One of the things I did this year was to engage in one of the most ridiculously long Reddit discussion threads ever, and that is really saying something. That link doesn't even go to the beginning of the thread because the discussion chain was broken by a post that was deleted by my interlocutor, who goes by the pseudonym "uniformist". The discussion branched and ebbed and flowed over the course of about nine months, and finally came to an ignominious conclusion when uniformist threw in the towel on what had to that point been a mostly respectful exchange and wrote:
You are a grotesque moral monster
To which I replied with a terse comment that was deleted by Reddit's content moderating system.
To save you the trouble of reading the ridiculously long and convoluted discussion that led to that bit of character assassination, I'll just tell you that the thing that makes me a "grotesque moral monster" is that I don't believe that a fetus is a person (and that therefore abortion should be legal). In order to be a person you have to have a functioning brain, and a fetus doesn't.
But this particular horse has been beaten to death, so I want to take a different approach and see what happens if we approach the question from the other side: what happens if we take seriously the premise that a fetus is a fully-fledged human being, a person, created in the image of God, and entitled to all the same fundamental humans rights as you and me? Does that actually lead us away from becoming grotesque moral monstrosities?
Before I dive in let's take a moment to appreciate the magnitude of the suspension of disbelief that granting the premise of fetal personhood requires. The religious right has done a masterful propaganda job to make people believe that there has long been a consensus about this among Christians, but this is not true. The idea that a fetus is a person and abortion is murder is an idea that finds support neither in the Bible nor in common law, and there is accordingly a long history of disagreement among Christian factions over this question. The attorney for Jane Roe was a Southern Baptist, and the Southern Baptist Convention initially supported the ruling. (They changed their position later as a cynical political ploy to cover up the fact that what they really wanted to do was restore racial segregation to the U.S.) The Roe v. Wade decision has a very brief discussion of whether or not abortion is murder. Here it is in its entirety (minus footnotes):
Whether abortion of a quick fetus was a felony at common law, or even a lesser crime, is still disputed. Bracton, writing early in the 13th century, thought it homicide. But the later and predominant view, following the great common law scholars, has been that it was, at most, a lesser offense. In a frequently cited passage, Coke took the position that abortion of a woman "quick with childe" is "a great misprision, and no murder." Blackstone followed, saying that, while abortion after quickening had once been considered manslaughter (though not murder), "modern law" took a less severe view. A recent review of the common law precedents argues, however, that those precedents contradict Coke, and that even post-quickening abortion was never established as a common law crime. This is of some importance, because, while most American courts ruled, in holding or dictum, that abortion of an unquickened fetus was not criminal under their received common law, others followed Coke in stating that abortion of a quick fetus was a "misprision," a term they translated to mean "misdemeanor." That their reliance on Coke on this aspect of the law was uncritical and, apparently in all the reported cases, dictum (due probably to the paucity of common law prosecutions for post- quickening abortion), makes it now appear doubtful that abortion was ever firmly established as a common law crime even with respect to the destruction of a quick fetus. [Emphasis added]
Notably, neither of the two dissents in Roe contests this. Both are grounded on narrow legal issues (standing, states rights, unenumerated rights) and not moral ones. So in 1973 there was a legal consensus that abortion was not murder.
But OK, so there is no legal foundation for the idea that abortion is murder, but maybe there is a theological one? The centerpiece of the Christian case against abortion is the fifth (or sixth or eighth, depending on how you count) Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Kill. What a model of moral clarity condensed into four little words (only two in the original Hebrew). Except that these words cannot possibly be taken at face value. There are many kinds of killing that are morally acceptable. Killing plants or certain animals for food, for example. So obviously what these words actually mean is "Thou shalt not kill other humans." And this finds support in other passages, like Genesis 9:6, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man."
But that can't be right either. Again, the are many circumstances under which God commands people to be killed, indeed under which God kills people himself (e.g. Exodus 12:29, Joshua 10:11). There are also many circumstances under which there is a broad consensus that killing other humans is morally justified despite having no Biblical foundation, like self-defense, or if you are soldier acting under orders in time of war. So a better translation of the Commandment would be, "Thou shalt not commit murder." 25% more words, but still pretty pithy.
But notice that in this rewrite the Commandment has lost all semblance of moral clarity. Instead, it now begs the question. The meaning of the Commandment now turns entirely on the meaning of the word "murder":
The killing of another person without justification or excuse, especially the crime of killing a person with malice aforethought or with recklessness manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life.And this too begs the question. What counts as a "person"? What counts as a justification? Is a fetus a person? Is killing one to preserve the life or health of the mother a justification?
On these questions, the Bible is mostly silent. But there is one relevant passage in Exodus 21:22-23 (what a lovely little numerological coincidence there!).
