The Pro-Life Movement

Recently (May 31, 2009) a man shot and killed George Tiller in the midst of a church service. Tiller was one of the few doctors in America that performed partial birth abortions and he was also consistently in the center of the abortion debate. Because Tiller was such a high-profile person in the abortion services community, and he was shot dead in a church, there has been a lot of media attention paid to the event. This attention has revealed something very telling about the current pro-life movement – we are failing miserably.

Before justifying such a claim I want to state some of my background assumptions via a quick argument seeking to establish that both Tiller’s killing and abortions are immoral. I will then explain why I think the pro-life movement is failing. Finally, I will conclude by presenting the strategy that I think the pro-life movement should endorse and demonstrate what that strategy looks like in action by arguing for the truth of some of the premises in the following argument.

1. Personhood begins at conception. That means from the earliest stage of pregnancy we are dealing with a human person and should treat him or her accordingly.
2. The unjustified killing of a human person is morally wrong.
3. Almost all abortions are instances of unjustifiably killing a human person.
4. Therefore, almost all abortions are morally wrong.

Though this is slightly off topic, I should point out that according to the above argument the killing of George Tiller was morally wrong. I am perfectly content with such a view since I take all instances of vigilantism as being morally inappropriate. On my view, killing Tiller is not just morally wrong but also pragmatically wrong. If one wants to see abortion more highly restricted (or eliminated altogether), killing abortionists won’t help that matter. If anything, it makes it more unlikely.

With the above argument in mind, I want to describe why I think the pro-life movement is failing and what should be done to correct it. First, why it is failing. I take as a representative sample of media coverage a recent column on the BBC News website (Anti-abortion and violence in the US). In this column, author Nick Triggle notes what he takes to be the general tenor of the abortion debate in the US. First he notes that quite-popular President Obama “was heckled by anti-abortion activists over his decision earlier this year to lift restrictions on funding for abortion.” He then notes that such heckling and protests are quite common in the US and its commonplace is, at least, partly attributable to the “hundreds of religious stations across the country.” He continues, “the level of involvement of religious groups” is vastly different in the US than in the UK. Finally, and most tellingly, he says “With half the US population regular church-goers, everything from sexual abstinence and euthanasia campaigns to the abortion debate has been dominated by religious groups.”

Now I don’t have a problem with Triggle’s article. In fact, I think his analysis is spot on. What I do have a problem with is that the pro-life movement has allowed itself to be branded as a religious movement. If you go to any number of websites that have reported on Tiller’s killing and look at just a few of the comments you’ll see a frequent theme. You’ll see many pro-choice supporters accusing “pro-lifers” as being close-minded and trying to force their religious beliefs on the rest of America. Sadly, the responses by those same pro-lifers support such an idea.

But don’t get me wrong; I am proud that most people in the pro-life movement are Christians. That religious groups are the primary reason this is still an issue in America today is a good thing. That means we are still fighting for the oppressed and willing to defend the defenseless. However, we do not live in a world that accepts our authority as their authority. Religious groups cannot make a religious argument to convince the world that abortion is morally wrong. We must give them arguments with premises that they can accept on their own terms. We can’t allow the fact that the pro-life movement is dominated by “religious groups” to become a fact that the pro-life argument is a religious argument.

There is simply no need to give a religious argument for the immorality of abortion. Of course, these types of arguments are available, but they will only convince those that already accept that religion as true and authoritative. Most in America today do not (even many of those that refer to themselves as Christians) accept Christianity as true and authoritative. Here one might ask what type of argument should we give, if not a religious argument. What would a non-religious argument look like? Here is an example of one, very simple, argument that all religious and non-religious people can use to make the case for the life of the unborn.

1. Either the unborn are human persons or not.
2. If the unborn are not human persons, then no justification for an abortion is needed (just like we don’t need justifying reasons for removing tonsils).
3. If the unborn are human persons, then the justification typically given for an abortion will never be morally adequate (just because an individual is too busy or too poor to take care of another human person does not mean that individual is justified in killing that human person).

This focuses the debate on the thing that matters most. Are the unborn human persons? I believe they are, but not even that belief depends upon a religious assumption. Why think the unborn are human persons? This can be boiled down to one general idea.

• The location of a thing is never a morally salient feature of that thing.

If one should think of a newborn as a human person, then there is no good reason to not think of a pre-born as a human person. Frankly, it is absurd to think that a few inches determine the moral status of a person. To believe that the fetus is magically transformed from non-person to person by traveling down the birth canal is rationally unacceptable. The fetus just prior to birth is just as much a human as the infant just after birth. Its location is irrelevant.

