “authority” the individual recognizes critically. If such a person’s friends tend to be pro-gay rights, they will be, too. The “authority” in question isn’t necessarily the church. It could be the peer group, the local community, the family itself. The essence of my argument is that some people never step outside of the authority structure they are born into. Sorry, but that “punish women for having sex” is straight out of the dominant culture. There is no justification for it outside of a patriarchal system.
I never said she was “irrational”. I’m saying that her position is “pre-rational” in that it originates in a part of the brain that doesn’t use objective reasoning. It’s a complex concept and comments on someone else’s blog is a hard place to try and explain it. A person with no real religion at all can still function this way, if they’ve never considered what life might be like if they were born in a different culture in any way except being glad to be a Christian, or an American or whatever. It’s not what you believe, but why you believe it.
There is nothing rational about identifying with a fetus. Inability to individuate from the herd comes from the mammalian brain, not the neo-cortex. Logic won’t have any affect on that.
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god damn it.
this may just be a personal pet peeve, but if you have something to say on a topic, don’t link to your blog post on it.
just say it. it isn’t that hard.
Karpad, Amp’s blog software integrates trackbacks into the comments, rather than separating them out. So Naaman didn’t post that link; he pinged Alas with a trackback and Alas’ software put it in there.
This is to add to what Morgaine has said — what is so difficult about listening to those who call themselves pro-life is the assumption, sometimes but not always unstated, that “everyone” knows and agrees that “they’re right” on the fact that a fetus is “equivalent in value” to a child or to its mother, they’re just willing to overlook the fact based on one of the following: greed, fear, personal ambition, inconvenience (re: John’s snarky comments about not wanting to delay one’s vacation); or outright solipsism (re: Demi’s judgment that abortions are obtained by millions of spoiled brats).
This is an unwillingness to step outside the framework of your own beliefs on a grand scale — to accuse all of your opponents of not acting in good faith, however misguided you think their views are. It cuts off the possibility of all discussion.
I could be wrong, but I thought karpad was referring to MOrgaine Swann, Robert.
My computer is doing that slow thing with the comments. Annoying!
NeVER mind.
Barbara – Thanks! That’s it exactly. You can’t get through to the underlying assumption in those cases.
Karpad – I apologize if I did something wrong. The piece I linked to is very long – four parts, in fact and I didn’t want to clog up the comments here with my own writing. Other places frown on that – I guess it’s the opposite here?
Anyway – sorry.
Morgainne,
I’m guessing with Robert about what ticked off Karpad, although only Karpad can truly answer the question. Your referencing your post elsewhere came along with a reasonably full explaination of what your post elsewhere said, and the trackback thing drives me nuts too.
It is one of the problems with gnomic attacks though, that they tend to derail threads as everyone tries to figure out what is going on.
yeah, I was complaining more about the trackback by naaman, not you Morgainne.
You actually said what you meant. You are blameless. I hate trackback.
why? Say by some strange twist of luck (punishment of a righteous god?) you found yourself on a cable news show, facing Dick of all Dicks, Sean Hannity.
when he addresses you, calling you a traitor or whatever, “You know, I had a conversation about that with Phil Donahue last week” and then expecting the fewers or even Sean to follow through and look for a tape of it is not effective for conversation, and Dick of all Dicks is just going to ignore it, and maybe take it as an admission of treason.
It’s not quite that stupid an asinine, but damned if it doesn’t annoy me.
and then expecting the fewers or even Sean to follow through and look for a tape of it is not effective for conversation…
Well, yeah. But it takes an hour to watch a TV show; it takes a microsecond to click on a link.
Honoring trackback pings adds enormous value to a web site. It lets the readers see who else is interested in the same topic, and go examine what they have to say. It’s like an automatic reverse hyperlink. (Click here to see what everyone else thinks.)
That said, I find integrated trackbacks in comments annoying. They ought to be separate.
Barbara, I understand what you are saying and do appreciate your point of view, but I disagree with that approach of arguing on extreme cases and conceding to a logic I do not support and which is also in contradiction to established legal and ethical principles.
See, to me, it is not “unfortunate” at all to “cut off” the logic of the pro-life position. It’s precisely what I think should be done: show how much of that “logic” is not really logical, or considerate of all aspects involved.
Because first of all there is no unequivocal factual “killing” a “being”, because of the reasons already discussed above.
Ignoring that little matter that the development of that potentiality into actual being is entirely dependent on the woman, a full developed being, is not a tangential matter. Those are not premises one can concede or accept and argue from there. The argument is with those very premises. A position that pretends to defend what is *not* unequivocally and objectively a person by ignoring the rights of what *is* unequivocally and objectively a person, is not a logical position or a morally/ethically unassailable one.
And this is not to say I am despising all people who are not unambiguously pro-choice. I do not necessarily see them all as silly, illogical, or immoral. At all. Like I said, I have had reasonable discussions on this with people with a differerent view. On Jake’s blog, I cited my own mother, who’s about 70 now, and who unlike me is a practicing, traditional, old-fashioned Catholic, personally opposed to abortion per se, but even she is decidedly in favour of keeping it legal. In fact, she voted yes in the referendum to legalise abortion in Italy in the 70’s. (A referendum won also on the strentgth of the denounciations of the horrors of clandestine abortions). She would have never considered abortion for herself, but even she, like most of her generation and background even at that time, can acknowledge and accept the point about not having the right to legally preclude to other people choices that she herself would not need or want to make.
(Again, given the established definition of what is a person, and given that, however distasteful this kind of “calculation” is, the rights of a grown person take priority, in case of “conflict”, with that of what is only potential person, whose development into person depends entirely on that grown person consent.)
I cannot have a serious discussion with someone who doesn’t accept that distinction.
Because that distinction between potential person and person, as well as the distinction between personal beliefs and law enforcement, is the entire “technical” point of keeping abortion legal. (Actually, add the distinction between clandestine and legal, too). And that is the main point that matters to me. A lot more than the debate on different beliefs on when the soul enters this material world, when a potential person really becomes a person depending on personal or religious beliefs, or if there is a soul at all, or if a zygote is as much a human being as a four-weeks foetus, a 1-hour old baby, or a 15 year old girl who is pregnant. That kind of debate gets to the point where we’re all arguing about the sex of angels, which is a great and fascinating topic for theologians, I guess, but not for lawmakers and their voters.
Personally, I am very thankful that so far I have not had to face that choice, I’ve been careful and when I haven’t been careful I’ve been very lucky, so I cannot possibly know what I would do if I really had to face that decision. No matter how distant from my mother’s generation I am, I know it would be very hard for me to make that choice and live with it. But I too would want to have more options than one. That is the entire point. I wouldn’t want to have a baby only as a sentence, or an unpleasant accident of nature, or because the Pope says so. I would respect myself a lot less if I did that. The Pope, bless him, can try having babies himself, if he cares so much about them. Same goes for every other religious and/or political figure with the same views. They have all the right to uphold a dogmatic religious and/or political position of their Church, or party, or coalition. But they don’t own me. They are not me. They are not what-would-become-a-baby-if-the-woman-only-acted-as-unwilling-incubator. And, with all due respect, they certainly aren’t god, either.
I hope I haven’t single-handedly lowered the debate again, now… But that’s how I feel.
