A Pro-Life Myth
Because of this year’s policy debate topic, I have become pretty well versed in pro-life literature, namely on the question of whether or not abortion is murder. One extrapolation that many pro-life authors make from their belief that abortion is murder is that when we don’t protect the unborn from annihilation(I’m using their language here, so bear with me), it means that we also won’t protect other voiceless members of society, like the disabled, the elderly, the disadvantaged etc. Much of this rhetoric comes from a Catholic perspective, where the Catholic Social Thought-y concern for human dignity and the disadvantaged encompasses fetuses as well as people. A good example of this type of rhetorical move is a passage from the US Bishop’s Conference’s A Gospel of Life: A Challenge for American Catholics:
“23. “Any politics of human life must work to resist the violence of war and the scandal of capital punishment. Any politics of human dignity must seriously address issues of racism, poverty, hunger, employment, education, housing, and health care. Therefore, Catholics should eagerly involve themselves as advocates for the weak and marginalized in all these areas. Catholic public officials are obliged to address each of these issues as they seek to build consistent policies which promote respect for the human person at all stages of life. But being ‘right’ in such matters can never excuse a wrong choice regarding direct attacks on innocent human life. Indeed, the failure to protect and defend life in its most vulnerable stages renders suspect any claims to the ‘rightness’ of positions in other matters affecting the poorest and least powerful of the human community. If we understand the human person as the “temple of the Holy Spirit” — the living house of God — then these latter issues fall logically into place as the crossbeams and walls of that house. All direct attacks on innocent human life, such as abortion and euthanasia, strike at the house’s foundation. These directly and immediately violate the human person’s most fundamental right — the right to life. Neglect of these issues is the equivalent of building our house on sand. Such attacks cannot help but lull the social conscience in ways ultimately destructive of other human rights.”
Take out all refrences about unborn life, and you easily have a statement that could have come from the Green Party of the Peace and Justice Party. But how often does this rhetorical committment to protecting the fetus as part of protecting all the disadvantaged actually show up in policy and politics. Despite Michael Gerson’s protestations, just not very much. The pro-life party is simply not the party of the marginalized, disadvantaged and oppressed. Gerson’s column on the issue – where he calls Obama an abortion extremist – tries to claim that Democrats used to “[speak] about building a beloved community that cared especially for the elderly, the weak, the disadvantaged and the young.” While now they are merely concerned with “the absolute triumph of individualism. The rights and choices of adults have become paramount, even at the expense of other, voiceless members of the community.” Does this mean that Gerson opposed welfare reform, or that he supports expanding the Family Medical Leave Act, or extending and increasing food stamps? Well, Gerson is something of a softie, so he may support all of that, but so does the modern Democratic party. Which, as Gerson notes, is fervently pro-choice. So the notion that being pro-life makes someone, or a political movement, more responsive to the “voiceless” is just empirically false.
This is a great example of what is so common in the abortion debate. Both sides assume that the way they term their justification for whatever position they take — for pro choicers, they ( I should really say we) see it as a matter of reproductive/women’s rights and autonomy; for pro-lifers it’s a matter of protecting the unborn — is the way the other side conceptualizes their position. So pro-choicers claim that pro-lifers simply don’t care about women’s rights, while pro-lifers call pro-choicers baby killers. This is exactly what Gerson does; since he sees his pro-life views as part and parcel of his concern for the powerless, ergo , pro-choicers must not care about the powerless.
This imputation of one’s own model for decision making onto others is not exactly a productive nor proper way to argue about something, as Gerson shows pretty well.