Further, there are no good reasons to cut off personhood at some earlier point in the pregnancy either. Distinctions based upon trimester are purely arbitrary ways for people to refer to general stages of development. Almost everything that a person needs to develop into a grown human being is present from conception. The only additional things needed are external. They are 1) an appropriate environment and 2) to not be killed. But this is just as true for you and me as it is for the unborn. If you kill me, then I will obviously not continue grow as a human being. But even if you just remove me from an environment conducive to my continued growth (e.g. by stripping off my clothes and placing me outside during an Alaskan winter), then I too will die. That the unborn depends upon the appropriate environment to live does not mean it is not a human person. If you don’t kill me, then I will continue to grow as a human person grows. If you don’t kill the unborn, they will do the same.

Now of course much more can be said in favor of the pro-life position. This is intended to be a very rough and ready type of argument that, for our purposes, simply demonstrates how the pro-life movement should advance its cause. You should notice that nothing I have said against the morality of abortion has depended upon a religious argument. Not once did I appeal to the Bible or to church teaching. If the pro-life movement begins to advance these types of arguments, then we will have a much greater shot at convincing the general public that abortion is morally wrong. Even if that does not result in Roe being overturned (though I in fact think it could), it will prevent a great number of women from choosing to have an abortion. But as long as the pro-life movement relies upon religious arguments we will continue to be marginalized in the public sphere. Our arguments are compelling and their arguments are not. In order to progress the pro-life agenda we must use the compelling arguments and not ones that rely upon a religious text that a vast number of Americans don’t accept as authoritative.

If you’d like more resources for developing this type of argument I’ll make two recommendations. The first is Stand to Reason’s Bio Ethics page. At STR’s page you’ll find a wealth of good reasoning about the abortion issue (as well as many of today’s other pressing ethical issues). The second is Life Training Institute, which is run by Scott Klusendorf, a former member of Stand to Reason. (I’m indebted to Greg Koukl of STR and Klusendorf for the formulation of the above argument.) Klusendorf just published a book dealing with the abortion issue called, The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture (this links to the book’s website). You can get his book from that site or from Amazon at The Case for Life.

Three Thoughts on the AIG Bonuses

I don’t have a degree in economics or law, but there are three things about the nationwide AIG bonuses outrage that have to be recognized.

1. Whoever authored the bill allowing the bonuses to be paid is to blame the most – not the people accepting the bonuses. If there is a legally binding contract that says they get the money, then they should get. That’s how contracts work. If you’ve got a huge carrot (several million dollars of ‘bail out’ money), then you use that carrot to get what you want (removal of huge bonuses). But this has to happen before all terms are settled upon. In fact, removing the bonuses just becomes one of those terms. You don’t, after you realize you screwed up the negotiations, make a moral issue out of people following through on a contract all parties agreed to and then ‘legislate’ that moral issue because you look like a fool.
2. What you especially can’t do is void such a legally binding contract. If you do, what reason would companies have to begin investing in our economy? They’d be quite aware that even legally binding contracts aren’t actually binding if the government is involved. The last thing you want to do is provide disincentives for future investment.
3. Since just voiding the contracts (or that part of them) isn’t a good option there’s now a push to tax 90% of those bonuses. This option is just as bad as the previous one because the same disincentive for future investment remains. If the government is able to retroactively enact taxes on whatever the current ruling party wants, then why should anyone think their projected bottom dollar for their business will be the actual bottom dollar? If it’s determined that your company was too successful, then the government can just increase your taxes going backwards. If the proposal was to raise taxes on all 2010 bonuses, then this is much less problematic. Enacting retro-active taxes on people that are not politically popular is a very bad precedent to set. (And I know the AIG issue is related to personal bonuses, but there’s no in-principle way of keeping the two apart.)

In sum, voiding the contracts or levying huge taxes are both bad options and send a very bad signal to the business world. What the economy needs now are businesses willing to invest their capital, but both of these actions will make execs that much more hesitant to do so.

The federal government should have required that AIG not pay these huge bonuses as part of the terms of the bail out. But now is too late to demand the bonuses not be paid. Handling this before the bail out terms were settled would have been acceptable because both parties would have agreed that re-working the contract is in both of their interests (and this is precisely what happened concerning the auto-industry). Now that there is a valid contract one party can’t decide to renege to save face politically.

The Morality of Sweatshop Labor

Many are aware about large companies making use of sweatshop labor in the production of their clothes, electronics, etc.