Quite the opposite, in my opinion. Great post!
Well, Ampersand, thanks. I was having second thoughts about my sarcastic reference to the Pope! Especially now that he is so old and frail. Of course the sarcasm is not about his person as such, but on the positions the Church. (Just in case someone gets offended).
Well, mn I think you totally misread my post so I will bow out. The “unfortunately” was meant to be, umm, ironic, and when I went back and reread it I still can’t figure for the life of me what you are disagreeing with. The “extreme” cases are useful because they are usually a clear point of common ground. The trick is to show why those “extreme” cases are not really all that different from less “extreme” (so perceived by many, obviously not necessarily by the woman faced with a decision), because what lets you get to “yes” in the extreme case is also present in the less extreme case — you don’t really consider the fetus to be a person with full-fledged rights. If you did you wouldn’t agree that abortion is appropriate under any circumstances including conception by rape or threat to health of the mother. So I consider your post to be an unnecessary diatribe aimed at someone who agreed with everything you said. Sorry it’s going to be a long day and I already have a headache.
So I consider your post to be an unnecessary diatribe aimed at someone who agreed with everything you said.
Barbara, it wasn’t a diatribe directed at you! It was still a general response to views like Demi’s and to those who complained about lack of civility in responses to her. I’m sorry if I misunderstood your “unfortunate”, I wasn’t equating your comment with them anyway, just using it as a starting point to argue why I’m not going to concede anything to views so distant from reality. Basically what I was disagreeing with was this in your post:
However, as Nancy P. says, if the concept of ensoulment helps those who are religious (or not) to work out their own views on when abortion would be appropriate for themselves or like minded individuals, far be it for me to say that it’s not a legitimate inquiry.
Because I do not accept it is legitimate at all, because IMO it undermines the entire framework of the debate, and I am going to say it. On the rest, we do agree and I appreciated your comments a lot as they helped me clarify my ideas too. Sorry if you felt directly attacked, it wasn’t my intention at all. Hope that’s clearer.
Because I do not accept it [ensoulment] is legitimate at all, because IMO it undermines the entire framework of the debate,
I can understand why you might feel that way. However, people are motivated by what they’re motivated by; doesn’t much matter whether I accept it. The debate itself turns in part on the question “what framework ought we to be using in this debate” – so I don’t think it’s legitimate to reject someone’s position as undermining the frame you prefer. Of course it does; that’s part of what the argument is.
Robert, what about the legal framework? If someone is arguing for a legal ban on abortion based on religious beliefs, then it’s not just me saying their chosen framework for debate is wrong, it’s the legal system we live in that says so. For reasons already stated above.
So it is perfectly legitimate for me to reject someone’s position when their chosen framework is not only antithetical to mine, and damaging to me, but antithetical to secular democracy too.
We all have the right to reject anything we don’t approve of, but if we are rejecting the entire foundations for modern thougth and modern democracy, then we can’t get away with pretending that’s an “opinion” like any other. It’s not. It’s a refusal of that basic common ground, and it’s not me doing that, I’m just pointing it out.
Fundamentalists and anti-abortionists who want a legal ban are fanatical, unreasonable people who do not accept living in a modern society. They can leave if they want. They cannot get their cake and eat it too, ie. benefit from all the advantages of living in a free modern democracy while, more or less consciously, undermining its political and cultural foundations from within. That’s a very slick trick that needs to be exposed and fought. Accepting their premises is not the way to do it.
MN, most of the people who fought slavery, both in Britain and in the US, were acting from the same non-rational impulse. They undermined the existing legal framework of the day – the “common ground” on which all the people who mutually thought themselves human could stand. Were they wrong to do so?
Sorry to divert, but this is a pet peeve of mine. The debate about slavery was really not, for the most part, a debate about whether slaves were human. Almost everyone agreed they were. The American Catholic Church, which consistently defended slavery, also condemned masters who denied their slaves the sacraments. Defenders of slavery said that it was a legitimate system of authority, in which people whom God made to be leaders governed people whom God designed to be followers. They explicitly compared it to marriage, in which God determined that men would govern women.
(I really recommend you check out the chapter on slavery in John McGreevy’s Catholicism and American Freedom. It’s fascinating and, as far as I can tell, very even-handed.)
In the U.S., at least, both sides of the slavery debate relied on Christian rhetoric and ideas. That was the common ground of the day, to a large extent. In many ways, the pro-slavery side had the leg up, since there are many places where the Bible mentions slavery without condemning it. I, of course, believe that the anti-slavery side was right, based on my secular ideals of human dignity and equality. But defenders of slavery were every bit as devout as opponents. So would you defend people whose religion taught them that it was dangerous to overturn systems of legitimate authority, such as the institution of slavery? After all, they made a pretty convincing Scriptural case.
The debate about slavery was really not, for the most part, a debate about whether slaves were human. Almost everyone agreed they were.
Sure. And the debate about abortion isn’t really a question about whether fetuses are human; of course they are. The question is whether they have human rights. (Then, for slaves; now, for fetuses.)
What I was trying to get at it was the set of people who had human rights, not the people who were human. Bad phrasing on my part; sorry.
I think it is important in this debate to recall that we do not have a secular democracy because that is what everyone wants. We have a secular democracy because that is the second choice of almost everyone. (“If my lot can’t run things, then let’s have some system where at least my lot gets a voice.”) The Founders in their wisdom recognized that elevating any particular religion – even the broader religious tradition that most of them shared – would be destructive to their new state, so they set up a (pretty darn brilliant) compromise. However, that compromise doesn’t obviate the religious origin of majoritarian religious belief.
I think people are allowed to believe that slavery is wrong, gay marriage is OK, abortion is questionable, or whatever, on the basis of their religious thought, and to act politically in accordance with their beliefs. That doesn’t undermine American democracy, it’s the entire point of it.
Robert, frankly I don’t get your point or what you’re driving at, or even what you’re disagreeing with.
I’m not talking of some “common ground of the day”. I’m talking the difference between secular democracy (parliamentary republic or presidential republic or constitutional monarchy, any variation of the form of modern legal systems developed in the later centuries to replace monarchy and theocracy), and theocracy.
As explained above.
It’s absolutely and decidedly not wrong or much less “illegitimate” to point out that difference.
Again, I can spare a lot of civility and even respect and understanding for people who disapprove of abortion but still a) agree it should be kept legal because they are not fundamentalists who think everyone should behave like them; b) accept and acknowledge that an undeveloped potentiality of a person is still not a person, and however much more troubled they may be at personal level by abortion, they are not as insane and callous as to liken it to actual murder or much less genocide; and c) they accept and acknowledge that even though they personally would never consider the option of abortion, they have no right to take away that option from another woman who would, and reduce her to the status of cattle.
Also, d) their disapproval is personal and doesn’t translate in horribly judgemental reproaches against women who have abortion, and they are capable of respecting someone who did something they would not perrsonally do.
Like I said, I know quite a few people like that, they are a significant part of the religious people in the country I live in. They can appreciate living in a secular democracy, perhaps because our country has had a bloody history of actual theocracy and religious persecutions, as well as atual fascism. Many other countries in Europe have had similar histories. It’s one reason why the French are so attached to their idea of laicité, of church/state separation. France has an important history of fighting against theocracy. It tends to leave people immune to the seductions of theocratic mentalities.
