VDB-NOBIS abortion discussion, continued:
My reply to Nathan Nobis’s latest critique
January 23, 2021
I. Background and introductory
comments
I appreciate Dr. Nathan Nobis (an abortion-choice proponent) for taking time to respond thoughtfully and
respectfully to my replies concerning his review of my book (a critique of popular abortion-choice arguments). No doubt some
readers may think Nobis’s and my discussion is getting tedious and difficult to
follow (as Nobis observes in his last response), and no doubt there may be some
truth in thinking that! Nevertheless, I hope that my additional comments will
be helpful to readers interested in Nobis’s and my discussion. I hope, too,
that truth concerning abortion will become clearer as a result.
Some background to get our bearings:
- Dr. Nathan Nobis co-authored a book published in June 2019.
- Both Nobis and I had articles on abortion published in August 2019 in a
pro-con forum at Political Animal Magazine (Nobis’s article was an excerpt of his earlier
book).
- I published a book in October 2020 (in which I criticize some of what Nobis and his
co-author wrote in their book).
- In November 2020 Nobis wrote a review of my book.
- In late December 2020 I provided some replies to Nobis’s review.
- On January 1, 2021, Nobis provided a response to my replies.
- What follows is my response to Nobis’s latest response.
I will respond only to a few
of Nobis’s comments. It seems to me that Nobis’s criticisms of my work continue
to be deeply problematic from the point of view of critical thinking.
II. Judith Jarvis Thomson’s
violinist
For background, recall that
Judith Jarvis Thomson writes the following in her famous 1971 essay “A Defense
of Abortion”:
You
wake up in a hospital, ‘plugged in’ to a famous violinist, who needs to use
your kidneys to stay alive. You were kidnapped for this purpose. If you unplug,
he will die. But it’s only for nine months.
Thomson’s idea is that even if
the unborn human being were a person, abortion is permissible morally, just as
you aren’t morally obligated to remain hooked up to the violinist to sustain
his life.
In response to my argument that Thomson commits a faulty analogy in her
argument based on her violinist thought experiment, Nobis claims that Thomson
isn’t arguing via analogy and thereby suggests that my critique of Thomson’s
argument is mistaken. Nobis writes:
The "point" of Judith Thomson's violinist
example is not to serve
as an "analogy" to fetuses: the proposal isn't that fetuses are
"like" violinists (although they are in some ways,
and are not in other ways: for a discussion of the nature and
function of analogies in reasoning, see Richard
Feldman's Reason and Argument).
Its point is to motivative [sic] and justify the insight that the right to
life is not a right to everything you need for your life to
continue if that requires using someone else's body: your right to life
is not a right to someone else's body, even if you need that
body to live.
I have two replies (which I develop below): (1) Thomson does argue via
analogy; (2) the insight to which Nobis points arises from a faulty analogy.
Reply 1
There are at least four reasons (that work together as a cumulative case
argument) for thinking Thomson’s violinist argument is an argument via analogy.
These reasons have to do with (a) Thomson’s intention, (b) her argument’s
logical structure, (c) her article’s context, and (d) background evidence.
(a) Author’s intention
It seems very much that in her essay “A Defense of Abortion” the author
herself—Judith Jarvis Thomson—intends the violinist thought experiment to be understood
as an analogy. Later in her essay Thomson writes, “And it might be argued that
all my analogies are therefore irrelevant—for you do not have that special kind
of responsibility for that violinist….” Significantly, Thomson responds to the
possible objection she is here considering not by saying she wasn’t arguing by
analogy but by saying something else, i.e., that there isn’t such a special
kind of responsibility (which is false, by the way). So it’s reasonable to
think that Thomson’s intent is that by employing the violinist example she is using an argument by analogy.
(b) Logical structure
Throughout her essay, Thomson explicitly and implicitly compares
abortion to the case of unplugging the violinist. It will take too much space
to demonstrate this point here, but a careful reading of Thomson’s essay does
show this, it seems to me.