Many also find this practice to be morally reprehensible. To those that do, I recommend you take a few minutes to read this short piece by Benjamin Powell.

If you think that his analysis is right, that doesn’t mean that we should stop working for even better conditions. But it does mean that a complete cessation of sweatshops would cause things to be worse for those employed there than they currently are now. We have to make sure that our efforts to better their lives, don’t end up making things worse (which not having a job, or having a worse job, would do).

I’d love to hear your thoughts about this topic, and Powell’s article.

(And a big heads up to Anthony Bradley of the Acton Institute for first making me aware of this article. You can read Bradley’s thoughts about the article here.)

Cartoons & Socialized Health Care

I happened upon this cartoon the other day and I think it does a nice job of clearly showing the problem that we are in today. No, I don’t think not having universal health care is the problem. I do think that people are increasingly of the mind that it is the government’s job to take care of them. This never has, and never should be, the central role of our government. The proper role of the government is to set the framework in which we can live freely. It is to protect others from infringing our rights to do as we ought (not as we want) and that is it. (For an outstanding argument demonstrating this point, see F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom.)
With that said, I would like to address a few of the depictions in this cartoon.

First, the roads. The majority of our roads are not federally funded. Most of them come from property taxes, sales taxes, and income taxes. And this is how it should be. The local governments are able to best decide what roads need to be built, repaired, and ignored. It is not the federal government’s role to do that for us. No one is advocating a local government ran health care system so the comparison to roads is really bad. But, if that’s what someone was advocating, and succeeded in getting it implemented (think Massachusetts), then make that clear. It’s a lot easier to move a state over than to move a country over.

Second, the army. Many don’t know this, but Milton Friedman (an economist) was one of the most influential people in getting the U.S. away from a conscription-based army and to a volunteer army. His reasoning was simple. If the military has to get people to choose to go into the military, the military will have to compete for their service. They have to offer better training, pay, etc. than the other options out there. The result, we have a much better trained and equipped military now than we ever did then. So, what does that have to do with health care?

Well, no one is forced to serve in the army. After we transitioned to a volunteer military, it has gotten better and more sophisticated. The military can’t just say “You have to join us”, instead they have to say “Here’s why you should join us.” Notice that if we switch to an Obama or Clinton-esque national health care, we are doing just the opposite. No longer do you get, “Here’s why you should join us” but instead you get “You have to join us.” So, the army example is bad for two reasons. First, the army is volunteer and national health care would not be. And second, when military service was mandated, there was no reason for the military to work to make it better. People had to join. Why think the health care industry would be any different?

Third, the postal service. By almost all accounts, our federal government ran mail service is a complete disaster. How many times can you remember their raising the cost of postage stamps? Why are they doing this? Because the USPS is losing money hand over fist and they’re trying to stop the bleeding. People thought the idea of FedEx, UPS, and DHL was absurd because the government already offered a mail service. But, the privatized system works so much better, and is cheaper for those that use it, that they are all extremely successful businesses. If the federal government is unable to deliver a package from point A to point B and keep costs down, what makes us think they can figure out a way to transplant a heart from person A to person B any better?

Fourth, the fire department. Once again this is a bad example because fire departments are not ran by the federal government, but local municipalities. Again, if you want a local ran health care system, say so. As far as I know, no one is seriously advocating such a system, and Obama and Clinton are definitely not doing so.

Now I know that this artist was probably doing this tongue-in-cheek, but I do think it highlights to a great deal how many people think about health care. It sounds so easy to just say the government should provide it and then stop thinking. But, it’s not that easy. Yes, they can provide our health care, but you have to figure out how we’re going to pay for it (the doctors, nurses, and staff are still going to get paid either way), who gets to decide if you get to have that life-improving but non life-threatening surgery, and how we can keep the program from becoming bloated with waste (which we still have yet to figure out how to do with Medicare and Medicaid).

Barack Obama, President Bush, and the War in Iraq

Barak Obama, President Bush, and the Iraq War

Believe it or not, it turns out that Barack Obama’s Iraq war strategy isn’t as different from President Bush’s as you might have thought. This is especially surprising since Obama’s Iraq plan seems to be one of the only things we know about what he would do as president (we’ve yet to figure out what exactly “change” amounts to, even though he wants to do a lot of it).

