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The Spectacle Blog
We all know the circumspect pro-lifers who will endorse restricting abortion only to rapidly follow their statement with a modifier. It goes like this:
But if you plan on telling women they can’t abort babies, then you’d better be ready to establish orphanages, pay for healthcare, add welfare benefits, etc.
For a long time, I accepted this as sage advice. On first blush, it seems to be clearly true.
A friend brought up that point to me earlier today. I suddenly realized it is in many ways a cop out.
In order to demonstrate, consider a similar position on theft, which does not of necessity entail the ending of someone’s life. Here we go:
If you plan on making theft illegal, then you’d better be ready to remove the sources of material deprivation. You’ll need to be ready to provide healthcare, food stamps, welfare, etc. Until you remove the incentives for theft, you had better be ready to live with theft.
Do you see the problem? Abortion is an evil. Theft is an evil. Both are sometimes resorted to because people are desperate and don’t know what to do. At other times, the act is chosen in a more cynical fashion and without the tragically beautiful wrapping of travail.
I think we should do things to make abortion less attractive to women. But I do not think that we should propose to people that they may not legitimately oppose abortion until they are willing to enact a host of social welfare reforms. The evil is the evil. We can seek to prevent the evil by making it less attractive through palliative measures, but we may also seek to prevent the evil by making it unlawful. The second does not logically depend on the first.
View all comments (17) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Hunter Baker
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c. j. acworth| 6.18.10 @ 7:03PM
Being willing to support PRIVATE aid to women contemplating abortion is another matter. My church helps to support a local "crisis pregnancy recource center" which offers counseling and material aid to women in a tough situation. A case can be made for a moral obligation to offer something besides a Scarlet Letter, but help should be freely given, not taxed out of somenes pocket.
Truth to Power| 6.18.10 @ 7:15PM
Well said except I don't see anybody advocating Scarlet Letters for pregnancies outside of marriage. It seems all too routine. Our society would be much healthier if there was some shame attached to this.
Nate| 6.18.10 @ 8:29PM
I agree with your overall view. Abortion is an evil. Roe v. Wade ought to go.
I'm not sure I accept the analogy to theft, however.
Society is greatly harmed by children being raised in poverty. Social "welfare" programs -- or whatever you wish to call them -- if done intelligently, can greatly offset costs -- in addition to heartache -- that can result from children being raised in poverty.
I don't see how the theft analogy holds up to the logic of seeing to it that the poor have a fighting chance and their children have some opportunity to make it in the world.
Social "welfare" programs actually account for a very, very small fraction of government spending.
That trillion dollars a year we spend at the Pentagon buying weapon systems designed to defeat the Soviet army as it existed in 1983?
Maybe a small cut here or there wouldn't hurt much.
Tom near Boston| 6.20.10 @ 12:26AM
Hi Nate,
Many, if not most, of the greatest figures of this nation's history were "raised in poverty" or something close to it. But they were also raised with the understanding that they were responsible for the manner in which they conducted their lives in a moral sense. You live your life right, the rest tends to take care of itself.
Why is that all gone now? Thank you, Nate, for neatly encapsulating why the moral and spiritual underpinnings of our nation have eroded: "the logic of seeing to it that the poor have a fighting chance and their children have some opportunity to make it in the world."
Seriously Nate, have you ever actually met someone who has lived their life relying upon government assistance? Do you think this sort of person really has more of a "fighting chance" now than their grandparents did before the Great Society matastasized into the near-complete destruction of the traditional family amongst "the poor?"
The source of providence used to be God, and generally speaking on flesh-and-blood terms that providence was secured by strong fathers and faithful mothers. Now, the source of all good is understood to be liberal politicians acting as the agents of self-congratulatory weenies, Nate.
darcy| 6.20.10 @ 5:33PM
I agree with you, Tom near Boston.
Character is what matters, and I would argue that dependence on government for sustenance short-circuits the development of character; there is no moral virtue in encouraging citizens to be slackers, who themselves develop no moral virtue in accepting dependent status ; there is no moral virtue in "leveling the playing field," as the Left romantically portrays confiscatory taxation and the redistribution of hard-worker A's income to slacker B's benefit -- none whatsoever.
The federal government is currently in the business -- in the guise of altruism -- of taking off the edge, if not eliminating altogether, the consequences of the vicissitudes of life, many of which are self-caused. The state has made itself the great enabler of all manner of vice, from laziness to promiscuity to the institutionalization of envy.
I don't have to pay the consequences of my immoral lifestyle? Then I don't get the teachable moment out of it either -- but rather, a severely comprised conscience. Thank you, Uncle Sam, for caring.
One last thing: Becky's comments below, at 7:45am, are noteworthy for their moral clarity.
Becky| 6.19.10 @ 7:45AM
From personal experience in dealing with those on assistance, the poor would be better served if the government did less. The problem with being in poverty today is not the financial hardships as much as the degradation of the human spirit. Providing for another adults needs in a faceless, nameless manner is impersonal and uncaring. It leads to degradation of your character whether intentional or not. Nobody, including liberals, treat those on public assistance as equals. Once you see the person in line ahead of you use food stamps, your opinion of the items in their grocery cart changes. I have heard liberals express the same comments "they were buying such and it was on food stamps, what poor choices.... yada yada yada". I have a higher opinion of someone counting pennies to purchase something than using state credit cards.
