I feel obligated to get my opinions about the issue of abortion on the record. Especially given my assertion of being a theist- a monotheist, at that. Seeker of Christ, guardian of the ideals of moral law. Moral law, for me, begins with the idea that there is such a thing as right and wrong. It isn’t always easy to know the difference. There are some situations where the answer appears to me to be obvious, as a conclusion shared as a consensus. Other cases are more difficult. Sometimes judgements have to be made, and in retrospect one learns how erroneous they were. Sometimes judgements don’t have to be made, and people jump to conclusions anway. The practical reality that moral dilemmas exist does not mean that there’s no such thing as right and wrong. It also does not mean that right and wrong are merely subjective. I find a lot of confusion on those points. I view myself as a moral relativist, because reality demands it. You can’t just get answers from a checklist- even that turns into a question of moral relativism. I notice a lot of confusion about moral relativism; a lot of people seem to confuse it with moral egalitarianism, which boils down to subjective morality, which might as well be no morality at all. Moral law is an objective standard. The human bandwidth can only seek to approach it, without anyone ever getting a precise readout on their ratio of success to failure. The fact that nobody is perfect is not evidence that moral law has no objective existence. I’m trying to do my best to figure it out. Believe it or not.
On the question of abortion, I’m inclined to discount the absolutist position, that life begins at conception. The claim is not made in either the Old Testament or the New Testament. I’m aware that people interpret the Bible verse that “whatever you do to the least of my brethren (or, alternately, “my brothers and sisters”), you do to me also”, but making that about a zygote is entirely too much of a reach. I don’t even think that statement has anything to do with a statement on abortion- which is noteworthy, because it’s the Bible verse that abortion prohibitionists most often claim for its relevance as a judgement on terminating a pregnancy. And the reason that verse gets leaned on so much to support the anti-abortion position is because it’s the only verse in the New Testament that lends itself to an interpretation on that subject, as far as I’ve been able to determine. The Bible lays down a lot of laws on human conduct (and Jesus directly challenged some of those provisions, as obsolete and contrary to the spirit of moral law.) But abortion is not one of the actions for which it provides any specific advice.
That puts those of us who seek scriptural guidance from the Bible in the position of attempting to suss out answers from the more general set of values and principles that we find expressed in the writings. And applying that wisdom is uniquely challenging in the case of abortion, because the Bible is overwhelmingly about judging fairness and righteousness in matters that relate to the conduct of full-grown adult humans, especially about how mature humans are supposed to treat each other. The teachings inform us that human consciousness contains a divine spark- an opportunity for communication and apprehension with a higher order of existence, in accordance with the quest to do the will of G~d in accordance with moral law, right and wrong. The question of whether human life begins in the womb, and at what point, is not addressed in the Bible, metaphysically or otherwise. As with so many other actions, it’s left to humans to make those assessments.
Some people- both Christian and non-Christian- are convinced that human life begins at conception. I disagree. To be blunt about my view of that interpretation, I think it’s DNA fetishism. That’s right- paradoxically enough, the notion that human life begins when sperm meets egg is a materialist position. Arguably, no less materialist than the position that life only begins when a human infant draws their first breath, which is another religious interpretation I’ve read. My position is: I Don’t Know. I don’t know when, phylogenically, the proto-human organism achieves enough complexity to qualify as experiencing human life as a subjectively aware entity. But my conclusion (admittedly, possibly erroneous) is that it doesn’t happen as the zygote stage, or even at the embryonic stage. I think fetal viability- at the current state of medical science- is a closely approximate estimate. To be on the safe side. And I’d caution those who claim that the ability to support that viability keeps getting pushed more and more toward the embryo and zygote stage, because that involves an implicit assent to the technological advance of producing humans in a laboratory, from conception to delivery. Those potential dilemmas have to be admitted. If it ever becomes technologically possible to grow a human in a lab from a sample of skin cells- of the sort that we shed every day- then the “life begins at the most basic cellular level” position implies that we’ve all been killing off myriads of potential humans for the entire existence of the species. One sufficiently complete genomic structure, and that’s a human, harboring the divine spark? The implications need to be pondered. Including the fact that, currently, around 25% of all pregnancies end with a miscarriage by the middle of the first trimester, with an additional 2%-4% ending in miscarriage by the second half of the first trimester.
