Since about a third of all fertilized ovum do not attach to the side of the uterus, "God" aborts more "babies" than all of Mankind.
Ain't Science fun?
47
Organized religion....mind control for the weak.
26
"...your unborn child could be reciting Shakespeare to you in sign language and it would still have no right to life." What? Huh?
31
douthat needs a chance to be pregnant in a horribly stressful situation and then see what happens.
42
Memo to St. Pete of South Bend:
Jeremiah 1:5 King James Version
Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.
7
Far from radical or mystical, the concept of an individual person's life beginning at birth is the only definition of personhood that makes any sense at all. Other tortured interpretations can only insert theocratic tyranny into our secular democratic nation. And it exerts an intolerable interference into the right of a woman's self determination. As long as a zygote, embryo or fetus is within a woman's body, that's her domain, and nobody else has any right to interfere.
50
Mr. Douthat seems to be attributing his own politics to theology, while arguing that Mayor Buttigieg's theology is politically-based.
Whether Mr. Douthat means to or not, mixing theology and politics like this is dangerous because the argument that a Catholic can't approve of progressivism can only call up the converse, that a progressive can't approve of Catholicism.
One of the foundational premises of the United States is that we can freely meet, associate, believe and promote our political or theological ideas. We've been blurring the lines between the two.
PS: I wonder how many people have told Mr. Douthat, "what do you expect, he's (Mr. Buttigieg) Episcopalian!!" However, that's the kind of comment Episcopalians themselves would likely make, and Mr. Douthat might not know any.
13
Regardless of beliefs, abortion is a moral choice. Since humans have yet to arrive at any conclusion about any moral choice, we don't need to expect one to ever arise hear. This will simply continue, much as the the endless argument that the climate crisis exemplifies, until it finally relieves us of such confusion by ending any memory of human civilization. But probably not human arrogance.
7
I think that everyone actually agrees that life is continuous and that man does not create it, not by conception or otherwise.
Some religious people assert that what conception creates is, not life, but a "soul." Non-religious people's reaction is, "Huh?"
8
Douthat is making a simplistic argument. Abortion without restriction is necessary because sometimes a woman develops a life threatening condition late in pregnancy before a fetus is viable enough to survive outside the womb. I think Buttigieg said it best: “So, let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a woman in that situation. If it’s that late in your pregnancy, that means almost by definition you’ve been expecting to carry it to term,” Buttigieg said. “We’re talking about women who have perhaps chosen a name, women who have purchased a crib — families who then get the most devastating medical news of their lifetime, something about the health or the life of the mother that forces them to make an impossible, unthinkable choice.The bottom line is, as horrible as that choice is, that woman, that family, may seek spiritual guidance, they may seek medical guidance, but that decision isn’t going to be made any better, medically or morally, because the government is dictating how that decision should be made,”
33
The simplest, most sensible dividing line between a fetus and a baby is when the fetus's development has been completed enough to survive outside the mother's body. Anti-abortion, by the way, is not synonymous with "pro-life." It is a personal belief that one has the right to put the value of a zygote, an embryo or a fetus - stages of developing human beings - above that of the free will and life of the woman. If a woman does not have control of her reproductive health choices, she is not free. Such consequential decisions certainly must not be made by an almighty government or any religious organization, all of which are tainted by politically malleable "moral" teachings.
30
I cringe when I hear the pro-lifers try to cover themselves in the mantel of science, when they say that it’s science that has determined life begins at conception. Of course, life begins at conception. Who would dispute that? The male cell has both the x and y chromosomes. So theoretically, under the right laboratory conditions, a single male cell could become a living human being as well. I’m unaware of any legislation in the works that is designed to protect male cells. An oak tree sheds thousands of acorns each year. An acorn can grow into an oak tree, but only in our poetic fantasies would we refer to the acorn as a baby oak tree. The pro-lifers whether religious or not are misconstruing a non-scientific teleological argument for science.
25
"The pro-life position is rejected, when it is rejected, for leaning too heavily on scientific definitions, not for ignoring them."
Nope. I have never seen a coherent pro-life argument that relied on science. Designating conception as the point at which human life is protected above that of the mother is far too simplistic to ever involve science.
The scientific approach should rely primarily on brain development, secondarily on viability. Only the latter is a moving target - currently the bullseye is about 25 weeks.
As to the former, fetal brain development happens on a fairly fixed timeline from the standpoint of function. Most people have a very muddled understanding of the implications of brain development. Throughout gestation, the parts are put in place, but the brain can't be said to function until after birth. Connectivity is not complete at birth, myelination is far from complete at birth, and little or no sensory input has occurred to support cognition.
If we want to base our laws on science we need to stop using "science" to tell us what we already want to hear.
18
Why waste any time or words on this guy. He will never be president.
3
I agree, this columnist will never be President and isn't worth the time.
Mayor Pete, on the other hand, will be a force in politics for a while. Get used to it.
25
I'm still grappling with the author's distinction that first breath is somehow "magical" compared to other objective measures. If anything first breath is the only blazingly obvious measure. To a greater or lesser extent, everything else is a guessing game.
15
Meant to say “less objective”
Wow, this got so convoluted I just gave up. Sorry, Mr. Douthat.
17
The snarky tone of this column begins in the first sentence with the reference to Mr. Buttigieg's Christian "piety." (Why not simply say "belief," given the rather negative connotation attached to piety?) Then in the second paragraph there's "a Rhodes scholar, even."
I always think that a given column might be the one where Mr. Douthat finally leaves his snarkiness behind.
I am always disappointed. But then I don't waste my time reading the rest of his column, either.
24
"your unborn child could be reciting Shakespeare to you in sign language," where did this irrational screed arise? It is obviously obfuscatory
I realize that"drowing men clutch at straws." but that has no relavance in this discusion either.
There are no points for air-headedness.
Be lucid or fold your tent
28
I don't think that God thinks that human life begins at conception. Consider the millions of spontaneous miscarriages annually--products of the human reproductive system designed by God on day 6 of creation. Surely God would not design a system that resulted in the murder of millions of humans each year.
18
@tanstaafl. Indeed, many religious scholars of different faiths, Thomas Aquila’s included, have connected ensoulment with quickening, not conception. To select one religious view over others, and expects all Americans to follow the beliefs of a faith they don’t hold, is a violation of the first amendment. People get themselves up in arms about Sharia law in Oklahoma, but it is somehow acceptable for Jews, Muslims, other denominations of Christians, and people of other and no religious practice, to be expected to follow one Christian view about when God breathes the soul into a fetus and that a living woman has equal or lesser rights to a fetus in case of a health emergency.
20
@Raindrop
Or that a pharmacist can refuse to fill some prescriptions for women because of his or her religious beliefs?
7
Douthat like other conservatives is interpreting (or more likely spinning) what Buttigieg said so as to reach a conclusion that nullifies how Buttigieg used the bible to show that determining when person hood begins is a matter of what verse you choose to be your guiding principle.
Douthat's conclusion that Buttigieg is suggesting that abortion should be legal up until (or even after) a baby is born is preposterous and he knows it or else he is lacking in critical thinking skills.
Douthat is so wrapped up in his Catholic beliefs that he has failed to see (as other commentators have written) the actual point that Buttigieg was making.
Abortion is legal and the morality of when it should be applied (within the limits of the law) or if not applied at all should be determined by the person who carries the fetus.
21
And where is the birth father in all this???
1
He provided seed, but Mom tends the garden and decides on the harvest....
6
A woman has a right to determine her own destiny, that includes whether she does or does not want to carry a pregnancy to term.
I don't know why this is so hard for other people who have no business getting involved in this decision to grasp, especially and most importantly men.
29
And especially and most importantly from a government that so obviously doesn’t give much of a care about a baby after it’s born, especially if it’s born brown, which makes it obvious how much of the right’s stance on abortion is for political gain vs. an actual concern for the fetus or the child it might have become. I’m a woman, and I love my kids. God took one from me in my 2nd trimester. I’ve also known a LOT of women in my 60 years. I never met 1 woman who WANTED to have an abortion or approached that decision easily or without anguish, but I know there are many who had absolutely no choice for economic and similar reasons, and more who did not have access to effective contraception, or contraception without horrible side effects. But there are how many kinds of Viagra-like medications widely available to men now? And too many men very quick to suggest abortion upon being confronted with an unplanned child. And this from a society that is apparently still struggling with whether rape is wrong. It’s beyond anything like common sense at this point. Until everyone can see that abortion is not the PROBLEM but a SYMPTOM of several other mitigating problems, we won’t get anywhere close to a reasonable answer. You might as well outlaw sneezing because it spreads germs.
14
if there is a mysticism it is precisely in the religious idea against abortion.
In Europe we know that since about 50 years.
Americans have not figured that one yet either.
8
Disappointed to read an opinion piece about abortion written by a man rather than a woman, but unfortunately not surprised.
18
The Bible says that life begins at first breath. Get it straight
12
Relax, Mr. Douthat. When the theocracy is established, you and your co-religionists can impose any rules you want, and have them enforced by the thought police.
13
Because "Word of God" known as the bible is silent or confused on the issue of personhood Doubty and other right wing religioniistas presume to supplement the Word with their own opinions.
3
Does Pete Buttigieg ever quote the 10 commandments and the one that states "though shall not kill." Every time an abortion occurs an innocent human being dies. Most babies who are aborted are healthy fetuses and terminated because it is inconvenient for the mother. Her premise is that it is her body and her choice. Her choice ends a life. Every time.
2
@KMW
For certain, if the fetus is allowed to develop, at some point in time it becomes a human being. Depending upon one's belief, it could be at conception, birth, or sometime in between, but it is always a matter of one's beliefs.
6
None of this has any bearing on a woman deciding whether to terminate a pregnancy or not, and Pete knows that. Forced pregnancy is not to be tolerated; end of story. And Pete knows that.
12
I disagree with the premise that "first breath" is mystical. "First breath" is what happens, most essentially, most scientifically, just after birth. It is a biological transition from dependence on the womb of our mothers to life on our own two lungs. This is our legal beginning in every other arena. We are citizens, for example, by virtue of having been BORN in America, not by having been conceived in America. (Which would REALLY confuse immigration policy!) Social Security numbers are not issued to fetuses. Every form we will ever fill out will ask for our birth date. Birth is the beginning of US, as citizens with legal standing, and it always has been. Anything else should be guided by a woman's OWN religious convictions, and not by the State. And as another commented, very late term abortions, when a fetus might be viable outside the womb, are rare, and most often sought for dire medical reasons.
13
Once upon a time there was less partisanship and more wisdom on the Supreme Court. Roe vs. Wade didn't just say "choice is God", it framed it's ruling along the three trimesters of a woman's pregnancy. During the first trimester, choice was absolute. During the second trimester, states could impose health and safety standards. States could then impose restrictions during the third trimester as long as exceptions were allowed to protect the life and health of the mother. Isn't this still, in 2019, how the American public feels about the issues? Since abortion is essentially a moral issue, with all the ambiguity that accompanies it, isn't this still the best resolution we can hope for? I would say yes, but I guess the absolutists and the "mystics" would say no.
5
The idea that personhood starts at conception is entirely a matter of belief, not science. A fertilized egg has human DNA? Sure. So does a skin scraping. The presence of DNA does not define personhood.
We see everyday that even those who assert personhood at conception don't totally believe it. Otherwise they'd be mourning every late period (just in case), and every early miscarriage would be as devastating to them as one that is near-term.
If you believe that personhood starts at conception, avoid abortion. Don't force people who don't believe as you do to follow your beliefs.
11
The problem with the Pro Life position (ok, ok, ONE OF THE PROBLEMS WITH THE PRO LIFE POSITION) is that whenever they win a battle, vis a vis when is it no longer allowable to perform an abortion, they jump to the next battle, to move that benchmark back closer to conception. Don't want to shock all you folks out there, but they really want to define life as beginning at conception and end all abortions, for whatever reason someone may want it. This brings them to where they would like to be, poor women, those who are morally derelict don't get to have abortions but those that are rich can have them.
