Pasadena City College’s social sciences division has two blogging professors: I’m one, and my father’s former student, philosopher Ed Feser, is the other. Ed and I like each other a great deal, and each refers to his counterpart as “a delightful person with appalling views.” We share a department, a common commitment to the college, and a common faith in Christ. And we both do love to scribble!
Ed is particularly appalling here, where his post on George Tiller (written from Ed’s very conservative perspective) is diametrically opposed to my own. (I compare George Tiller to Dietrich Bonhoeffer; Ed compares the assassinated physician to Jeffrey Dahmer.)
Warning: Ed’s post may be triggering — or simply infuriating — for some. But he’s got tenure, as do I, and he can handle a bit of heat for his views if you want to see if you can get through his moderation queue. Part of being in an academic department, after all, is finding a way to be personally amiable and ideologically combative. And sending readers his way is surely within the bounds.
By the way, Ed’s book, The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism has been well-received on the right, and is now winning widespread plaudits from those who find its reactionary views to be congenial. It’s certainly spirited and enjoyable to read, albeit jaw-droppingly wrong. And I’m not even an atheist.
It must be nice to have so much privilege that you can find a person with ‘appalling views’ to be ‘delightful’ – after all, their appalling views don’t impact your life in the slightest.
Being a pro-life conservative is not the least “appalling.” It’s rather fun afflicting flabby liberal orthodoxy.
Mythago,
Hmm. So I suppose that in real life I should utterly shun the company of people like Hugo? Because I certainly find his views on things like feminism, abortion rights, war, capital and corporal punishment, hell, the atonement, animal rights, older men/younger women, and just about every other issue on which he expresses an opinion, to be utterly appalling, and deeply contrary to my Christian faith.
John, “Flabby” is just the word.
Good point, Hector. I suppose the majority of my close friends, who are mostly Socialists or Green voters of the liberal persuasion, ought also to shun my company, and vice versa.
….not to mention his views on Lent, fasting, disgust, mortification of the body, Marcionism, voluntary childlessness, divorce…am I missing any others?
In real life, of course, if I shunned all people with appalling views I’d have a very small social circles. Most Americans have appalling views on one topic or another: simply put, we live in an appalling society, appalling through its entire history, founded on appalling ideals, and so most people here are in some way ideologically corrupted by that.
Hector, I didn’t realize that one’s only options socially are “find their company delightful” or “shun them”.
I also didn’t realize that all disagreements mean the other person has “appalling” views.
You learn something new every day on the Internets!
Of course, mythago! I’m always outraged and appaled when people have different opinions. Just the other day a friend of mine were arguing over earned-income tax credits – that itself was bad enough – but then he really got my blood boiling when he said that state governors shouldn’t have line item-veto powers! Shocking!
/sorry, couldn’t help the snark.
“It must be nice to have so much privilege that you can find a person with ‘appalling views’ to be ‘delightful’ – after all, their appalling views don’t impact your life in the slightest.”
I’m not the only one who found that bit irritating and privileged. It’s one thing to be civil with people who disagree with you about such sensitive matters, it’s another thing to call them delightful. It’s pretty easy to call a person delightful when they aren’t trying to take away your rights – or accusing you of supporting murder when all you support is women’s right to autonomy over our own bodies and women’s right to safe, legal health care.
It’s a tough thought for me about interacting with people with outrageous views (as opposed to the simple differences in opinion I was poking fun at earlier). There was an acquaintance of mine with whom I’ve had some common interests, so in person we were generally able to be cordial. When I became his facebook friend, I became annoyed by his very, very extreme (and ill informed) comments; as a result, even though we never fight about these matters in public when we meet, I still have trouble comfortably interacting with him beyond small talk.
Are there other anecdotes that people have had that are similar?
Mythago,
Well, no, not all disagreements render a person appalling. Hugo’s views on the above topics are, however, appalling. To support abortion rights, not in extreme cases but as a general rule, and to defend it on grounds of deeply unchristian concepts like ‘autonomy’ and ‘self-ownership’ and then to call oneself a Christian- well, ‘appalling’ is an understatement. I could say much worse.
I know plenty of people who support abortion rights, including my family members, and while they’re of course deeply wrong they at least have the good taste not to call themselves Christians.