In fact, the structure of Thomson’s argument very much seems to be what
philosopher Trudy Govier calls an a
priori analogy (see chapter 11 “Analogies: Reasoning from Case to Case” in
Govier’s widely-used and highly-respected critical thinking textbook A Practical
Study of Argument, 7th edition; I’ve used Govier’s text for a dozen or so years
in my Critical Thinking courses). According to Govier, the analogue in an a priori analogy may be “entirely
hypothetical or fictitious,” i.e., “a case that is invented by the arguer.” This
is certainly true of Thomson’s famous violinist who needs our kidney to live.
Also, in an a priori analogy the key
is to achieve, with respect to our primary subject, i.e., what we’re trying to
get illumination or clarification about (e.g., abortion), consistency with judgements rendered in cases that we are morally
clear about or upon which a judgement has already been rendered (e.g., being
hooked up to someone else so that person can use one’s kidney). This is the
structure of Thomson’s argument.
(Govier distinguishes a priori
analogies from analogies based on empirical experience of the world’s goings-on
and inferences therefrom. The notion of a
priori has to do with “concepts and beliefs that are independent of sense
experience.”)
(c) Context
According to Govier, arguments by a
priori analogy are typically found in ethical and legal discourse. So the
location of Thomson’s argument, i.e., the fact that it’s in the academic
journal Philosophy and Public Affairs,
seems to be a natural philosophical “habitat” or context for a priori analogical arguments. This by
itself is not a whole lot of evidence for thinking Thomson’s violinist argument
is an analogical argument, but it counts, at least a bit, and adds to the larger
cumulative case.
(d) Background evidence
There are others—i.e., not just me, and not just pro-life thinkers—who interpret
Thomson’s violinist argument in terms of argument by analogy. Here is a brief list
of others who think (along with Thomson) that she is using the violinist as an
analogy:
- Francis Beckwith, Abortion and the Sanctity of Human Life (College Press 2000), p. 88.
- David Boonin-Vail, “A Defense of ‘A Defense of Abortion’: On the
Responsibility Objection to Thomson’s Argument,” in Louis Pojman and Francis
Beckwith, editors, The Abortion
Controversy: 25 Years After Roe v. Wade: A Reader, 2nd edition
(Thomson/Wadsworth 1998), p. 152.
- Charles C. Camosy, Beyond the
Abortion Wars: A Way Forward for a New Generation (Eerdmans 2015), p. 75.
- Christopher Kaczor, The Ethics of
Abortion: Women’s Rights, Human Life, and the Question of Justice, 2nd
edition (Routledge 2015), pp. 152, 157.
- Scott Klusendorf, The Case for
Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture (Crossway 2009), p. 187.
- Justina Van Manen, Stuck: A
Complete Guide to Answering Tough Questions about Abortion (Life Cycle
Books 2019), p. 104.
- Eric Wiland, “Unconscious violinists and the use of analogies in moral
argument,” Journal of Medical Ethics
26:6 (2000).
So we have
four reasons—Thomson’s apparent intention, her argument’s logical structure,
her article’s context, and background evidence concerning Thomson’s article—which
work together as a cumulative case for thinking, reasonably, that Thomson’s
violinist argument is an argument by
analogy, contrary to what Nobis claims.
Reply 2
I grant that Thomson’s violinist scenario may indeed
motivate the principle/ insight that Nobis claims it motivates: i.e., that the right to life is not a
right to everything you need for your life to continue if that requires using someone
else's body: your right to life is not a right to someone
else's body, even if you need that body to live. But the problem is that the violinist
scenario is in hugely important ways—hugely morally significant ways—not analogous
to the situation in pregnancy (in which the unborn human being is assumed, for
the sake of argument, to be a person). This means that the principle to which
Nobis points isn’t helpful for furthering our understanding. The principle, to
which Nobis points, is a principle that arises from a faulty a priori analogy,
i.e., an analogy that doesn’t capture the morally significant goings-on in
pregnancy and abortion.
Permit me to quote again from my book (a note on page 83), so readers
will have a better sense of how faulty Thomson’s violinist and other analogies
are:
Thomson writes: “You wake up in
a hospital, ‘plugged in’ to a famous violinist, who needs to use your kidneys
to stay alive. You were kidnapped for this purpose. If you unplug, he will die.
