Humans as Separate and Independent Beings and Abortion
the source of ‘individualism’ and that debate (here in the U.S.)
For the record, I believe abortion is a sin, but I am against criminalizing it. I would note that there are other sins that are not (currently) criminalized anywhere in the U.S. Adultery — a really big deal in the Bible — is one.
For those who want to criminalize abortion, the argument has centered on a fetus as a ‘human life’. Personally, I do believe that a fetus is a human life — which is why I believe that having an abortion is a sin.
Whether a fetus is or is not a human life, or at what stage of a pregnancy whatever form of existence is there becomes a human life, is a matter of belief. Like all beliefs, none of those can be demonstrated to be true or false. That is why we must turn to another criterion to determine whether abortion should be criminalized or not.
Laws exist to govern relations among human beings within society. In the U.S. lawmaking begins with the proposition — observation, really — that underlies individualism: humans exist as separate and independent beings with respect to one another.
There can be no debate about that. For us, that goes back to John Locke, who wrote the book on the approach to justice upon which the governance of the U.S. is based (Two Treatises of Government: 1689). Today, he would be considered a ‘traditional conservative’ (then, he was on the side of the revolutionaries in the English Civil War).
Locke explicitly insisted on the fact that humans are separate and independent beings with respect to one another and that the just governance of society cannot be separated from that fact. Thomas Jefferson had those words in his original draft of the Declaration of Independence [as I learned in reading Liberalism Proper and Proper Liberalism, by Gottfried Dietze (1985): re. slavery, “equal” is a more malleable concept than “separate and independent” is.]
It is just this simple: whether a fetus is a human life is a matter of belief, but it is an undeniable fact that a fetus is not a separate and independent human being. As such, a fetus is without any rights — or Rights, to include a Right to a continued existence. A fetus exists as an entity within a woman’s body, and as such is subject to her discretion, even as far as the continued existence of the fetus is concerned. That does not preclude preaching against abortion and, in appropriate circumstances, making alternatives available to pregnant women, but it definitely does preclude criminalizing abortion in the U.S.
A person might argue that this approach to the issue implies that a woman could choose to have an abortion at any stage of pregnancy. I say, ‘So be it’.
Once a stage of viability outside the womb has been reached, however, that does become a cognizable — clearly identifiable — consideration. If that limit on a woman’s discretion is granted, it is not intrinsically unreasonable to push that limit back even further. At that point, however, establishing such a limit has clearly become a matter of politics, of lawmaking, and nothing else. Of course, allowing abortion up to some (reasonable) stage of a pregnancy legitimates the criminalization of abortion beyond that stage.
Reasonableness in making and adjudicating laws has always taken ‘degrees’ and ‘differences in kind’ into account. There is always something arbitrary in such distinctions. Establishing a particular stage of fetal development for limiting abortions would be another example of that kind of reasoning. Yet, criminalizing abortion altogether denies the fact of human existence that informs the governance of the U.S. in its entirety: to be a human is to be a separate and independent being.