How to Argue About Abortion

Over the course of this year, the centenary of William F. Buckley’s birth, we will republish an article by him weekly. In this column, WFB considers how best to argue in defense of the unborn and the unpleasant necessity of honestly depicting abortion, comparing the pro-life effort to the abolitionist one in terms of righteousness.

T here is room for passion in almost every argument, but there is room, too, for dispassion, and those arguments overfreighted with passion tend only to polarize the combatants and tune out those who do not care.

The arguments over abortion have been in this category, and it is a pity. Indeed it may very well be more than a pity, a tragedy: if the moral analysis of the anti-abortionists finally prevails upon the national ethos. The arguments over slavery used to be full of passion, and resulted in a civil war. Even so, there were those who were patiently making the rational points on the basis of which the great insight was finally established. Lincoln, debating with Douglas, for instance. And in due course we came to know not only that man was born to be free, but that men brought over in ships from Africa with black skins were also men, and born to be free. The Civil War settled the political issue. The arguments of Lincoln and others, resting on a distinguished moral and philosophical patrimony, clinched the moral case.

I have seen, I think, the very first attempt to talk about abortion that manages to avoid every one of the bloodcurdling clichés used both by those who believe in abortion and those who oppose it. It is a most remarkable essay by John T. Noonan Jr., and it is entitled, “How to Argue about Abortion.”

John Noonan is a professor of philosophy and of law at the University of California, Berkeley, and he shows us here how a subject as sundering as abortion can be discussed: what to look for, what the relevant perceptions are, what at all costs to avoid, and what the implications are of certain modes of argument. It is not only a distinguished performance; it is a beautiful performance, and although the pamphlet sells for one dollar, I’ll send it to anyone who wants it for nothing, if you will write me at P.O. Box 574, Murray Hill Station, New York 10016. Just say: “Please send me Noonan pamphlet.”

PROFESSOR Noonan does some truly marvelous things in a few thousand words. He examines, for instance, the role of perception in the controversy in question. I have myself gagged over the anti-abortion material that features pictures of fetuses. I have also gagged at pictures of war that feature mangled corpses. I have always assumed that the reaction of horror and disgust was philosophically irrelevant. Noonan shows, without drawing the same analogy, why in fact it is not. Why in fact perception means so very much in modern intercourse . . .

Perception of fetuses is possible with no substantially greater effort than that required to pierce the physical or psychological barriers to recognizing other human beings. The main difficulty is everyone’s reluctance to accept the extra burdens of care imposed by an expansion of the numbers in whom humanity is recognized. It is generally more convenient to have to consider only one’s kin, one’s peers, one’s country, one’s race. Seeing requires personal attention and personal response. The emotion generated by identification with a human form is necessary to overcome the inertia which is protected by a vision restricted to a convenient group.

If one is willing to undertake the risk that more will be required in one’s action, fetuses may be seen in multiple ways—circumstantially, by the observation of a pregnant woman; photographically, by pictures of life in the womb; scientifically, in accounts written by investigators of prenatal life and child psychologists; visually, by observing a blood transfusion or an abortion while the fetus is alive or by examination of a fetal corpse after death. The proponent of abortion is invited to consider the organism kicking the mother, swimming peacefully in amniotic fluid, responding to the prick of an instrument, being extracted from the womb, sleeping in death. Is the kicker or swimmer similar to him or to her? Is the response to pain like his or hers? Will his or her own face look much different in death?

There is something close to moral and psychological poetry in this passage, and throughout the pamphlet, which friends and foes of abortion will join in acclaiming.