But it’s only for nine months.” Thomson’s idea is that even if the unborn human
being were a person, abortion is permissible morally, just as you aren’t
morally obligated to remain hooked up to the violinist to sustain his life.
But, as many critics have (rightly) pointed out, Thomson’s analogy is
faulty—terribly faulty. Getting pregnant is (typically) not like rape. That is,
getting pregnant is not like being forced to get “plugged in” to a violinist,
famous or not. Also, to unplug or detach the violinist is not like hiring
someone to directly kill the violinist by poisoning him, ripping off his limbs,
crushing his skull, or shredding him via a suction machine, which is what
abortion does. Rather, the violinist’s death is caused by the kidney ailment,
not your or your doctor’s direct killing action. And keep in mind that
“Euphemistically calling abortion the ‘withholding of support or treatment’
makes about as much sense as calling suffocating someone with a pillow the withdrawing
of oxygen” (Beckwith, Politically Correct
Death, 133). Also, the violinist is a stranger, to whom one does not have a
moral obligation to provide life-sustaining care, unlike the special moral
duties parents have to care for their children. In her article Thomson attempts
to address these sorts of issues by setting out other analogies, but they are
terribly faulty, too. According to Thomson, if you opened a window and someone
blundered or fell into your house, you don’t have a moral obligation to let
them use your house, so, similarly, abortion is permissible. But, as critics
(rightly) point out, it’s a different story—one more analogous to pregnancy—if
by opening the window you knowingly
pulled (or risked pulling) an innocent person into your house. So it would
be morally outrageous to kill the innocent person you pulled into your house.
Also, according to Thomson, if “people seeds” floated into your living room
carpet (which is required for their gestation) and they began to sprout into
persons even though you tried to keep them out (via fine-meshed
screens/contraceptives), you wouldn’t be morally obligated to sustain them.
But, as critics (rightly) point out, if you actually planted the people seeds
by engaging in a planting activity (while knowing that screens/ contraceptives
are not 100% foolproof), you would be morally obligated not to kill them.
The reason you would be morally obligated not to kill them is that they
are persons. And persons have the right to life, which is, at minimum, the right
not to be killed—especially if they haven’t done anything wrong, and especially
if you are responsible for their existence, vulnerability, and dependence.
The main argument in my book that’s relevant here, i.e., relevant to
Thomson’s violinist argument where the fetus is a person, is on page 82 of my
book:
Objection: Okay, the unborn human being is a
person, but just as nobody has a right to my kidney to ensure his/her survival,
abortion is morally permissible because I’m not morally obligated to sustain
another person with my body.
Reply: Yes, I agree that at least this much is
true: If you lost the function of your kidneys, then you wouldn’t have the
moral right to force me to donate one of my kidneys to you, nor would I have
the moral obligation to donate one of my kidneys to you. And if I lost the
function of my kidneys, then I wouldn’t have the moral right to force you to
donate one of your kidneys to me, nor would you have the moral obligation to
donate one of your kidneys to me. But these truths are not analogous in any
relevant way to the situation in pregnancy. It’s a faulty analogy, in other
words. The situation in pregnancy is more like this: My life depends on a
kidney you’ve voluntarily given me, i.e., you’ve consented to giving me the
kidney by deliberately engaging in and willfully permitting the action that put
the life-giving kidney in me (a kidney you can live without), but now you want
to take it back—and doing so will kill me. See the difference? Yes, one is not
morally obligated to sustain another human being via kidney transplants/
donations, but one is morally obligated not to cause the death of another human
being by taking away what she requires to sustain her life—even if it was your
kidney. It’s one thing for someone who needs a kidney to die because of a
kidney ailment, but it’s quite another thing to rip out kidneys from another
person and thereby kill that person. Abortion is like the latter case: it
deliberately kills a person (often by poisoning, ripping off limbs, crushing
the skull, etc.).
In other words, pregnancy (in non-rape cases) is like freely giving your
kidney (which you can live without) to another person (a vulnerable, dependent
person whom you’ve created) so the other person can live, whereas abortion is
like tearing out from that person the kidney you’ve donated to him/her—and
thereby kills that other person—because you’ve changed your mind about your
previously-freely-made decision to donate it.
