A response to my critics.
A response to my critics.
M y Washington Post article with Robert P. George, “Biden’s stance on abortion contradicts his Catholicism,” generated a fair number of criticisms over email, on Twitter, and in the newspaper’s comment section — too many for me to address individually or at length. Here I’ll try to provide an omnibus response to the critics, speaking only for myself. Most of the criticisms are composites, but I’ll include links when I have specific comments in mind.
“If you don’t agree with abortion, don’t have one.” This retort would be fine, though superfluous, if made after the discrediting of the key premise of the essay: that abortion is an unjust attack on a human being in violation of her most fundamental right. It is a non sequitur as a substitute for that discrediting, in the same way as it would be to say, “If you don’t like genocide, don’t commit it” or, “If you don’t like school shootings, don’t shoot up schools.”
“I’m Catholic and I’m pro-choice.” No one doubts that many people consider themselves both Catholic and supportive of legal (and constitutionalized, and sometimes even subsidized) abortion. Our article would not exist in the first place were it not directed against the coherence and soundness of this position. Re-asserting its existence is not even a glancing blow against the pro-life argument.
“The cells I scrape off my arm are also human life. This is an equivocation on terms.” No, the equivocation is yours. Those cells are not “a new and distinct member of the species Homo sapiens,” the human beings we argued deserve protection. Those beings are organisms in their own right, not functional parts of other organisms.
“Reduce poverty and you’ll reduce abortion.” That may be true, and it is one among many reasons to seek to reduce poverty. But even the most praiseworthy anti-poverty agenda or record would not make it right to violate human rights by exposing a category of human beings to lethal violence on the basis of their age, stage of development, location, or condition of dependence.
“The President’s job is to uphold the Constitution. It is not his job to enforce Catholic doctrine.” This comment seems to be offered as a criticism, but contradicts nothing in the article and, indeed, essentially restates one of its passages. Neither George nor I suppose or argue that, for example, the government should require citizens to affirm the Trinity. Our argument turns on the nature of abortion as a violation of human rights. Actually upholding the Constitution, by the way, would mean allowing states to protect the right to life without the supervision of the federal judiciary.
“The Catholic Church has no right to tell a diverse society what to do about abortion.” It doesn’t have or claim the power to issue commands to our society or our government. It can and does, however, urge that human rights be respected, and that its members, who claim to adhere to its teachings, actually do so. It can and should also correct the record when its members misdescribe its teaching, as President Biden does.
“Now do the death penalty.” Sure. It’s a different, though related, issue. Professor George and I are both opposed to it, although abortion is worse both in its current scale and its deliberate infliction on the innocent.
“You fail to acknowledge that the issue is not whether the foetus is biologically human. The issue is: at what stage should you regard a developing foetus as a rights-bearing person?” It’s true that our short op-ed did not specifically rebut all common arguments for abortion. But the argument is addressed nonetheless: The attempt to distinguish between those whole, distinct human beings who count as persons and those who do not is (a) unjustly discriminatory on the basis of a being’s stage of development and (b) foreclosed by the Catholic teaching that the subject of our criticism, President Biden, professes to believe. (Which may be one reason Biden has not himself advanced the argument in public.)
“Embryos routinely die naturally, so if you’re right then God is the greatest killer of all.” This is one of those arguments that proves too much. Human beings die naturally at all stages of development and ages; that fact does not establish that it is acceptable, or that it should be legal, for us to take actions to bring about the deaths of human beings.
“Sorry to tell you this, but I blew off that OpEd piece because neither author identified their religion, thereby hiding a component in how one should evaluate their opinion.” The argument can be evaluated without any such identification, but in any case I think we dropped subtle hints.