Whereas, the religious right in the US, probably also because of not having had that immunization, have embraced literal religious fundamentalism, while pretending they’re the ones most faithful to democracy. Abortion is only one tool of this power battle they’re fighting.
I’m calling the bluff on that, and I have no respect for that position. I already said why, even if it will have no legal effects in the near future, it’s an undermining of the culture that forms the basis for the legal system we – all humans living in non-theocratic systems – live in, in comments above.
PS – pedantic but hopefully useful technical suggestion the to administrators: you should try and implement a way of saving one’s post preview even if one forgets to add up the numbers.
Good thing I had written it in my notepad because when I clicked “say it” without remembering to add up the numbers I got an error page saying I’d forgot that, and clicked the back button, but the preview and the text in the textarea field had both disappeared.
You could have the text reappear in the error page, with another opportunity to add up the numbers and post from right there, without having to hit the back button, so nothing typed in would be lost.
I think we’ll have to agree to disagree, MN.
However, that compromise doesn’t obviate the religious origin of majoritarian religious belief.
Robert, the compromise granted by secular democracy also establishes that while religion has a legitimate place also in public debate, no legal principle can be based on religious belief.
This distinction of course had a tendency to get blurred in the *political debate* itself because there are political parties in which religious beliefs or positions can take the place of policies.
But ultimately, the debate on abortion has to get down from the political, religious, cultural plane and face the ultimate question: the legal one.
Ultimately, I don’t care what you or anyone else personally think of abortion. What I care for is: do you want to ban it legally? Are you prepared to defend that position and all it entails, including the end of secular democracy as we know it? Do you intend to hold your chosen party to that legal demand? When do you plan to implement it? How and when?
Forgive my cinicism, but I do not see any mainstream political party with a genuine intention to establish a complete total ban on abortion, in the US. I see a party milking that view for all its worth in terms of votes from the fanatics who would literally want a ban, even as those who grab their votes have no real intention to enforce that, also because it would be impossible to do so. But they do milk those votes, with no regard for the cultural consequences of that.
On human rights – they are granted to persons as defined by the current legal system we all live in. Back to square one, Robert – that definition does not include the concept of ensoulment, it is not based on religious beliefs, it does not consider a zygote or undeveloped foetus as a person because by all objective accounts – scientific and secular philosophical observation of what makes a person a person (brain activity and consciousness) – they are not, so it does not grant upon it human rights, whereas the person carrying that zygote or undeveloped foetus in her own body is recognised as a person and is granted the according rights, including that of not having her person violated by impositions from others.
At the legal level, the issue is already clear and the debate already closed at that very basic level of defining personhood. The issues that are open are, where do we draw the line between undeveloped foetus and developed, viable and non-viable, etc. Those are matters on which legislation in different country can vary (some have a stricter limit, say, three months; others a bit wider, say, four months, and so on). But none of those who have legalised and therefore regulated abortion have done so by accepting concepts that are extraneous and antiethical to the very legal system they are based upon.
I think we’ll have to agree to disagree, MN.
No problem. Don’t know if what you’re disagreeing with is the concept of secular democracy itself, but keep in mind I’m not the one who created it and set the basic rules for it. So in that case you are not disagreeing with me, but with that system itself.
The comparison to slavery is not really a good one, though, Robert. For the simple reason that, as Sally described above, the justification for slavery was religious in nature: God decreed that whites should have dominion over blacks, slavery was in the Bible, etc. To a large extent, the opposition to slavery was also religious in nature, but in the end, there was the very simple fact that it was universally acknowledged that blacks are humans, and that as humans they had the same rights as whites. There doesn’t have to be any religion involved on either side to come to that conclusion.
Those who argue that abortion is wrong and should be made illegal, though, are bringing up religious arguments that can’t be verified about the ensoulment of the fetus. The law, ideally, should focus only on what’s observable and ethical, and that is that fetuses, though undoubtedly human, are simply not viable up to a certain point and therefore their rights, if any, are subservient to those of the mother — who is a fully-functioning human with rights of her own. Once you start trying to legislate based on ensoulment, you’re leaving law and medicine and entering religion.
Robert, there also isn’t a consensus that “fetuses are human” at least not in the way you’re driving at.
the consensus is that they are human by adjective, not a noun.
they are “human” in the same sense that a finger is a human finger. not human as in “Jimmy’s a human.”
There is by no means a consensus that fetuses are human beings. Much of the anti-abortion crowd has decided to skirt that issue entirely by pretending that it’s been decided. And it’s true, IF you grant that fetuses are human beings, being pro-choice is a much harder position to defend. not impossible, mind you, but harder.
but just because you keep saying it doesn’t make it so.
Are you prepared to defend that position and all it entails, including the end of secular democracy as we know it?
Since we had secular democracy back when abortion was illegal in most states, I don’t see how to take this position very seriously.
the compromise granted by secular democracy also establishes that while religion has a legitimate place also in public debate, no legal principle can be based on religious belief
This is a commonly held view. It is also mistaken.
A legal principle can be based on anything at all, including the whims of the legislature. The principle itself, however, must pass certain Constitutional tests. There are religious views that pass that test effortlessly (“thou shalt not murder”), and those that do not.
Many of our underlying bedrock principles are quite secular in origin, and many are quite religious. Others can be reached from either a secular or spiritual starting point; you can believe murder is a bad idea and ought to be illegal without getting it from Exodus. These principles harmonize, rather than conflicting.
On human rights – they are granted to persons as defined by the current legal system…that definition…is not based on religious beliefs
“That all men are created equal: That they are endowed by their creator With certain un-alienable rights…”
The underlying principle of American rights is that rights are imbued by God (however conceived), not granted by government. This is in stark contrast to the European model, which seems to be the approach you are coming from (I think; correct me if I’m wrong.) European and American jurisprudence are not the same.
When slavery was ended, the state was ending a wrongful state of rights being denied to African Americans – not imbuing previously right-less citizens with new rights. The slaves had already had the rights – we were just unconscionably trampling them.
On a personal note, I absolutely reject the notion that rights are a grant from the government. That notion carries with it implicitly the ability of the state to rescind rights. I do not believe states have that power.
Robert, there also isn’t a consensus that “fetuses are human”? at least not in the way you’re driving at. the consensus is that they are human by adjective, not a noun.
Yes, I agree with that. I wasn’t intending to say that fetuses are developed human beings, just that they’re human as in not-zebras. Proponents of slavery argued that blacks were human, just of a very degraded form not worthy of the same rights and treatment as white people.
Actually, the debate is about whether fetuses are human. My religion explicitly teaches that a fetus is not human.
It’s completely anachronistic to talk about “human rights” in the mid-19th century, but I don’t think pro-slavery types would say that they were depriving slaves of human rights. They would say that you and I misunderstand “human rights.” Humans have the right to be justly governed according to their innate capacities. It’s unfair to people to expect them to live outside of the parameters that God has designed for them. Slaves wouldn’t be happy if they were expected to run their own lives: it’s cruel to them to expect them to do things that God didn’t give them the capacity to do. According to pro-slavery people, abolitionists believed in a cruel society based on competition between worker and employer, in which weak, stupid people (like slaves) would be crushed. Slavery was a much kinder system that created bonds of affection and mutual obligation between master and servant. It made the worker/employer relationship akin to the family, which was better for everyone involved. Slavery protected the weak. In the North, the system ate weak people alive.
