1998-11-04
How much is human life worth? A billion dollars, as a recent lawsuit would have it? Or an infinite amount, as the Right to Life movement would have you believe? The question is, can you put a scale on the value of human life, and rate different kinds of lives differently? It's a simple question. We have rules about the taking of human lives. In response to demands for the right to abortion and the right to physician assisted suicide, Christians say that there is no scale: life is not scalable.
I think the liberals went wrong on this issue. In the 1200's, liberals (all right-- there were no "liberals" then, but I'm using the word to cover ideologies that believe in change and progress) argued that the gentry were persons, not objects and thus entitled to have a voice in government. They were right and they forced King John to sign the Magna Carta, forcing the subsequent rulers of England to seek permission from the gentry before taxing them. In the 1600's, liberals argued that land-owners were persons, not objects. They were right and they eventually won the vote for the propertied classes. In the 1800's, the liberals argued that blacks were persons, not objects, and entitled to freedom. They won, and slavery was abolished. In the 1900's, they argued that women were persons and entitled to the same rights. Again, they won, and women got the right to vote and to run for elected office. Each time, they expanded the definition of person, in order to expand the franchise, to confer rights that previously did not exist, to a class of people who were previously exploited or oppressed or otherwise victimized. This is quintessential liberalism-- spreading wealth and political power around as equally as possible.
Meanwhile, conservatives argued that the poor and blacks and women were not fully persons, and therefore not fully entitled to most human rights. They lost. This is quintessential conservatism: let's preserve the status quo. Let's compel people to respect the existing power structure. Let's not change. Let's protect the wealthy and the privileged. Your gain must be my loss.
It is perhaps one of the most disgusting turns of the abortion debate that the conservatives now look back to the civil rights era for inspiration in defending the rights of the unborn. They act as if they were in favour of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. They act as if they had always opposed segregation. They act as if they have always stood for government intervention and activist social policies. And now, by golly, once again they represent the interests of the poor and oppressed.
Conservatives always seem to think that society used to be resolutely in favour of the right to life, but, in the tide of sexual immorality that has flooded our society in the latter half of the 20th century, we are now decadent and pro-choice. They forget, or never knew, that before the 20th century, nobody seriously regarded life in the womb as equal in value to a life outside of the womb. There are no laws, or even books, that defend the "right to life" before the 1900's. This issue only arose because we suddenly had the technology to end the life in the womb. Suddenly, the conservatives wanted to extend the franchise. They wanted to say that fetuses were persons, not objects, and thus entitled to all the rights enjoyed by other humans. And suddenly the liberals wanted to disenfranchise. They wanted to constrict the definition of human.
Why the reversal? Simple. The 1960's brought "free love". Suddenly, a lot of people took it into their heads that they could just go out and have sex without going through all the hoops we used to make them jump through. They were having fun. Christians don't believe in that kind of fun, but they know it's fun, so maybe they became jealous. They couldn't prevent people from having fun, but they tried very hard to take some of the fun away by preventing abortions, and sex education, and birth control.
Fetuses and adults are not the only forms of human life on the planet. We have the very old. We have the very young. We have the brain-dead. We have the developmentally delayed. We have Iraqis. We have Newt Gingrich. The conservatives, who want to expand the franchise to the unborn, also want to make sure the old and infirm and developmentally delayed are protected. But then they go even further: the brain-dead, the mangled, the hopeless--- all must be protected. All... except the Iraqis. All... except the criminal. All... except the Bosnians.
The same conservatives who fight tooth and nail against abortion rights enthusiastically supported an all-out war against the overwhelmingly out-gunned Iraqis. Over 100,000 Iraqis died, and only about 100 Americans. They supported President Bush and General Colin Powell when they insisted on preventing Bosnia from defending themselves against Serb aggression, though it cost tens of thousands of lives. They did nothing to prevent the slaughter in Rwanda that cost 500,000 lives. They fought bitterly against any kind of display in a war museum that acknowledged the American's use of the nuclear bomb against Japan. They energetically and enthusiastically support the death penalty for everything other than speeding. They support preposterously stern sentences for even simple possession of marijuana. They oppose the U.S. signing the treaty to ban land mines, even though they are targeted at civilians. They want to spend more and more money on defense-- even more than the Pentagon asks for.
The conservatives argument against abortion is an absolutist interpretation of what is life. Even though a fetus has only a few cells and no discernible brain activity, they declare: close enough! They insist that there is no doubt that this life is sacred. And a brain-dead old man on an artificial respirator with no hope of recovery? Sacred! A woman dying of cancer who wishes to spend her last days at home with her family, and then die before the disease completely ravages her body? Sacred! A person who has been in a coma for twenty years? Sacred!
But a black man in prison on a charge of homicide? An Iraqi soldier? A Moslem woman? A Rwandan refugee? A child in Africa who steps on a land mine manufactured and sold by a Canadian or European or American company? There is equally no doubt in their mind that this life is not quite sacred enough to inspire opposition to war, or a devotion to solving world hunger, or support for an international ban on land mines. Or a few moments to consider the role of the Enola Gay in human history.
That makes no sense to me. They claim that life is an absolute right. Then they say, no, it's not. We can take it away under certain conditions. We can take it away with a careless bomb, a land mine, a flawed judicial system that denies adequate legal representation to the poor, with indifference. We take it away in the interests of encouraging a robust improvement in our standard of living.
It seems to me that you can't have both. Either life is of a piece-- it is all sacred-- or there are degrees, there is a scale. And if there is a scale, it is possible to say that some human lives are not absolutely entitled to protection. They can be ended. And if you can say that some human lives can be ended, why can't a woman say that a few cells in her uterus can be scraped away? Why can't a terminally ill cancer patient die a few weeks earlier, at home, and in relative comfort, instead of in a hospital with a dozen tubes stuck into her body, and her mind drugged into oblivion--- to ease the pain.
I think the liberals should adopt the "right to life" movement. Liberals will support laws that prevent abuse of animals. Why? Why do we care about animals? Because they are living things. They inhabit the earth. They share our world. Well, if a skunk should be protected, then why not a fetus? It's a matter of degree. In my opinion, a fetus is more sacred than a skunk. Maybe the skunk is sacred. But so is a fetus. Maybe under certain circumstances we have to kill skunks. Maybe under certain circumstances-- like rape or mental illness-- we will have to permit abortions.
Conservatives, if they were consistent, would be arguing, "hey, it's just a few cells. We can't feed everybody." That would harmonize with their other values: "Hey, the poor-- tough luck! But we can't help everybody. It costs too much. It's a drain on the economy. Foreign aid? First they need the gospel--"
I think abortion is debatable up to about six weeks. I don't agree with it even then, but I believe it is debatable. But permitting abortions up to 16 or 20 or even 24 weeks, as we presently do, is insane.
A few years ago, a man in London, Ontario dropped some puppies into a river. He was arrested and charged and convicted of cruelty to animals. Is a puppy more sacred than a human fetus that has a heart beat and brainwave activity and a gender, and could survive outside the womb? Is it more conscious of pain or love or indifference? Does it have less dignity, less spirit, less personality? No way. We know a heck of a lot more about life in the womb than we did fifty years ago. I don't care what you call a 20 week old fetus-- it is not a cluster of a cells anymore.
Copyright © 1998 Bill Van Dyk All rights reserved.