Roe v. Wade is often
compared to the infamous Dred Scott decision, and much has insightfully
been made of the parallels between the issues of slavery and abortion. These
parallels are usually drawn more for the benefit of persuading the opposition
than for the benefit of pro-lifers themselves—pro-lifers already know that
abortion is evil without the helpful comparison to the evil of
slavery.
I recently had occasion to revisit
Frederick Douglass’s immortal “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” speech
in a course I’m teaching on slavery, and I realized that one crucial parallel
between the issues of abortion and slavery has gone mostly unnoticed, or perhaps
has been unduly neglected. The reason for this is simple: It is a parallel that
some pro-lifers may find unsettling or uncomfortable, and therefore one that few
have been especially eager to find.
In this famous speech, Douglass imagines
a member of his audience imploring him to “argue more, and denounce less”—to
push rational discourse about the slavery issue toward acknowledging the wrong
of slavery, and thereby to further the cause of abolition in a calm and
civilized manner.
In response, Douglass asserts that “where
all is plain there is nothing to be argued.” He then unleashes a powerful
barrage of rhetorical questions on his audience: “Must I undertake to prove that
the slave is a man? Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty?
That he is the rightful owner of his own body? Am I to argue that it is wrong to
make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty . . . to starve them into
obedience and submission to their masters?” According to Douglass, the slavery
issue has already been settled on the level of reasoned argument, and “it is not
light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but
thunder.”
While there were in fact a variety of
pro-slavery arguments current at the time, Douglass was of course absolutely
right: The humanity of the slave was obvious, and the right to liberty was, and
is, an obvious concomitant of this humanity. The practice of slavery wasn’t
being upheld by the force of rational argumentation, but by slaveholders’ desire
for self-preservation and non-slaveholders’ apathy or inactivity. The battle to
be fought wasn’t a battle of ideas—that battle already had been won—but a battle
of conscience.
The same, I submit, is true of the
abortion debate today. While, as in the case of slavery, arguments have been and
are given against the humanity or right to life of the unborn, the contrary is
simply obvious to anyone willing to set aside ideology or narrow
self-interest.
Excellent and highly sophisticated
arguments for the personhood and dignity of the unborn from the moment of
conception have been given by many on the pro-life side (by Robert George,
Christopher Tollefsen, and Patrick Lee in particular), arguments clearly unmet
by those in favor of abortion rights. Such arguments drive home this basic fact
of human existence in a manner that effectively marshals the support of
heavy-duty philosophy to the pro-life position. While this is a crucial task, in
fact the argument may be settled by common sense and simple
reasoning.
In a manner similar to the case of
slavery as outlined by Douglass, there are two simple points that, once
admitted, join to condemn clearly the practice of abortion: (1) the embryo is a
human being from the moment of conception, and (2) all human beings have a
natural right to life.
The second point, as in the case of the
natural right to liberty, doesn’t require serious argument on the level of
ordinary judgment, even though many pro-choice philosophers have tried to argue
that only persons have a right to life, and the unborn, in their view, aren’t
persons. To make such arguments, however, requires choosing an arbitrary cut-off
point for personhood, as pro-life philosophers such as George, Tollefsen, and
Lee have shown.
The first point is more often chosen as
promising ground for challenges, but it too is plainly obvious to the unbiased
mind.
Once conception occurs, the embryo is
something other than the woman who carries it. The fact that the embryo requires
the mother’s body to live is no argument against this—dependence does not
exclude otherness, otherwise none of us would be distinguishable from everyone
and everything else in the world upon which we depend in innumerable ways. The
embryo is obviously something other than a part of the mother, but what is
it?
This is where it gets easy, despite the
messy, abstract philosophical arguments. The more appropriate version of the
question is the following: What else could it be besides a human being? Is there
a single example in natural history of sexual intercourse between two
individuals of the same species resulting in something other than another
individual of that species? Is it plausible to guess that sexual intercourse
between two human beings might result in a fish, at least initially? Or maybe a
frog? Such speculation is entirely fanciful and runs directly contrary to our
experience of the world since the beginning of recorded history.
It should be obvious to anyone that the
two points hold, and that the embryo is a human being possessing a natural right
to life from the moment of its conception. The problem is that the younger and
less developed the embryo is, the less it excites what some have called our
“moral sense,” our sympathy with it as another human being like us. And as Hume
correctly notes, human beings tend to be moved more by their passions and
feelings, including the so-called “moral sense,” than by their intellectual
understanding of the world when determining their actions. Even if our reason
and common sense tell us clearly—as they undoubtedly do—that the embryo is a
human being with the right to life, our moral sense or sympathy lets us off the
hook.
So where does this leave pro-life
advocates? How can we bridge the Humean—and human—gap between intellectual
understanding and actual practice in our nation? The answer lies in the parallel
between the issue of abortion and those of slavery and subsequent civil rights.
The pro-life movement needs to model more closely in its organization and
practices the antebellum abolition movement and the civil rights movement in
order to achieve similar success in ending the evil of abortion. It needs to
take up the mantle of these causes in a manner beyond rhetorical parallel or
intellectual analogy and be prepared to undergo similar hardships before
achieving its goals.
Both of these historical movements
ultimately succeeded not by winning arguments, but by awakening the moral sense
or conscience of a majority of the nation. Legislation relating to the provision
of an ultrasound prior to an abortion, currently in place in some form in more
than twenty states, is very well suited to this purpose. The dissemination of
graphic images relating to abortion procedures, though controversial in pro-life
circles, is also highly appropriate to this purpose.
The civil rights movement was driven
forward significantly by television and photographic coverage of the inhuman
treatment of protestors, as well as the publication of vivid written reports of
racially motivated cruelties. Moral senses or sympathies are sparked most
effectively by distasteful, unsettling, and shocking information; and when
intellectual argument has had its day in trying to awaken consciences and has
shown itself insufficient, recourse must be had to the level of moral sense and
feeling.
The pro-life movement currently finds
itself in the same place as the abolition movement at the time of Frederick
Douglass’s great speech. If we are to experience similar success, we would do
well to follow Douglass’s advice and focus our energies on awakening the moral
sense of our fellow citizens. It would help to have another Douglass for our
cause, but at least we still have his words: “The feeling of the nation must be
quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the
nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its
crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.”