This is pretty perverse, but that’s what they argued. Speaking as someone who has read and taught the debate on slavery, I don’t really see the parallels that pro-life people think are so strong.
Speaking as someone who has read and taught the debate on slavery, I don’t really see the parallels that pro-life people think are so strong.
The parallels of the debate aren’t strong, the parallels of the situation are strong.
In both cases, there are people who have legitimate rights, under the existing legal scheme and/or natural rights. The rights of those people are in conflict with rights possibly belonging to another group of entities.
The precise nature of the second entity group is contentious. Some say they are human beings with all the natural rights of any human beings. Others say they are property, or that they have no meaningful status of any kind. Some make arguments that their status is contingent upon their relationship with the people in the first group.
The question of the nature of the second group is critical. (If slaveowners had been right that black people were simply incapable of running their own lives – that they really were subhuman – then some kind of paternalistic approach would have been the only humane way of coexistence.) Because of the critical nature of that question, it is unsurprising that zealots on both side of the abortion fence are very uncompromising in their stance. (“It’s a human being and you should save a plateful of embryos in preference to a single 6-year old” vs. “it’s a glob of tissue less worthy of consideration than the byproduct of a noseblow”.)
It’s also understandable that, one level removed, people on both sides will try to render void the premises underlying the other side, saying that faith values have no place in the discussion, or that science ought to be silent on moral questions, etc.
Many proponents of slavery cast what they did as a kindness, actually–blacks were considered to be not fully intelligent, adult moral agents, and therefore white stewardship, i.e. slavery, kept them industrious, happy, fed, and Christian.
The underlying principle of American rights is that rights are imbued by God (however conceived), not granted by government. This is in stark contrast to the European model, which seems to be the approach you are coming from (I think; correct me if I’m wrong.) European and American jurisprudence are not the same.
No, but they have developed from a common experience in secular humanism, haven’t they? They do share that common secular framework, don’t they? Are you arguing the US is not based on a secular system? That it’s a theocracy? Careful there… think about what you’re saying.
See, it’s a sign of how much that common ground is being culturally eroded, if you’re telling me that the God in your constitution is not some indistinct (actually, masonic) god figure but speaks of an actual religious basis for your system. You know too well that’s one of the points of contention of the religious right, and that everyone else disagrees strongly on that religious rewriting of the law.
As for abortion being illegal before – well, even before that, there was no such thing as human rights, there was no such thing as artificial insemination, there was no such thing as equal civil rights… We can go back a long way. Like Sally said, it’s anachronism.
As long as abortion was not legal, there was no need of a specific set of arguments against it, it just wasn’t legally allowed, period. It existed, clandestinely, no one paid much attention to it. The strong political arguments against it emerged after it was made legal. The religious nature of a large part of these arguments is a fact. That they demand that concepts extraneous to the modern legal framework (common to ALL secular democracies, across the entire world) be incorporated in it or used in place of established secular ones is also a fact. None of this was a significant political debate before abortion was legalised.
As for slavery, it is an inappropriate comparison by all accounts. The US had a long history of slavery, even as it already had a democratic system, but human rights and equal civil rights are a recent development, and by today’s standards, no one would recognise the status of full democracy to a nation that implemented racial segregation. Just like, today, a nation that doesn’t grant voting rights to women would not be called a proper democracy. So I really don’t get the point of the analogy. Societies evolve, the foundations can indeed be reinterpreted, new rights be granted (for instance, gay marriage), but you cannot have an upheaval of those foundations without explicitely acknowledging so and the full consequences that entails. Today, abortion is used as a tool by fundamentalists who often also want things like a religious-based ban on gay marriage and maybe even a religious-based ban on contraception and a religious-endorsed programme of abstinence-only and a religious-based filtering of content in the public sphere and a religious-based ban on all pornography and so on and so forth.
None of these issues was a matter of debate before they emerged as such, but now that they are, they are heavily religious-based and they aspire to incorporation of religious beliefs in the law. Which is not what a secular democracy, which the US is, is based on.
When slavery was ended, the state was ending a wrongful state of rights being denied to African Americans – not imbuing previously right-less citizens with new rights. The slaves had already had the rights – we were just unconscionably trampling them.
Don’t see how this in any way relates to abortion.
Yes, I agree with that. I wasn’t intending to say that fetuses are developed human beings, just that they’re human as in not-zebras.
A single hair from my head is also human. A single human epithelial cell is also human. A single human non-fertilised egg is human. A single human sperm is human. A zygote and an undeveloped foetus of a human are also, umm, human. But that doesn’t mean they are persons. They certainly aren’t under any current legal system.
On a personal note, I absolutely reject the notion that rights are a grant from the government. That notion carries with it implicitly the ability of the state to rescind rights. I do not believe states have that power.
Perhaps we’re coming from different planets here, not just different views and backgrounds. I didn’t say rights are a grant from a government. Legal systems and human rights and constitutional rights and internationally valid legal principles are not tied to a single government and they cannot be revoked unless by a revolution that changes the entire system of a country itself – which is exactly what religious fundamentalists, of all kinds and colours and of all nations, want to do. Take away the rights of people to have more choices than the one they want everyone to take.
That’s why the system that was developed precisely to avoid theocracy is the best guarantee for everyone.
You disagree with that? Sure?
Also, abolishing slavery was objectively a step forward; banning abortion after legalising it to recognise the rights of women and to reduce the atrocious effects of clandestine abortions, would be a step backwards.
Unless of course your personal projection of a soul/personhood on an undeveloped foetus is more important to you than the ethical, medical and legal definition of person (back to square one again) and you just don’t care about the rights of women and the consequences of clandestine abortions.
That’d be some twisted way of using abolition of slavery as a parallel…
Yeah, I think we’re coming from different planets. Not a whole lot of point in debating; we’re not going to convince or explain anything to one another. I believe your interpretation of American history, and of rights theory in general, is pretty off. You probably feel the same. ;)
Ok, fair enough, I appreciate it when someone acknowledges there’s no point in debating. Saves a lot of time :)
But just out curiosity, Robert, and without re-opening the debate which I’m perfectly happy to close, do you believe your own interpretation of American history and of the US legal framework is not only accurate but also shared by a majority of Americans? Because I hear differently, you know. And my sources on that are not just anti-religious evil commie French atheists, either :)
I think the substantial majority of Americans would come a lot closer to my view than to yours.
I think the substantial majority of Americans would come a lot closer to my view than to yours.
Ok then, if you say so, I believe you. I’m sure all other Americans who read this board will agree with you, too. I’m sure those pesky pedants who still uphold the debatable opinion that the US is based on an entirely secular system of separation of church and state are only an insignificant minority, and are totally betraying the spirit of the Founders… yep…
~Thomas Jefferson.
~George Washington.