So I don’t think it’s that simple. But I am willing to give credence to the position that as a rule, a human fetus in the womb eventually develops sufficiently to achieve a level of subjective consciousness that qualifies as personhood, humanity. I don’t know exactly when that happens, but I’m inclined to be cautious in that regard. I think that’s a widely shared position. I’d like to see it accepted and assumed as a social consensus. Without a reliance on imposing it with the heavy hand of criminal law, a use of Power that practically guarantees its own opposing reaction. I can feature legal restrictions on abortion beginning in the second trimester, personally. (That’s the policy favored by many of the European social democracies. I find it remarkable that for many years the US had a national abortion policy less restrictive than those of liberal democracies constructed on secular and humanist principles where religious concerns play less of a role in the public square than they do here.) I’m also hearing the voices of people- including those who feel that human life begins at conception- who plainly think that simply isolating the practice of abortion and making the remedy a matter of legal coercion does not begin to address the wider set of conditions that lead women to consider and perceive abortion choice as a matter of urgent necessity. That the most important answers are those that obviate the dilemma.
I also support abortion interventions in the case of terrible fetal deformities and circumstances that threaten the life of the mother (or their human surrogate.) I’m not by any means thoroughly studied on the abortion issue. But I’ve reviewed enough evidence to know that the people faced with that decision are dealing with some of the most emotionally fraught and harrowing dilemmas of the human condition. It isn’t some caricature of promiscuous fecklessness, at that point. The physicians performing the abortions are nearly always doing it out of a sense of duty. I’m aware of the exceptions- profiteering conscienceless ghouls. But that criminality is uncommon. The physicians who perform late-term abortions could apply their medical skills in other ways in order to make an income under considerably less stressful conditions. I’m not even referring to risks related to being targeted by anti-abortion extemists, up to and including assassination. Anyone who thinks that the very few doctors still willing to perform late-term pregnancy terminations are rubbing their hands with glee—or worse—is going out of their way to not review their testimony, and the facts that often inform the decision. Those cases do not make for easy reading. Nor do they summon easy answers.
But let’s return to the original question of respect for human life, the act of conception, and the role of responsible sexual conduct, because I think that a healthy fraction of those who hold that human life begins at conception are assigning that benchmark in an attempt to affirm standards that they find more important than using criminal law to forbid abortion. Really sharp, smart Christian guys like Stanley Hauerwas are basically trying to remind people that human sexuality is about a lot more than any egocentric zero-penalty hedonistic pleasure quest that happens to produce offspring as an occasional side effect. (And that any consequences in that regard should be entirely optional, especially for men.) The motivations for concern about abortion aren’t just some abstraction about “the sanctity of human life”; they point out that human beings need to care not just for themselves, but for each other. A lot more than many humans appear to be doing, in the present climate of social values. (Although the proportion of people who are upholding those values—or who haltingly but sincerely yearn to uphold them—is not be understimated.)
Consider birth control, per se. Contraceptive practices. Why are they almost entirely about the requirement for women to maintain a state of readiness in regard to avoiding pregrancy? Every once in a great while we hear about the possibility of developing a male contraceptive, and all of the obstacles and possible pitfalls and complications…why isn’t more attention given to perfecting surgically reversible vasectomy?
Setting aside the situation of reversibility, vasectomy is so much safer for the health of the patient than almost any contraceptive method used by women that there’s almost no comparison. Vasectomy is also more reliable as a contraceptive method. It’s much more effective than condoms, the default male contraceptive resort.
