George: No Tired Meme

Over at the Mirror of Justice website, law professor Eduardo Peñalver keeps reasserting his arguments for why Catholics and other pro-lifers can and should support Democrats¯even those who uphold abortion. But Professor Peñalver’s arguments do not improve with age or repetition. Moreover, Peñalver continues to ignore the damning point that the overwhelming majority of Democratic senators and members of the House of Representatives¯and every leading Democratic presidential aspirant¯has promised to work for the funding of research in which a vast number of human beings would be created by cloning and killed in the embryonic stage of development in the hope of benefiting others. But let us get to the heart of the matter in dispute. Either Eduardo Peñalver believes that human embryos are human beings or he does not. Either he believes that every human being—irrespective of age, size, stage of development, or condition of dependency¯possesses profound, inherent, and equal dignity or he does not. The first question is a scientific one, and the answer to it is clear. The evidence, attested to unanimously by the major embryological texts used in contemporary anatomy and medicine, is overwhelming. From the zygote stage forward there is a complete, distinct, individual member of the species Homo sapiens who, by directing his or her own integral organic functioning, will (assuming adequate nutrition, a suitable environment, and decent health) develop himself or herself toward the more mature stages of human development. The second question is philosophical. Do we possess dignity and a right to life by virtue of the kind of entity we are, namely, a human being¯the one type of bodily creature known to us who has a rational nature? Or is dignity something we possess only by virtue of our acquisition or realization of certain qualities (immediately exercisable capacities) that human beings in certain stages and conditions possess (or exhibit) and others do not, and that some possess in greater measure than others, e.g., self-awareness, consciousness, rationality? If the latter, then not all human beings are “persons” with rights. There are certain classes of human nonpersons: pre-personal human beings (embryos, fetuses); post-personal human beings (those in minimally conscious states, those who have been afflicted by dementias); and those who (due to severe congenital retardation) are not, never were, and never will be “persons.” The Catholic position (shared by many Protestants, Jews, people of other faiths, and people of no religious affiliation, and philosophically defensible even apart from revelation) is that every human being, irrespective of age, size, stage of development, or condition of dependency, possesses profound, inherent, and equal dignity and a basic right to life. There are no classes of superiors and inferiors. There are no “human nonpersons.” If Professor Peñalver doesn’t believe this, then he should clearly say so. In that case, no one would need worry much about why he would see no problem in supporting a political party and seekers of political office who promise to resist virtually all restrictions on abortion and to fund embryo-destructive research on a colossal scale. Peñalver seems to have been throwing us hints in his recent postings. His latest makes parenthetical reference to the status of the embryo being “human” merely “in some sense.” That is a line worthy of the politicians Peñalver is trying to defend. In fact, we know precisely the sense in which human embryos are human: They are distinct living members of the species Homo sapiens who, unless denied or deprived of what any other human being requires, namely, adequate nutrition and an hospitable environment, develop by internal self-direction along the gapless continuum of a human life. The adult human being who is now, say, Eduardo Peñalver, is the same individual, the same human being, who earlier in his life was an adolescent, a child, an infant, a fetus, and an embryo. By directing his own integral organic functioning, Eduardo developed from the embryonic stage of his life into and through the fetal, infant, child, and adolescent stages, and into adulthood with his distinctness, unity, determinateness, and identity intact. To have destroyed the human being who is Eduardo at any stage of his life would have been to destroy Eduardo. But perhaps Professor Peñalver thinks that he lacked dignity and right to life in the embryonic and fetal stages of his development. Perhaps he supposes that he acquired them later. Sophisticated arguments for distinguishing putatively “pre-personal” (and “post-personal”) human beings from “persons” have been advanced by a number of people. Some of them, like Peter Singer, Michael Tooley, and Jonathan Glover, are willing to live with the logical implications of their position by endorsing the morality of infanticide. I and many others have advanced philosophical arguments against the idea that some human beings are “nonpersons.” I will not repeat the arguments here. I will say only that among the weakest arguments for denying that embryonic human beings are persons is the one that seems to have impressed Professor Peñalver: namely, the argument that purports to infer from the high rate of natural embryo loss (including failure to implant) that human embryos lack the dignity and rights of human beings at later developmental stages. No one knows what the rate actually is, in part because what is lost in some cases is, due to failures of fertilization, not actually an embryo. But the rate doesn’t matter. For nothing follows from natural death rates about the moral status of the human individuals who die. By Peñalver’s logic, human infants would be “human” merely “in some sense” at times and in places where the infant mortality rate is high. (It has been as high as 50 percent in some cultures.) So this argument is going nowhere. Peñalver says that in my National Review Online essay from the last election I compare abortion to slavery. However, it was Eduardo’s fellow pro-life Democrat Mark Roche who prominently introduced the comparison with slavery into the debate during the last election, asserting in an essay in the New York Times that “history will judge our society’s support of abortion in much the same way we view earlier generations’ support of torture and slavery¯it will be universally condemned.” My own view is that slavery and abortion are comparable in some important ways, though not in others. There are respects in which slavery (especially the race-based chattel slavery system that is such a stain on our own national history) is worse than abortion¯especially in its appalling cruelty (though late-term abortions are also cruel). And there are respects in which abortion (even in early stages before fetal pain becomes an issue) is worse than slavery, since direct abortion is always an attack on human life¯the precondition of every other human good, including human freedom. What believers in the intrinsic and equal dignity of every member of the human family can agree on is that both slavery and abortion are fundamental offenses against human dignity and profoundly grave injustices, and we should oppose them resolutely. I couldn’t suppress a chuckle at Professor Peñalver’s quoting uncritically a MoJ reader’s blusteringly defiant statement that “no amount of rhetoric can bridge the ontological chasm between a person enslaved and a fetus” (which was accompanied by the reader’s triumphant proclamation that the public is with him on this). If he goes back to the nineteenth-century debates over slavery, he will find the supporters of slavery saying virtually the same thing about the differences between African slaves and white people like themselves. (Have a look at William Lee Miller’s splendid book Arguing About Slavery .) Notwithstanding the abolitionists’ assertions of human equality and their invocation of the biblical principle that every man and woman is made in the image and likeness of God, defenders of slavery insisted that “anyone” could see the inherent difference between whites and blacks (referred to as members of that “inferior” and “unfortunate” race). Many believed that science proved it. They insisted that most white people¯even among the non-slaveholding majority¯agreed with them. And on that point, unfortunately, what they were asserting was true: Most whites did not believe that blacks were their moral and intellectual equals. Even many whites (including Lincoln) who opposed slavery did not believe in full racial equality. I invite Professor Peñalver, if he accepts the point he quoted, to give us a philosophical account of the “chasm” that allegedly exists between human beings in early developmental stages and those at later stages of maturity. Given the remarkable assertion that the alleged chasm is ontological, it would be good to know what evidence he would adduce to establish what seems on the basis of the embryological facts to be patently false, namely, that embryos differ in kind from infants, adolescents, or adult humans. If Peñalver is prepared to propose the ontological division of humanity into classes, some fully human and others merely human “in some sense,” I would be curious to see if in fashioning the argument he would do as well as the pro-slavery philosophers and theologians of the antebellum period¯some of whom, as Eugene Genovese has shown, were very sophisticated indeed. There are equally sophisticated writers today¯such as Singer, Tooley, and Glover¯who are willing, as I mentioned, to distinguish pre- and post-personal human beings from human persons. But they do not pretend that such distinctions can be made compatible with the sanctity-of-life principles of the Catholic Church and the broader Western philosophical tradition. Indeed, they are tenacious critics of the Church’s (and tradition’s) basic stand. I do not suspect that their work will be of much use to Peñalver in defending an “ontological