It wasn’t just abortion though. You seriously think that someone who doesn’t share your views on fasting is “appaling”. I mean, my earlier comment about the outrage of someone not supporting earned income tax credits was a sarcastic farce, but even that is less trivial than some of the issues you get outraged about. Pardon me for laughing, but this very much reminds me of the scene in Life of Brian when there are several Jewish separatist groups (the People’s Front of Judea, the Judean People’s Front, and the ‘Popular Front of Judea’) that basically hate each other for trivial reasons.
Thanks for pointing this out Hugo. Since I’ve got children in college I take some comfort that there are still some college Humanities professors who’ve maintained their ability to reason amidst the Babel of MLA jargon.
My only point of disagreement with Ed is his belief that the state had the right to kill Dahlmer. But that is just a simple disagreement with a commonly held mainstream view – I don’t find his views appalling in any sense.
Given his perspective – one that sees killing, except lawful state executions as evil, and your view that the practice of systematic and scientific killing, when done to serve to the interests of some members of a favored group – is a noble, and even saintly, endeavor – it is the latter that appalls me.
You should have a trigger warning on your original piece, Hugo. A trigger warning for Christians like me, because when I read it I felt afraid. Frightened, because I realize that despite all my efforts to raise my children as Christians, they’re now exposed to articulate, hip, and trendy college professors who adopt Christian language to celebrate a lifetime of hands-on killing as a Christian ideal.
As Orwell said: There are some things that are just so plainly and obviously wrong that it takes an intellectual to believe them.
Jaxebad,
Let me be more clear. It isn’t the view ‘Fasting is bad’ that I am so offended by, it’s the view ‘Fasting is unimportant to the Christian Life’. I mean, you can be an atheist materialist, or a neopagan, or an African animist, who thinks Christianity is nonsense, and so is fasting. While I might not agree with that view, it’s consistent and logical on its own terms, and deserves respect. However, to say that ‘Fasting is unimportant to the Christian life’ is quite a different thing, and a worse one. For it doesn’t deny the Christian faith, rather it maims, contaminates and deforms it.
No, I won’t read it: why should I? If you, Mr. Schwyzer, have in my opinion erred greatly by giving this kind of guff any publicity at all, why should I share in your error? I’m capable of making mistakes enough on my own. You want to compare Dr. Tiller to Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Go ahead: if I object it’ll be primarily on the grounds of taste. But any comparison of Dr. Tiller to Jeffrey Dahmer can only be made (whether the proposer of the comparison wishes to admit this to himself or to others or not) with the intention of exculpating Dahmer and thus of invalidating the secular, consensual morality out of which develop the only kind of ethics any society has ever proven able to put to actual use. (Societies may from time to time call God to be their witness, their enforcer, their inspiration, etc., but when the chips are down, and the chips are down all the time, they depend on military power, the banks, and the police; on earthly institutions, IOW.)
That’s not the same game and it’s not being played on the same field. I refuse to participate in it even from a distance.
I went over there expecting some sort of intelligible blog regarding abortion, but….wow. I can’t even . . . like comprehend the idiocy of it.
That there are people like that in the world truly terrifies me.
Hector, I’m not sure an unrepentant fornicator has any business going around and deciding who is or isn’t Christian. Mote in your own eye and all that.
That aside, you’ve never called Hugo “delightful,” to my recollection, so I don’t see the problem. What Hugo is doing is enjoying the company of somebody who has “appalling” views because he has the luxury of doing so. None of those “appalling” views are directed at Hugo, or really affect his life in any way; they’re academic. If Hugo had a colleague who thought blacks were the descendants of Ham and that interracial children were an abomination, or who thought the natural purpose of animals was to suffer and die to give us fur, I doubt Hugo would be chattering about what a “delightful” person his colleague was.
I know how you feel about all Western culture after the 16th century, but I can’t help thinking of the song “Your Racist Friend” here. (Not because I think Ed Fesen is racist; I have no idea about is views on the subject.)
but then he really got my blood boiling when he said that state governors shouldn’t have line item-veto powers!