What Ross and the evangelicals can't get through their heads is that God is the Judge, not man. Let people make their own decisions around things like abortion and then if the Christian position is correct (I'm Jewish which has no concept of after life as part of its core belief system, so I have no idea) and there is a duality to an afterlife, God will judge whether each person's behaviors entitles them to enter the good place or the not good one, but to all of you: I'm pretty sure he/she/it (God) didn't appoint you to this supreme position.
7
Any of the science the anti-choice position uses applies equally to animals. So to claim that theirs is a more scientific position is ridiculous Because they are not saying that any creature with such a developed nervous system cannot be killed.
Instead they are using a clearly factually false distinction to create an ethical distinction. That is imposing one's religious belief upon people who don't share it.
5
Ross, your own fervently adopted church has spoken on the subject.
So, oh Father Doubt That, how is it that the church you wish was evenmore regressive doesn’t offer Rite of Christian burial for miscarried fetuses, even well after viability? Could it be that the church really doesn’t regard fetuses with “personhood?”
7
Douthat for Pope. Vote in 2020.
Right, Ross ???
4
How is "at birth" a mystical belief, but "at conception" is not?
10
Where's your moral line for making a woman act as an incubator?
15
You voluntarily joined a mystical organization that does not allow its members to practice effective birth control thus effectively eliminating the best means to avoid unwanted pregnancies and therefore abortions. Any opinion that you have on this subject is entirely illegitimate based on your voluntary decision to become a Catholic.
11
More of men pontificating about abortion. PU-LEEZE! listen to the women.
11
Another day, another Times column slamming Mayor Pete.
6
Buttigieg's referring to 'the breath' is only a way to say that choice regarding abortion isn't necessarily against biblical religion. It is not really an argument per se. But to claim that the 'right to life' side actually is more in line with science is patently absurd. The semantic slippage that needs to be held centers around the meaning of 'personhood'. There is nothing scientific about this concept. it is through and through a philosophic concept, a concept by imputation or postulation.
Without this argument there is nothing biological that indicates personhood. One needs to define this and apply it to the biological facts in question, and then make a judgment about how far to stretch it and where to draw lines. The concept usually gets elaborated along some combination along the lines of a person has life, has sentience, is rational or has language, has desires and desires about his or her desires, is evaluative and has projects, has 'personality', and so on. The question is how far back and under what conditions to apply the concept. The pro-life position actually assumes what you call the mystical position in assuming the incarnation of a soul at conception. that carries moral status. there is no scientific argument for this.
6
There might be ambiguity in Buttigieg’s remarks, leading to uncertainty over whether I agree with him. But I definitely fail to see any need to drag religious doctrine into this discussion. It does not clarify the issues at stake, but muddies things up with differing interpretations of scriptures. Instead of examining the issues of inserting a new life into very particular circumstances, resorting to institutional pronouncements only vaguely related to the realities of a unique future pairing of mother and child
2
Had my babies in the sixties, and I was a college graduate, pretty sure I understood conventional wisdom. That first breath was critical. One infant survived and thrived after two weeks in an incubator. One did not. Two breathed on their own from the beginning. Breathing meant life, whether you were a republican or democrat. We had no option to save a two-pound non-breather, today we do.
5
Ross has, in his blind zeal to outlaw all abortions and contraception, has produced his pinnacle of gobbledygook. It is obvious that Mayor Pete was merely pointing out that the Bible says that life begins is at birth while allowing for different people to draw the line anywhere they would personally like. Pete is clearly, clearly not expressing either his own personal belief about when life begins. What he is expressing is the belief that women have the absolute right to determine what happens to their bodies, not the government, not the religious right and most certainly not Ross Douthat.
18
It is utterly ridiculous to suggest communicative ability in a fetus that isn't possible in most people under the age of 4--in other words, the argument that the unborn deserve personhood for impossible intelligence is precisely why this "debate" is ungrounded.
5
I have heard some on the right say when the mother's life is at risk that the unborn fetus is a person.
Somehow they seem to forget the mother is also a person.
9
Honestly, there's something really amusing about an adherent of Catholicism complaining about the "mysticism" of someone else.
10
Notwithstanding that shotgun marriages would solve the abortion issue (the seriousness of consequences for men would relatively equal those for women), some people claim that an “aura” disappears from a person in a coma when the “soul” leaves” and a newborn “aura” can appear as late as several days after birth. Roe vs. Wade with a caveat for the woman’s life when it’s in danger accommodates our protected religious freedoms. People can apply their beliefs as they see fit as it affects them individually. They just can’t force their beliefs on others unless they first change the Constitution.
“Maximalist,” “mystical,” “nonperson” – it doesn’t matter.
1
Ross Douthat,
This is neither "maximalist or mystical": The choice is between a woman and her doctor. You don't get a vote. It is simply not your choice.
12
Ah, Ross crying that the Dems don't respect science enough for his utterly unscientific theological obsessions. As if he'd be the first one in line to support the party if only they had a better biblical explanation for a public policy conundrum. So tired of this garbage.
8
What about quickening, Ross. WHAT ABOUT QUICKENING!?!??!?
3
Ross, the all abortion all the time Catholics got Trump elected and you know it. Be careful what you wish for.
4
Wow, once again Douthat really twisted himself into a pretzel on this one. Buttigieg may be just a wee bit too intellectual for him.
The party's position has nothing to do with the christian King James bible or "absolutely-no-restrictions". It's simply about a woman's right to choose.
9
I have always believed that evangelicals opposition to abortion is not based on biblical scripture, but the desire of their leaders to keep their flock in line over an obviously emotional issue. That is why many evangelicals will vote against their own self interest over a single issue like abortion.
10
@Joseph B. Evangelicals have only been anti abortion recently. In the 1970s, non- Catholic Christian groups were not very opinionated or supported abortion rights. Here is an article in a Baptist paper about the change in view: http://bpnews.net/44055/how-southern-baptists-became-prolife
8
Viability was the test for centuries, not first breath. The point in time of viability has changed but not the concept. Other than Douthat, who thinks that first breath is anyone's criteria for "personhood," whatever that means.
The Bible is all over the place regarding the value of fetus and the very young.
The word "abortion" doesn't appear in the Bible, but "miscarriage" does and is used as a euphemism for abortion. Priests, for example, are allowed to use a potion to induce miscarriage: if the abortion happened, then the child was illegitimate.
The Bible does tell us that unlike other animals, humans have a soul, an everlasting soul. When does the human acquire a soul? We're not told: conception, viability, birth, who knows?
Science tells us that around 80% of conceptions naturally abort, so if the soul acquisition is at conception, there's a bunch more souls than there are humans who have ever walked the earth.
6
It may take awhile longer, but unlimited abortion is doomed. Even today, the collective morality doesn't support it. And better technology will merely speed that along.
1
This argument is not even really about abortion, it is about sex. It's the 'Original Sin' that precipitates an unwanted pregnancy that is really at issue. This is about ensuring woman can be controlled as property, as it is described in the odious tome being referenced in the article.
Feudalism and patriarchy- that is what is being argued here.
11
Douthat is showing his Christian bias. If he'd look at other religions, he'd see that there's nothing mysical about first breath - it's a natural consequence of the theology in some other religious communities.
2
Abortion, the issue, prevents many good people from seeking political office.
Poverty, health care, pollution, the environment, rights for workers, the disabled, the disadvantaged, the young.
Income inequality.
A fairer tax code.
World Peace.
They are ready to work on all 0f these.
There is a large, and very capable group of potential politicians who could be very effective Democrats.
But not only do they not share the Democratic Party’s positions on abortion — they would never publicly espouse them.
They often, but not always, or even usually, vote Democrat. Abortion is not a litmus test for them — even while both Parties themselves have made it one.
They respect women — and a mother’s right to control her body.
But they weep for the unborn child.
Why must this be so?
Why not more laws to keep the father accountable?
Use DNA tests, the father of an unborn child can be confirmed.
A man who makes a woman pregnant with a child she does not want — should be punished. Either way, whether the woman chooses abortion or not. If they are not married and she gives birth, the father must pay 10 percent of his earnings to support the child for 18 years. If she chooses abortion, he must also pay — the money can pay for the mother’s health and psychological care, and for adoption services. If the mother was a minor, the father should be indicted.
No one talks about the responsibility of the father.
But such a dialog will never take place in these polarized times.
2
Personhood begins at ensoulment. Full stop.
2
@Contrary DAve
And when exactly does ensoulment happen? Chapter and verse, please.
4
"quoting Proverbs on the debate stage to critique Republican opposition to a minimum-wage increase, attacking conservative evangelicals over their “porn star presidency” and un-biblical approach to refugees, urging his party to court religious voters and take religion more seriously."
Amusing, really, that the columnist ignores these critiques. No comment on them?
No comment on the GOP opposition to living wages for people supporting a family? No opinion on evangelical support for a blatant liar and a chronic philanderer who has been married three times? No position on the way refugees are being refused refuge?
No, just another re-count of the anti-abortion argument angels on the head of a very small pin.
10
@The Poet McTeagle. No concerns over the needs of babies and children, never mind adults? Does anyone but a fetus have the right to life? Listen to some of the comments about health care — the most shocking being of course, the 2012 comment to “let him die!”
5
Another man talking about what a woman can do with her body.
8
Would anybody know what is the position of the author on abortion? Does his obvious pro-life position mean no abortion, in any case?
1
@Anna
Republicans support abortion for daughters and mistresses
8
the author is a Catholic
3
Until such time as every male submits DNA for universal paternity identification, no man should engage in this discussion. At such time as every child is identified with his/her father with equal certainty as his/her mother, and the responsibility for lifelong care is thus equally distributed across male and female representation, men have absolutely no right to discuss the right/wrong nature of a woman's choice. Or, if the State wishes to make lifelong, compassionate care of every child its mission, then abortion could be part and parcel of a legal doctrine.
8
I've always tried to find that part of scripture that describes the sperm, the ovum, and fertilization. Can't seem to find it.
Douthat kinda forgets that he (and the government) have no more right to know what is in a woman's uterus than the right they have to know what all the people would say who signed non-disclosure agreements with Trump or Purdue Pharma or Enron or the Saudi Government etc.
He can speculate how a hypothetical fetus should be treated, but he has no right to know whether an actual fetus is present, unless the woman has given him that privilege.
3
Democrats have been steering away from hard science for a few years now.
2
The author writes: "...your unborn child could be reciting Shakespeare to you in sign language and it would still have no right to life."
Yeah, right. It COULD happen, as much as a cow might someday fly. But a fetus reciting Shakespeare in sign language won't happen. Ross, maybe you need to read up just a little bit more on the science behind brain development, and spend a little less time suggesting that a fetus (OK, you say unborn child, I say fetus, because I go with what developmental biology calls the object at the end of the umbilical cord during the 9 month gestational period, not with what organized religion wants me to believe along with their stories of immaculate conception and other fascinating myths and legends) might, just might, maybe......be using sign language. Give....us.....a.....break.
11
Here’s an idea, keep your religious views out of the public discourse. They belong inside your home and/or your church.
10
Children need to be born into a family who can care for them, but even more importantly it is a woman’s choice of when to bear children and with whom. This is not a discussion for anyone but a woman and her family.
It’s only the foolish religious hypocrites, such as this author, children are possibly a two decade responsibility while society is totally mute with empty hands once a child is born. It’s only when the women is pregnant that these religious hypocrites scream for punishment.
7
Maybe, as a gay man, he just feels this is not his business.
3
I do not care one whit what you, Pete or anyone else thinks about abortion. It is a PERSONAL choice. No one's business, period. Government and Religion has no roll in any decision that a father and mother decides, nada none
So stop writing about it. It is a private matter.
8
Oh if only we women followed Ross's Catholic Church in all things and gave our feeble decision making abilities to said Church and those who have been abusing children and/or permitting others to abuse children in the name of God for decades. Blessed Day.
11
Mr Douthat,
You pull two extreme examples of how two men have treated aborted fetal remains: "unapologetic grisliness of a Klopfer, or a Kermit before him". But you know full well the grisliness of dead women and girls, yes? The grisliness of their trials for abortion murder, and sometimes their conviction? The grisliness life, death, disease, and of birth itself?