As for reversibility, a quick scan of the topic on Wiki indicates that
“Vasectomies are not always reversible. There is a surgical procedure to reverse vasectomies using vasovasostomy (a form of microsurgery first performed by Earl Owen in 1971[62][63]). Vasovasostomy is effective at achieving pregnancy in a variable percentage of cases, and total out-of-pocket costs in the United States are often upwards of $10,000.[64] The typical success rate of pregnancy following a vasectomy reversal is around 55% if performed within 10 years, and drops to around 25% if performed after 10 years.[65] After reversal, sperm counts and motility are usually much lower than pre-vasectomy levels. There is evidence that those who had a vasectomy may produce more abnormal sperm, which may explain why even a mechanically successful reversal does not always restore fertility.[66][67] The higher rates of aneuploidy and diploidy in the sperm cells of those who have undergone vasectomy reversal may lead to a higher rate of birth defects.[66]
Approximately 2% of men who have undergone vasectomy will undergo a reversal within 10 years of the procedure.[33] A small number of vasectomy reversals are also performed in attempts to relieve post-vasectomy pain syndrome.[68]
So, not perfect. More science needs to be done to improve outcomes. My impression is that surmounting the obstacles to optimal reversible vasectomy should not present intractable challenges in the era of continual improvments in microsurgery. Especially not compared to the challenges of inventing a safe and reliable contraceptive pill for males. Even the associated challenge of restoring viable sperm health in the aftermath of vasectomy sounds like an easier project than inventing a male contraceptive pill to use for a temporary sterility measure. Especially given that most of those answers are likely related to the wider research into finding remedies for the effect of aging on male fertility. Improving sperm health in the aftermath of a reversed vasectomy is a very different project from using a chemical to send messages to the endocrine system and hormones to force sperm to become nonviable.
In the meantime, compared to the problems of women with complications like ectopic pregnancies, the unwanted consequences of vasectomy are damn near trivial. Also, sperm banks. Incomparably easier and less complicated than a woman having her eggs frozen and banked.
Now, consider this graph:
Hmm.
There’s more to the goal of minimizing the requirement to consider abortion than technology, of course. Humans tend to fall between the two antipodes of wanting sex as part of a lasting relationship that includes children, and just wanting to Play. In aggregate, women tend toward preferring the first option, and men prefer the second. It’s important to figure out where one resides on that continuum as an individual. And to want what you get, as a result of the decisions that follow from that, and their consequences. Because it’s a place where you can’t have it all- at least not without wounding other human beings in the process, sometimes very deeply. No matter what, everyone makes mistakes. Assuming risk is a personal responsibility. No one should gamble more than they can stand to lose, but that can be a tough thing to know. No one gets to whine over less than 100% safety, which is unachievable. And no one gets to imprison people in the name of pursuing that impossible goal.
The invention of the female hormonal contraceptive pill- first publicly marketed in 1961- led to an unheralded expansion of latitude for individual choices, for both women and men, but especially for women. I’ve found an articulate summary of that historical turning point here on Substack, which I found in a critical review of Mary Harrington’s positions on contraception and abortion:
I think that essay makes some very strong points. But so does Mary Harrington. For me, that sort of tension makes for a productive conversation, provided that people are willing to hear each other out without preemptive interruptions and obdurately indulging in facile interpretations that twist meaning and assume ulterior motives.