~John Adams
~James Madison
~Thomas Paine
So, if you add all those quotes of the founders of the nation, writers of the Declaration of Independence, framers of the Constitution, first presidents and legislators, if you read the actual _words_ of those documents and then….
read this article from the treaty of 1797 with Tripoli, read aloud and approved unanimously by the Senate and signed by our 2nd president and founding father, John Adams
I think it should be pretty clear that we are _not_ a Christian nation. Perhaps a majority of people have been and are Christian (of myriad sects and doctrines), but the founding documents, leaders and jurisprudence made it quite clear that the nation was to be founded on secular principles.
I admit, when your culture is saturated with a certain religious way of thinking, that way of thinking will of course find its way into laws and practices. This isn’t in doubt (at least to me). But the founders made it quite clear that they wanted this nation to be a secular nation, basing its laws on secular reasoning and democratic concensus, NOT a nation that based it laws on Christian or biblical principles or doctrine. We are not, and never have been a “Christian” nation.
Perhaps a majority of people have been and are Christian (of myriad sects and doctrines), but the founding documents, leaders and jurisprudence made it quite clear that the nation was to be founded on secular principles.
“Perhaps”?
Most of the provided quotes go wide of the mark. Yeah, Thomas Jefferson thought the mainline churches of his day had a lot of corrupt clergy. Proving what, exactly?
The Tripoli treaty simply expounds on the common-sense notion that – unlike some European monarchies – we don’t have a religious obligation to make war on Islam. Yeah, we’re not directly founded on the Christian religion in the sense of being a Christian state. Again, so what?
Here’s my list of block quotes.
It is certainly reasonable to argue that we ought to have been founded, and ought to have, a purely secular state. But it is not reasonable to believe that we were founded by men thinking in those terms. The founders sought independence from established churches and freedom of conscience – even the individual freedom to throw off religion altogether. They did not create a system that barred the spiritual from participation in the temporal. Most Americans that I have encountered – right and left, spiritual and not, acknowledge the religious origins of our nation.
Robert,
like with MN, i think we’ll just have to agree to disagree (to a point)…
Most Americans that I have encountered – right and left, spiritual and not, acknowledge the religious origins of our nation.
I believe you and I must walk and talk with a different group of Americans. Because most Americans I have encountered, right and left, spiritual and not, do not believe our nation has ‘religious origins’, quite the contrary. Most Americans I know believe we are and always have been a secular nation with secular origins. We must know different Americans.
I will agree to disagree on this point, where I will not agree to disagree is when any individual, group or party attempts to overtly base our laws on their ‘Christian’ principles. I am a believing Christian, but the _last_ thing I want is our nation to base its laws on anyone’s interpretation of ‘Christian’ principles. Usually those who do have a very different interpretation of ‘Christian’ principles than I do. And this topic of abortion (and same-sex marriage, and etc) is a perfect example of why not. Their ‘Christian’ principles are different than my ‘Christian” prinicples.
_Personally_ my Christian faith does indeed inform my politics, I see nothing wrong with that (or to base ones politics on any faith), but I believe as US citizens we need to base our laws on secular reasoning and convince our fellow citizens of our views based on reason, not our faith, anyone’s faith. 76.5% of Americans consider themselves “Christian”, 23.5% do not (Jewish, Islam, Wiccan, agnostics, atheists, non-religious etc). Even of those 77% there are Catholics, liberal mainstream Protestants, Mormons, Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, Unitarians, etc. They often disagree on if each other is “Christian” much less on what “Christian prinicples” are. What “Christian principles” do you believe our nation should base our laws on? Catholic? Fundamentalist? Unitarian? Mormon? UCC? I find my self agreeing more with members of Reform Judaism on the larger principles on how this nation should be governed than my supposedly ‘fellow’ Christians of fundamentalist and Evangelical bents.
I do not believe our nation is a “Christian” nation, nor was it founded as such. And I surely do not want it to be now or in the future.
I see nothing wrong with that (or to base ones politics on any faith), but I believe as US citizens we need to base our laws on secular reasoning and convince our fellow citizens of our views based on reason, not our faith, anyone’s faith
I guess this confuses me. How you can base your politics on your faith, but then not use that faith as a guide in the formulation of law?
This is very far from my area of expertise, but it’s my understanding that this is something over which scholars of early America can come to blows, simply because there’s a lot of evidence for both positions. Part of it is that the various “founding fathers” had different ideas about religion and the state. Part of it is that they occasionally contradicted themselves. Although they would have denied it, they were politicians, and they occasionally said what they needed to in order to get elected.
But the way I see it, the men who drafted the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence had ample opportunity to assert that this was a Christian nation. They knew those documents had particular meaning, in a way that their letters and speeches and private utterances didn’t. And there, where it counted, where they were writing for posterity, they chose not to use the words “Christ” or “Christian.” Why do you think they did that? Was it an oversight?
this is something over which scholars of early America can come to blows
I would pay money to see that. (Heck, who wouldn’t?)
And there, where it counted, where they were writing for posterity, they chose not to use the words “Christ”? or “Christian.”? Why do you think they did that?
My understanding is that they chose deistic language (“nature’s God”, “Creator”, “appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world”, ” the protection of Divine Providence”) rather than denominationally specific language, both because not every founder was a Christian, and because a lot of Christian sects then (and now) don’t believe in throwing “Christ” around lightly. “Divine Providence” makes the intent obvious without offending strict sectarians or Jews.
Actually, the reason they can come to blows is because, like all historians, they wish to impose their own opinions and principles to historical figures.
No one, not a single person, who wants the US to be ruled by a council of christian religious elders (or what have you) will ever “admit” that the US was founded on the principles of the Enlightenment, most notably secularism.
No one who thinks Pat Robertson should shut his gob and never open it again will “admit” that it was founded by a bunch of christians, with christian values, who worshipped jesus.
Needless to say, I’m in the “they’re from the Enlightenment. they’re obviously secular, dumbass.” camp.
All of American history has been retconned so many times, you’re lucky to find anything honest in any textbook you read.
As long as Abolitionism has come up, take some time to look up John Brown.
First, he was just a radical abolitionist. then, because blacks were “obviously” inferior, he was retconned into being insane, until around the time of the 1960s, when blacks were recognised as equal again, and since then, he’s slowly regained his sanity, although he’s still often portrayed as unbalanced.
Same for abortion. It was legal in the days of Thomas Jefferson. it and other birth control means were made illegal in the early 1900s by klan sympathizers who felt that catholics, Slavs, and other undesireables were outpacing good white people in reproduction because the desireables had an idea of family planning.
“I would pay money to see that. (Heck, who wouldn’t?)”
I don’t think there was any actual physical violence, but there was a very heated conference about this at the Library of Congress maybe 8 or 9 years ago. Actually, it sort of disproves Kissinger’s dictum about academic politics being so nasty because the stakes are so low. The stakes in that debate are reasonably high.
There weren’t enough Jews in the early Republic for anyone to have to pay attention to them. There wouldn’t have been serious political consequences to just ignoring them. So if the founders decided to defer to their sensibilities, that was a conscious choice, a conscious gesture towards inclusion. And that suggests that they decided not to assert that the U.S. was a Christian nation, out of respect for minority faiths. The suggestion that Christians wouldn’t want the word “Christian” used in public documents is more interesting. I’m not sure which sects those would be, though. Which religious groups are you thinking of?
Is there any real proof Madison said this? I had thought that the quote could not be confirmed.