I think you'll just have to admit that this is a difficult line to draw, it may not be draw-able, and that if you want to be an extremist pro-lifer, you're going to have to deal with your own set of political and actual grislinesses.
My suggestion: Butt out. And my that I mean way, way out. Don't risk imposing grisliness on the unborn or its mother by causing a person to be conceived. That is the safest and most extremist way to be pro life.
9
"But the conservative claim that he believes that personhood is mystically imparted via the inhalation of oxygen is the more accurate description of his actual legal position, and the emerging orthodoxy of his party."
Actually, Mr. Douthat, no it is not. It suprises me that you are not applying the legal interpretive standard recently made famous by former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia. I am of course referring to literalism.
As you have indicated, Buttigieg clearly states:
"No matter where you think about the kind of cosmic question of where life begins, most Americans can get on board with the idea of, alright, I might draw the line here, you might draw the line there, but the most important thing is the person who should be drawing the line is the woman making the decision."
The above position is really quite clear. The woman carrying the fetus gets to decide. Not the government, not any church, and, in case there was any question, not God.
13
Many if not most medical schools and academic pathology and obstetric departments maintain “products of conception” for study. Writing about it out of context merely sensationalizes the issue of abortion. Confounding the issue of morality with the Christian or Jewish religions or new or old testaments does so as well. Concepts of western and eastern morality existed well before either religions. Abortions were performed in this country by midwives in the 19th century before anyone discussed the morality of such a procedure. Effective universal access to birth control is basic to decreasing abortions. In its absence, access to safe abortion is not only the right of every women but a necessity for her health care to be considered by her physician and herself and not by politicians, philosophers or believers in so called religious principles masquerading as morality. This is not a question of “personhood” but a question of extremely sensitive and serious health concerns only qualified health care workers make with women who have to bare the physical, emotional and psychological burden of pregnancy. Many conceptions end in spontaneous abortion without intervention. In what way does the question of personhood enter these terminations? This maybe a question philosophers may entertain but not force upon other individuals.
9
Oh please Ross. Once again you prove you are not the mental, political and linguistic equivalent of Bill Buckley. Mr. Buckley would have carefully constructed his argument to at lease generate the BELIEF that of course he was right because his logic is flawless. Not here. Instead we get the typical Republican/Conservative/Evangelical Axis talking points that start with the assumption that OF COURSE everyone agrees with and shares his point of view. WRONG! As soon as you scrape away those barnacles, the argument falls apart. Mayor Pete made a very clear reference to the Bible and it DOES NOT support the R/C/E Axis' arguments, period. Find another word salad Ross, maybe that one will work better.
6
Ross Douthat manages to both quote AND MISS Pete Buttigieg's main point, "the most important thing is the person who should be drawing the line is the woman making the decision."
12
@egc52556
As long as the search engines start equating Pete's name with things that Mr. Douthat and his fellow Far Rights find hateful, which is the real goal here, then Ross has done his job for his misguided cause.
8
The Mysticism of Ross Douthat -- like many, Douthat prefers conception as the magic moment when life (or at least personhood) begins. But conception is ill defined unless is meant fertilization, which is a process of several stages rather than a moment. Is there a person when the sperm enters the ovum, when the gametes size each other up, when there is a fusion of pronuclei resulting in a zygote? Is the zygote the fully fledged human being, a person? What about the gametes just before fusion? The same material -- the essence -- is present both before and after. If the zygote is sacred, so are the gametes. The pro-life movement fails to go far enough -- Save The Gametes!
3
Riddle me this Professor: Why does Jehovah make a distinction between the death or injury of a woman carrying a fetus and the death of the fetus only? Exodus 21:22
2
The Bible does say very clearly that we are created in the womb as God plans (Psalm 139). The Biblical view is that God knows all our days before we are born. But not everyone believes this. My view is that society should be limited in what it can dictate to someone and the rights they have with respect to their own body. It will always be a compromise or tension between what we believe and an a person's autonomy. Does a person have the right to end their life? To end the life of a person to be born, but now is dependent on them? They have to live and we have to live with our decisions. My advice is that the best course for everyone is that the children be allowed to live, if at all possible because if we let these to be killed, then anyone is expendable judged as not useful to society. Remember what happened in during the Nazi era.
1
How interesting that Ross Douthat grabs a loosely worded comment by one Democratic candidate, and turns it into a treatise on abortion and mysticism in the Democratic Party! Or maybe the column's really just a slip-up of some sort: after all, Douthat doesn't address Buttigieg's concluding sentence regarding women and their rights--which is what the progressive stance toward abortion is all about, anyway.
9
His "first breath" comment is no more ridiculous than Pro-lifer's insistence that life begins at conception and that Plan-B is murder.
4
Have you never heard of the Eleventh Commandment Ross,
the one that says "Mind Your Own Business"?
13
A corpse's organs and tissues cannot be taken by the State without permission from the deceased while they were alive, or from their estate after death - even if other person(s) would die without these donations.
A parent cannot be forced to donate blood, bone marrow, etc to their child if required to keep it alive. This is true even when the parent recklessly caused the child's medical emergency.
I don't see any politicians campaigning to remove the right to bodily autonomy for EVERYONE - only for women who can become pregnant.
10
Much conservative rhetoric is about pushing down this issue from the Federal level to the more local level of the States, that take in account local mores. I agree pushing the decision down to the local level makes sense. Most reasonably, the decision should be pushed down to the most local level, the woman who is pregnant.
3
In the UK, the late Baroness Mary Warnock, a philosopher, headed up a blue-ribbon committee that in 1984 proposed regulations for embryo research. Her report was widely accepted in England and became the basis of subsequent legislation. Probably no one liked it, but they acquiesced in it because the alternatives were worse.
Warnock's recommendation was that "no live human embryo derived from in vitro fertilisation,
whether frozen or unfrozen, may be kept alive, if not
transferred to a woman, beyond fourteen days after fertilisation, nor may it be used as a research subject
beyond fourteen days after fertilisation."
She further recommended that "it shall be a criminal offence to handle or to use as a research subject any live human embryo derived from in vitro fertilisation beyond that limit."
Her report dealt with in vitro fertilization, but I have often wondered why the same considerations that led to the 14 day rule should not apply to naturally conceived embryos as well with exceptions for the life of the mother and other compelling reasons.
Even Warnock did not have the courage of her convictions, and her position on abortion made no mention of her 14-day rule or its rationale.
SEE https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01277-5
1
Has Douthat spent one day, even hour, at a Planned Parenthood clinic and engaged the staff there and, more importantly, it’s pregnant clients concerning the services that are provided in an attempt to gain some “on the ground”, firsthand knowledge about their actual decision making processes?
4
By wanting to place personhood at the moment of conception, it is the "pro-life" crowd that has created the problem. Reasonable people can try to set dates of pregnancy, but the anti-women groups are not reasonable. To designate a fertilized ovum as a person is, absolutely and simply, nonsense.
11
I didn't finish the column, as it was veering into the realm of biblical exegesis, which as a realm prior to the enlightenment and the attempt to merge science with human values.
We have a set of words from this earlier era that take on profound affect, being good or evil. So euthanasia may sometimes be good, but eugenics is always bad. And killing a living infants is the later and therefore bad- and should be a crime.
I remember when my Aunt gave birth to her first girl, a smiling happy infant named Barbara around 1950. It became known shorty that she had Tai Sacks disease, meaning development stops at about a year, with the beginning of an incurable decline that ended with death after a few years. I didn't attend the funeral, but her mother was so distraught that she had to be restrained as she tried to through herself over the lowing casket. (now with genetic testing this scourge of the Ashkenazim is all but eliminated.)
But what if then it could have be identified. The incurable fate incorporated into a blessing that allowed the life to be terminated based on humanistic prayer --verbiage from the Talmud. My Aunt would have had less suffering, and Barbara ...... well it would not have been any worse for her.
Bringing an infant who is unwanted into the world may comply with biblical edicts, but human suffering is the measure that I choose to revere.
7
Wow, Ross Douthat. Another spy in the church stoning women after Jesus expressly stated, "Let he who hath not sinned cast the first stone." You are obviously factually wrong in every caveat with your rebuke of Democrats. And you assume like an "well you know" that Jesus would be Pro-Life (or in other words Pro-SLAVERY). By definition Jesus is Pro-Choice. There is no argument otherwise.
8
If Ross is right, and conception is the true hallmark of life, then, by extension, it would be better to save a two test tubes containing fertilized eggs from a fertility clinic fire than a single living, screaming, crying child.
That seems insane to me. What jerk fireman would honestly say, "I left your daughter Sara to die in the flames; but, rest easy knowing the I saved the lives of 342-D and 567-H, who might someday get implanted and maybe even come to term"?
It also seems weird that a unviable fertilized egg can be alive, but we regularly declare humans that can no longer sustain life without artificial aid dead. If conception, but not viability is the be all and end all of life, when do we die?
It seems like the philosophically honest answer is that conception + at least some expectation of viability = life.
7
"Our side of the debate has the simplest and most scientifically coherent definition of personhood"? Wait, there's a "scientific" basis for "personhood" now? Like, a biological marker? A category so malleable that strongmen and statesmen throughout human history have perverted it into their own image by any means necessary, can "simply" be determined by "science"? And I don't think you mean to include Political Science....wow. The naivete, it burns!
4
@EKW
I agree with you that a womans body is hers to do with as she chooses, same for men.
However, I draw a line between you and Ross.
I consider abortion wrong. And while life of the mother, and there are other valid reasons for having an abortion, the fact is that for most people it comes about from desire and sex. Something that we do have control over.
Sex, drugs and generally satisfying desire where it is adrift from some greater context is something i consider to be wrong. I have and will continue to do things that are wrong, though it has become easier to avoid wronging others as I've aged - I would that i were a better person. But i do for one one try, like lots of other people.
Advocating for greater restraint, arguing morally that showing restraint to achieve a greater good is a noble expression and that is embedded in Ross's belief system.
That we do things that are sinful and wrong everyday is something we should be able to accept in ourselves and try to do better. But that is not to criminalize or outlaw such behavior.
That is where Ross goes too far. i wonder how he would feel, if we acknowledged that it was wrong but remained a woman's right to do - and that applies to lots of human conduct.
Ross's dismissal of life other than human life, further weakens his arguments
Ross, you just do not get it! I will explain it here:
We human beings OWN our own bodies, and no one has any right to control what we do with them, wether that's getting a tattoo, getting a haircut, or getting an abortion. None of those things affect you in any way: it is MY body, not yours. The idea that another person has the right to proclaim that the 1/2 inch long, unconscious, unfeeling, fetus inside MY body has more 'rights' than I do is laughably absurd. That idea is promoted only by those who have the hateful and perverted desire to control all women: to control our bodies and our personal lives, and force us to birth unwanted, unaffordable pregnancies- and that is cowardly and depraved. If you don't like abortion, don't get one~ it's that simple.
9
The line drawing game is arbitrary because you have to derive and ought from an is and thus defy Hume's law.
The voting age and other line-drawing laws are similarly arbitrary. But you have to set a voting age regardless.
With abortion, the most obvious line is when the fetus is sentient and can feel pain. There are problems with this too because the fetus can be anesthetized before being aborted.
1
Love the 'logical coherence' slight of hand, how deft!
1
Conservative voices being about as rare as hens teeth in the pages of the NY Times, I generally appreciate hearing Ross's point of view.
I differ from him in that he seems to accept almost literally the scriptures and biblical perspective as being the ultimate arbiter.
Abortion is wrong, no matter how you come to justify it. We are human beings, we do things that are wrong all the time. Religion frowns on sex out of marriage . There is a good reason for that. Because when it comes to sexual attraction, people behave in all sorts of nasty ways.
Even the extremely logical Vulcan, Spock in an episode of Star Trek (Amok Time) becomes completely irrational and is faced with death if he does not mate. The condition is known as 'pon farr'. Captain Kirk must order the Enterprise to return to Vulcan land to save Spocks life.
So people shouldn't be having sex if they aren't prepared to raise a child. And yes it is wrong. But it is what it is.
Where the left went wrong is in saying there is nothing wrong about it. It is. But the puritanical left cannot admit that they do anything wrong - they are pure, they love.
