more on Saletan and abortion in China
I had been thinking about weighing in on the story that Conor comments on here, but abortion is not a subject on which anyone I have ever met is persuadable. Still, maybe it’s worth making this point:
Opponents of abortion have often appealed to a kind of teleological argument: a fetus deserves the same legal protections as any one of us because a fetus will in the natural course of events become one of us, will become what we are, and will never become anything else. This has always been rejected by proponents of legal abortion: one of the most famous and influential defenses of abortion ever written, that of Judith Jarvis Thomson, begins by denying this teleological argument. And any successful defense of the right to abort will have to reject teleology at some point, I think.
William Saletan knows this, and he knows that by protesting the aborting of female fetuses he is verging on accepting the teleological argument, which is why he makes a point of tiptoeing around the issue: the problem in China, he says, is “the devaluation of women, and the expression of that devaluation through sex-selective abortion.” I think Saletan is trying really hard not to say that any women are directly harmed when a female fetus is aborted, because that would grant to the fetus the status of “woman,” and once that is granted the game is up. So he tries to say that aborting a female fetus is an indirect “expression” of a point of view — in the same way, one presumes, that I might express my disapproval of you by drawing a mustache on your photograph.
This would be a nice trick if he could pull it off. Saletan has always been pro-choice but also notably uncomfortable with many of those who agree with him, and he seems to see the Chinese situation as a way for him to occupy a safe middle ground: he can lament the consequences of millions and millions of aborted female fetuses for living women and for the society as a whole, without ever having to say that there’s anything intrinsically wrong with aborting millions and millions of female fetuses. But I’m not sure the ground is as safe as he believes it is. I think he has let the teleological argument in through the back door, and I think that anyone who protests sex-selective abortions and only sex-selective abortions has done precisely the same thing.
abortion is not a subject on which anyone I have ever met is persuadable.
My father was fond of quoting the following, which he attributed to a Chinese political philosopher: Justice comes out of the barrel of a gun.
— Tony Comstock · Apr 17, 02:11 PM · #
Alan:
I’m not sure I agree that there is no way to make a moral argument against sex-selective abortion without letting in the teleological argument by the backdoor, nor am I sure I agree that only moral arguments could be used to oppose sex-selective abortions.
For example: you could make a kind teleological argument about the woman rather than about the fetus. The fetus may have no moral status as such, but the woman’s decisions with respect to that fetus might still be expressions of her qualities as a mother. A mother who chose to abort because she feared she could not feed her children if she added another to her brood would be a “good mother” if, indeed, the fetus has no intrinsic moral status. A mother who chose to abort because she really wanted a boy, not a girl, is expressing a kind of relationship to her future child that we might call “bad” mothering. Judith Jarvis Thomson herself makes a version of this argument in her defense of abortion – admits that such an argument has force, and that it means that abortion is not permissable in all circumstances. (Whether “impermissable” means “illegal” or merely “morally unacceptable” then becomes a practical question – whether there are greater harms that flow from forbidding a wrong act by law than would occur if the law did not touch the question.)
Alternatively, one could make a practical argument about the consequences for society. Individual choices to select for one sex or the other are morally unproblematic (so the argument would go); but society-wide preferences have pernicious social effects (and are probably indicative of an underlying social pathology of some sort). Again, there’s no necessary implication for legality or illegality; it depends on just how bad the social consequences are and how much value you place on individual choice relative to said consequences.
Here’s a good thought experiment to see whether you’re right. Suppose it was possible, through chemical intervention, to reliably and safely select eggs that would produce male (or female) children. Eggs do not have a teleology or an inherent moral status in your scheme; they will not become people absent fertilization. Suppose the Chinese were not aborting female fetuses but selecting heavily for “male” eggs. The social consequences would presumably be the same as in our world of sex-selective abortion. The implications for the nature of the mother-child relationship would presumably be similar as well. Everything would be pretty much the same – except for the nature of the act taken to achieve the desired outcome, and that difference would be irrelevant if the fetus has no moral status. Are you saying there are no possible arguments, moral or otherwise, against widespread social sex-selection for male children if that selection did not involve abortion? That would seem to be the implication of your claim, and I don’t think it’s correct.
BTW, just to be clear, I’m not endorsing your views on abortion, Saletan’s views, or either of my hypothetical arguments above – this is all just an effort to see if you’re right about the whole business of Saletan bringing moral status for the fetus in through the back door.
— Noah Millman · Apr 17, 03:01 PM · #
Are you saying there are no possible arguments, moral or otherwise, against widespread social sex-selection for male children if that selection did not involve abortion?