So persons indeed do have a moral right to what was someone else's
kidney, if they need that kidney to live AND if one (the donor) has already, in
a fully-informed manner, engaged in freely giving/ donating one’s kidney to the
person in question (and the donation isn’t a physical threat to the life of the
donor). Ditto for human fetuses—which we and Thomson concede are persons—and
the biological systems gifted/donated to them also freely and in a fully-informed manner.
III. Nobis’s objection to my case of the
donated kidney
Nobis objects as follows:
I'm just going to say that, in
important ways, pregnancy and abortion don't seem to be much "like"
either of the kidney cases he mentions. "Repossessing" a donated
kidney from someone who then dies because of that repossession is very different
from abortion. I will leave it to any readers to make lists of similarities and
differences here to further evaluate whether van
der Breggen indeed makes a strong case that if women voluntarily engage
in sex when there is a chance of pregnancy that indeed results in the fetus
having the right to their bodies or woman are otherwise prima facie obligated
to provide for the fetus.
My reply: I will leave it to readers to think about
this, too. But, for the sake of clarity, I will add (emphasize) that my
argument that pregnancy and abortion are like the kidney case I mention comes
at the heels of arguing for the personhood of the unborn and is an attempt to
set out a better analogy than Thomson’s violinist analogy. It seems to me that
aborting a human fetus, which we and Thomson concede are persons, is like repossessing a donated kidney in
the important sense that the biological systems gifted/ donated to the fetus (i.e.,
gifted/ donated freely and in a fully-informed manner) are now being ripped
away from the fetus. By ripping the fetus out of his/her life-sustaining
environment we are (from the fetus’s perspective) ripping away the biological
systems that were freely gifted to the fetus in a fully-informed manner. This
is not a case of merely declining to sustain a person’s life for whom you have
no responsibility and who has no moral claims on you. Rather, it’s a case of killing
a person — your son or daughter whom you’ve created to be in a vulnerable and
dependent state — by ripping away the necessary life-lines (some of which do
the work of kidneys) you gave him/her in the first place; AND it’s not just
ripping away the life-lines—it’s also a case of poisoning that person (by the
abortionist’s needle) or tearing off that person’s limbs (by the abortionist’s
suction machine) or perhaps crushing that person’s skull (by the abortionist’s
forceps). Abortion is like a fatal tearing
out of a donated kidney, and much worse.
IV. Consciousness
About consciousness and its significance for the abortion discussion,
Nobis writes the following:
We [Nobis and Grob] argue that the
fact that (early)
fetuses are not conscious and have never been conscious is highly relevant to the
ethics of abortion.
In response, van der Breggen
writes:
the state of being of the fetus is more like a non-permanent
coma or non-permanent vegetative state: the fetus will awaken/ gain
consciousness—if we don’t kill him/ her.
But a non-permanent coma involves someone who was conscious:
that's not present with most abortions. So I invite readers to investigate here
more thoroughly.
In reply, I agree that readers should investigate further. I invite them
to look at the relevant portions of Nobis and Grob’s book AND look at the
relevant portions of my book (chapter 11).
For clarity’s sake, please note that it’s important to take the dialectical
context of my response into account. My above comment is my response to Nobis’s appeal to what he thinks is “support” for his principle
that “If a being is and has always been
completely unconscious, that being is definitely not a person,” which in
turn, according to Nobis, provides support for the permissibility of killing a
fetus, since “they never ‘were’ in a conscious way.” Nobis
says this is supported by considerations such as “permanent, irreversible coma
cases.” But, as I point out, as support
it’s problematic. Why? Because, as I also point out, the state of being of the
fetus is more like a non-permanent coma or non-permanent vegetative state: the
fetus will awaken/ gain consciousness — if we don’t kill him/ her. Critical
thinkers should be aware of this.