Therefore there must not be anything bad about abortion.
Ross, has shown in his writings a total lack of reverence for all of life. He only seems to value human life; urging on more children where the world is so overpopulated by humans it is extinguishing all other life.
But here is news for him, god loves all his creations creatures both great and small.
3
Ho, hum, Another male weighing in on a subject that is not his concern or decision. A woman owns her own body and reproductive system--period! No man ever has to make a decision to terminate a pregnancy in his own body--what gives him any right to tell women how they should "behave."
8
There is nothing mystical about believing that fetus gains personhood only after it leaves the woman's body. It is obvious that before that it is part of the woman. That is why it is entirely up to the woman to decide. Also, the remains of fetuses found with Klopfer were just that - remains. not 'corpses' as Douthat claims.
5
I usually enjoy reading your column, even when I strongly disagree, because of your civil tone and intellectual honesty. I'm very disappointed by the substance and tone of this column.
The clear purpose of Buttigieg's quote from the Bible is to answer the pro-life supporters who routinely invoke biblical authority as unequivocal and dispositive for their side. As he states, "even" the Bible has "parts" that can be read differently. Never does he say that the "life begins with first breath" scripture is what guides his position on the issue, let alone that he believes it a biological sense.
If you acknowledge this, going on about science seems intellectually dishonest. From a simple observation that the Bible is not unequivocal, you've inferred that he regards "life begins with first breath" as religious doctrine and biological fact, and is a hyprocrite for invoking either science or the Bible!
The abortion issue is when life should be legally protected, not where it begins biologically. The scientific fact that biological life begins at conception is not the only fact relevant to this issue. (That's even true for the pro-lifers who ignore IUDs.)
More disappointing than the intellectual dishonesty in this column is the name-calling and put-downs. Carcastically calling Buttigieg the "Smartest Guy in the Room" helps your argument as much as Trump's nicknames help his. For knee-jerk conservative opinion with a smarter-than-thou attitude, we already have George Will.
6
Dear Mr. Douthat, I enjoy listening to you on the Argument. When you talk about politics, you are cogent, even if I disagree with you. However, here, when you state that using brain development as a measure for understanding "personhood" and saying that it is a moving target, you are missing the point of brain development. While we still struggle to learn the details of brain development and the acquisition of "cognition, " this is not a moving target, it is simply biologically founded. There is no relativism, no advance of biology that makes it come sooner or later. It is immutable. Only our knowledge of it changes. Viability out of the womb is moveable, by contrast. Using a neurologic benchmark would hue closer to the definition of "personhood" and allow us to have a scientifically valid discussion.
3
I fail to see how "the pro-life position is rejected...for leaning too heavily on scientific definitions," when it seems that the argument in this piece, and the most common argument heard from anti-choice advocates, is one of a morality based in religious doctrine. More importantly, this piece ignores the second half of Buttigieg's quoted statement. No matter where any one person draws the line, the woman making the decision should be the priority. This takeaway was skipped over in favor of the type of debate Buttigieg says doesn't matter as much as the living, breathing woman who is perfectly capable of making her own decisions.
8
Personhood is a social construct not a scientific one. Defining a person as a live ex-utero human is not scientifically unreasonable - nothing mystical about the first breath just proof of being not dead on arrival.
For centuries lives have been measured from 1st breath to last, birth to death - read the stones in any church graveyard.
This does not translate into a justification for abortion at any time before birth, but does underpin the concept of viability as a cut-off. If every reasonable medical/scientific effort is made to preserve life of a fetus naturally expelled ex utero prematurely, how could the same not be provided to a viable fetus deliberately removed prematurely; in turn, if every effort is to be made to preserve that life, what justification, other than the life of the mother, can be made for prematurely removing the viable fetus knowing that its chances of problem-free survival are greatest if it is left in utero.
Well personhood does begin at birth. That’s obviously the common sense take here as well as the only possible scientific take - there is no reasonable definition of human individuality that leads to any other conclusion. The forced birth brigade’s attempt to conflate a person with something that could become a person is as old as the political issue (not very old in other words), but it is intellectually incoherent. (Not that they care of course - they are reactionaries so their whole ideological framework is shoddy and incoherent.)
6
I would say this to Ross and all the pro-life Right: it’s YOUR belief, but it’s my body.
It’s possible for me to challenge your belief, hut how can you possibly challenge whether it’s MY body?
Will the government — because of YOUR religious belief — imprison a woman who wants to terminate her pregnancy?
Would you still say women were equal citizens if that was the law of the land?
10
When you discuss abortion it seems as though you view the absence of a government prohibition on abortion as equivalent to a government requirement to terminate every pregnancy. There are a lot of things the government may not be the correct tool to accomplish. I personally believe that the morally right way for almost all pregnancies to end is abortion. But, largely out of deference to other moral philosophies, I don't support government requirements for abortion. Will you extend the same consideration to my philosophy that I extend to yours? I didn't think so.
2
Mayor Pete has done us a great service. He has exposed the truth behind late term abortions. In all, or virtually all instances they are performed for health reasons after a woman who clearly intended to carry to term is presented with some awful news and thus has an excruciatingly painful decision to make. In the extremely rare case when a woman in the third trimester decides to abort on a whim then it behooves the doctor not to participate Thus all moral angles are taken care of without any external interference.
The argument against later term abortion is thus the very weakest one the pro-life crowd have to offer. And as for what Catholicism has to say about it I really don't care. This is not a theocracy. And given the church's record through the centuries of corruption, anti-science, pedophilia, oppression, murder, war and complicity in genocide, thank goodness the Founding Fathers explicitly wrote it into the Constitution.
10
Science has nothing to say about "personhood" because that that concept is constructed by us. Just as nature doesn't define a typical feature of human physiology as "a heart." We do, it's useful definition to prolong or improve human life.
Douthat finds it difficult to accept that . Define "personhood" from conception (that is, given a conceptus the full rights of people) and you logically must morally ban: abortion of products of rape and incest. IVF, too, less you create what he'd consider to be cryogenically imprisoned people stuck in fertility clinics.
But if you don't define "personhood" at conception, then the pro-choice position is the logical consequence. For in that case, the rights of the mother, who is definitely a person, clearly supersedes that of a developing blastula/embryo/fetus.
Here's prediction:
The men who want to do way with abortion rights will find a way to make exceptions for IVF -- they know should their mistresses or daughters need one, they are only a flight away from a short procedure in another state. But, if IVF is banned, their families, should they have the need for assisted reproduction technology, will be out of luck without moving out of their states (it's impossible to perform IVF given the necessity of frequent examinations, medications use, etc). Thus, Mitt Romney is somehow wants to shut down abortion, but is happy to have grandchildren frozen away from the IVF procedures used by his son and daughter-in-law.
It's a religious issue.
8
It is hard to imagine anyone on any side of the abortion debate who doesn't take the practice of aborting a fetus very seriously. That said, individuals find their own justifications to be in favor of choice under any circumstances or against abortion under any circumstances, or at some point in between. Science, the Bible, women's rights, the rights of a fetus -- any and all rationales still involve making a difficult decision that no one can take lightly or without long-term consequences for their body and psyche. As a libertarian in regard to this issue, I can understand a politician seeming to straddle the extreme positions abortion tends to bring to the forefront. Aborting a healthy fetus is a very serious matter.
Whatever happened to the conservative claim that "you can't legislate morality"?
5
Is there any politician left, right or center who would stand up and say that a healthy woman with a healthy pregnancy should have the legal right to an abortion just days or weeks before she is due to give birth? I don’t think so. Yet that is the what Pete Buttegieg’s position entails. He would say that late term abortions have many moral complexities and he trusts women to make those heart wrenching decisions. But it is not impossible to imagine a woman requesting such an abortion for immoral reasons or even for mere convenience. Buttigieg would say that such a situation is extremely rare if not unheard of. That is certainly true but that should not be the basis for the legality of any action. Even if no one in the history of the world had ever robbed a bank that would not mean that robbing banks should be legal. Law must define and enforce just principles in all situations.
1
@Christopher
It is imaginable, however in the extremely rare circumstances, probably less than 100 cases per year, the doctor can fulfill his/her moral obligations by refusing to perform one. The state does not get to participate in ethical decision making process. The ones that got away will pale into insignificance compared to the number of people who will be gunned down. Just like the right to own weapons, the right to bodily autonomy is written into the constitution. Consequently both legal and ethical principles are met best by giving women and doctors the final say so.
3
What I meant to say is that men seem to have these long discussions about abortion as abstract philosophical matters. We women have different viewpoints based on real life.
6
I fail to see what is mystical about "first breath" as the start of personhood. It is a well-defined and necessary step to living in the outside world. I am not arguing that it is the most defensible point in the process at which to draw the line of becoming human, but cloaking it in mysticism is inappropriate.
4
Wow Mr Douthat, you’re a bit off the mark. What Mayor Pete was saying, as do many progressive minded people, is that reasoning based on scripture is never ever definitive, because my made up story is better than your made up story. So, when we enter a discussion about how to deal with difficult human circumstances, leave the Bible and any other religious scripture out of it. Just go with empathy and compassion to find the right path.
9
I don't view Dr. Klopfer's collection as "grim" or "grisly."
It's unusual, but he was a doctor, so probably more comfortable than the rest of us with all things biological, including human remains.
When I read the details of Dr. Klopfer's collection, I thought perhaps it was a way of honoring these specimens, instead of discarding them in a way he would have found disrespectful.
Don't see any connection between this and Buttigieg.
141
@luckygal. Well at least you have the decency to call them "human remains". Do you not see the irony in that statement and then calling them specimens? Humans are protected against murder by the law. Even subconsciously you admit this.
9
@luckygal I mean, I think it's gross he was keeping speciments at his house. But in the same way I'd think it was gross if there were a bunch of eyeballs or amputated limbs at his house.
Generally I think the products of an abortion are medical waste. There may be some interest in studying them to understand fetal development, but other than that, it's tissue.
So yeah, kinda weird to keep around the house, but has absolutely nothing to do with morality of abortion or Pete Buttigieg. What a weird thing to throw in there for cheap shock value.
36
@luckygal
My thoughts exactly. Isn't there a popular traveling science exhibit that displays the cadavers of dead humans?
It is certainly a bit odd to collect the limbs of aborted fetuses, but I hardly see anything morally objectionable about it. The lifeless fetuses certainly have no use for them. Collect them! Grind them up! Eat them! Whatever floats your boat.
There's nothing at all sacred about human bone and tissue, despite the rantings of a few Christian ideologues.
13
What's so infuriating is that Buttigieg gives intelligent, thoughtful answers to complex questions. Instead of praising him for trying to raise the level of discourse on controversial issues, otherwise-intelligent people keep trying to weaponize what he says to use it against him.
12
@HKGuy
As the late Christopher Hitchens was prone to saying, "Religion Poisons Everything"
1
We don't know how ANYTHING works, at bottom, or what anything is, or where it came from, or what it's all about, or if it's about anything at all. Your belief that life begins at conception is trivially true, but at what level are we supposed to take it? You don't believe an embryo is conscious, do you? But then, is potentiality somehow sacred? Consciousness must not be what you're trying to protect. Strict rationalism won't end this debate.
Look at all the mania for nonhuman rights. Take Ezra Klein, who's up in arms about chickens. He says he can see that his dogs have personalities, and that chickens do too, and this means they must be experiencing something interiorly. And thus chicken-eating is a sin -- or something. Given what we know about the thinness, the fragility of human consciousness, about the appearance of zombie-like states in the impaired (blindsight, inter alia), given what we've learned about the neural architecture that underpins awareness, IF any other animals have this "selfness," have qualia, it is probably only a select few.
But activists don't want to hear this. Instead, they look for "experts" to tell them a feeling is a fact. Motivated reasoning is omnipresent. Look how quick pro-lifers are to talk up any supposed findings about fetuses "feeling" pain. ... Buttigieg is saying what he knows he must. The bigger problem is that traditions and boundaries fall apart so fast in today's world. Transitioning to post-God, where "all is permitted," is rough.