I don’t think I said or even implied that, Noah, though I may have been imprecise in my language. Certainly Saletan is trying to make just the kind of pragmatic or utilitarian argument that you outline. The question is whether he has managed to do so without acknowledging more of the teleological argument than he wants to acknowledge.
— Alan Jacobs · Apr 17, 03:18 PM · #
This:
“abortion is not a subject on which anyone I have ever met is persuadable.”
And then this:
“The question is whether he has managed to do so without acknowledging more of the teleological argument than he wants to acknowledge.”
Has me wondering why it matters what Saletan acknowledges or does not acknowledge.
I have witnessed one or two conversions on issues where people tend toward the sort of intractability you’ve experienced around abortion. The people’s conversions were not provoked by having holes poked in their logic.
When your heart opens up, there’s a danger of all sorts of unexpected things finding their way in.
— Tony Comstock · Apr 17, 03:35 PM · #
I’m sorry, but doesn’t this get Thomson’s argument exactly wrong? She starts off by granting arguendo full personhood to the fetus, and then looks to show that even then, the fetus has no right not to be aborted. (That’s the point of the analogy to an adult, obviously-fully-personed, violin paper.)
— James Williams · Apr 17, 03:42 PM · #
Alan already answered for himself, but for myself: There would be lots of social arguments against such a program, public or private, and a government-run program like this would offend libertarian morals. But I am hard-pressed to arrive at a moral argument against private sex-based gamete selection that didn’t resort to some tediously abstract concept of femininity, as though the spirit of womankind would be under assault in a way that doesn’t target actual, living women.
Whereas sex-based fetus selection, with abortion as its implement, involves the destruction of actual female organisms, and you cannot assign more significant moral weight against such an act than what airy appeals to the Frauengeist would allow, without first reckoning with the morality of destroying fetuses of all sexes.
— Blar · Apr 17, 03:45 PM · #
James, how Jarvis Thomson deals with the personhood question is different than the way she deals with the teleological argument, and I was only talking about the latter. Those are philosophically distinct questions, though obviously related.
— Alan Jacobs · Apr 17, 04:14 PM · #
Noah: Is your egg thought experiment also subject to a teleological critique, like abortion? If the argument against abortion goes that even if we cannot determine the status of the fetus, we can determine its end, and thus it is morally reprehensible to truncate the chain which leads to persons. Your egg analogy assumes the dumping of female eggs over male eggs. In that case, you have the same knowledge of ends as the sex-selective abortionist. So, the absence of the fetus is irrelevant, since the fetus functions only as the epistemic anchor in the teleological argument against abortion. I think all you need for the teleological argument to get off the ground is a clear line to a person, which your thought experiment assumes. It does not seem correct to say “the egg has no teleological or moral status on your scheme, because they will not become people absent fertilization” and then say you know what sort of person it will become.
— c.t.h. · Apr 17, 04:28 PM · #
BTW I will freely admit I am not as dexterous with the abortion debate as many, so ignore and forgive me if I have made gross over generalizations about how the teleological argument goes in the abortion debate.
— c.t.h. · Apr 17, 04:32 PM · #
Alan: I agree with your post.
I jut want to point out that while the teleological argument may be the most effective argument against abortion, but it’s not the one I subscribe to. I’m not against abortion because a fetus is a potential human being. I’m against abortion because a fetus is a human being.
(Let the flamewars begin.)
— PEG · Apr 17, 04:32 PM · #
This is still a completely incomprehensible argument to me.
A differentiated cell clump is just not a human being, or even a human-being-from-teleological-argument.
It is a cell clump.
— matoko_chan · Apr 17, 04:38 PM · #
The teleological argument is flawed at the core: if the foetus has basic human rights by virtue of having a human genome, then so does the woman, and the conflict can’t be resolved at this level; if a woman with a human genome doesn’t have basic human rights then having a human genome is an insufficient condition for having basic human rights, and the argument becomes pointless.
— MouseJunior · Apr 17, 07:21 PM · #
the conflict can’t be resolved at this level
So you’re saying a conflict between two humans in which the life of one is set against the convenience of the other is irresolvable?
— kenB · Apr 17, 08:05 PM · #
I think Mr. Saletan’s position has problems independent of any teleological concerns. His devaluation argument seems to be pretty easy to apply to situations other than sex selection. The vast majority of Down syndrome pregnancies are aborted for example.
