Religion & Law

Not surprisingly, my post objecting to the use of the term "Holocaust" to describe legalized abortion has generated quite a bit of feedback.  I've included some highlights after the jump.  There is a lot of material here, but I encourage interested readers to work their way through it, as the responses are all thoughtful and productive. 

Notre Dame law prof Julian Velasco is at a conference (and so apologizes for any choppiness in his comments):

Your comments improperly minimize the horror of abortion.  If the fetus is a person, as the Church teaches, then abortion is objectively, instrinsically, and gravely evil. I was particularly disturbed by your assessment that killing a 12-year-old is worse than killing an unborn child.  By that logic, one could argue that killing someone in a coma is not as bad as killing a healthy person.  By extension of the argument, one might argue that killing a person with many loved ones is worse than killing a loner because of the additional pain and loss that the others will feel (i.e., "even more reasons to protect [him]").

Unfortunately, hiding behind "hard choices" can complicate even straightforward moral issues.  If abortion is murder, it doesn't matter whether it was a "hard choice."  Mercy killings and many other homicides -- even honor killings, I imagine -- may involve "hard choices," but are still horribly wrong.  The circumstances may (or may not) affect the moral culpability of the actor, but not the evil of the act itself.  And besides, there's a difference between "hard choices" and "no other choice."  In the United States, at least, abortion rarely, if ever, involves "no other choice."

That the general population would be more upset about the killing of a 12-year-old than of an unborn child is virtually meaningless.  In the first place, they've already been conditioned that abortion is a matter of personal choice, so it's not surprising.  More importantly, they're also likely to be more upset about the killing of attractive teenage girls than of homeless men.  But emotion is a poor guide to morality.

I also find it extremely unfair to suggest that anyone who really believed abortion is murder "would be blocking the clinic entrances, physically rescuing the children, [and/or] overthrowing the government."  Many people struggle with the issue of what they should be doing, and the right course of action is by no means clear.  I suppose one could say that if anyone really believed that the economic imbalances in the world that allow children to starve to death every day is an injustice, they would be doing much more to end it.  One can always do more; that may impugn the actor, but not the merits of their cause.

Finally, given the absolute numbers involved, I am not willing to say that "gas chambers are worse."  However, I am not necessarily opposed to saying something like that, either.  I just don't think that's a meaningful statement if both are horribly evil.  What I will not accept is any suggestion that abortion isn't really all that bad.  And despite your comments to the contrary, that's what I took away from your post. Perhaps what you meant to say is that people who procure abortions, or support abortion rights, aren't necessarily evil.  Of course, that may well be true; it's certainly not my place to judge.  It may also be true that not all of the Nazis who killed Jews in the Holocaust were entirely evil -- perhaps they felt that they had "no other choice."  And perhaps we might allow that not all the salveholders throughout history were evil people.  But that doesn't mean that slavery, the holocaust, and abortion aren't themselves evil.  And because they are, the law ought to prevent them.

I think your last post on MOJ identifies a common societal discomfort with the pro-life movement. But, I think, your concern I think is misplaced. I don't think calling abortion a Holocaust is particularly helpful or meaningful and that is why I avoid it. I am 100% pro-life and feel at home but resist using the language. I believe that communication in the pro-life movement is essential and should be better.  Calling it a Holocaust doesn't carry much meaning and, like you say, makes people think critically of us rather than positively. But if the issue in abortion is that it takes a human life, abortion is at a minimum, just as evil as the Jewish Holocaust.

 

Taking the life of a 12 year old is not worse-it only seems worse because we can see, and no one disuptes, their humanity.  While people dispute the humanity of a baby in the womb, they are wrong. Objectively speaking, both are equally human and killing one is as evil as killing the other.  Is the morality of an act measured by how the victim senses that act? Or do we judge the morality of the act from the nature of the act and the intent of the actor? That is why you, and the "we" you identify with, are wrong to call those who try to physically stop the killing of unborn life "extremists."  It is uncommon but not extreme-is it human or not? If its a human why is it extreme to go to such lengths?

 

Now, to be sure, there are other ways to fight for life and those ways can be, and often are, more useful and effective. I know personally of dozens of cases where physical intervention has saved human lives. The hard choices and moral considerations you mention are what make it harder to identify abortion with the Holocaust. But in terms of the objective destruction of human life, the slaughter of innocent Jews and others has much in common with the destruction of children in the womb. Why are gas chambers worse, morally speaking? Because they were public and killed adults? They didn't even come close to killing as many humans as abortion does. I think your failure to recognize these commonalities and distinctions lead you to fall into the perception trap rather than recognizing the nature of the two acts.