God. I hope you have cut this terrible person out of your life. 😉
Mythago,
Ah, the old ‘He who says A must soon say B’ Stalinist tactic. Sorry, it won’t work then and it won’t work now. Parenthetically, I differ from orthodox Christianity in substantially more important subjects than the issue of whether premarital sex is ever OK, such as on the origin of evil. You’d have done better to charge me with neo-Manichaean views about the devil. But sorry, neither of those charges will wash. I’m orthodox in some regards and heterodox in others, and I’ve arrived at those conclusions based on my reflections on scripture, tradition, and natural reason. (Unlike Hugo, I don’t consider feminist dogma to be a source of truth equal to these.) Now, you and Hugo may choose to claim that you have reflected on the same sources of truth and arrived at quite opposite conclusions- say, that Christ is A-OK with abortion. And I say, well, OK, you’re wrong, and I will endeavor to persuade you why, on the basis of natural law. It won’t be hard. Do you actually care to have that discussion, or would you prefer insisting that you have a right to abortion, damn anyone who tells you otherwise?
The idea that scripture and tradition must be adhered to in every particular or else junked entirely is, to put it charitably, silly, and reminds me of nothing more than the New Atheist yahoos.
As for the yahoo above who mentioned ‘secular, consensual’ ethics, let’s get one thing straight. Morality can never be decided by consensus (i.e. democracy, elections, mob rule, or whatever you want to call it).
By the way, Mythago, your implication of racism to Ed Feser, followed by a retraction is shameful. How’s this: “Listening to Mythago reminds me of the conversation I had once with an Eskimo who clubs baby seals for a living. Of course, I have no idea if Mythago clubs baby seals in her spare time. Just saying.”
Hector; STF, tens of millions of American Christians are pro-choice. Hugo’s not particularly unique in this regard. You can’t wish or define those people away.
I compare George Tiller to Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Wasn’t Bonhoeffer the dude who ultimately found the German government’s systematic killing of Jews so appalling that he entered into a conspiracy to kill Hitler?
I must admit, having a trigger warning on your referral to Dr. Feser’s site, and none on your original post on the saintliness of Dr. Tiller does strike me as a little inconsistent.
You certainly know which buttons to push, as of course Dr. Feser does.
I don’t feel the need to post “trigger warnings” on my posts, in general, unless I’m going to provide a link to a potentially unsafe site. Most of my readers are repeat readers who know what they’re getting.
I note Ed has responded, and sent his folks here with a warning of his own. It all balances out.
DJW,
No, but I can pray for their change of heart. As I do. If Hugo can go from pro-choice to pro-life and back again, it’s possible for pretty much anyone.
Well, John, we can all work and pray for a world where every child conceived is wanted by all involved, every fetus develops normally, and every woman has the resources to provide for her chosen, wanted offspring. And then abortion will be almost unimaginable. Until that happy day…
And when the eschaton comes, the child will put his hand in the viper’s nest, I know, I know.
Until then, I’ll keep doing my bit for the culture of life–and praying for you into the bargain.
Well, I pray for you as well. We look through a glass darkly. (Though I suspect that there’s something particularly opaque in the lens through which my right-wing friends peer!)
Oh quite. Nothing comparable to the stygian blindness and flaming smugness on the Left, but opacity enough, to be sure.
All I can say is that if Pasadena City College is such a lousy excuse for a university that they’re willing to give someone as appallingly stupid as Feser tenure, I’m glad I didn’t go there. Anyone who thinks it’s “superstition” not to believe that there’s an invisible magic man in the sky ruling the universe is not only not playing with a full deck, he’s got a deck that’s all jokers.
Oh, Hector, spare me the passive-aggressive fake indignant routine. You’re pissy because I pointed out your hypocrisy; fine. Don’t express that by pretending I called Feser racist, when I did exactly the opposite.
“Your Racist Friend” is a song about somebody who makes excuses for a friend’s racism and can’t understand why somebody else (the singer) is angry and doesn’t want to be around them anymore. I mentioned Feder because I was, somewhat presciently as it turns out, concerned that somebody would believe I was implying Feser was racist.
DJW – I did not characterize pro-choice Christian Americans – indeed I made no mention of them at all. Yet for some odd reason you think I’m expressing some wish about them, or that I have some need to define them away.
You’re the one that generalized, by claiming Hugo is not an unusual pro-choice Christian American. Since the generalization is yours, I’ll leave it to you to sort out any resulting wishes that rise up within you.
I guess I don’t quite get what you’re trying to convey with your fear of “college professors who adopt Christian language to celebrate a lifetime of hands-on killing as a Christian ideal” (I assumed hands-on killing refers to abortion?) It would seem to suggest a major contradiction between supporting abortion (hands-on killing) rights and Christianity. At any rate, I apologize for jumping to conclusions and re-direct my comment to Hector only.