Detroit is a prime example of the maturation of a liberal experiment. It is a place where decadence is physically evident in it's buildings and people. It is a feral place.
A good many of children are in poverty today because their parents never married or they divorced. If you don't want your child raised in poverty, stay married. It is a parent's duty to raise their child, not the states or society.
Concerning abortion, in many cases it is not the woman, but the boyfriend or parents that pressure such a choice, and the reasoning is based on similar do good arguments. Because the state offers help, the argument is get rid of the child and save the public budget. If the parents or father don't want the responsibility of kinship to the child, or they percieve a child as an interference in a planned career, it also is reduced to a monetary decision (didn't Stupak mention that?)
The question of those who argue from the monetary standpoint is if their own lives are worth the money spent? How do economies grow and the elderly find support if not for following generations?
Are we know saying it is impossible for the poor to raise responsible adults? If so why, it never used to be that way.
Oldefarte| 6.19.10 @ 12:56PM
As a born, raised and educated [16 years] Catholic, I favor abortion since the act saves both the woman/mother and child from a lifetime of poverty, misery, abuse, neglect,etc in cases where the mother/family do not have adequate financial assets/income/funds to adequately provide for the baby brought to term. Which is more inhumane/cruel, abortion or the lifetime of abuse/misery that the child will no doubt endure in an extremely povertous condition? In my opinion, it's the latter. Pro-lifers do not answer the question of who/what will fund/pay for the financial support of an unaborted child into a lifetime of poverty. Their diversion is adoption, but no doubt one in a hundred children are adopted, with the remainder subjected to a hellous jungle that is extremely cruel. Pro-lifers must answer this question honestly if the subject of abortion is ever to be fully explored!!!!!
Jill| 6.19.10 @ 5:27PM
Oh, dear. This tired argument. So, maybe we should take all the world's poor and just KILL them because they endure a lifetime of misery, abuse, neglect, etc... You are without hope. Rich children endure those things, too. Poverty is not a guarantee of misery, nor wealth a guarantee of joy. Life is irreplaceable. Once it's gone, it's gone. Money comes and goes.
sheesh.
Nate| 6.19.10 @ 11:14PM
Oldefart --
Your argument is morally insane. Actually it's a pretty good example of what libertarianism looks like. I'm sure Ayn Rand would agree with you.
Tom near Boston| 6.20.10 @ 12:35AM
Actually, I found some redeeming virtue in Oldfarte's post: try substituting the word "chastity" for the word "abortion." While not perfect, you'll find the logical consistency hangs together better than in the original. Oh, and you may need to also substitute the word "slatterns" for "pro-lifers."
Funny how outrageous and untenable it seems now to suggest that gentlemen keep it in their pants and gentlewomen keep their knees together. How could we possibly build a civilization with such ideas?
Oldefarte| 6.20.10 @ 10:13AM
Nate, Obviously you are totally ignorant of the moral/religious teachings that I [and many of us] received throughout life. Your moronic statements obviously are incapable of understanding my 24 hours of college study of theology and philosophy at a religious university. What is yours.........from the liberal, radical, extreme BARACK OBAMA SCHOOL OF CHICAGO HOODLUMISM??????
Oldefarte| 6.20.10 @ 10:07AM
True, misery has no financial boundaries, but the financially sufficient do not have to depend upon government/taxpayers for their mistakes. I/others not only have to support my own, but for your bleeding heart indigents as well. No, killing the world's poor is a ludicrous and stupid argument, but they/everyone should have a sense of what you obviously are totally ignorant about, and that is RESPONSIBILITY. Someone[s] always has to PAY THE PRICE for the human mistakes of others. It is the typically selfish, me-me-me-I-I-I attitude that results in unwanted pregnancies, with the misery and pain to the mother and child which comes forth. Go bleed your heart somewhere else, because your blood droplets are falling upon the rest of us [and is the reason why this world is as messed up as it is]!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
John - TMF| 6.19.10 @ 1:59PM
Social Welfare Analysis is merely a form of Utilitarianism. When human life is reduced to a utility, the resulting governmental/social policy will always lead to self-immolation.
If one introduces the scales of human whim, and human determination of what is worthy or not worthy, worth living or not worth living, then all live is futile, useless, and bereft of value.
Human Life is the only thing of REAL value that we have. All of the gold, silver, machines, medicines, money, power (or whatever we label as having some sort of value) is worthless or non-existent without life.
No one life is worth more than any other until that life is in the history books.
Some of the greatest men and women of human history have been born into profound poverty and deprivation. Some of the worst most ignoble born to ordered cared for lives of plenty.
If the pro-life cause bogs itself down with the anchor of utilitarianism it will ultimately fail.
Again... for clarity... the only REAL wealth that we generate is the NEXT generation. Human Sacrifice continues apace. We are destroying our wealth at the alter of our self-worship.
r/The Mighty Fahvaag
(Reminder: at the current rate of "replacement" Europe will be Muslim within the next century.)