1
One issue I have with this article is the continuing reference of the scientific definition of personhood. Let me be clear, there will never be an actual scientific definition of personhood. It is purely philosophy when people argue when life begins. There is no "experiment" showing you life begins when x, y and z happens. Science shows you when x, y and z happens, it does not tell you anything about why x, y and z means the person is now human instead of a fetus. We are drawing moral lines based on human emotion and logic. Science is just a methodical experimentation process of determining how and why things happen predictably. Saying a fetus becomes human when it can feel pain is 100% philosophy and not scientific. All science does it show you at what age they start feeling pain. It has nothing to say about why feeling pain means you are now human.
4
The first breath marks a significant transition. Instead of relying on the mother for oxygen in her blood, the fetus/baby suddenly begins oxygenating its own blood with its own breath. The distinction doesn't strike me as "mystical" at all.
6
Nonsense. This column is so full of dubious rhetorical fallacies it’s difficult to know what to respond to.
An early-term fetus is not an independently viable life form. That’s not mystical thinking. I have no objection to people who want to treat early fetuses as sacred. I don’t think it’s socially, ethically or morally correct to impose that belief on society at large.
I personally view the progressive view on abortion—occasionally over-strident as it may be—as grounded in humanistic concern for what’s best for society and it’s members than some mystical or reactionary contortion.
5
Funny you defend the conservative position as the most scientifically defensible, but don't touch on the paradox that so many of the same people who talk about the divine sanctity of life or whatever tend to cheer when we bomb other countries and have no problem with the death penalty.
What worth is your scientifically defensible stance when it's so blatantly hypocritical?
3
This is not Mr. Douthat's opinion. It's his obsession. Grow a uterus and stay out of mine.
The GOP have proven they are not pro-life just anti-women. Wasn't that what we witnessed in the Kavanaugh hearings? Wasn't that the triumph of the worst man beating the most qualified woman for President? Women can be heard but they are not equal to even a very flawed white man.
Ross, save the kids in cages. Write about America's appalling mother/child birthrates; the Trump administration's work to undermine Obamacare and its pre-existing conditions, which created untenable insurance requirements for parents with sick children. Use your voice to help pass commonsense gun laws that protect our living children. Work for a better America to bring babies into.
12
Mr. Douthat: Your description of the Democrats as the party of science is arbitrary and capricious. No party, Democrats, Republicans, Liberterians, etc. has decided exactly when personhood begins. It is up to each of us to make that judgment. The abortion issue will be debated forever with no resolution. Many Democratic voters are pro-life and many Republican voters are pro-choice. So please don't use a wide brush to paint stereotypes. And by the way, the leader of your party spent many more years as pro-choice. It was not until Donald Trump decided to run for president that he conveniently embraced a pro-life platform for the sole reason of appealing to the Evangelical base of the Republican party.
@nzierler
While we cannot say that any particular party is pro- or anti- science, we can point to the historical record and accuse the Catholic church of being anti science, from suppression of the writings of the Greek atomists to Galileo and beyond. And that's really Douthat's problem. He knows all the big words but he still clings to the belief that his morality is ordained by his perception of the divine, and is therefore not only superior but based in absolutism.
As an anti-theist I find him rather tedious.
1
The question of when "personhood" begins has never been a scientific one. It has always been a legal standard, based on philosophical, moral, and/or religious considerations. Science can give us some estimates of when a given fetus might exhibit a certain level of brain activity, or be viable if removed from the womb before carried to full term, but it can't decide personhood. As with any surgical procedure, the decision has to be left to the patient and her doctors. There is no "one-size-fits-all" rule offering easy, black-and-white answers. It's messy and difficult, and every pregnant woman will have to grapple with the medical and moral trade-offs of her decisions for herself, with as much information about her range of options, and likely outcomes, as she can get.
1
No thinking person can be pro-abortion at any stage, but the situation is complicated by many factors from the impact of an unplanned child on a woman to medical issues with the fetus.
So the problem is that trying to eliminate abortion with a simple ban amounts to trying to make a right from two wrongs. It's not that progressives are necessarily rejecting the humanity of the fetus, but that an inflexible legal ban is just not the right way to deal with the problem.
1
A Personhood Conversation at the Time of Conception
Fetus: "Mother, am I or am I not a person? The question is moot. However, it seems that nature has taken its course. You don't have to eat more or healthier. You don't have to exercise. You don't have to take vitamins. You don't have to rest. You don't have to see a doctor. You could even abuse drugs and drink alcohol and chances are I'd survive. Only the living survives."
Mother: "You are ..."
3
@Saul
So it appears that my fetus is a freshman philosophy student rather than, say, a physician who is board-certified in maternal fetal medicine.
Disappointing.
3
Abortion like many other moral questions has many sides to it. It is above all an individual’s right to interpret just what they consider a moral question and how to interpret it. The essence of most religions recognizes a person”s own control over their morality no matter what the nation state says. As I interpret it, the New Testament explains why we should never kill anyone. Our nation state believes that we can go to war and then kill people and that is our moral compromise with modern day reality. We have some areas of the country where people are executed for committing evil or sins. Again we have made compromises with what God’s message is for many of us.
The future of unwanted children is not bright in this country and across this world. Some are adopted by loving families. But many more are brought up in a world of poverty and violence and suffer from being unloved. This alone does not call for abortion but along with the right of a woman to control her own body it demands for a health system that gives her a choice over whether to become pregnant or how to end a pregnancy that is not wanted. Many of us who do not like abortion support choice because of these two reasons. Until this country is able to provide for a healthful contraceptive that is available to all and a foolproof way for supporting unwanted pregnancies and children there is no other answer. I think this is the compromise that most Americans support, but no one really likes it.
As a professor of biology, let me make one thing crystal clear. No, the position expressed by the writer and conservative Christians is NOT scientific. It is NOT true that personhood starts at the formation of the zygote, as they would have it, because the zygote is a cell that is implanted in the uterus and that would not be able to survive were it not for the complex nutritional system provided by the uterus of the woman. The developing embryo is NOT an independent being. So, no, it is absolutely not true that science supports the position espoused by conservative Christians that life begins at conception. Please, Mr. Douthat, refrain from spreading scientific falsehoods, and please, go study some science. It will do you good. You will stop embarrassing yourself by displaying your lack of basic scientific knowledge.
18
What a bunch of pseudo-science gobbledygook! There’s nothing “mystical” about determining when a baby draws its first breath. It’s probably the brightest line of demarcation in the whole abortion debate as opposed to some subjective assessment of viability or developmental stage. At the point at which the baby can breathe separate from the mother, it becomes its own person. Until then, it’s a part of the mother’s body. It’s as clear and simple as that. And it is the mother’s decision what she does with her body. None of this requires any religious interpretation or input from the patriarchy.
6
Mr. Douthat twists, turns and contorts words, biblical interpretations, and musings to arrive at his theme, which is what, that all pro-choice Americans support abortion up to delivery. Has the American Enterprise Institute paid you (in addition to the NY Times) to come up with this as the basis for their latest attack on a woman's choice to choose? I am sure some will fall for it; however, I'm not one of them.
6
The only thing I appreciate about this article is seeing the large number of readers who defend and support Pete Buttigieg.
Seems like Mr Douthat likes to cherrypick quotes and actions in order to shore up his opinions. OK, he is an Opinion Columnist. But here again, I'm noticing that the NYTimes keeps rolling out negative-tinged articles about Buttigieg. The Washington Post is doing the opposite, with articles titled "What makes Pete Buttigieg so effective";
"Buttigieg doesn't raise his voice. Thank goodness";
and - most recently "If Biden can't go the distance, here's another center-left alternative".
This is not a suggestion that the NYTimes start a fawning-festival or do puff pieces about Mayor Pete. But how about some articles that at least focus more on the qualities that make Buttigieg a thoughtful and viable candidate.
6
I suspect that very few individuals hold their personhood view out of philosophical argument, logical demonstration, or scientific deduction. These three strong methods of argument and learning have their place in most spheres of life, but perhaps not so much in discussions about fetal moral status. Given this (apparent) fact, moving the abortion law out of the federal Constitution and into the respective states makes the most sense. Full-disclosure: I am strongly pro-choice, and I think that abortion freedom would be best secured in the long run through states rights vs. one size fits all.
It's a woman's body.
It's her choice alone.
9
Everyone who is focusing on "let the woman decide" or "the woman should draw the line" is just assuming the problem away. They are assuming that the fetus is a disposable clump of cells, not a baby in need of protection. But that's the big question. You can't just say "the woman should decide" and *poof* the problem goes away.
*If* it's a baby, then it is very vulnerable, and we may need to stop the mother from taking a pill to cause it to die--just like we don't let the woman "draw the line" to allow killing a 6 month old. *If* it's a baby, then it isn't just "the woman's decision." There's another person who gets a say in whether death is okay, and since that person is too small to have a voice, the shield of the law steps in to be its voice.
If you just keep saying "the woman should make the decision", you simply aren't addressing the single biggest pro-life argument. If you just keep saying that, it sounds, to me, like the two sides aren’t talking to each other. You can't just assume the very question away.
*If* it is a baby, then pro-life is not "disrespectful" to women. (In fact, if it is a girl baby, pro-life is especially respecting women!) *If* it is a baby, then it doesn't matter that "no one has a late term abortion on a whim": serious reason or whim, you can't kill a baby (except to save the life of the mother).
This painful national discussion makes no sense if the only response is "it’s the woman’s decision." Please, please, engage the pro-life side.
6
@Monsieur Bultitude
What kind of outcome do you expect if you reduce a woman to unwilling broodmare and force her to carry a pregnancy to which she is hostile? A fetus she doesn’t want and won’t properly care for? Pregnancy takes a great deal of care and sacrifice and an acknowledgment that you are risking your health and life in the process. You can force a woman to gestate but you cannot force her to do all the things necessary for a good outcome. And you don’t care because it’s not about “babies” it’s about controlling women.
2
@Monsieur Bultitude
"*If* it's a baby, then it is very vulnerable, and we may need to stop the mother from taking a pill to cause it to die--just like we don't let the woman "draw the line" to allow killing a 6 month old."
No. There a one significant difference between a fetus and a 6 month old that you are completely ignoring. Which one is inside a woman's body, relying on her body to sustain its life?
There's your answer. My body isn't a resource for you to allocate according to your whims. I decide who uses it at all times. Doesn't matter if the fetus has the same moral worth as a newborn, 6 month old, Barack Obama, or an 80 year old. None of those people have the right to use my body either, even if I am dead.
You want pro-choicers to "please, please engage the pro-life side?" What about you? Did you forget the fact that pregnancy involves a woman's body? Personhood is utterly irrelevant. No one, born or unborn, has the right to use my body without my consent. That's why the woman makes the decision.
Now, if I could get a little intellectual honesty from the "pro-life" side, that would be a nice change.
3
The malicious lie that pro-choice supporters are in favor of abortion up to the moment of birth reveals the character of the religious right. Removal of the fetus from the womb in the third trimester is called induced labor and every effort is made to keep the baby alive.
As for the beginning of personhood, religions differ, including , historically, the Catholic Church, and science offers no agreed upon definition. I suggest a test case for the position of the religious right on this issue. Claim the unborn fetus as a dependent on your federal tax return.
5
Ardent anti-abortionists can cite whoever or whatever to justify their position, but the purpose of the position is punishment of the woman. Those who are so concerned about life in the womb somehow become indifferent after it is born.
1
I'm now, and always have been, pro-choice. It's insulting to me that men are making these decisions for us women. The abortion issue has taken on a life of its own, to the point that the Dems are ruining the life of a Supreme Court Justice. Their actions border on criminal!! Just because I'm pro-life does not give me the right to force my views on society...and does not give me the right to manipulate SCOTUS. I also believe a battered woman has the right to kill her abuser even when he's asleep in bed! But, that's against the law! Mayor Pete does offer "food for thought", and I support limitations on abortion. I believe a doctor must weigh in on late-term abortions....but I firmly believe we do not have the right to force a women to give birth to a deformed child for whom she will be forever responsible while that child suffers throughout his life. I do not believe God, in his universal kindness, would want that. Scalia says the Constitution does not cover abortion...it has to be handled by the states. If that's the outcome, so be it. But, I think SCOTUS will uphold Roe and all this fervor is for naught!