DJW,
Simply put, I don’t think Christian values are in any way compatible with abortion rights, except in extreme cases (i.e. when the baby will not survive long anyway, or when the mother’s life is threatened). The fact that some American Christians say otherwise is neither here nor there. Surely there has to be some meaningful definition of Christian such that not every yahoo who calls himself a Christian is considered to be one?
Well, lots of Christians have views that would exclude substantial number of Christians from being Christians. (The father of a friend of mine was raised in a small and almost entirely Lutheran town where he remembers being taught that while *this* pope might not be the anti-christ it was only a matter of time. I see no particular reason to follow those who would define Catholics out of Christianity than follow those who would define the pro-choice out of Christianity, no matter how sincerely felt the exclusion is in the hands of those who insist on it. Christianity simply is a big, complex, diverse thing, regardless of what you want it to be.
Actually, Christianity isn’t just “what you want it to be.” It’s defined by its Creed, its Sacraments, and the teaching of Jesus Christ passed down through the Apostles.
There may be other things which sound like, or borrow bits of Christianity, but if they don’t fall within the bounds of the Nicene Creed, then they ain’t the real deal. I don’t get to say what happens on the Day of Doom, but that is the official Statement of what Christian churches believe.
There are lots of mainline Protestant churches where I live where the members and leadership are overwhelmingly pro-choice. They think they’re Christians, they’re treated as part of the Christian community by major national organizations like the National Council of Churches, etc etc. That being pro-choice and being Christian can go together just fine isn’t some fanciful, wishful claim, it’s a straightforward observable empirical fact about the world. I’m not the one here who’s trying to make Christianity what I want it to be.
DJW,
I’m technically affiliated with one of those ‘mainline Protestant’ churches you may be talking about (Episcopal Church), although I consider myself neither Protestant nor pro-choice. (My faith is the highest of high-church Anglicanism, and I believe the things that high-church Anglicans believe: in transubstantiation, in the immaculate conception, perpetual virginity and corporeal assumption of the Mother of God, in the deuterocanonical books, and so forth). And let me say that your statement, while technically true, is highly misleading. The Episcopal Church as a body isn’t pro-choice: its leadership, which has been hijacked by apostate ‘bishops’ like the current contemptible Katherine Jefferts Schori, is pro-choice and has forced this down the throats of the laity. Not even today’s Episcopal Church at its worst actually considers abortionists heroes, BTW. And furthermore, the Episcopal Church had _no right_ to do what it did. It owes duties of obedience to its Mother Church of England, which is pro-life; it owed duties of obedience to the collective Anglican Communion, which is pro-life; and it owed duties of obedience to apostolic tradition, which is represented by its sister Catholic and Orthodox churches. The Episcopal Church must look to the Catholic and Orthodox churches for guidance, and should strive to be more like them, not other ‘mainline Protestant’ churches.
So again, the decision of the current bunch of renegade bishops that run the church is utterly invalid, and illicit, and should be given no credence at all. Jefferts-Schori is every bit as low as those Borgia Popes who poisoned their rivals. The collective voice of the Anglican Communion, and of the mother Church of England, is pro-life, and nothing you say can change that fact.
John: Actually, Christianity isn’t just “what you want it to be.†It’s defined by its Creed, its Sacraments, and the teaching of Jesus Christ passed down through the Apostles.
I agree with you on the neccessity of the teachings of Jesus, and mostly on the neccessity of the creed (except for that whole Filioque dispute with Western and Eastern Christianity; I happen to follow the western version of the creed, but I don’t think it’s essential). The Sacraments, though, there’s so little of a concensus on that I can’t find it to be an essential doctrine. Roman Catholics go with 7 of them. Lutherans, Presbyterians, and several other Protestants go with just baptism and communion. Some protestants keep those two but call them “ordinances” instead of sacraments. Quakers don’t even celebrate those two at all. Who is right?
Catholics.
There, that was easy!
Hector – I’m laughing at the idea that you’re the ultimate arbiter of how from from conventional Christian teachings one can vary and still be a Christian. Apparently deviating from explicit Scriptural prohibitions on sex outside of marriage still lets you in the club, but supporting the legality of abortion is waaaay over the line.
Very Augustinian of you, I suppose; you won’t ever need an abortion, but god forbid you should remain chaste until marriage.
DJW:
“It would seem to suggest a major contradiction between supporting abortion (hands-on killing) rights and Christianity.”