Beyond the matter of whether or not the reader endorses every position defended in that essay, it reasonably states enough valid points that it deserves to put paid to the scaremongering and Manichean posturing of Republican abortion opponents who craft narratives that appeal to the fears of extreme social conservatives who hold a rigid stance of total opposition that’s dictated by their adherence to strict religious doctrines. (Not all of the people who base support for a total ban on abortion on religious grounds identify as Christians- I’ve heard and read those sentiments expressed in Internet comments by people claiming identification as pagans- but in the US, Roman Catholic and evangelical Protestant Christian sects comprise the vast majority of the total.) It’s possible to defend an anti-abortion position- even a very strict one- without insinuating that the pro-choice opposition is inherently Evil, and that those who advocate it are Evil. But that’s what the issue has become, for all too many abortion opponents: a litmus test of Good or Evil. A two-valued choice that’s transferred into the realm of partisan politics, with the Republicans cast as the Pro-Life Party, and the Democrats as the Baby Killer Party. In my humble opinion, that’s hypocritical False Witness masquerading as an article of faith, and my impression is that it’s a caricature has been highlighted and repeated incessantly primarily for its value as a partisan political manipulation tactic. The essay linked above provides a more accurate and detailed outline of the reasoning of almost everyone supporting legal access to abortion. It’s possible to read the essay and disagree with the positions it supports. But there’s a crucial difference between someone being Wrong, and their being Evil. I notice that distinction being forgotten by one side- or both- in all sorts of different political policy disputes, but nowhere is the problem more pronounced than it is on the abortion issue. And while I’ve heard pro-choice people unfairly caricaturing those who support abortion prohibition, only the abortion opponents have raised the position of their adversaries to the level of Metaphysical Evil. Often those dire accusations include insinuations of Elite Conspiracy.
Once someone is convinced that the pro-choice position is being advanced by Murderers, there’s no end to the speculations that open up, with no requirement for hard evidence. They’re Murderers already, after all. Mass Murderers. “Genocidal”, even.
All I can say to the Manicheans is: Stop it. You know better. You know that conservatives and Republicans exist who are not convinced that life begins at conception. You know that some conservatives and Republicans have permitted their children to terminate their pregnancies; have had abortions themselves, or supported their partners in doing so. You know that one of the consequences of the Breun decision was a shift in conservative and Republican support for legislation to retain at least some access to legal abortion procedures. Do you seriously imagine that result to be an unmasking of the presence of Evil in the hearts of everyone who currently supports that legislation? You’ve been smugly viewing every Democratic Party candidate who held the same policy position as an embodiment of Evil- along with, implicitly, everyone who dares to vote for them. As a snap judgement. Are you up for continuing to apply it with the same litmus-test sweep, now that the condemnation includes Republicans? Really? The supposed Evil Murder Conspiracy is now being at least conditionally endorsed by some Republicans, ever so quietly and discreetly. Just like it was endorsed by some Republicans back in the Reagan era, and before. Republicans like Barry Goldwater: “Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate for President in 1964, was pro-choice, and his wife, Peggy, had helped found an Arizona chapter of Planned Parenthood.” That was back before the GOP partisan propaganda push got rolling, to exploit support for abortion choice as Proof that Democrats hold an exclusive franchise as the Party of Evil.
I write this realizing that some self-avowed Satanists- publicity hounds and opportunists to the bone- have jumped into the Bruen, post-Roe vs. Wade fray with their latest Culture Jamming tactic, of openly contending that Abortion is one of their Sacred Religious Rites. That’s for the courts to decide, and I don’t envy the judges. It’s an obvious Stunt, but I have to hand it to them: considered as as a Situationist manipulation of Constitutional law, it’s ingenious. That said, I seiously doubt that the effort has any association with anyone in the leadership hierarchy of the Democratic Party. (Or Newsmax would have run that story already, hmm?)
Let’s return the abortion controversy to the level of a reasoned discussion.I know this can be done. It’s a curious fact that in all of my years and years of reading online political discussions on controversial issues, the story comment debates on the abortion issue in venues like The Atlantic are some of the most thoughtful and civil exchanges of views I’ve encountered. You’d never know that, to hear the views expressed in major media outlets. I think maybe the difference was the medium of text. It wasn’t all slogans and soundbite talking points and partisan hyperbole. Reflective thought was in evidence, along with a willingness to hear out the views of the opposition. (I wish I could access those conversations, but The Atlantic dropped its Disqus platform for story comments in early 2017, immediately on the heels of the inauguration of Donald Trump. I was only a lurker in the abortion comment threads, fwiw; I read, but didn’t post.)