Let me say first that I agree that the strong language often used by members of the pro-life movement can be counterproductive, misleading, and needlessly hurtful.  A woman who chooses to have an abortion is not even close to the moral equivalent of a Nazi, and anyone who equates the two is at best unthinking, and at worst deeply uncharitable.

On the other hand, I think the way you have framed the issue also falsifies reality in a significant way.  You seem to think of the typical abortion situation as one in which a woman chooses, on her own, to have an abortion because she feels she has ?no other choice.?  I happen to be very close friends with several women who have had abortions, and their experience was not like that at all.  Moreover, the experiences of these women, who did not know each other when they had abortions, and are from different backgrounds, were remarkably similar.  Here is the story of one of them, whom I?ll call Rachel (after the Rachel?s Vineyard program for women who have had abortions):   

Rachel grew up in a solid, middle class family with fairly conservative values.  She disapproved of abortion, but was not particularly knowledgeable about it, and often said that although she would never have an abortion herself, she did not want to impose her ?own values? on others.  When she turned 17, Rachel was still a virgin ? but her friends were all having sex with their boyfriends, and when she started dating someone, she had sex with him.  She wasn?t really comfortable with this decision, as she had always told herself she would wait until marriage.  But everyone around her seemed to expect her to have sex, and she didn?t want to seem abnormal, so she did. 

 When she started to think she might be pregnant, she was a mass of mixed emotions.  She felt shame (although you were ?supposed? to have sex, you weren?t ?supposed? to get pregnant) and fear.   What would her parents think?  Her friends?  Her boyfriend?  Would she have to leave school?  For the first time, she started to think that she might be capable of having an abortion.  But she also thought about other options.  Could she carry the child to term?  Could she raise the child?  Would she be able to face putting the child up for adoption?  She worked up her courage to go to the doctor, and also tried to develop a resolve to keep the child and do whatever was best for her baby.

 When she went to the doctor, the pregnancy test came back positive.  Before she had time to take this in, the doctor was talking to her about setting up an appointment for an abortion, and strongly implying that this was the ?responsible? course for her to take.  She left his office, and went to her boyfriend?s house.  When she told him she was pregnant, his first response was to offer to pay for her abortion.  She told a friend, who advised her to get an abortion ?before anyone finds out.?  (Years later, she overheard that same friend say ?I may have been a little wild when I was young, but at least I never did anything really bad, like have an abortion.?)  She never told her parents she was pregnant, as she didn?t want them to be ashamed of her. 

 Ultimately, Rachel had an abortion.  After that, she became a strident pro-choice activist for a time, and then for a time she tried to forget the abortion had ever happened.  But years later, she married and got pregnant.  When she saw the beating heart of her daughter on the ultrasound, she was devastated, because she knew that this was a living child, and that she had killed one just like her years before. 

Was Rachel exercising her ?autonomy? or ?freedom of choice? when she had that abortion?  In a sense, yes.  She did, after all, make the choice to abort the child, and that choice was actualized.  She bears some responsibility for that choice.

But this does not capture the fullness of her experience.  Our choices are determined, in part, by our circumstances and our culture.  Had she truly been given freedom of choice, she would likely have not had sex when she did, much less have an abortion.  Once she got pregnant, every message she received ? from her doctor, from her friend, from her boyfriend ? was that she should have an abortion.  And of course, the implicit message she received from her parents was that if she was sexually active, they didn?t want to know about it.  This, too, was an encouragement to abort the child.

This is where the comparison to the Holocaust comes in, I think.  It?s a mistake to think that Nazi Germany was a ?culture of death,? but that we are somehow simply a ?culture of liberty? or ?autonomy.?  Abortion is not, in most cases, about autonomous women making rational choices about their own best interest.  Rather, the choices women make are conditioned by their culture.  And what is a ?culture of death? but a culture in which the signals all point toward choosing death rather than life?  Where doctors, friends, loved ones all give the message that death is the best choice to make?  It is self-deluding to believe that we do not live in such a culture.  There is a difference between Nazi Germany and post-Roe America, but it is not the difference between black and white, but rather between two fairly dark shades of gray.

As to your second point, that killing a 12 year old is worse than killing a fetus:  Don?t be so quick to assume that everyone would be willing to give up their lives and livelihoods to protect those 12 year olds.  There was no mass uprising in Germany to protest the Holocaust (if I may use that term), and in this country, those who rabidly opposed slavery were generally considered extremists and troublemakers.  There is a great human tendency to avert one?s eyes in the face of horrific evil.  It?s harder to see and identify with a fetus than a 12 year old, and thus easier to avert the eyes, but this is the only true difference between them.