It doesn’t suggest that at all, and I don’t understand why it seems that way to you. I expressed no judgment of anyone based on their support of abortion rights. The only judgments I made were some snark about college professors and intellectuals, some appreciation of Beser’s views, a horror about Tiller’s life-mission of killing, and finally of Hugo’s view of Tiller.
Hugo, I haven’t, and do not intend to read much in the way of your views. Your comparison of Tiller to Bonhoeffer is an “appalling” shot across the bow and ample warning of what could be an almost injurious waste of time.
I suspect there may be an imaginative defense of such a comparison, just what could it be? Perhaps the likeness between pro-lifers and nazi’s, or was Bonhoeffer an abortionist, did he commit, excuse me, perform thousands of abortions on which he grew rich, or did Tiller stand up to a totalitarian regime?
Or if it is just the fact, not completely unhappy, that Tiller was assassinated justify what is otherwise a grotesque exercise in moral license? If that is the sole or primary basis for what is also an intellectual atrocity then assuredly the young soldier gunned down by a islamic fanatic must or should qualify for sainthood.
Strange indeed the twists and turns that belief takes in a corrupt and dying society, guided as some of us are by a media culture obscene in it’s putrescence.
Mythago,
I don’t know how productive it is to have this argument, since I’m not sure you are actually interested in having a good faith argument, but I will waste a few minutes of my busy day anyway.
1) I would not justify any moral rule, or any moral prohibition, on the sole basis that ‘The Bible says it’. That would be silly. God makes His rules for a reason. Now, an important part of the reason behind the prohibition on premarital sex, as Aquinas states it, became substantially weakened after the advent of reliable contraception. Hence, there are grounds to reassess this rule. The grounds for prohibiting abortion, however, are still oprerative- if life began at conception in 30 AD, it still does today. Technology has changed, but human physiology hasn’t. If it became possible to carry out an abortion without necessarily destroying the life of the fetus, then there could be grounds for arguing that the traditional prohibition was no longer ironclad. It’s legitimate to question the traditional prohibitions against homosexuality, I think, and also the blanket ones against premarital sex.
2) Sins against chastity were always regarded as less grievous than sins against life (that was why Jesus explicitly forbade the death penalty for sexual crimes in the Pericope Adulterae) and in that regard it seems like they should be less at the core of Christian doctrine, and more open to being re-assessed. Abortion on the other hand was regarded as a crime against life, not a crime against sexual morality, and therefore much more serious. If Christianity is fundamentally a life giving religion, and it is, then abortion cannot be tolerated.
3) I don’t claim that ALL premarital sexual activity is OK, only in specific instances. I think that marriage is the ideal and that some premarital relationships are legitimate _in as much_ as they provide some of the same goods that a married relationship would. It’s a disagreement of the traditional rule but not a complete denial of the grounds on which it was based. I certainly don’t approve of _casual_ sex.
4) I also try to honor the spirit of the law, not the letter, in my view on abortion. I do think that there can be two kinds of instances when abortion is morally OK. When the fetus will not survive anyway, and when the mother’s life or health is seriously threatened.
5) finally, I reject your whole premise, which is that everyone’s religious and moral opinions are entitled to equal respect. That premise is derived from Jeffersonian liberalism, not from Christianity. I don’t think your religious or political opinions are valid or worthy of equal respect, and in an ideal political order they would have absolutely no place in the political process.
Hector, you’re inspiring me to start a fundraising drive: buy Hector a one way ticket to the theocracy of his choice.
“Hector, you’re inspiring me to start a fundraising drive: buy Hector a one way ticket to the theocracy of his choice.”
I volunteer to make the first donation! He just has to promise to stay off the internet once he gets there.
Hugo,
Georgia, perhaps; I’ll confess to a great fondness for their current spiritual leader, Patriarch Ilia II.
That said, Hugo, my immediate one-way ticket is going to be off your blog; this is my last post here, at least for the rest of the summer. I have a very busy summer coming up, work wise, and I am not going to spend my free time arguing with, of all people, feminists. Nor with people who say abortionists are saints. Some views are so ‘appalling’, in your words, that the very act of arguing with them gives them a dignity they don’t deserve.
Have a nice day.
I would like to see a debate between you and Dr. Feser. I think a lot of people would. If you’re both as civil to each other as you seem to be, and as committed to the subject of abortion as you seem to be it could be a really interesting debate. All your readers would come.