— Mr. Grouchypants · Apr 17, 09:40 PM · #
The whole “choice” based argument of the pro-abortion types has always seemed flawed to me. If choice is so damn important, the more choice the better. Choice is the defining characteristic of life, right? When you are dead, there are no more choices. So, to abort life, or potential life, which can be measured or identifed by its choices, reduces choice.
I, mean, you kill a fetus, you have made one choice, but your life goes on, you still make choices, e.g., to watch Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles or not – sorta zero sum type a thing. But – you choose not to abort a fetus – you have still make choices, but the sum total of human choices has increased, because the number of choice making life forms on the third rock from the sun has increased by a factor of one, and one extra person watching Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles may keep it from being cancelled.
16 million lives never born, female, male, what have you, seems to leave a mighty big hole. It is a profound and willful act of moral blindness not to see this.
— lovingthelaw · Apr 18, 05:07 AM · #
So you’re saying a conflict between two humans in which the life of one is set against the convenience of the other is irresolvable?
The the conflict is between the life of one, and the right of the other to not have their body appropriated by anyone else for any reason. Rape is immoral. Slavery is immoral. Mandatory bone marrow registries and forced donation are immoral. Forced pregancy is immoral. For the same reason in each case: it deprives a human of their right to control of their body.
There may be arguments against abortion that have merit; the teleological argument isn’t one of them.
— MouseJunior · Apr 18, 06:08 AM · #
Noah has suggested it, but the thought that it would be vicious of a parent to act as if they could only love a future child if it was male is a very easy position to hold, I think. I think such a position has a little more plausibility when we note that unease about designer babies extends to many people who don’t oppose abortion.
— Justin · Apr 18, 06:31 AM · #
It’s interesting to me how everyone wants a binary solution to the question of abortion. Perhaps the question is more complex. It is also interesting to me that there is great energy spent considering the rights and obligations of mother and fetus, but none on the father, in the analyses evident here. One for example, could argue that the easiest way to solve the moral problem abortion represents is to require mandatory reversible vasectomies of men upon puberty. When men demonstrate sufficient resources and ability to be fathers, the could be granted a license to reverse the vasectomy. In such a world there would be very few abortions, I reckon. We would, of course, have to expend great energy considering whether the state’s imposition on a man’s right to control his own body was warranted.
— Pudentilla · Apr 18, 11:36 AM · #
“A study published last week in the British Medical Journal, based on a survey of nearly 5 million Chinese children and teenagers, bares the gruesome numbers.”
It seems to me the use of “gruesome” lets something in the door.
— Julana · Apr 19, 08:48 PM · #
I propose a compromise: people who want abortions can get them; people who are opposed to abortions do not have to have them, and can even attempt to convince others to their point of view in the open market of ideas.
I don’t have a good name for this compromise, though. It’s on the tip of my tongue, though, I think it starts with a “C”.
— Chet · Apr 20, 02:47 PM · #
Here’s another compromise people used to propose, Chet: people who want to own slaves can own them; people who are opposed to slavery do not have to own slaves, and can even attempt to convince others of their point of view in the marketplace of ideas.
Now, you can wail and gnash your teeth all you want about how this analogy is unfair or absurd, but it pretty exactly mirrors the logic of your own proposition. People who believe (with very good reason) that abortion is the taking of a human life are not going to be content with allowing those who want an abortion to have an abortion, just as those who believed that slavery was a grave evil and a terrible abuse and degradation of human beings were not content with allowing those who wanted to own slaves to own them. For pro-lifers, the process of persuading others to their point of view involves persuading others that abortion is the killing of an innocent human person, and most people think the killing of an innocent human person should be illegal.
Like it or not, Chet, the question of abortion revolves around how we are going to define personhood, and those who consider themselves pro-life have just as much right as any other group — in the “marketplace of ideas” — to argue their position (abortion is the killing of a human being) and to argue for the logical consequences of their position (abortion should be illegal).
— Kate Marie · Apr 20, 04:25 PM · #
Alan, I believe abortion is wrong, but I don’t think your argument makes any sense. Saletan’s article would be exactly the same if couples in China were using some new technology that screened out sperm with X-chromosomes. He’s not acknowledging any harm or offense against the particular child that is aborted because she’s female, he’s lamenting the harm done to society when there’s a gender imbalance.
I don’t even see him acknowledging anything wrong with a Chinese couple’s decision to abort a female child because she’s female. He’s lamenting the perverse incentives in Chinese society that lead people to make that choice.
(And Noah? What in the world? Why the bizarre thought experiment about a world in which eggs determine the child’s gender? You sound like Henry the VIII.)