My colleague Teresa Collett writes:

I agree with you that  the Holocaust is not a good analogy for the deaths of millions of unborn children. The final practices of the Nazi regime differ in important ways from the current American practice of permitting abortion through all nine-months of pregnancy. In its final years, the Nazi government killed thousands of its own citizens in furtherance of its goals of racial purity and improvement.  At this point in time, neither state nor federal governments require pregnant women kill their unborn children, regardless of the women's circumstances or the unborn children's condition.  To employ the language of constitutional law, abortions are not state actions, unlike the imprisonment and killing of the Jews by the Nazis.

This is a crucial distinction to citizens, like myself, who believe that each abortion results in the death of a human being.  If the abortions were compelled by law, as they often are in China, we would have to seriously consider, in your words, "overthrowing the government that [forced] this to happen."  Even at this juncture, some have raised the question of whether we are nearing a time when "the Church collectively [must] decide at what point a government becomes sufficiently corrupt that a believer must resist it." http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=3945 

You seem to suggest that those of us who believe that hundreds of children are dying everyday due to legal abortion must abandon all other pursuits to blockade clinics and ferment  revolution if we are morally upright human beings.  I question the moral seriousness of this claim.  Political revolutions are rarely peaceful, more often than not resulting in large numbers of deaths.  Our founding fathers understood this, as evidenced by their statements in the Declaration of Independence.  Abolitionists too recognized that the elimination of great social evils is best achieved by democratic means, and pursued their efforts to abolish slavery in the courts and legislatures for over a century before the issue was resolved through armed conflict.  Do not underestimate the conviction and determination of those of us who continue to hold out hope that we can reverse this grave injustice by legal and political means.

While we agree that women often choose abortion because they are overwhelmed by their personal circumstances, that fact does not make their choice of abortion morally or legally sound.  Many other acts of child abuse and child murder are actions by those who are overwhelmed by personal circumstances and unable to make sound choices.  Yet we do not privilege these acts in the law, making them immune for legal prohibition. 

As to your speculation that everyone shares your belief that "killing a twelve year old is worse than killing a six week old fetus," I must disagree.  The vulnerability of the six-week old child within the womb makes such actions a greater abuse of the powerful over the powerless, than the killing of a twelve-year-old who has some (albeit limited) ability to protect herself. This abuse is aggravated by the fact that, while the murderer of the twelve-year-old may be a perfect stranger, the person directing that the child be killed in an abortion is the mother, the very person intended to nurture and protect the child during those crucial first months of life.  Both killings are deeply wrong, because as you say, "we should protect human life, period." Nonetheless, if we are speaking of which act is of greater moral gravity and thus a more proper subject of legal prohibition, it is the mother killing her defenseless child within the womb.

Finally, Greg Pocak has a challenge for "progressives" on this issue:

I appreciated your comments on the Mirror of Justice blog regarding whether abortion is a holocaust.  I don?t agree with you (well, I do agree that killing a 12 year old is subjectively worse?for the audience?than killing a fetus, but I would argue that as far as the fetus and 12 yo are concerned personally, it?s not a whole lot different. Especially since the fetus can experience pain and some degree of awareness much earlier than expected.  And even if they didn?t, objectively you?re still killing human life.  And yes, you do sound like a Pinker who lacks the courage to take your argument to its logical conclusion) .  But, that said,  I respect that you had the courage to write what you did ?out loud.?  I respect your honest and forthright attempt to wrestle with this.

I have a somewhat tangential question, though.

Your comments are, in some way, similar to Cathleen Kaveny?s comments at dotCommonweal the other day who stated that she rejected the pro-life ?analogy? that being ?moderate on abortion is akin to being moderate on slavery.?  Likewise, at the America blog, a commenter  essentially said that while he knows that objectively abortion is murder, he is uncomfortable with the term because it makes the women who have abortions, ? murderers??and  thus the analogy complicates the Church?s ability to be pastoral to post abortive women.

In response, I guess I am struggling to understand what an appropriate progressive analogy for abortion would be.  What would be the progressive answer to the following analogies ?Abortion is to the Dignity of Human Life as??  and ?Abortion is to slavery as??

I think progressives will have a difficult time gaining a fair hearing from more mainstream pro-lifers unless they can come up with a more accurate analogy and compelling analogy than those of murder, holocaust, or slavery.