Hugo, while you’re at it, re. Hector, allow me to buy you a one way ticket to the autocracy of your choice. The options and possibilities are both appropriately ugly, dehumanizing, coercive, and with some luck, deadly. I daresay your one way ticket would be more one way, literally, than Hector’s.
Come on Hugo, embrace the Beast!
Hugo,
I am puzzled by the position you articulate when you say:
“Well, John, we can all work and pray for a world where every child conceived is wanted by all involved, every fetus develops normally, and every woman has the resources to provide for her chosen, wanted offspring. And then abortion will be almost unimaginable. Until that happy day…”
If there is nothing inherently wrong with abortion, then why should we wish it were unnecessary, infrequent, or “unimaginable”? In short, you are really saying that abortion is wrong, but there are unfortunate circumstances that make it permissible.
Similarly, Obama likes to say that having an abortion is a difficult decision that women have to be allowed to make on her own. But why is it a difficult decision? Because we are talking about taking a human life, whether at a very early stage of development or at a rather advanced stage as “Dr.” Tiller was wont to do.
The radical pro-abortionists do not appreciate your concessions, because your argument then is really lost (except through cognitive dissonance).
As for those who say that wanting to make abortion illegal is akin to wanting an totalitarian theocracy, wake up! For the first 300+ years of our nation’s history abortion was illegal. We live in a more totalitarian regime today than existed even in 1973.
Tood, I’d also like to get rid of cancer so that oncologists are out of business. That doesn’t mean I think chemotherapy is immoral. And I don’t want to make it illegal.
I also would love a world where no one ever needed to divorce. But I’m bloody grateful that divorce exists as a right, and am glad it was there for me. And thus I can say that yes, I am glad women have access to safe and legal abortions. And that in no way contradicts the position that I’m also hopeful of a world where no one will need to avail themselves of any of these rights.
I felt relieved when I got divorced. That doesn’t mean divorce is an a priori good, but it does mean in an imperfect world, it is frequently the “least worst” option. The same can be said sometimes of abortion.
And Carlos, I’m sure it would be an interesting debate, but I don’t think it would be helpful. Other than personal civility and a mutual ability to use the English language reasonably effectively, Ed and I would have no common ground on which to stand with which to begin such a discussion. It would certainly produce heat, but I doubt it would produce much light.
Hugo,
The analogy with cancer fails, of course, because cancer is an illness, i.e., it is bad. Pregnancy is not bad (indeed many, many, many persons desire it greatly). A child is not bad, as are cancer cells. The only reason one wants to eradicate a child in the womb is that he does not want to care for it (through pregnancy and/or after it). In short, because he is selfish. The fact that persons are selfish is hardly a justification for any crime, especially that of killing an innocent human life.
Divorce is a much more apt example, because it is nearly as evil as abortion is. Two persons who promise to give themselves to one another until death do they part fail to keep that promise, again, because of selfishness (on the part of at least one party). For a Christian the breaking of this promise is especially heinous, and was not countenanced in any Christian church for well over a thousand years.
Wanting some convenient means to dispose of responsibilities does not make such means right or good or ethical (no matter how much we might like to use them).
Todd, you’re shifting the argument — what you asked was why we should want to reduce abortion rates if we don’t believe abortion is bad.
Because abortion, like most surgical procedures, doesn’t feel good.
Todd, how much time in jail should post-abortive women get? How much time for the doctors? I answered your question, answer mine. Be specific.
For the first 300+ years of our nation’s history abortion was illegal.
Todd, this really isn’t true at all. For one thing, 4 states had essentially abortion-on-demand laws, and another 15-20 had laws that allowed for abortion in a number of circumstances in 1973.
But more fundamentally, anti-abortion laws didn’t really start to pop up until the 1820’s, and for a long time they tended to be sporatic and local. Criminalization largely took place between 1860 and 1900. In the absence of law, the common law tradition was generally assumed, which largely held that abortion was legally permissible for roughly the first half of pregnancy (ie, prior to quickening, which I understand to generally be around week 20). This principle can be found in Blackstone and is re-articulated in the writings of the framer James Wilson.
Are you being honest? You really want abortion to be infrequent, because they do not feel good? if that is the case, your ability to grasp the gravity of the issue seems quite negligible then. I doubt, however, that that is truly your position. I which case you are avoiding the argument (for obvious reasons) and you are not a worthy interlocutor. (Regardless of how “delightful” you may be.)