If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life...Or, in a more modern translation:
If people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely (or has a miscarriage) but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.In other words, causing a miscarriage is not a capital crime. The penalty for causing a miscarriage even though negligent violence is a fine. The Bible clearly does not consider an unborn child to be a fully fledged human.
Apologists will often counter this by citing Jeremiah 1:5 "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations." There are two problems with this. First, if you read it in context it is clear that this is not referring to humans in general, but specifically to the author of the text who is trying to pump up his prophetic credentials. But even if we set this aside and grant the apologetic generalization, it still doesn't work because the text says that God knew the author before he was formed in the womb! So according to this, life doesn't begin at conception, it begins before conception. And that leads to so many practical problems that not even apologists are willing to take that seriously.
OK, but maybe I'm just missing something. I'm not a Biblical scholar. Maybe my analysis is hopelessly naive, and what I need to do is to conduct a detailed, language-aware, historically-informed exegesis, or some such thing. Fine. Let us grant the entirety of the Christian apologetic argument and say that abortion is murder. Where does that lead us?
Let's do a little thought experiment. Consider the following two scenarios:
Scenario 1: There was recently a shooting in my community. The perpetrator was a well-known local resident named (just so I don't have to keep calling him "the shooter") Fred. Fred entered a local school and killed a dozen children with an AK-47. The whole thing was caught on security cameras, and Fred did not wear a mask, so there is no question of his identity or guilt. Fred fled, and has so far managed to elude the massive manhunt currently underway.
So today I am walking down the street and I see Fred carrying his AK-47 walking towards the front entrance of another school. I am armed with a hand gun, which I am licensed to carry. I am close enough to shoot Fred before he gets to the door, but too far away to prevent him from entering the school in any other way. Fred doesn't see me, so I am probably safe as long as I don't draw attention to myself. But there is no nearby cover, and my hand gun is no match for Fred's assault rifle, so if I shoot him and fail to kill him, he will almost certainly kill me. I am nowhere near a good enough shoot to be able to reliably shoot him in the arm or leg. If I shoot, the only viable option is to shoot to kill. Am I morally justified in killing Fred?
Scenario 2: Ginger is a gynecologist. As with Fred, Ginger is well known in the community, and it is well-known that she performs abortions. In fact, that is Ginger's specialty. It's pretty much all she does. She does several every working day. Over the course of her career she has probably performed several thousand.
One day I see Ginger walking towards the front entrance of the hospital where she works. As before, I am carrying a hand gun. I know that there are armed guards inside the hospital as part of the security staff, so I can't pursue Ginger inside. The only way I have to stop her from entering the hospital and going about her work is to shoot her, and if I don't kill her, she will almost certainly recover from her injuries and return to work. Am I morally justified in killing Ginger?
I think most people, even those who profess to believe that a fetus is a person, would agree that the answer is that I am morally justified in killing Fred but not Ginger. In fact, some people might even say that I am derelict in my moral duty if I don't kill Fred.
But why? If you believe, as I do, that a fetus is not a person then the answer is easy: Fred has committed murder (and seems to be in his way to commit more murders) but Ginger has not. A fetus is not a person, and so killing a fetus is not murder.
But if you believe that killing a fetus is murder, then on what possible basis could you distinguish these two scenarios? If you are not going to draw a distinction between the two scenarios on the basis of fetal personhood, on what possible basis could you distinguish them? In both cases you have a killer entering a building with both the intention and the means of killing innocents. If anything, the case in favor of killing Ginger is stronger than killing Fred because Fred has only killed innocents once whereas Ginger has literally made a career out of it. She sees nothing wrong with it. In Fred's case as I have laid it out there is the possibility that he had no history of violence, and his murderous spree was an anomaly not to be repeated (though the fact that he's heading towards a school toting his rifle isn't promising). But Ginger is as cold-hearted a killer as you could possibly hope to find, killing thousands of babies day in and day out with no moral qualms whatsoever. And getting paid to do it.
So who is really the "grotesque moral monster" here? Is it me, who believes that killing Fred is morally justifiable but killing Ginger is not, or is it the people spending their time hanging out on Reddit rather than taking up arms to stop the mass murderers they profess to believe are living amongst us even as I write this? On their world view, innocent children are dying every day, a literal ongoing holocaust. Why aren't they out in the streets doing something about it? Why aren't there Nuremburg trials happening right now for every doctor who has ever performed an abortion in the United States?
I have a good-faith belief, which I have arrived at after careful consideration of history and scripture (to say nothing of basic common sense), that the defining criterion for being a person is having a functioning brain. Maybe that makes me a grotesque moral monster. But at least I'm not a hypocrite.