— Michael Straight · Apr 20, 06:47 PM · #
And people who do not believe (with very good reason) that a fetus is just a smaller kind of child rather than a potentially dangerous interloper in a uterus that doesn’t belong to them are not ever going to be content with others determining for them who they must be forced to gestate.
People who find abortion abominable have a hard time countenancing letting others have them. People who find it abominable to force a woman to experience a pregnancy won’t countenance laws that do just that. Compromise must be sought, and the most reasonable compromise is always “go your own way.” Pro-choice people will continue to mourn when an already-troubled mother brings another child into a broken, dysfunctional home; pro-life people will continue to mourn when a woman exercises her right to an abortion. And, of course, people will continue to try to convince each other that they’re right. And Republicans will continue to exploit the issue in crass identity politics.
The world, in other words, will continue to turn.
To the contrary, personhood is a red herring – not even full adult people have squatter’s rights in a uterus that doesn’t belong to them.
And yet, even the people much like yourself who think abortion is the killing of a human being don’t advocate that women who have abortions be executed for murder. I’m aware that this is the rhetoric, but the truth is that nobody really acts like abortion is identical to murder.
— Chet · Apr 20, 07:03 PM · #
Chet, I’m perfectly willing to grant that those who support abortion rights are (for the most part) making good faith arguments for their position. I think they’re wrong, but that’s another issue altogether. I don’t think you do yourself any favors when you insist that those who hold the position you happen to disagree with are disingenuous or don’t really believe what they say they believe.
Moreover, for someone who seems somewhat fixated on abortion as a matter of “crass identity politics,” you might do well to examine your own rhetoric. The fetus is a “potentially dangerous interloper?” A “squatter?” So the fetus just decided to barge in and take over? If one grants that the fetus is a person, it is the biological child of the mother whose uterus it inhabits. And yes, there are instances where a parent may be legally required to put him or herself in some danger in order to protect their child. A parent cannot simply watch their own child drown in a lake, for instance.
— Kate Marie · Apr 20, 09:13 PM · #
If persons are going to say “this is what I believe” and then not act in any way like they actually believe it, then it’s hardly my fault when it appears they’re not acting in good faith. The pro-choice movement was roundly supportive, for instance, of Bristol Palin’s very public choice to keep her pregnancy, because the pro-choice movement embraces the compromise I’ve detailed above. On the other hand, the pro-life movement won’t get behind sex education in schools or increased contraceptive access, two things known to reduce the rate at which women seek abortions.
It’s abundantly obvious that the pro-life movement has ulterior motives. If they (and you) don’t like the implication of acting in bad faith, you might try acting in good faith sometime.
Biologically, yes, that’s almost exactly what happens – a developing fetus has an entire arsenal of biochemical lockpicks to circumvent the mother’s immune response. It’s instructive that essentially the entire process of pregnancy is much more one of the developing fetus overcoming or suppressing the mother’s immune function rather than the mother’s body lowering those immune defenses on its own. Regardless of how its experienced by mothers or by our culture, at a biological level pregnancy is very much an antagonistic process.
If pregnancy wasn’t unique as the origin of our lives we’d have to classify it as a sexually transmitted disease. How else should we refer to the leading cause of death for women aged 14-20 worldwide?
Wow. Let me know when you’ve caught up to the 20th century, ok?
— Chet · Apr 21, 01:37 AM · #
Chet, I don’t generally speak to interlocutors as though they were representatives of a group whose positions I can characterize with as broad a rhetorical brush as possible. I consider it lazy.
You called the issue of the personhood of the fetus a red herring, and you implied that even if one were to grant the personhood of the fetus, the fetus had no right to take up residence in its mother’s womb if the mother didn’t want it there. Did you not understand my response? If one does grant the personhood of the fetus, it is not simply some random stranger to the woman whose womb it inhabits. The law recognizes that parents have a duty to their offspring.
— Kate Marie · Apr 21, 02:35 AM · #
Not in any way analogous to pregnancy – the law doesn’t require that a specific person feed or house the child, only that the child be fed or housed; the law requires parents to have the child’s medical needs attended to but doesn’t require them to donate organs for the child’s health. Mothers are under absolutely no legal requirement to nourish their children with their own bodies; otherwise you’d need a doctor’s note for formula.
It’s true that children are legally owed many things but residency in the uterus of their choice is not one of them. Children aren’t owed anything at all like that.
— Chet · Apr 21, 06:54 PM · #