|
 nna
Quindlen has an interesting column in the latest
Newsweek.
No, really.
Most coverage of the debate over research using stem cells or fetal
tissue implies that it has gotten tangled up with the politics of
abortion because pro-lifers have irrationally connected the two.
Pro-lifers say that of course the two are connected, because they
both turn on the question of when life begins. They also note that
the idea that abortion could indirectly result in fantastic medical
advances might move pregnant women, and citizens generally, in a
pro-abortion direction. But this latter argument is not their main
one, and it is made only occasionally.
But here comes Anna Quindlen, moved by candor or recklessness, to
tell us that it is true. Quindlen, who has often written in favor
of legal abortion, says that the likelihood that research using
embryos might change attitudes toward abortion is a reason (the
reason?) to favor the research. Abortion is something, she gracefully
concedes, that "many people still see as a negative act." But "thinking
— really thinking — about the use of the earliest embryo
for life-saving research might bring a certain long-overdue relativism
to discussions of abortion across the board."
For Quindlen to own up to "relativism" is also an act of candor,
though her terminology is imprecise. The morality of abortion should
be considered relative, or in relation, to what? She does not specify.
She can't. If she does, there would be implicit criteria by which
one could say that some decisions to abort are objectively wrong.
What she actually believes, at least in the case of abortion, is
"subjectivism": The morality of a decision depends on the view of
the person making it. Which removes both decision and decision-maker
from the possibility of judgment. It also removes any possibility
that she can know whether she has made the "right" decision —
whatever that word means in this moral universe — except perhaps
based on how she feels about it.
Given this view of morality, it is not surprising that her column
is an appeal to sentiment, not logic. We are supposed to have more
sympathy for the distressed women we know than for "those unborn
unknown to [us] by circumstance or story." Our sympathy for people
suffering from ailments that stem-cell research could cure, prevent,
or ameliorate — people such as Christopher Reeve, Michael J.
Fox, and Ronald Reagan — is supposed to defeat any mere principled
objections we have to that research.
She writes: "[S]ome who believe that life begins at conception may
look into the vacant eyes of an adored parent with Alzheimer's or
picture a paralyzed child walking again, and take a closer look
at what an embryo really is…. It may be an oversimplification
to say that real live loved ones trump the imagined unborn, that
a cluster of undifferentiated cells due to be discarded anyway is
a small price to pay for the health and welfare of millions. Or
perhaps it is only a simple commonsensical truth." (Doesn't The
Brothers Karamazov have something to say about this kind of
bargain?)
Look. Picture. These are acts of dumb perception, not intellection.
In the abortion wars, pro-lifers are often cast as the party of
emotion and pro-choicers as the party of reason. Quindlen follows
this convention in her column, depicting pro-lifers as zealots and
pro-choicers as "more thoughtful and reasonable." But "thinking,
really thinking," is about the last thing she has in mind.
|
