A Civil Debate Over Uncivil Matters
Last October, a number of now-former readers of this blog became enraged because I agreed with Postmodern Papist's call to "hospitably engage" pro-choice advocates in debates over the basis of their belief that killing fetuses and embryos is justified. In comments to that post, Postmodern Papist and I were accused of being "coddlers" of "baby killers." In private e-mails, I was accused of worse.
It appears that those conservative Christian wing nuts over at First Things agree with Postmodern Papist. Writing in today's edition, Associate Editor Ryan T. Anderson discusses a panel at Princeton University that took on the task that Postmodern Papist promoted, a "star-studded symposium at Princeton titled 'Is It Wrong to End Early Human Life?'"
The participants included [Princeton philosophy professor Elizabeth] Harman and her Princeton colleagues Robert George and Peter Singer, along with Don Marquis (Kansas), Patrick Lee (Franciscan), Jeff McMahan (Rutgers), and John Haldane (St. Andrews). Moderating the discussion was Harold Shapiro, Princeton’s president emeritus and the chair of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission under President Clinton. On any measure, these are among the most prominent voices in contemporary philosophy and bioethics, and to have them together on one three-and-a-half-hour panel was an intellectual treat.
Speaking of professor Harman's view that "fetuses that die before they’re ever conscious really are a lot like plants: They’re living things, but there’s nothing about them that would make us think that they count morally in the way that people do." Anderson argues well, I think, why such views ought to be engaged with civility, albeit forcefully.
Many, no doubt, will find Harman’s comparison of human fetuses to plants—not to mention Singer’s moral defense of infanticide—deeply repugnant. I certainly do. But these are merely the conclusions of a chain of (gravely mistaken) moral reasoning, and such intellectually honest reflection is to be preferred, in fact welcomed, over the unprincipled rationalization that often takes its place. When people like Harman and Singer speak openly and follow their premises to their logical conclusions, the audience realizes what is at stake when a commitment to intrinsic human dignity and equality is rejected—and that realization is a very good thing.
Though ethical disagreement about such important matters as killing human beings, restricting women’s liberty, and forestalling scientific research often generate more heat than light, one of this panel’s many virtues was its consistent civility. The participants themselves stressed that intelligent and reflective people of goodwill can and do disagree. Eschewing ad hominem attacks, they opted to offer arguments and rebuttals, a mutual exchange whose currency is reason. This brought to mind Fr. John Courtney Murray’s famous remark that “disagreement is a rare achievement, and most of what is called disagreement is simply confusion.” So it is a credit to the panelists that the discussion was marked by a lack of confusion, albeit much disagreement.
Some would still question its worth. Toward the end of the Q&A, someone admitted to being impressed by the philosophers’ “ingenuity” but asked if it really mattered: Don’t people come to their ethical conclusions “viscerally” and then try to justify them?
I wouldn’t be so cynical. Such theorizing throughout the academy—and the Church—plays a crucial role in developing adequate responses to new ethical challenges. Objections are raised, theories are refined, misconceptions are cleared away, and arguments are developed—and truth can be discovered. It has been through exchanges such as this one, for example, that the pro-life side has refined its argument to the intellectually persuasive position that it is today. And championing this developed argument has its effects—on the young, who are consistently polled as being more pro-life than their parents’ generation, and even on older converts, like NARAL cofounder Bernard Nathanson.
That said, read the chilling intellectual theories propounded by proponents of abortion and euthanasia, and shudder. You'll understand how right GK Chesterton was when he said that the problem with a man who doesn't believe in God is not that he believes in nothing, it is that he will believe in anything. You'll also understand how many intellectuals refuse to confront the world their ideas will create if followed logically to their conclusion. As Chesterton also lamented, one of the major problems with an atheist is that he never comes to his point. It takes another man, a Chesterton, an apostle of common sense and an unblinking observer of human nature, to show him what that world will be. In every case, it will be a horror.
Yet, as Anderson reminds us, engagements such as these reveal to the Church and other pro-lifers what they are up against and what issues they must confront in this endless engagement with, and battle against, foes of human life and human dignity.
As the panel was wrapping up and I was headed to dinner with the panelists, I realized how important these types of discussions are—not only in the public arena, where we are told to use "public reason," but also for the life of the Church. As Lee, George, and Haldane spoke, it became eminently clear that the public reasons they invoked were the real reasons behind their views. While revelation tells us that man is made "in the image and likeness of God" and therefore should be protected and not killed, the data of revelation doesn’t answer the question of what, precisely, is made in the image and likeness of God—a soul, a consciousness, an “embodied mind,” a body? Nor does it answer the question of when this entity comes into existence or when it becomes valuable—fertilization, quickening, formation of the brain, beginning of consciousness, beginning of self-consciousness? Beyond the abortion and embryo-destruction debates, many bioethical issues loom large for the Church. Besides issues of killing, the Church will need to address new biotechnologies that seek to create life and enhance life. It seems to me that the philosophical reflection on display at the killing panel will need to be applied anew.
Or, we can choose to scream "baby killer" and see where that gets us.





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