It was refreshing to read those conversations. Such a far cry from “Democrats Support Infant Sacrifice” sloganeering.
If the side that leans toward restrictions and prohibitions on abortion can bring themselves to back off from that sort of Baiting Without Due Process, maybe a productive conversation by both sides can begin on Values. The notion of prosocial values, and how to cultivate less self-centered priorities. Including the merits of responsible sexuality, and discussions of attributes of traditional morality like fidelity, moderation, continence, and abstinence. I’m finding entirely too much of the public discourse revolving around the extremes: Demoralized Incels vs. Default Valorized Obligatory Hedonism. (The Extremes. At each end, attention sluts.)
The Pill led to a Sexual Revolution, yes. But- as is the rule when doors that were formerly shut are opened, and choices that were once foreclosed are made available- the immediate aftermath is always marked with an era of excess. An era that I would argue has been artificially inflated and extended in connection with the “market benefits” to consumer capitalism from the ubiquitous commercialization of sexualization. But even that gets trite and tired after a while. The shadows emerge: satiation, decadence, exclusive egocentrism, and the hollow quest for extreme sensual thrills. Exhausting Eros leads to the dubious seductions of Thanatos. And more generally, the generation at the forefront of Sexual Liberation has now had 50 years of experience under the new regime. No longer starry-eyed, not even the most adventurous experimenters.
As many of the people in that life eventually find: in terms of sheer unmediated sensual pleasure, nothing beats some of the Drugs out there. Promiscuous sex is hit or miss, even for the most dedicated to its pursuit. Why do so many porn stars and prostitutes get into drugs? Because the sex that they’re having becomes routine and impassive, and merely a means to some other end. Whereas the effect of pleasure drugs—especially opioids—has much more staying power. Hard drugs pose an interesting existential challenge for those who take to them; they promise the ticket to Material Paradise. Instant gratification, directly accessed internally, with no need for the complications associated with the presence of other humans. A logical extension of the promise of unbridled sexual hedonism pursued for primarily private ends: the pleasure sensations and euphoria of the drugs just plain lasts longer. They also have a way of swallowing their users alive. The Users are liable to become the Used.
I also get that sexual liberation allows for more moderate arrangements, like polyamory, polygamy, polygyny, four-partner marriage. That brings up a different set of questions. The tension between individual self-fulfillment and duty to the other human partner(s) who share in the activity is always present and in need of resolution, even for monogamous couples. And when children enter into the relationship, that’s another level. I respect the choices of adult individuals, whether they travel the breadth of extremities, or stick to some straighter line. In my observation, in the realm of relationships, the straighter line is more durable. Even after making allowances for differences of temperament. (I’m not saying that to judge. There’s a difference between concern trolling and remarking on the benefits of questioning assumptions.)
In any event, commercial advertising and pop culture have little use for the realm of lasting interpersonal relationships, except as a consumer niche. It’s mostly about targeting individual drives and desires. That paradigm that gets people to literally buy into it. Challenging that paradigm is of the most important features of a campaign to minimize the resort to abortion. Not by force, but by exposing the superficiality of commercial button-pressing. By pointing out the fraudulence and dreadfulness under the superficial appeal. (“Selling the sizzle instead of the steak”, is the old metaphor.) Re-balancing the values of this society is mostly about learning how to not be tricked and swindled, and teaching others to not be tricked and swindled.
It’s also about nurturing healthy alternatives, at the level of neighborhoods and voluntary association. It isn’t meant to be a Punitive Morality project. There’s an argument to be made that the excesses of liberation have mostly been a Reaction to a former regime of strict social mores that relied entirely to much on group coercion and repressive social policing. The 1960s era had a lot wrong with it, but it was also like an ice jam breaking up. The Sixties era of American cultural glasnost can’t be held solely responsible for the deterioration of values in succeeding decades. There was a entirely too much political stunting, but also a lot of authentic idealism. Not much different from now, in that respect.