There weren’t enough Jews in the early Republic for anyone to have to pay attention to them. There wouldn’t have been serious political consequences to just ignoring them.
I see your point, but tipping one’s hat to the Jews as an act of political inclusion may not be the only motivation for thinking of them. Presumably the Founding Fathers were well aware of the strife that domininated Europe over religious fighting included ugly violence towards Jews. Regardless of their attitudes towards non-Christian religions, it’s still inaccurate to say that religious freedom meant freedom to choose which “denomination”. Anyone who says this is being disingenous or ignorant. Christians then didn’t see themselves as simply a bunch of denominations living next to each other in harmony. I mean, many Protestants in this country have only barely come around to admitting that Catholics are Christian at all. And let’s not forget the amount of hostility aimed at Quakers. If Americans were more peaceable than Europeans about their differences in belief about what counts as “Christian”, it’s probably just because they had a little more elbow room.
I agree, this would be a terrific idea. But I don’t know how to program in php, so I don’t know how to do this. (I didn’t program the spamblocker myself, I just swiped it from someone else).
Sorry, I don’t have quotes to back this up. But I was told that the concept of “natural rights” was introduced by medieval Christian theologians, and the basis of the concept was that souls were God’s, and no one could be permitted to interfere with God’s rights to souls.
I remember hearing, much later, that there was a similar concept among medieval Islamic theologians.
I’d imagine that the “founding fathers” wanted to be independent of any specific organized religion, but still believed that the existence of a (presumably Christian) omnipotent being was too obvious to be doubted. The desire to be independent from any particular organized religion came from obvious reasons: the many intensely different Christian sects in North America, and the origins of the founding of the colonies as a spin-off of the English Civil War.
As far as issues of social justice go, I don’t believe in “rights” as absolutes, and I don’t give a damn what the “founding fathers” wanted when I consider what we should do now.
I don’t think I really agree with that, Amanda. It’s true that there’s a long history of inter-Christian religious animosity in America. But it’s also true that the Early Republic marked a relative low-period in that. Before the Revolution, many colonies, including those in which most Catholics lived, had explicit anti-Catholic legislation on the books. Catholics couldn’t vote or even worship openly. This mirrored the situation in Britain, where Catholics didn’t achieve full political rights until 1829. After the Revolution, the Constitution forbade the Federal government from passing anti-Catholic legislation, and the new states made a conscious choice to take that legislation off the books. It wasn’t a mistake or an oversight: the laws had been there, and they decided to get rid of them. And it’s not like Catholics were living off in Catholic enclaves. It wasn’t a matter of elbow room: it reflected beliefs about religion and citizenship. Most Catholics supported the Revolution, and most Americans believed they had put to rest concerns about Catholic loyalty and fitness for citizenship. Those concerns resurfaced again around 1830, but until then, Catholics enjoyed relatively uncontroversial political rights.
(I don’t know nearly as much about this, but my understanding is that Quakers in some ways faced a bigger problem, because they were pacifists, and most people believed that willingness to defend the polity was a prerequisite of citizenship. That was part of the reason that women couldn’t be full citizens. Quakers had to struggle to show that there were other important modes of “defense.” There’s an argument that Quaker anti-slavery can be chalked up to an attempt to show that they were moral defenders of the nation and therefore worthy of citizenship. I don’t think I really buy that, though.)
What is true is that several states initially required every citizen to pay taxes to support a state church. That was perfectly constitutional. The bill of rights didn’t restrict the states until the 14th amendment was passed. It only said what the Federal government could do.
I only skimmed the last few posts, so forgive me if I’m covering old ground.
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The abortion issue isn’t about the fetus. It’s about a woman’s rights to self-determination.
So TAKE THE FOCUS OFF THE FETUS.
We live in a secular society because Americans as a people want to be free to believe as they choose. To prevent state control of religion as well as religious control of the state, we have agreed to start from the premise that each human is created equal. From that, we determine that each of us be treated equally. The founding fathers were aware and hopeful that as society progressed and education improved, that these rights would be rightfully extended to all races and to women as well. They agreed to disagree on these points at the beginning so they could move forward. Better to begin imperfectly than not at all.
Let’s look at the other end of the life chain. When is it generally accepted that a person can be taken off of life support? When the brain no longer functions, despite of continuing biological processes. From this, I would say that a fetus that doesn’t have a fully developed brain – which occurs around 4.5 to five months – is a body without consciousness as we know it. Since most abortions are performed well before that point, the fetus is humanoid in form but not functionally human as we know it. Abortions typically only occur after the 12th week if there is a medical concern. It is the woman’s right to Live, to have Liberty, to pursue happiness, so she decides whether to risk her life to carry a birth to term, whether to carry a defective fetus to term, etc.
It should all come down to the will of the mother. If you put the emphasis on her rights, you see that enforced pregnancy is enslaving a woman who should have free will; in cases where, for example, a woman is murdered and a fetus dies as a result, that is a double murder not because the fetus had rights, but because the mother’s INTENT was to carry the child to term.
Women are people. We have rights to self-determination. It’s that simple. No group of mostly rich, old, white men has any business telling young women what to do with their bodies. We are not chattel, owned by fathers, spouses or government. My uterus, my choice; No uterus = No opinion.
Tactically, I think Morgaine’s quite right that we need to take the focus off the fetus and put it on women’s freedom. It’s women’s freedom we want, right? We should be clear about what we’re fighting *for*, and not let the anti-abortion folks take the initiative away from us.
Is there any real proof Madison said this? I had thought that the quote could not be confirmed.
I hadn’t heard it was in dispute, but it does seem to be. The searches I did seem to indicate that there is considerable contention over it, with one camp saying it’s unfounded and inconsistent with Madison’s other writings, and the other camp admitting it’s unfounded but saying that it is consistent with his other writings. I’ll take it out of circulation in my own quote index.
But the founders made it quite clear that they wanted this nation to be a secular nation, basing its laws on secular reasoning and democratic concensus, NOT a nation that based it laws on Christian or biblical principles or doctrine. We are not, and never have been a “Christian”? nation.
trey, thanks, exactly my point.
Robert, the quotes, and actual documents, only “prove” what trey above says, that the US is as secular a system as any. Secular does not mean anti-religion. Being against the tyranny of a church and the interference of religion into government doesn’t mean being anti-religion either. The founders could be simultaneously religions, Christian or deists or whatever, and against the interference of religion into government, that’s why they specifically devised a secular system.
Secular foundations and Christian majority culture are not in contradiction. In the US there is also the largest number of Jews outside Israel. A large number of Muslims. Buddhists. Hindus.
The foundations remain secular, no matter how much of a dominant the Christian majority can have in political and cultural matters. The foundations will change only when the legal system is changed.
This is not a controversial point at all, it’s pretty self-evident for both right and left wing and all things in between, it’s just refuted, dishonestly and/or ignorantly and/or by ignoring the actual principle of separation between church/state which is what makes a system secular, by people who do want the law to reflect their religion and theirs only.
No one is challenging the right to bring religious views into public debate; but the establishment of religious views as foundation for the law was expressly what the founders wanted to avoid, and that principle is inscribed into your founding documents. That is fact. The difference between the US and Iran is not just the overall political structure, it’s that difference between secular democracy and theocracy.