With that clarification behind us, let’s say that we do have a human
being who is and always has been completely unconscious, but will not remain so
and we know this—that is, we know that if we don’t kill this human being, then he/she
will awaken, will gain consciousness. As I write in my book, “the fact is that
being a human being who will have
consciousness etc.—if we don’t kill it—is a morally significant moral kind of
thing! That’s why we don’t kill people who have non-permanent comas, and that’s
why we would not kill people who (hypothetically) have been in a coma all their
previous lives but we know will waken and will become conscious.” The human
fetus is such a morally significant moral kind of thing.
V. Consent
Concerning consent, I believe my point remains: If one consents to sex then
one is consenting to the possibility of pregnancy. In spite of Nobis’s
disagreements, my argument still stands.
For the sake of clarity (and to ensure my original argument
is not inadvertently misrepresented or lost in the discussion), here is the
argument from chapter 24 my book (keep in mind that the context of my argument
below is that it comes on the heels of dealing with Judith Jarvis Thomson’s
argument, in which it is conceded, for argument’s sake, and for which I argued
previously in my book, that the pre-natal human being is a person):
Objection: An impregnated female has the
right to consent to having sex without consenting to becoming pregnant, so if
she gets pregnant it’s morally permissible to abort the fetus.
Reply: This argument doesn’t seem to make
sense. This argument requires believing that it’s meaningful to give consent to
the beginning of a causal chain of events and do so without consenting to the
causal effects—the risks of which one admits and knows are real and yet goes on
to risk. It’s like saying I have a right to consent to lighting a match in a
room full of gasoline without consenting to the room catching on fire. Or I
have a right to consent to smoking without consenting to getting cancer. That’s
odd, surely. And this oddness counts against this argument.
The point is this: If you consent to action X
and X has known consequences (or a known high risk of consequences) then
basically you are consenting to accepting responsibility for those (risked)
consequences. As in gambling at Las Vegas, when you decide to gamble you risk
your money and are responsible for your possible losses, so too in initiating a
causal chain of events you risk the outcome of the causal consequences—and are
responsible for them even if you hoped they wouldn’t occur. Again: Claiming one
isn’t consenting to the consequences is odd—and this oddness counts against the
above argument.
One may not want to get pregnant and one may
take precautions against getting pregnant, but because no precaution is
foolproof—and we know this—by engaging in sexual intercourse one takes the risk
of pregnancy for which one is responsible. If the outcome is a person with the
right to life, then killing that person via abortion is not morally
permissible. (Untangling, p. 85.)
VI. Rape
Nobis writes: “It’s curious that van der Breggen doesn't outright argue that
abortions of pregnancies that result from rape are wrong.”
In reply, let me re-iterate my previous response.
Recall that Nobis writes (in his review of my book): “It is notable that
van der Breggen seems to think that abortions of (comparatively rare)
pregnancies that result from rape are also wrong. This, at least, makes sense,
since if embryos and early fetuses are persons with the right to life, their
origins wouldn't change that fact.”
Right, it makes sense if embryos and early fetuses are persons with the
right to life. Nevertheless, the point of my discussion of the situation of
rape is to encourage critical thinking:
to look at the pros and cons. Rape is
terrible, for sure, definitely. And perhaps
it’s a justification of abortion. But, as I point out, perhaps not. To avoid causing further harm, careful thinkers should
also examine the other considerations that I discuss. Again, I
am trying to encourage careful thinking. It seems to me that when some
(many?) people mention rape in abortion discussions, even merely countenancing
the possibility of reasons against abortion is a bridge too far for them.
And, again, here is what I write in my book (chapter 21):
Objection: Rape justifies abortion.
Reply: Rape is wrong and terrible, definitely. But
perspective is needed.
Of the total abortion practice, abortions for rape
account for a small percentage only. According to ethicist Charles C. Camosy,
“about 1 percent of all abortions take place in situations where the mother was
raped.”[1] Thus, to justify the general abortion situation because of these few
terrible cases is to commit the fallacy of hasty generalization.
Also, abortion does not undo the trauma of rape.
The mother has been victimized—she needs care. Moreover, abortion can be
traumatic, too. And abortion may be related to subsequent health problems.
Abortion risks include breast cancer, premature birth (of subsequent children),
and psychological problems.[2] By seeing abortion as a solution to rape, we
might victimize a woman (a second time).