2
When a baby can live separate from its mother then it is on its way to be called a person.
Prior to that it is part of the mother......so yes, life after surviving its birth.
3
Mr. Douthat: "[T]he conservative claim that [Buttigieg] believes that personhood is mystically imparted via the inhalation of oxygen is the more accurate description of his actual legal position, and the emerging orthodoxy of his party."
In other words, that the mother can choose to abort right up until the time the baby has been born and, moreover, has taken its first breath? I've never heard anyone, Democrat or otherwise, advocate such a position. Would someone care to cite a source on Mr. Douthat's behalf?
7
The problem with this entire article is the presumption that the the pro-choice movement has ever embraced can kill a fetus for any reason at any moment. The law is fairly clear First trimester yes. Second trimester increasing restrictions. Third trimester only life or health of mother (or in cases of of extreme abnormality which will end up in death anyway). That is not kill for any reason.
That mirrors a accurate and scientific sense of developing personhood if one is going to apply the concept of personhood itself as scientific (which is a very problematic assertion).
The legal issues which have always been asserted is an individuals right to bodily autonomy and the idea of competing interests.
Hence nobody has the right to use another's body without their consent to sustain their life. Neither religion nor the law permit that. On the other hand there are clearly competing interests. The law divides the baby in the middle by giving the person whose body is growing the right to say no to helping that life in the early stages, plus a qualified right early in the middle. After a certain point, the law basically says you had your chance to say no, so now, barring physical threats to you, the fetus right kick in. The fetus still doesn't have the right to harm the mother but it has the right to exist within her until it is born. It is developmentally closer to a person now, with a greater chance of surviving, less time togo, so the accommodation is also more reasonable.
4
I'm a liberal who follows liberal politics closely and I've NEVER heard any liberal politician advocate a first-breath definition of personhood to determine when abortion should be prohibited. A fair reading of Mayor Buttigieg's quote is that the Bible's reference to first breath refutes the argument that the Bible defines personhood at any other point (e.g., conception). Mr. Douthat needs to stop reading what the pro-life movement says its political opposition believes and start reading what the liberals actually say.
Mr. Douthat's claim of scientific support for the pro-life position, while condemning the opposing position as "mysticism," is not just surprising but laughable. He notably does not recite any scientific support nor even clarify which of the various pro-life positions to which he refers. The particular pro-choice position to which I adhere is based on when the fetus has the capacity for consciousness and the feeling of pain. Scientific findings are relevant to that determination and I'm prepared to follow the science where it leads. The pro-life movement is animated by the basic misunderstanding of this point--a large number of its adherents believe that a fetal heartbeat, for example, proves that the fetus has developed sufficiently to be considered a human being, despite the fetus's brain development at that point.
6
OK guy-- you are a male person. There is NOTHING mystical about squeezing fetus out of your body. It's pretty real. It's counted by all of humanity as a major life event for all parties involved. We count the day of birth as when that life begins for a reason. Before that, the fetus can't take in enough experience to make more than the most rudimentary neural connections. The hard-drive has been installed, the power is turned on. But the programming only begins once the brain begins to absorb and react with external reality. That's why infants are not great personalities. There is no personality there yet. Hence no person. Whatever the new parents see in the new offspring, they are basically projecting their own ideas onto the grimacing, sleeping, eating, screaming face they give a name to. Only with the passage of time, does that new being emerge as an individual. We give a person a name at birth for a reason. The person is born.
3
A strange conservative embrace of science. When science yields an answer I like, then I am all for it. Climate change, not so much. Likewise the Bible. Pete quotes the Bible but that quote is rejected because it conflicts with science, says Ross. Then there is the anti-abortion view that life and personhood begins at conception, viability is not a part of this definition. Is this science too. And finally we get to the power question, namely who gets to decide. Here conservatives who generally detest government say the state should decide. While it is likely true that most Americans favor some limits on abortion, that is not where anti-abortionists stand. And finally there is the complete unwillingness to empower women by giving them any control over their reproductive health. I am talking here about availability of contraception and sex education. I am sure there are some whose objection is based solely on moral grounds but the anti-abortion movement as a whole is totally infused with fear of women having control.
Seen on a billboard in Tuscaloosa, “Abortion: You do you.”
Why are we libertarian about guns, etc. and then go nuts when it comes to a serious medical decision women make for ourselves? In my state, plenty of women are against legal abortion because their churches taught them so. These are the same churches that are full of molesters. It’s about controlling women and grabbing them “down there”. They think they own you.
I’m sick of it. Women are smart enough and moral enough to reclaim our dignity.
8
"Our side of the debate has the simplest and most scientifically coherent definition of personhood"
Although I have no idea what this definition of personhood might be. Mr. Douthat might at least have provided a reference.
I admit that I don't believe it the claim. I don't believe that a scientific definition of personhood is possible. But he could have made a gesture in the direction of proving me wrong.
2
Ross, what don't you understand about the fallen nature of humankind? Nothing is perfect, but abortion rights are necessary given how imperfect this world is. I'm a pacifist and against state sanctioned murder (wars and the death penalty), yet I hear nary a word about these issues from the right-wing.
4
how strange to privilege a fertilized egg over the separate genetic components provided by (at least) one sperm cell and one unfertilized egg.
these, too, are alive. these, too, can become dead. and the same goes for pretty much any subset of an organism down to the cellular level.
yet we don't consider it murder to pierce our ears or clap our hands, and we wouldn't confer personhood on toes. or even on semen, one hopes, though I suppose it's been tried.
there is nothing "scientific" about equating a zygote with a few cells in it to the human being that might exist after billions of cell divisions and nine months or so. it's just sleight of hand, and not even very effective.
it has always been obvious that the moral argument of either side cannot be made by reference to scientific fact. yet that doesn't stop people from trying, somehow, and claiming that only their side has reason on its side.
and the nerve to talk about abrupt bright line rules! it's the pro lifers who have decided that personhood is conferred at the precise point when genetic material from two parents coalesces.
5
Wait, Ross Douthat is criticizing "magical thinking"? How about that rising from the dead, virgin birth stuff? if he is really interested in what those who compiled the Bible (at least the Hebrew Bible, which Mr. Douthat is certainly familiar with from the English translation of the Greek translation of the Hebrew original), the ancient scholars (the exegetes of the Talmud) understood the ultimate "ensoulment" (i.e., that which makes people human) to occur not only after the fetus passes through the birth canal, but months after that. Mayor Pete seems to have a better handle on that part of the bible that most closely seems to deal with the issue than does Mr. Douthat.
5
Ross, you have a thing for Pete, don't you?
You keep pecking away at him, repeatedly.
Another approach to the abortion issue is to regard the fetus as a part of the mother's body until it achieves autonomy outside her body,
Til then, it is the woman's choice in conjunction with the government's interest in protecting fetal rights and maternal health. Roe's trimester framework, modified by Casey's "fetal viability" standard, remain sensible.
2
What are the rights of the unborn? Are they defined in statute in a way that says rights for 'born' people are transferred to the unborn? Additionally, if you support the rollback of air pollution laws are you not harming the unborn? Or the lax response to lead in the water - a more immediate threat to the nearly born. The argument against choice doesn't wash because it is arbitrarily narrowed to pregnant women - a reverse discrimination if there ever was one.
The answers to the extremely hard questions for any mother having to face this choice should not be codified in statute but rather discussed and explored in private among family, friends, counselors. The decision is a private one, not a public display.
3
" Planned Parenthood, which has long benefited from its cultivated reputation as a health care outfit...." That denigrating sentence echoed in my mind today as I read that as women's health centers have had to close, the rate of cervical cancer deaths have gone up. These centers are essential to the health of women, especially poor women.
7
I agree that the start of personhood, humanity, or whatever one wishes to call it cannot be determined scientifically, since there is no scientific definition of it. To me, therefore, any arbitrary point where the termination of a viable pregnancy is allowed runs the risk of, not the certainty of, terminating a human being. It is that risk that I do not believe the law should allow.
@michaelscody
So instead you are fine terminating the rights of autonomy and general freedom of an individual you know is a person. Seems fairly clear you know your rights are never at risk.
2
I must use a word that never leaves my lips. Poppycock.
This debate demands metaphysics and from time immemorial dogma not truth disqualifies those who understand " beauty is truth, truth beauty" Keats.
This argument is about philosophy in a society that does not trust or like philosophers.
Ode on a Grecian urn is not about an urn it is about Socrates and the enlightenment. Even as I look for truth, I listen to the Ross Douthats who look to dogma.
We are in the middle of a debate defining Western Civilization for 2500 years. Unless we acknowledge the whys of the polarization we will never solve our problems.
Do we want truth or Dogma. Why aren't we talking about the Creel Committee of 1917 when Congress decided in favour of Dogma over truth. It is the same debate and the same arguments but this time the survival of our species hangs in the balance and we are seeing the triumph dogma once again. Since knowing when we are is beyond our ken we have always given way to Dogma. Today foregoing truth means suicide does that change the debate.
1
Mr. Douthat offers religious thought posing as logic and "science." Douthat is interested in certainty, which has nothing to do with scientific thinking. A plethora of psychologists and neuroscientists have explored the question of personhood and found it to be rich and complex, not reducible to the simplistic formulation Mr. Douthat supports; he could not be less interested in these findings. To locate the emergence of personhood in a specific moment, whether conception or viability, is ultimately arbitrary. Viability is an ethical compromise that tries to balance the value of incipient life with the value of autonomy. It's based in the real world of difficult choices and consequences.
4
Life is ubiquitous, be it human or other. Maybe it's time, or really passed time, to make the conversation about the quality of life, not the quantity.
1
Interesting that Douthat states "Our side of the debate has the simplest and most scientifically coherent definition of personhood," but never bothers to state exactly what that definition is. Many on "his side" define personhood as beginning at conception- a microscopic one-celled speck. So extreme are adherents to that "scientifically coherent definition," they would have any form of birth control banned that can prevent blastocyst (a person) implantation, such as birth control pills and some IUDs. Applying this "scientifically coherent definition," it follows that millions of women must be found to be impregnated with the frozen persons that have been produced from in-vitro fertilization and funerals should be held whenever a woman has a miscarriage.
6
I'm no fan of Mayor Pete, but there's nothing wrong with his position on this matter (based on what I've read here). One of the main things that makes a liberal society different from a theocracy is that a liberal society does not derive its laws directly from some moral doctrine. In a liberal society, the fact that some or all people think that some action is morally wrong does not entail that that action should be illegal. It is therefore perfectly coherent to believe that abortion is something that should not be done while simultaneously believing that there should be no laws prohibiting abortion. Indeed, a very significant number of people hold this position.
I believe that there is ample support for the position that it is morally wrong to reproduce. The world is overpopulated and humans are undeniably the largest contributors to the destruction of the planet. Uncontroversially, humans cause more suffering than any species that has ever existed. Given this, I believe that if one finds themselves to be pregnant, they have a moral obligation to abort the fetus before it is released into the environment. If an abortion is unobtainable, then the infant should be euthanized as soon as is practicable following its birth. Although this is what morality requires, I simultaneously hold that this should not be legislated, and that these decisions should be made entirely by the person who is carrying/birthing the child.
8
To say that we don't have a definition of what constitutes personhood that is scientifically supportable and therefore that it might begin sometime in the womb is not to prove that it does begin sometime in the womb. Surely, if you don't have even a sketchy scientifically supportable definition that can be pegged inside the womb, you've no right to assume that a sketchy one does. So currently, all that we have is political and religiously based definitions. You can argue for your political definition, but you're on sketchy grounds arguing against anyone else's.
2
This issue never seems to go away. It's just not practical for the State to tell women that they can't have early-term abortions. Why not concentrate on making sure unwanted pregnancies doesn't happen in the first place ? That is surely something people on both sides of the issue can agree on.
9
I'm trying to imagine a woman going down the rabbit hole of Douthat's latinate 'exegesis' on Butigieg and abortion. Douthat's claim that right-to-lifers rely on science for their position, while Mayor Pete and liberals in general, according to Douthat's 'jesuiticisms', believe abortion should be legal right up and until the moment of birth, is absurd.