chasm.” Finally, there is an accusation by Professor Peñalver that I “wheel out the tired meme that the Democratic party is intolerant of pro-life views.” I’m delighted that Peñalver has prefaced his accusation by saying that he is making a “point of fact.” For the issue here is indeed factual, and happily the facts are on the record. Peñalver, and anyone who wonders about the truth of his allegation, should have a look at the late Governor Robert P. Casey’s autobiography, Fighting for Life . It provides a clear, factual account of the abuses and indignities to which he and other pro-life Democrats were subjected by their fellow Democrats. He was the successful, two-term governor of our nation’s fifth-largest state. In his re-election, he carried fifty-four of Pennsylvania’s fifty-five counties and won the election by more than a million votes. This was the largest landslide by a Democrat since the Civil War. He should have been welcomed at the 1992 Democratic Convention as a hero. Can Peñalver be ignorant of how he was actually received? He was denied a speaking position on the platform. (The “official” rationale given for this was risible; indeed, the episode was described as shameful by no less iconic a Democratic figure than New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.) Instead, the convention was treated to a speech by a pro-choice Republican woman who had aggressively worked against Casey in his re-election campaign. The whole Pennsylvania delegation was banished to the far edge of the huge convention hall. Many pro-choice delegates wore pro-abortion buttons bearing a photographic image of Governor Casey dressed as the Pope. Casey and other pro-life delegates were subjected to insults and name-calling¯including name-calling of a religiously bigoted sort. I could go on. And if Professor Peñalver would like me to, he need only ask. “Tired meme” indeed. It is true that the Democratic party has gotten behind the late governor’s son in his race for the Senate this year against Rick Santorum. Sensing the possibility of retaking the United States Senate—perhaps by a single vote—savvy pro-choice Democratic leaders like Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell and New York Senator Charles Schumer stressed the political value of running a pro-life Democrat against the pro-life Santorum. Tactically, this was exactly the right move, and it might well succeed. The Rendell-Schumer argument is simple and (logically) sound: The pro-choice cause will be hugely advanced, despite Casey’s pro-life views, if his election to the U.S. Senate shifts control of that body to the Democratic party. But if anyone is tempted to think that this “openness” to a pro-life candidate is anything more than tactical—i.e., trying to secure the vote that might put the pro-choice party in control of the Senate—they need only think back to what happened the last time Santorum faced re-election. Pro-life Democrat Ron Klink won his party’s nomination only to be abandoned by the national Democratic establishment because of his pro-life views. Many in the party preferred to have even someone they loathed as much as Rick Santorum in the Senate rather than a Democrat who would challenge the party’s position on abortion from within. With the possibility of control of the Senate in view, however, Democrats like Rendell and Schumer have wised up. But note this: If Casey wins and the Democrats in fact gain control of the Senate, we will easily be able to see whether Peñalver’s view or mine is the correct one. Casey’s committee assignments will tell the story. I predict that Casey will not be given an appointment, much less a chairmanship, on any committee that will put him in a position to influence policy on abortion (including judicial confirmation). Would Professor Peñalver be willing to venture the opposite prediction? Peñalver cites Nevada senator Harry Reid as a “pro-life Democrat” whose election as Senate minority leader is evidence of the Democrats openness to pro-lifers. But Reid’s “pro-choice” voting record on the most recent “Scorecard” (2005) issued by NARAL Pro-Choice America is 100 percent. This places the allegedly “pro-life” Reid ahead of such “pro-choice” stalwarts as Connecticut’s Christopher Dodd, Oregon’s Ron Wyden, Washington’s Patty Murray, and Wisconsin’s Herb Kohl and Russell Feingold in the rankings of the nation’s premier organization promoting legal, widely available, and publicly funded abortions. So having Harry Reid as leader of the party in the Senate hardly counts as evidence of the Democratic establishment’s openness to pro-lifers. How nice it would be to be able truthfully to say that the Democratic party’s intolerance of pro-lifers is a “tired meme” rather than what it is, namely, a sad fact of contemporary political life that has driven vast numbers of people who once fervently supported the Democratic party as the defender of “the little guy” into the arms of the Republicans.

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