Furthermore, to kill by abortion the human being
conceived by the crime of rape is like killing an innocent bystander at the
scene of a crime, a crime perpetrated by the bystander’s father. The father
deserves (severe) punishment, not the child.
Moreover, the child's voice should be heard.
Significantly, there are people who have been conceived by rape and are now
speaking out on behalf of those who cannot. Enter anti-abortion activist and
attorney Rebecca Kiessling and company—people conceived via rape. Kiessling
asks: “Have you ever considered how really insulting it is to say to someone,
'I think your mother should have been able to abort you.'? It’s like saying,
'If I had my way, you’d be dead right now.'” The child's voice should be
considered—so we should listen to those persons who were conceived via rape.[3]
Rape justifies abortion? Perhaps. But perhaps not.
Yes, rape is wrong, definitely, for sure, 100%. Yet there are also very good
reasons for thinking rape shouldn't justify abortion. What is certain is that
rape doesn't justify the general practice of abortion—not by a long shot. What
is also certain is that the rapist deserves punishment and we shouldn’t
victimize a woman twice by inflicting another trauma (or traumas) onto her.
What is certain, too, is that we should speak for those who can’t, which
includes the child conceived by rape. In thinking about whether rape justifies
abortion, let's be sure we don't attempt to right a wrong by adding more
wrongs.[4]
NOTES
1. Charles C. Camosy, Beyond the Abortion Wars: A Way Forward for a New Generation (Grand
Rapids, Michigan/ Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,
2015), 20. Camosy's source is Lawrence B. Finer et al., “Reasons U.S. Women
Have Abortions: Quantitative and Qualitative Perspectives,” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive
Health 37:3 (2005), 113,
https://www.guttmacher.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/journals/3711005.pdf . The
journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health is a publication of the
Guttmacher Institute, which is a pro-choice organization.
2. See the documentary Hush: A Liberating Conversation about Abortion and Women's Health,
directed by Punam Kumar Gill (Mighty Motion Pictures, 2016). For trailer, see
here: http://hushfilm.com/ . See too Angela Lanfranchi, Ian Gentles, and
Elizabeth Ring-Cassidy's book Complications:
Abortion's Impact on Women (Toronto: DeVeber Institute for Bioethics and
Social Research, 2013).
3. See the video Conceived in Rape in which Rebecca Kiessling and other people
conceived via rape speak out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Dal0opeSnQ . See too Kiessling’s website: https://rebeccakiessling.com/
Again, the point of my discussion of the situation of rape is to
encourage critical thinking: to look at the pros and cons. I make this point because, in my experience, very few people
(whether pro-choice or pro-life) have taken the time to look at the reasons for
why rape might not justify abortion.
It’s not just a question of mere logical consistency for the anti-abortion view,
though that’s part of it. There are also reasons like the ones I set out. I
want not to outright 100% dismiss whatever reasons an abortion-choice proponent
might have (though I think, as the rest of my book shows, those reasons are
weak); I want readers to consider the
reasons for thinking why abortion may not be the solution. I want readers
to think carefully.
VII. Caution
Nobis
writes:
I will note that I agree with the sentiment to err on the side of
caution, which is why I argue that abortions at or near when fetuses become
conscious or sentient could be wrong. Some pro-choice people
want to argue or insist that no abortion could ever be wrong,
but that's not my view: some could be wrong, and so we should be
cautious.
In reply, I
appreciate and respect Nobis’s willingness to err on the side of caution to
avoid the possibility of killing a person. He is against abortions of human
beings that perhaps are conscious or sentient. For this, I am glad. Yet he goes
on to permit the destruction of human fetuses earlier, when they are not
conscious or sentient. In my view, those earlier fetuses have the inherent
capacity to give rise to consciousness and sentience, though it’s not
immediately exercisable but will be immediately exercisable if we don’t kill
them. That makes them significant morally, it seems to me. And, it seems to me,
it would be wise to err on not killing them.
Nobis also
writes:
About the theory that everything that's a
rational substance is a person or everything with a rational
human nature is a person (which is an alternative to the view that
personhood is determined by having psychological characteristics), van der Breggen appeals to Francis
Beckwith and Robert
George, and he could also
appeal to Christopher
Tollefsen. I have reviews of
their work on these issues which can help assess their broad proposal for what
persons are; for another accessible brief critique of their general argument
see here.