By the way, Britain is a lot more secular in culture and political debate than the US, even though it has an official church and government funding of faith schools. Even France funds faith schools, but it doesn’t have an official church. But all these countries – US, France, Britain – do share a secular system because they do not allow laws and the legal system itself to be based on any religion.
This is very basic stuff, it really shouldn’t even need pointing out.
PS – Robert The founders sought independence from established churches and freedom of conscience – even the individual freedom to throw off religion altogether. They did not create a system that barred the spiritual from participation in the temporal.
You’re absolutely right, but, again, you’re confusing “secular” with “removing religion altogether from any public sphere”. It’s not what it means at all. Check the actual definition of secular, not its misuse and demonisation.
The BBC each Sunday broadcasts religious programmes like a church service and “Songs of praise”, with public money, but the UK still has a secular system because that separation of church/state in the legal system means that laws are not established on the basis of one religion. You can even have an official church, you can even have a part of public money devoted to supporting religious schools if the wider community thinks they do provide a useful service; these are relatively minor points of contention, not everyone agrees public money should be used that way, even though most accept it.
But demanding to inscribe religious views right into the law, like, wanting to ban abortion and the morning-after pill exclusively because your religion (not others!) believes the foetus has a soul even when it still doesn’t have a brain and is not developed and not viable and not recognised as a legal person, that’s not a minor point of contention, that’s slipping into an entirely different legal system. That’s the point. Not how much presence religion – and which religion – itself has in the cultural or political sphere. But having it as the basis for the law.
You can very well maintain that America had religious origins, in cultural and philosophical and historical terms, religion sure played a big part; it still does not have religious foundations in terms of legal and political system. It has secular foundations. Like France, like Britain, and unlike Iran or Saudi Arabia. Simple as that. AS such, its legal decisions are and must remain motivated on secular principles, not exclusively religious ones. Else, you need to change the entire system.
Agree totally with karpad, trey, sally, and especially Morgaine:
If you put the emphasis on her rights, you see that enforced pregnancy is enslaving a woman who should have free will; in cases where, for example, a woman is murdered and a fetus dies as a result, that is a double murder not because the fetus had rights, but because the mother’s INTENT was to carry the child to term.
Exactly, that’s also why the debate on the soul/person status of the undeveloped foetus is a derailment, it’s like, looky here, we have something that may develop into a person if we use the person inside whom it’s going to develop as a mere container without choices – so don’t look at that person fully developed and entitled to personhood and choices, no, let’s just argue endlessly about the potential personhood of a non-yet person.
Let’s also ignore other religions and religious denominations that say differently, as well as people who don’t let religion inform their beliefs, let’s just impose our own arbitary religious views on everyone, and demand them inscribed in law, and pretend that’s not a theocratic approach.
My uterus, my choice; No uterus = No opinion.
Brutally honestly put, yes, absolutely. That’s what it comes down to. That’s exactly what legal anti-abortionists don’t want to deal with. It’s the kind of thing they recoil in horror from, like vampires from garlic,aaah, that’s insensitive – all the while ignoring their disregard for women. Or even actual victims of genocide and murder. Or, children themselves. No one who wants to force women to go through unwanted pregnancies can have that much concern for the actual future person anyway. No, they just like that undeveloped unconscious potentiality, the closest to absolute sin-free innocence you can get this side of total non-existence. Very creepy if you think about it.
You can’t base legislation on the soul – there is no way to prove it exists. It is conjecture, not fact.
Also, Robert, the entire point of the Bill of Rights is to protect the rights of the minority from the tyranny of the majority. Every individual has certain rights regardless of how many others agree with her, or whether any do at all.
Banning abortion does not reduce the frequency of abortion. It simply reduces the rates of women’s survival of abortions.
Safe, legal, and rare, that’s what I say.
The BBC each Sunday broadcasts religious programmes like a church service and “Songs of praise”, with public money, but the UK still has a secular system because that separation of church/state in the legal system means that laws are not established on the basis of one religion.
I wonder if those who do not follow the enshrined State religion feel likewise, or think it a ‘minor point of contention’ if you can get the government to pay for your kid’s Anglican schooling, but if you’re a Muslim fuhgeddaboutdit.
It is *not* secular when your government bankrolls a church. Period.
mythago – actually there are state-funded Muslim schools in the UK too, as well as other religions, I think. Faith schools get public funding regardless of the religion in question, that I’m sure of. Not any faith school gets funding, of course, there are some requirements (like in France, maybe less strict, I don’t know), but they definitely don’t have to be Anglican. Whereas yeah, you still don’t get the Catholic or Jewish or Muslim or Hindu equivalent of Songs of Praise on the BBC, but I don’t think anyone is clamouring for that, either. The way different religions and different communities get represented is not limited to that hour a week.
Anyway, my defining the acknowledgement of an official church and the funding of faith schools a “minor point of contention” was not in the absolute, and not a personal judgement, but relative to the far bigger and fundamental “contention” betwen secular vs. religious-based law.
Funding faith schools does not in itself detract from the fact the legal system is secular. As in France.
By the way, in principle I do in fact disagree with any faith schools being funded with public money, but I can accept the compromise as long as there are precise requirements for those schools to comply with national curricula so that they indeed provide some public service. In any case, this does in no way change the fact that laws are established on secular, not religious, grounds. That is what defines a secular system per se.
Whereas yeah, you still don’t get the Catholic or Jewish or Muslim or Hindu equivalent of Songs of Praise on the BBC, but I don’t think anyone is clamouring for that, either.
Oh, well, that’s all right then. As long as nobody actually *complains*, it’s perfectly OK for the state to fund and favor a particular religion and then pretend to be secular.
Are you quite sure that *all* faith schools receive funding? If the Falun Gong started an elementary school, or the Order of the Golden Dawn wanted a ladies’ academy, they’d get just as much funding as the nice Anglican school down the road?
It’s much easier to convince onself that government favoritism is no big deal and is, well, mostly just secular when you’re in the majority.
Actually, while the BBC is state funded, it isn’t actually supposed to be affiliated with the state per se (TV Licenses go partly towards the upkeep of the beeb and are manditory for anyone who owns a TV), Songs of praise fills an almost out of date niche in programming that I have never heard any muslim or person of another religion (even non-anglican christians), that I’ve known, say they want a similar program to represent their demographic (I’m also reasonably sure that if enough of any other religion asked for one they might get a similar show, The BBC does have to take into consideration viewer figures after all, if it seemed worthwhile they would do it), most people actually find the show a teensy bit tacky and dated (It’s a show for old ladies and their sunday knitting basically, the old men drink heavily and fall asleep instead, possibly vicer versa).
songs of praise isn’t some evangelical fire and brimstone lecture against the sins of being a non-anglican you see, it’s just a normal country church service that is televised, and if it was deemed offensive to minority religions the BBC bosses would get punished severly by the government as an example, which is the system of feedback that keeps it from being abused by BNP-tastic agitators fucking the whole thing up.