Listen to Obama speak for a few minutes and sooner or later you’ll hear him mention his plan to begin bringing troops home now. It’s no coincidence that the ubiquitous “We Support Our Troops, Bring Them Home” stickers are often placed right next to “Barack Obama ‘08″ stickers. As it turns out though, Obama actually thinks that Bush’s Iraq strategy isn’t such a bad idea. Of course he could never come out and say that because the liberal-left would kill him for it. Before I demonstrate that their plan for Iraq is essentially the same, I need to briefly summarize Bush’s strategy.

When you hear President Bush speak about Iraq he inevitably mentions refusing to fail. Why is not failing so important? There are two main reasons. First, if the U.S. fails in stabilizing Iraq, there will undoubtedly be an increase in the presence of al-Qaeda in that country. This isn’t too surprising since the people we’re fighting in Iraq right now are mostly members of al-Qaeda. They already have one place from which to base their operations and we can’t give them another one, especially one so close to Saudi Arabia. Second, the increased presence of al-Qaeda in Iraq will put the lives of those Iraqis that have fought alongside the United States in serious danger. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that al-Qaeda is going to seek retribution against the Iraqis that have ‘offended their cause’. Abandoning the Iraqis to al-Qaeda is not acceptable.

Now you might disagree with Bush about this, but you should take note that Barack Obama doesn’t.

Because you probably think I’m crazy, I’ll now quote from the Obama campaign website. The author of Obama’s position paper on Iraq writes, “Under the Obama plan, American troops may remain in Iraq or the region. These American troops will protect American diplomatic and military personnel in Iraq, and continue striking at al Qaeda in Iraq… In the event of an outbreak of genocide, we would reserve the right to intervene, with the international community, if that intervention was needed to provide civilians with a safe-haven.”

Now to be fair, prior to that quote Obama says he’ll immediately begin bringing troops home and have everyone home in 16 months. The problem is that he goes on to say residual forces will remain. Well, one might ask, how many residual forces and for how long? What happens if those residual forces aren’t adequate to “protect American diplomatic and military personnel” or to intervene to “provide civilians with a safe-haven”? One might also wonder why he would be willing to leave troops at all, especially since he continually says he’s going to bring all of them home. Essentially, Obama gets that al-Qaeda is going to be a problem and that they’ll be such a problem that we won’t be able to ignore them. Why wouldn’t we be able to ignore them? Because they’ll have a new base to operate from and will retaliate against Iraqis that helped the United States. Sound familiar? He understands what Bush is saying, but he also knows that he’d never get elected by admitting Bush is right. However, Obama is a very smart man and that’s why he provided the “out” clause I quoted above. This clause allows him to preach now about how he’ll bring the troops home, but once elected, can keep things going until the Iraqis can adequately manage things themselves. He can get the political payoff now and keep letting the military do their thing then, all that without ever going back on his word. Smart man.

I should point out one big and important difference between Bush’s plan and Obama’s plan. Obama evidently thinks it is better to wait to act until an outbreak of genocide occurs, whereas Bush thinks it is better act now and ward off an outbreak that would otherwise be certain to occur. I’m not so sure about this strategy.

So, if you’re a big fan of the “Support Our Troops, Bring Them Home” idea, you might want to push Obama a bit harder on what he would be able to do as president, and stop being satisfied with what he would like to do.

Before you vote for McCain

Before you vote for McCain
Please do yourself, and America, a favor. Before you head off to vote on Tuesday, take a few minutes to find out about the following bills that McCain helped write:

1) McCain-Feingold
2) McCain-Kennedy
3) McCain-Lieberman

After you’ve learned what these are, ask yourself if a traditional, Reagan conservative would support those bills. Keep in mind that the large percentage of Republicans (who should be as close to traditional conservatives as we’ll get) voted against each of them. McCain not only voted against the large number of Republicans, he sponsored the bills!

Another thing to ask yourself is if a traditional, small government, low taxes Republican would have voted against making Bush’s tax cuts permanent. Here again McCain sided with the Democrats and not the majority of Republicans.

You should also consider whether a traditional Republican would have voted in favor of amnesty for illegal immigrants (hint, this is the McCain-Kennedy bill). McCain said it doesn’t really matter if you broke the law to get here, pay $3,000 and you’re fine. Now I know that the bill didn’t pass, but we still don’t know what McCain’s actual position is on amnesty. When asked if he would vote in favor of it as President, he said “Well it’ll never come up for a vote.” What? That wasn’t the question. It was a hypothetical question that McCain didn’t seem to understand.

Finally, are you not at least a bit concerned with his support of Justice O’Connor. It seems odd to say “I’ll appoint justices like Alito and Roberts” and then turn around and say “O’Connor was a fine justice” when they are nothing alike. I wonder if the fact that she would have been the deciding vote in upholding McCain-Feingold had anything to do with that comment.