It’s crucial to face forward. Realize that the pre-1960s era isn’t anything to pine for. Herbert Asbury (1891-1963), one of America’s premier social historians, was alienated from his religious upbringing early on by witnessing the persecution of those who transgressed the stringent religiously enforced sexual mores of Midwestern small towns. His grand-uncle was the first American bishop of the Methodist Church. Herbert Asbury departed for a different path. He became a library researcher and an independent social historian- as a reporter and a journalist, not an academic. Readers may be familiar with his books, such as the one that was made into the film Gangs Of New York (believe me, the book depicts a much seedier scene than the movie.) Herbert Asbury also wrote The Barbary Coast, about Gold-Rush era San Francisco; The French Quarter, about New Orleans; Sucker’s Progress, a history of gambling, and Grand Illusion: An Informal History Of Prohibition. And about a dozen other books, both nonfiction and novels. Another eye-opener for me in terms of learning about the continuing influence of the Puritan strain of American Protestantism in the 19th century was Sarah Vowell’s history of Hawaii, Unfamiliar Fishes. The book is about much more than the influence of Anglo-American Christianity, but that factor was so influential that it turns up throughout the book in different aspects. (If you’ve read Somerset Maugham’s long short story “Rain”, you’ll have an inkling of some of the social and cultural frictions.) And finally, just to learn how good almost all of us (even most of the homeless population) have it in the US, c.2023—and how much better behaved even our most stressed out neighborhoods are—read the book The Heroic Gangster, about what New York City was really all about in the Gilded Age of the 1890s. The New York City of Eric Adams is Mayberry RFD in comparison to what NYC was then. In the 1890s, Hell’s Kitchen really was Hell’s Kitchen, and the cells in Riker’s Island- “the Tombs”- really weren’t much wider or longer than coffins. Readers will also learn how a multiethnic group of concerned New Yorkers finally banded together to clean up the most crime-afflicted neighborhoods of the city. A task that took years, but they got rid of the worst of it. Neil Hanson does a worthy follow-up to Herbert Asbury with that 2013 book.
If you investigate the history of the US during the era of strictly enforced Social Conservatism, you’ll also find a scary Shadow of rot and corruption. I think it’s a bad idea to nurture false nostalgia for that past. It had some good points, of the sort that require both cultivation and vigilance. But let’s not get carried away.
I need to end on this point: there’s an economics and manpower aspect to the Values Restoration. Funding, resources, and labor commitment. And there’s no more formidable competition for prosocial values than the economy of the illicit drugs trade- which the Punitive Morality project of Drug Prohibition has ceded to career criminals, for over century. The only way to effectively reduce that sluicing of money into the hands of criminals is to reduce that illicit demand to a trickle, through a combination of education, markets, medicalization, and rehabilitation. There are towns and parts of town in this country where every local public education program, parks budget, church congregation activity, sports program, music and arts program, and adult-supervised youth group combined has less resources to draw on than the local illict drugs market. If we’re going to continue to permit the criminals to profit from that cash cow, then we need to overmatch their revenue receipts in the locales where that market has the most antisocial impacts. At the level of the national US economy, those illicit revenues add up to a lot of money. The most conservative estimates are way over $100 billion dollars annually.
That said, there’s ample reason to think that young people aren’t the new crop of fools that they used to be. Illicit drugs use by American teenagers is way down. Drugs aren’t as cool and edgy as they once were; not only has their presence become routine, but the market has turned a lot more deadly. At least some of the kids are crying out for an alternative. They’re looking for something better to say Yes to. They aren’t finding enough of it. And doors to the Pleasure Island of the illicit drugs economy are always open.
(not to be confused with a scene from Barbie.)