I know, in theory, it breaks any illusion of Britain being a secular state, but it’s a weird conjunction of many centuries of religious atrocities and outrages (the “irish trouble”, as they’re called, were exacerbated hugely by anti-catholic prejudices within the british run irish government during the 20th century) which mean that, in practice, Songs of Praise, as it currently exists, doesn’t imply or condone a state sponsored religion of any kind, and keeps the state secular (scotland and Northern Ireland are both “catholic” in principle at least, with strong aglican undertones, which also figures into it). Britain is also much more of a multicultural melting pot than america is and the fact that britain is a gestalt entity of several different other national identities (not to mention the english non-identity) means that any state sponsored religion would piss off a major portion of the electorate and, without any major BNP type upsurge in several major cities, wouldn’t gain anyone enough political capital to compensate atm.
Sorry for keeping the thread off topic, just thought I would try to clear some things up, please resume normal broadcasting when y’all feel like it.
Oh, well, that’s all right then. As long as nobody actually *complains*, it’s perfectly OK for the state to fund and favor a particular religion and then pretend to be secular.
I find myself in agreement with Mythago. It is absurd to describe Britain (or most any European country, as far as I know) as a purely secular state. They all give their churches huge sums (again, as far as I know).
That the person holding up a secular state as the exemplar waves established-church Britain at defunding-divinity-students-America seems…odd.
mythago – Oh, well, that’s all right then. As long as nobody actually *complains*, it’s perfectly OK for the state to fund and favor a particular religion and then pretend to be secular.
Now where did you extract that kind of nonsense statement or implication from? Not my posts, for sure.
I never said anything of the sort. I was explaining how even public funding for religious schools, of all religions, does not detract from the secular basis of the *law*, thus, of the entire system.
I was not analysing the fairness of unfairness of funding religious groups in the first place, that is beside the point because it does not negate the *secular* as opposed to *theocratic* nature of a legal system and a system of government. Theocratic dictatorship vs. secular democracy. Ok?
My “I doubt anyone is clamouring for that” was actually said jokingly because I’m familiar with what kind of programme “Songs of praise” is… nevermind.
Nothing like what you read into it was implied.
Seriously.
And by the way, I have lived in Britain, but I was certainly not in any “majority” there, what with not being Anglican, not being British, and not being white. So you might as well stop assuming so much and reading so many biases and defenses of whatever inequalities into simple statements of fact about the difference between giving money to schools of various faiths, and having a non-secular basis for the law.
It is absurd to describe Britain (or most any European country, as far as I know) as a purely secular state. They all give their churches huge sums (again, as far as I know).
What piffle. Robert, the point in bringing up Britain as well as France was to give an example of what counts in terms of having a *secular legal system* and *secular form of government* as opposed to based on religious principles ie. * theocratic*.
Funding faith schools, of all religion, because so far it’s been largely accepted they do a public service, and they are subjected to public requirements and scrutiny, is a matter of contention and public debate, but is a minor one compared to *secular* vs. *religious* basis for *legislation*, because if a majority of people disagrees with having faith schools, then they can withdraw their support from them and vote to stop funding them; if a majority of people were ever to want religion at the basis of the legal system, then they would have to turn Britain into Iran, which I suppose you too know would be a fairly more complicated process.
But feel free to derail the discussion even further on how unfair it is to fund faith schools and how very non-secular France or Britain are – sorry, weren’t you the one bothered by the US being referred to as secular? now you just want a contest in who’s more secular, America or Europe? Well, have this discussion with a French person, let’s see how far you get…
And the point for those who missed it was that demanding to introduce the concept of “soul” into law is not possible in a secular legal system which is defined as based on non-religious principles.
First mention of Britain and its official church was above in this passage:
No one is challenging the right to bring religious views into public debate; but the establishment of religious views as foundation for the law was expressly what the founders wanted to avoid, and that principle is inscribed into your founding documents. That is fact. The difference between the US and Iran is not just the overall political structure, it’s that difference between secular democracy and theocracy.
By the way, Britain is a lot more secular in culture and political debate than the US, even though it has an official church and government funding of faith schools. Even France funds faith schools, but it doesn’t have an official church. But all these countries – US, France, Britain – do share a secular system because they do not allow laws and the legal system itself to be based on any religion.
In other words (….), in the US religion dominates the public discourse and culture to a much bigger extent than any other country *with a secular system* as defined above (religion not the basis for legislation; system developed post-enlightenment, in opposition to tyranny of one church power dictating laws, ie. theocratic system). The US Christian right and their exclusively religious-based arguments for a legal ban on abortion being one example of that influence in public debate, and the relevant one here. The Republicans taking massive funds from the same Christian right and assorted fundamentalists such as the Rev. Moon and in turn massively funding a plethora of think-tanks with ultra-conservative and religious right views, is another example of that.
Still a secular system, less secular public debate and culture.
If that’s a controversial and contentious statement, then I don’t know what kind of reality we are talking about.
but is a minor one compared to *secular* vs. *religious* basis for *legislation*
OK, let’s stipulate the distinction you’re drawing here.
For many (and recent) years, the UK had strong laws against homosexual sodomy. (Not sure if they still do; I think they’ve taken them off the books.) Oscar Wilde, famously, was imprisoned for it.
What was the secular basis for those laws?
“Oh, well, that’s all right then. As long as nobody actually *complains*, it’s perfectly OK for the state to fund and favor a particular religion and then pretend to be secular.”
Jeez, I’m in a strange position today: first coming off like I was defending the aristos (eurgh), and now going to bat for the BBC!
I just want to point out that Songs of Praise is only *one* programme the Beeb puts out that could be contstrued as “religious” in tone. Just off the top of my head, there’s also Heaven & Earth, and another one whose name I forget where celebs talk about music that’s affected them spiritually. Neither of these is centred on the Church of England or even Christianity….or for that matter “religion” as such: atheist viewpoints are also welcome.
Whether my licence money should go towards “religious” programming at all may be an issue, but to be fair, I’ve seen a lot on the BBC about all sorts of creeds, or lack thereof. In fact, am I remembering wrong or didn’t they just do a whole series on atheism?
As to what religious schools get funding, I have to confess I don’t know. I’m sure there are lines drawn as to which religions are “appropriate”, which okay does blow (I doubt if the Wiccans wanted to set up a school, they’d get any cash), but AFAIK money isn’t restricted to only Christians. And hell, I actually would prefer it if NO religious schools got public funding.
Robert, you’re pulling the same anachronism with anti-sodomy laws as with slavery.
Secular systems evolved in history, but they did not evolve by *renouncing* their secular foundations or *compromising* them; they developed into *modern* secular systems precisely by doing the opposite.
For many (and recent) years, the UK had strong laws against homosexual sodomy. (Not sure if they still do; I think they’ve taken them off the books.) Oscar Wilde, famously, was imprisoned for it.
Got some old history there. Homosexual acts were decriminialized in Britain with the Sexual Offenses Act of 1967. So, approximately, 35 years before the US finally got rid of all sodomy laws. Not sure that is a good illustration of a ‘secular’ nation vs. non-secular nation… since Britain wins hands down there, striking down a ‘religiously’ based (which I don’t think it was, no more or less than slavery and Jim Crow laws were) law a generation before the US.
In fact, am I remembering wrong or didn’t they just do a whole series on atheism?
Yes, on BBC4, they did a great series a while ago, “The Atheism Tapes“.
Here’s the BBC religion page with links to all recent religious programmes on the BBC. Never even noticed that many.