Abortion should probably be a capital crime for the doctor. As for the mother, I am not sure what kind of penalty there should be. You are the historian. I would be interested to know what the penalties were in the various states before the Supreme Court by fiat wiped all the (totalitarian) local laws against abortion off the books.
Todd, I know it is shocking that Hugo would care about reducing women’s suffering. But apparently, the gravity of that issue escapes you.
I care about reducing women’s suffering as much as the next person. (Believe it or not.) Nevertheless, to reduce anyone’s suffering by killing or inflicting suffering on another is not a justifiable practice. (With the obvious exception of when we are responding to the actions of an unjust aggressor against us. Many woman act as though the child in a woman’s womb is an unjust aggressor against the woman.)
It would reduce the suffering of poor woman with many children, if she killed and robbed a rich man. That does not mean that she would be justified in doing so.
According to your logic, the heroic abortionist who suffers as a result of the harassment he receives from anti-abortionist-would-be-totalitarians would be justified in killing said harassers because it would reduce his suffering. But perhaps you believe that.
“Nevertheless, to reduce anyone’s suffering by killing or inflicting suffering on another is not a justifiable practice.”
Then you are, of course, against the killing of animals in order to eat their flesh? Even if someone is starving to death?
“Many woman act as though the child in a woman’s womb is an unjust aggressor against the woman.”
If the woman does not want to be pregnant, then the fetus is an unjust aggressor. Having an abortion is often an act of self-defense against possible or definite permanent damage (giving birth -always- alters a woman’s body) to a woman’s body and health, as well as an act of defense against another living being who would reduce the woman’s quality of life by causing her to have to live in poverty, drop out of school, not go to college, etc. etc.
http://hugoschwyzer.net/2009/06/03/ed-feser-on-george-tiller-more-from-my-delightful-but-utterly-appalling-colleague/#comment-518330
Then you are, of course, against the killing of animals in order to eat their flesh? Even if someone is starving to death?
That example is not analogous. A better example would be that someone has killed an animal for food and you want it because you or someone you know is hungry and so you kill the other person. While this may seem completely reasonable to you, particularly in the moment, it is morally reprehensible and wrong, especially when there are other options available to you. Even if you or another person were starving, it would still be immoral and wrong to kill another person for solely your own benefit.
If the woman does not want to be pregnant, then the fetus is an unjust aggressor. Having an abortion is often an act of self-defense against possible or definite permanent damage (giving birth -always- alters a woman’s body) to a woman’s body and health, as well as an act of defense against another living being who would reduce the woman’s quality of life by causing her to have to live in poverty, drop out of school, not go to college, etc. etc.
Technically speaking, the logic you are applying is no different than Roeder’s. Your argument is essentially that lives and wants of women are far more important than the lives and wants of any other living beings. Ironically, your argument justifies child murder. Not just the killing of unborn children, but the killing of born children as well. This is not surprising, particularly given feminists tendency to support and quibble about female violence against children. However, this is a pretty good example of why the logic driving abortionists is just as flawed as the logic driving people like Roeder.
TS,
I’m not even bothering responding to your comment. There are more distortions and projections in those two paragraphs than I can shake the proverbial stick at.
That doesn’t mean divorce is an a priori good, but it does mean in an imperfect world, it is frequently the “least worst†option. The same can be said sometimes of abortion.
The problem, Hugo, is that your other rhetoric goes way beyond the description above, of abortion being the “least worst” option. You said that “Christ called him, and George said ‘yes,'” that Tiller was “martyred” because of his stand for “the God-given dignity of women,” that Tiller was like Bonhoeffer, that you are certain that Tiller was “welcomed” in heaven, and even that “I am George Tiller.”
It would be the understatement of the year to note that your rhetoric here bears no resemblance whatsoever to the depiction of abortion as merely a necessary evil.
Look, JD, we’re at one of those irreconcilable difference moments where the gulf between our world views is far too vast to bridge. Suffice it to say we celebrate warriors who go to war even when we don’t celebrate war itself; we celebrate cancer surgeons who heal when we don’t celebrate cancer surgery as a fun day at the park. And yes, I get the last word in this thread.
A substantial number of my readers are women who have had abortions. I’m giving them — and myself — a break from the right-wing rhetoric. The fact is, any search for common ground we have will be in the area of contraceptive policy. There is no common ground anywhere else, and we will each simply push on supporting the side we believe in.
Toysoldier, take a break. JD, take a permanent break.