So I agree with van der
Breggen that "To dismiss them and their views as
unreasonable would be false as well as foolish."
However, to confidentially [sic] appeal to their authority without
rigorously investigating critiques of these sorts of views would display the
same vices. Nobody should do that do [sic].
In reply, I
would still urge that we err on the side of caution. Nobis may be correct in
his critiques of the works of Beckwith, George, etc., but he may be mistaken
(as I and others think he is). As I point out in my previous replies to Nobis,
because we’re talking about killing human
beings who may be persons, we have to be sure that arguments which purport
to show they aren’t persons are strong—really strong—and beyond reasonable
dispute.
Enter my Hugely Important Point (that’s in my book
but missed by Nobis, and which I presented in my previous replies to Nobis, and
which I will post again here):
If my
appeals to the insights from Beckwith, George, Kaczor, and others cast at least
some significant doubt onto to the abortion-choice view (which I think they do,
and more), then, it seems to me, we should err on the side of not killing what
may or may very well be a person, especially since evidence points to it as
being an actual human being (albeit a pre-natal human being) and since
arguments against its personhood have problems. As I point out in my book’s
introduction, in my book’s discussion of personhood, and in my book’s
conclusion, it’s crucial, especially if one favours abortion-choice—which may
kill a human person—to be sure that one’s arguments are solid. Indeed, as I
point out repeatedly in my book, “If we aren’t sure whether a body is dead, we
shouldn’t bury it. And if we aren't sure whether what is moving in the bushes
is a hunter or a deer, then we shouldn't shoot it.”(Norman Geisler, cited in
van der Breggen, on pages 3, 41, and 126.) In other words, we can rightly
demand of abortion-choice advocates that they must have very strong arguments.
The abortion-choice view, which permits the destruction of human beings, has
the burden of proof to show—demonstrate—that arguments which purport to show
that those human beings aren’t persons are beyond-a-reasonable-doubt strong.
This is a matter of life and death, after all, and the arguments that permit
choices for killing must be so convincing that no reasonable person would ever
question them—just as in a conviction for a criminal case the evidence must be
so convincing that no reasonable person would ever question the defendant's
guilt. I don’t think abortion-choice advocates have succeeded in showing this.
As Beckwith, George, Kaczor, others, and I have argued, there are very
reasonable doubts. (By the way, Beckwith and George and Kaczor are first-class
philosophers. To dismiss them and their views as unreasonable would be false as
well as foolish.)
I agree with Nobis that to accept anyone’s views without
rigorously investigating critiques is important. I encourage readers to investigate
the views of Beckwith, George, Kaczor, and company (and how I have employed
them in my book), and I encourage readers to investigate Nobis’s critiques. Nevertheless,
it seems to me, we must tread with great care and intellectual humility. Nobis
might not agree with Beckwith, George, Kaczor, and company (and me), but the
fact is that there is reasonable disagreement going on, which suggests a
reasonable possibility of error. And, if there’s a reasonable possibility of
error, it’s wise to err on not killing human beings, i.e., not kill human
beings who may very well be persons. As history shows (and as I argue in my
book), whenever some human beings have been excluded from the human family as
non-persons, we have erred—and disastrously so. My book argues for caution and for
an ethics of inclusion.
VIII. Conclusion
More could be said in reply to Nobis’s last response, but I’ll end here. It
seems to me that, as I’ve argued above, Nobis’s criticisms of my work continue
to be problematic.
Along with Dr. Nobis, I hope our discussion(s) will encourage careful
thought about the abortion issue. I thank Dr. Nobis for the interaction and
wish him—and all our readers—all and only the best!
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Hendrik van der Breggen, PhD, is a retired philosopher who lives in
Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada. His areas of interest include philosophy of
religion, philosophy of science, metaphysics, ethics, and logic/ critical
thinking. Hendrik is author of the book Untangling
Popular Pro-Choice Arguments: Critical Thinking about Abortion available at
Amazon.