Of course if you’re not a Republican or are a more progressive one, these things might not matter to you. But, if they do, you should seriously consider the above points and ask yourself if McCain is really a Reagan conservative or is just trying to act like one.

(Bias alert: I’m voting for Romney because I think his policies are solid. If you agree with me about McCain then hopefully you also realize that Huckabee has no real shot at winning the nomination and so should vote for Romney too.)

Look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Why the Bible Doesn’t Matter (at least sometimes)

I’ve been listening to quite a bit of commentary following Tim Hardaway’s recent comments that he hates gay people. For those of you that haven’t heard, Hardaway was asked on a Miami area sports radio show what his thoughts were about having a teammate that is gay. He made some remarks that seemed a bit bigoted and when asked if he understood those were homophobic, bigoted remarks, he responded by saying “I hate gay people.” Much of the commentary I’ve heard on a local radio station has focused on how the Bible condemns homosexuality and even though the way Hardaway expressed his view is questionable, he is right in saying that homosexuality is wrong. Their basis for why homosexuality is wrong is that the Bible condemns it. Well, I want to argue that, in this situation, what the Bible has to say about homosexuality doesn’t matter.

First, it’s not at all clear that Hardaway based his comments on the Bible. In fact, I think it’s clear that his comments were not based on the Bible. So the biblical passages that refer to homosexuality don’t matter in this context because they were never appealed to in the first place.

Some may respond by saying that even if Hardaway didn’t appeal to the Bible in his comments, he could have made such an appeal. In fact, some have even said that he should have made an appeal to the relevant Biblical passages. This leads naturally to my second point. Even if Hardaway (or anyone for that matter) does have a case that the Bible condemns homosexuality he should not have appealed to that case. Why? Because what the Bible says about homosexuality is completely irrelevant when discussing the issue with people that don’t believe in the Bible. I understand that some may be bothered by this statement so let me explain a bit further.

When making a case for or against some issue, it is important to make that case with premises that all parties find agreeable. Please allow me to illustrate. Imagine you and a friend are playing in a field behind both your houses. You see a tree and decide to climb that tree. Tree climbing is a hobby you developed with your father and would now like to climb that tree. Your friend tells you, “Don’t climb that tree!” to which you ask “Why?” Now if your friend responds by saying “Well, my daddy said to not climb this tree, so you shouldn’t climb the tree” do you have any obligation to comply? Of course not. What reason do you have to comply with the commands given by an authority (her father) that you don’t recognize? Now if your instead friend replied by saying, “All the other children that have climbed this tree have fallen and hurt themselves very badly” then it might make sense to not climb that tree. Does the situation change if instead of a friend in the field with you it is a sibling and your sibling said “Don’t climb that tree because Dad said not to”? Yes that does change things and in a very important way. Why? Because now both people recognize the same person as a common authority.

So how does that apply to debating whether or not homosexuality is a good thing to practice? Well, if you say, “Don’t engage in homosexual activities because the Bible says it is a sin” but the person doesn’t believe in the Bible, then you are no different than the friend that expects you to obey her dad. Now if both parties agree that the Bible is the inspired Word of God and a guide to daily living, then it is perfectly acceptable to appeal to the Bible as your authority on the subject.

Does this mean that the Christian should remain silent about the potential or actual harms of homosexuality? Of course not. There are two things open for the Christian to do. One is to engage the other person about why he or she should accept the Bible as the standard for daily living. This would be like the friend in the example going on to say, “Well, my dad is a fireman and the last time someone got hurt climbing this tree all the firemen decided it was too dangerous for anyone to climb.” This would be an attempt to show why, in this case, you should accept the authority of her dad. The second thing you can do is make your case against homosexuality without referring to the Bible. Why do you think the Bible seems to prohibit homosexuality? (I use ‘seems’ because not everyone reading this will agree it does, but even those people would agree with what follows.) Well, certain behaviors prevent people from living the best life possible. That is true whether or not you believe in God or the Bible. If you show how those behaviors prevent the best life without appealing to the Bible, then whomever you are talking with cannot just say, “Well, I don’t believe in the Bible and so I have no reason to obey its commands.”

I do think such a case can be made. If you’re interested in some books that make a case against homosexuality (among other things) without appealing to Scripture, let me know. There are also some great books that will help you know why people should believe in the Bible’s trustworthiness and reliability. Those types of books may help you with your ability to convince those that don’t trust the Bible that they should.