First, the overwhelming majority of right to lifers are anti-abortion, not because of the science, but because of religious dogma they interpret from a 2000-year-old, Iron Age collection of writings. As for the science, the AMA supports a woman's right to an abortion and has pointedly taken this position -- in court -- to combat conservative efforts to effectively ban abortion in red states. So, science is on the side of women. Period.
Second, Butigieg's 'moment of breath' comment need not be taken literal maximalism. He could simply be arguing for the problem of taking scripture, the thinking prevalent at the time it was written -- a relatively ignorant, ancient, pre-scientific era, prone to sacrificing animals, crucifying cult leaders, and forcing slaves (gladiators) to kill one another for sport -- too literally.
But no, like the sophisticated dogmatism that Douthat seems, when shorn of his exegetical logic (dogmatic by definition), to be grounded in, he's quick to twist any push back against the oppression of women, that the Christian right seeks so aggressively, as worthy of convoluted, intellectual sophistry.
6
Maybe just once someone could say that the reason we hold "maximalist" views is because those on the opposing side have hypocritical, women-hating motives and are not fair dealers in any potential compromise.
They show their hand time and time again with exceptions for rape and incest (ah, so pregnancy is punishment), talks of banning/restricting birth control as a next step, and regulating the procedure out of existence in many places. That's not to mention complete disregard for the life of the baby once born. They have created and are executing a long term strategy at all levels of government to erode any and all abortion rights. Their goals are not unclear.
Their agenda is keeping women down, with the justification that they need to be punished for having sex. The babies are window dressing. I will give that agenda no purchase.
9
Mr. Douthat is serving us an example of sophistry in the modern age. Naming the pro choice position as orthodoxy is a turnabout that is NOT fair play.
No pro choice person has killed a so called pro life person but killing in the name of life is similar sophistry and has occurred.
The basic argument is that an abortion position that is based not on science but on a religious belief ought not to be forced on others who don't hold that belief. No one is forced to have an abortion but so called pro lifers want to force that belief on others. Calling a doctor who performed legal abortions a monster kind of tells the story, doesn't it?
5
Humans are fallible, God is infallible. God loves and understands us where ever we are in the debate about when life begins. My beef is with a government which would presume to declare that a fetus is a citizen and therefore under its protection! The same government should concentrate itself, in my view, on providing protection for all of its citizens already born!
3
I'm happy to see that the anti-abortion crowd, or as I like to think of them, the Big Government Conservatives, have decided to adopt the language of personhood. When you deal with personhood you get to the crux of this argument, which is "when does a fetus receive a set of legal rights that exceed those off its mother".
Rather than provide the simple answer to that question, Douthat rather magically believes we should grant those rights to a fertilized egg. If true, Egg Child should be able to receive legal council to defend said rights. Frivolous and ridiculous.
The Roe and progeny legal path is a much clearer and morally correct process, balancing a shifting set of rights between woman and fetus. As to the "liberal" extremists looking for a first breath definition, this is the first I've heard of it. If more substantial than a fevered imaginary construct of anti rights extremists, I can only ascribe this idea to a reaction to those same right wing absolutist. May cooler and more logical heads in the middle prevail.
At the end of the day this boils down to a fight over how intrusive the government, both state and federal, is allowed to be. Today it's the womb, tomorrow it's your privacy. I advise people to never let the government go either place.
6
And yet again, Douthat ignores the fact that Christians have the highest percentage of abortions with Catholic having the highest percentage of abortions within Christians in the USA.
Douthat and some Christian's claims of moral superiority, would have some credulity if the "faithful" could just model their church teachings that they volunteered to follow before they try to enact laws for the rest of the world.
5
You can use the Bible to justify anything and to use selective verses that support your argument and ignore others that contradict your opinion. But the one verse that sums up the compartmentalization of evangelical Trump supporters is Mark 8:36 - "What profit a man if he gains the world and loses his own soul?"
3
He interpreted Pete properly, then ignored what Pete clearly meant.
The POINT is that the definition of where life begins is a religious issue. The other POINT is that the religious choice belongs to the woman based upon "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".
If you want 'the science of the right' you can either go with 'before the sperm even meets the egg' or 'Fetal heartbeat' or 'Viable'.
So here is a compromise: Pass a law that at any stage, the woman can choose to have the fetus removed from her body, but the state has the option, perhaps even a mandate, to remove that baby and try its best to keep it alive, on the government dime.
Anything else is "involuntary servitude" of the woman, which is unconstitutional. It is well established case law that the government can not force the continuation of 'Life Support' such as that provided either through machines, or through a persons efforts.
4
Why can't we all just mind our own business? For many of us, this is actually quite simple. No one should be involved with what occurs in a doctor's office, the bedroom or how/where someone worships or doesn't worship.
I can't begin to imagine how many lives over the last two thousand years have been lost because of the arrogance of some to proclaim they speak, judge and act on behalf of their God.
13
Children, until relatively recently, have had little protection under the law. So it isn't surprising that the human fetus is, increasingly, dehumanized. It would be useful if we could dispose of that trend. The fetus is human and needs to have its own bill of rights. Primarily, the human fetus has a right to responsible treatment on the part of its mother. Sometimes that means merciful and thoughtful use of abortion. Those who support Trump and also cry out against abortion should consider carefully. Trump is involved in child abuse of immigrant children on a grand scale under immigration law. It follows that the law, without intelligence or compassion does not equal morality. We need to stop the ridiculous arguments over philosophy and dare to accept that abortion is sometimes the responsible, compassionate and moral choice. Let us make laws that protect everyone's rights.
4
We would make much progress if we would agree that women are persons with a right to bodily autonomy.
25
@L T
I wonder what these men will do once they realize that the right to privacy and bodily autonomy that forms the basis for Roe protects them, too? Imagine the shock post-Roe when their ex-wife takes them to court for a kidney for their child and he is compelled to comply.
9
Ross wouldn't recognize true mysticism if it bit him.
But as a Catholic, he should not be mocking mystery -- Catholicism is one of the world's great mystery religions. The primary doctrines are mystery, as they are for the Anglican Communion.
The false orthodoxy of his branch of the Church reflects their ignorance of how integral mystery is --- not as some cultic lapse into pre-science, but as the acknowledgement that the crucial things cannot be understood. Plato knew that, as did Abraham and Jesus and Thich Naht Hanh.
6
@Emily Another great mystery religion is Eastern Christian Orthodoxy. Their belief in "You are born, you suffer, you die, the rest is mystery" can be seen in Russian culture and their literature. The short stories of Russian author Anton Chekhov are an example.
3
Ross is least objective and reasonable when he is most influenced by his Catholicism. The problem is he doesn't know the difference and in fact sees no tension. The key to clear-headed thinking is recognition and subtraction of one's biases. Ross has always fallen down there.
4
Douthat is putting words in Buttigieg's mouth at a fabulous rate and then attempting to ad hominem smear him with the existence of shaky abortion operator in his town. If Douthat approves of any abortion at all he's undermined his own position that life begins at...anything before taking breath. He and other restrictionist anti-abortionists are essentially saying "all cells after conception are children, and I'll accept you killing some children if the sperm was provided by a rapist, or a biological family member, or if something's gone wrong biologically, or the mother will die." So the guy who thinks they're all fully children but is ok with killing some of them thinks other people who don't think they're fully children have a morality issue? Classic.
9
Contrary to Douthat's suggestion, there is no scientific or philosophical consensus — or even rigor — around the thesis that personhood begins at conception. That thesis collapses a distinction of fundamental importance, between the beginning of a biological process that eventuates in a human being, an organism belonging to the species homo sapiens, on the one hand, and the onset of the moral status of being a person, on the other. Typically, 'person' is used to distinguish creatures that are moral agents from those that are not; that is, those who are capable of directing their lives on the basis of reasons, and are thus responsible for their behavior and subject to praise or blame, and those that are not. (No one I know, or have even heard of, grants that status on the basis of breath.)
Under that meaning of personhood, a fetus is obviously not a person, at any stage of its development. Neither are newborns or even young children. All of these, however, are potential persons, since developing the capacities for autonomous choice are programmed into their biology, are latent in their DNA. While everyone should grant that potential persons have a higher moral status than organisms that are not potential persons, it strikes me as utterly fatuous to assume that all potential persons, no matter how undeveloped that potential may be, should count as having the same status as actual persons. (Like pregnant women).
But isn't that the conservative view?
2
The statement that pro-lifers have “the simplest and most scientifically coherent definition of personhood” gave me a good laugh! You’re confusing life and personhood. The carrot that I pulled from the soil also had a life, but it did not have a personhood. Why not? Well, that’s when things get complicated, but some of the reasons have to do with a lack of consciousness and the inability to feel pain (or pleasure). When a fetus is not biologically equipped to have a consciousness and/or feel pain, it is reasonable to say that it is alive but is not a person. And of course, when it is able to feel and be conscious, then it is reasonable to give it the legal status of a person. This means that a fetus becomes a person several months after conception and several months before birth. I highly doubt that Buttigieg is defending the idea that any abortion, at any time in the pregnancy, is morally OK.
7
Not knowing precisely what "personhood" means in our word-twisting world, I do believe the human fetus is human-kind because it can be no other.
Trying to justify infanticide in a womans' womb by assigning a magic number of weeks to be human is an exercise in verbal nonsense.
Abortion is the killing of our own kind, pure and simple....but made excusable by the impure of heart and the complexity circular reason.
Mysticism has nothing to do with abortion. Morality does.
125
@Lake. woebegoner Unfortunately, for many the morality stops at birth. So quantity of life trumps quality. A life of deprivation, possible poverty, doesn’t count. After the baby is born, society turns its back.
201
@Lake. woebegoner - In my world, morality recognizes that being forced to bring an unwanted, possibly unaffordable or handicapped child into the world can many times be a cruelty to the child, not to mention the woman. A huge percentage of unwanted children are neglected, abused, sometimes tortured and killed, and our prisons are full of adults who began life as unwanted children.
It's also no kindness to a child to insist that it be born regardless of how horrendous its quality of life will be because of congenital defects. We certainly don't see the GOP rushing to ensure that every child will be clothed, fed, housed, and educated, let alone provide the kind of support and medical care and assistance a very handicapped child requires for the rest of his life.
241
@Lake. woebegoner whose morality. Does that mean someone can use their religion to force everyone to live by their rules and life philosophy? And which religion governs us?
Maybe we should embrace the real and underlying idea behind this "morality." All life is sacred. And then all killing should be illegal. So, no poisoning rats or termites, no steak dinners or leather shoes. Not even a slap at a mosquito or bed bugs. Or women covering every possible inch of flesh when outside the home, having no rights to even her own children or to do anything without a male guardian's permission, and being punished should she err.
You should be careful about what you wish for. Some people who believe in making abortion illegal again might find those ideas extreme, but some people embrace them and live that way every day. I tell you, those who believe in the sacredness of a woman's body and right to choose find the religious right's ideas about women's health no less extreme. The horror and debasement of that kind of draconian law has nothing to do with what Jesus preached, or even what the majority of citizens believes. If the duty of government is to protect and serve, this falls into vigilantism. Denying major health services to women is nothing short of abuse and abrogation of government responsibility.
173
Let's be clear Ross...we do not outlaw many things that are deemed "immoral" in the bible. Why not? Why don't we outlaw marital infidelity for example? The bible is clear on that. It's clear what it is. It deeply hurts at least one other person and often wrecks two families. Are you going to argue that we should legally outlaw marital infidelity too? I don't think so. Nobody likes marital infidelity but we all want to live in a world where are free to do it. Confusing the argument about what you think is morally right, and what the government legally permits is a huge mistake.
6
I think the author is falling into what himself was criticizing in his Sept 4 article "Four Things That Are Not White Nationalism"
Monster doctors, supposedly mystic politicians, abortions at any time during pregnancy, and other things mentioned here do not belong to a serious discussion about this matter.
3
Ross, the party of science hasn't decided anything.
3
How about we leave God out of it altogether. Give me one good reason anyone's religion should impact my life at all.
13
Douthat does battle with two of the the very flimsiest straw men: that abortion rights advocates support women aborting late-term fetuses on a whim, and that women indeed do so.
It is not reasonable to believe that he makes this argument merely out of ignorance.
Here's what third-trimester abortion really looks like:
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/30/718546468/opponents-fight-efforts-to-protect-late-term-abortion-rights
8
The columnist seems to be deliberately misconstruing the ‘breath’ argument as meaning full-term. I have never, ever met a since pro-choice supporter who believes in abortion up to full-term. It is, instead, a matter of when a foetus can possibly live, with supportive intervention, were it to be born early. That may change with science. At present, four months gestation is hopeless, Five may not be. I would assume that is what Mayor Pete meant.
I would also ask “pro-lifers” to reflect on the wise words of an elderly Irish nun I heard interviewed before her country’s recent pro-abortion vote. She said she would be voting for legal abortion, because she had realised her fellow “pro-lifers” were really just “pro-birth. After that the wee ones are on their own. That is more wrong.”
5
Left wing theocracy, right wing theocracy............it's still a theocracy.
2
What does the bible have to do with anything?
8
Women are NOT male chattel property. Please get over it.
12
Douthat – arguments about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin were laughable in the Middle Ages, and even more so now. Supposed moral judgements based on supposed revelations from supposed invisible creatures have been and are used to force women to reproduce; they simply are not logically defensible, and ignore the real moral issues balancing the quality of life of a woman and her children against having yet more children. The law of the land remains Roe v Wade; your musing about the supernatural are without value. FACT: two-thirds to three-quarters of all pregnancies end in spontaneous (natural) abortion. Until the religious come to grips with reality, I for one will ignore their pronouncements.
7
Douthat's column today is more evidence that Mankind does not deserve to survive. That he and his religious beliefs would make a significant issue out of determining when a fetus's rights overrule the rights of the mother points to the problem. It's this issue that has been the cause of much conflict and death between "chosen people" on both sides of the argument. Mankind has proven time and time again that it cannot live together in peace and organized religion has been the driving force behind much of it. It's this one example of the destructive influence of organized religion that will doom Mankind to its ultimate demise.
6
No, I think the more accurate description of Buttigieg's actual legal position that, to quote you, even a polity influenced by Christian piety should leave both believers and nonbelievers alone to decide the fetal personhood question themselves. You’re the one who wants a definition of when life begins, and Buttigieg was not giving that to you or anyone else.
I think progressives would say that the question of when live begins depends on what you mean by life — and that's a serious question, both at it’s beginning and at its end, that we don’t have good answers for. The real question is when do rights begin for one individual when that individual’s being is physically intertwined with another individual's being, and that other individual has inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that are or may be compromised by the first individual’s being.
Some conservatives seem to believe that when we talk about a woman’s right to choose, we mean a woman’s freedom to decide what happens to the fetus, a right those conservatives do not believe she has. What we actually mean is a woman’s right to choose what happens to herself, a right those conservatives also appear to believe she does not have.
7
What's grisly in this world, Ross, is the plight of billions of women in this world who lack access to birth control, and their starving, dying children. Perhaps you could talk to your Vatican about that.
11
Ross,
While I am Pro-Life, Ross's assertion that the Pro-Life position is firmly based while the Pro-choice is wishy-washy, mystical, is flawed. The position that life begins at conception and so legal person-hood should also is also mystical and wishy-washy. When the egg is fertilized, how is it truly any different than a skin cell scraped from your body. If a culture of 16 cells is allow to grow in a petri-dish should it have legal rights. Being inside or outside of the womb doesn't really resolve the conflict. The reason this is such difficult subject is that there will never be a perfect answer, no matter the science. It is choice that society must make.
5
@Michael Justin IMO, it is choice that the pregnant woman must make. I wouldn't trust "society" whomever and whatever that is.
His position is that holding one's own philosophical or religious position is an individual right, whether drawn from Scripture or otherwise. It is not true, however, that one's position (no matter how valid to that person) can be justification for imposing that position on others. No one is opposed to Douthat believing what he will; the resistance is to Douthat and his ilk making that decision for others because he feels he has better support for his belief.
4
Mr. Douthat is woefully ignorant about abortions late in pregnancy. Perhaps if he talked less and listened more--to women--he would better understand why Buttageig trusts women.
7
It remains a complicated personal issue. No one is pro abortion. But any so called pro lifer who believes in the death penalty should not be part of this conversation unless they own up to their hypocrisy.
6
Really do we need another column from the Mr. Douthat on fecundity? It is well known, by anyone reading his writings, where he stands on this issue. The lectures are stale and there is no new information to be gleaned from them. Ok, ok we get it, women can’t have a say in their bodies because Jesus. Forget that god gave us all a brain and agency but stupid little women shouldn’t have the right to use that as they see fit when it comes to their fundamental rights to make choices which are specific to them and their future. Praise Jesus for men and their all knowing knowledge about the female body and agency, because God knows they really don’t have a say in this, they will never have to confront pregnancy and it’s attending problems but they darn sure know how to lecture women about it. Leave us alone and find another new hobby to lecture about.
7
You can bend yourself into a pretzel with your labyrinthine arguments, trying to justify why anyone other than the woman whose body is affected should decide but if we have freedom of religion in this country, the choice is hers and hers alone. Your religious beliefs do not determine the course of my life - mine do.
9
Why do those like Ross Douthat want to claim freedom to pursue their chosen religion, and then given that, shove it down everybody else's throat? I personally find believing in the Great Ho Ho in the sky just plan stupid, but I do not begin and end every political conversation with my believes. Most all of us believe in the live and let live notion to get threw most all of our daily and civil lives. Ross if you don't want an abortion don't have one! the great majority of Americans believe we do have the right to safe and private abortion. And yet you guys pester and bicker around the edges and just make a diseases of your selves you act like a germ or virus a nuisance and menace to the rest of us just trying to get along with our lives. Some time I feel we need a vaccine and an antibiotic to be relieved of your constant bickering. It is very offensive to constantly be harried by your religious believes, but here it is your right to run your mouth as much as you want, that goes for us all. When you try to make your religious beliefs law that is a very different thing and a very different fight.
6
Religion and science: oil and water.
Forever and ever, amen.
5
The discussion of abortion seems to begin in two different places, go on to make reasoned arguments, then end back where each began. Those who strongly believe that human life is sacred, created in the image of god, have their argument rooted firmly in their religious faith. Those who believe that a woman has an inalienable right to make choices surrounding her own health and well-being may or may not have strong religious views, but they don't believe their views should be imposed on others--perhaps because they don't believe they (or anyone else) have an infallible understanding of the mind of god. The Founders, for whatever faults each had, were pragmatists when it came to religion. The endless wars over religious beliefs that, to them, exemplified the "Old" that they'd left behind had no place in this new country. Let people practice their faith as they chose, there would be no state-ordained religion here.
Pro-life people, be pro-life. Live your truth. Speak your truth. For those of us who don't share your religious beliefs, legislating your truth is using the power of the state to impose your beliefs. Given the present make-up of the Supreme Court, you might get away with it; but when does forcing faith ever work? The damage you are doing to religion in the process won't be easily reversed.
6
The use of "science" by religious conservatives to establish the boundaries of personhood strikes me as fundamentally disingenuous. It's a little bit like the Creation "Scientists" that argue that the Earth is really only 7000 years old and so on. The only people who ever make such arguments are religious conservatives. I think it is safe to say that Mr. Douthat's objection to abortion is based on faith, not science, and the "science" is merely a necessary justification for legal restrictions, because we don't live in a theocracy. If Mr. Douthat were honest, he would admit as much, and explicitly make the religious case for banning abortion. Perhaps he doesn't because the religious argument is actually much harder to make than the scientific one, shaky as that may be. I think this would be a useful exercise, though, because the Scriptural case against abortion is weak at best, as is the theological one (does anyone really believe in a God that would send aborted babies to Hell?) If the opposition to abortion is motivated by religion, but that opposition is misplaced, maybe we could finally get past this incredibly destructive issue.
4
Life is hard enough without being born to a woman or family who do not want you in the first place.
10
Why does Ross have such a need to put his punitive patriarchal hands all over women's' bodies?
9
More to the point: how the party of religion decided that fetuses are more important than living children and their families.
How, exactly, is this "ideal" fetus to survive without a caring mother and community?
I suggest a careful reading of the Gospels, which are short and repetitive, and advise helping rather than hurting, supporting rather than attacking, and noticing that the less fortunate are, well, less fortunate.
Meanwhile, there's a lot of killing in the "sacred" right to high-powered killing machines without respect for the lives of victims. There's a lot of killing in the vengeful hatreds and victim blaming coming from the top these days.
If I could devise a metaphor more evil than Trump and his cabal of looters and exploiters, I'd be surprised.
All the deadly sins in one packet, taking from the poor to give to the rich.
6
I am completely disgusted by the thought of anyone applying the book of fairy tales known as the Bible to any aspect of my decision making. I like the idea of Democrats taking a strict separation of church and state approach to the issue.
10
Buttigieg was raised Catholic and simply stepped over to the more gay tolerant Episcopalian church for his own. Even if seemingly an allay, the last people who ought be setting laws on female reproductive rights are:
1. Males;
2. Gay males;
3. Catholic, evangelical, Islamic, Christian, Buddhist, agnostic, atheist males and the females attached to their ribs.
7
This kind of half-baked "logic" really irritates me as a woman. The debate is simple. A woman has the right to do what she pleases with her own body. Period. That is not the easy choice the essayist and religious right seem to think it is. Our essayist is also grossly misrepresenting what the religious left is all about...We are about Jesus' commandment to LOVE one another, not judge one another.
8
I'm glad to read Mr. Douthat's article here in the NYT. But would I read it in the waiting room or distractedly as she is holding my hand while I am at bedside? Or would I read it as I am performing the procedure? Or while having the procedure? I know it's a boring, tired complaint but I think there's nothing like a woman's opinion, without any hope of where her opinion takes us, what degree she has or in what style she makes her defense or whether she hides from it and never mentions it again. Miserable, unjustified death is all around us. A relative just retired from military service just completed his home died of brain cancer this summer about which he knew nothing. People intent on blaming humans and in love with defending God have it backwards. If God isn't ashamed of all the unjust circumstances of death, indifferent to the pain he causes his creation, all for the benefit of his ego, he's no better than Trump. That said it's easy for me to shake my fist with my young body and I took no pleasure in Dawkins conclusion that we are DNA replicators. Abortion is a great topic because Rhodes scholar or not, none of us have a good answer.
1
I believe the Dr. Gosnells of this world happen when you don't make abortion available & affordable. "Safe, legal and rare" means accessible -> not requiring a visit to a different county or a different state or the need to save hundreds of dollars for the procedure because of no insurance coverage, which only results in delaying the procedure. It means all other options of birth control are so readily available and affordable, that abortion isn't needed BUT IT IS STILL ACCESSIBLE to everyone, everywhere. Because remember birth control is a probability, not an absolute. And rape happens. It also means that there are no legal restrictions to a late term abortion when it is medically necessary. Women don't knowingly opt to stay pregnant for months when they don't want to be.
You want to give personhood to fetuses? Then women become a special class of citizen. Do you police her every move? Her diet? Her bad habits? What is this world like in which a fetus has personhood status and a woman will suddenly count as 2, 3, maybe 4 people in one being while she is pregnant. Tell me how this works. Tax deductions, car pool lane, medical benefits, death benefits, disability benefits? What happens if she's arrested? Now you've falsely imprisoned her other-person. And miscarriages: murder investigations? How does this work?!?! I need to know.
6
I've always thought it odd that a fetus is considered a 'life in being' under testamentary and succession law, but not otherwise. In other words, if property or assets are involved, the fetus is accorded the status of personhood and if not, the foetus is a non human blob of cells with no rights.
Talk about arbitrary and whimsical definitions of personhood. Wouldn't it be more accurate to define human life as that point when the fertilized egg (or zygot) completes its first cell division, or perhaps even completes the ball shaped morula? Left to their own devices, these cells will ultimately grow into an independent human life -not a tadpole, lizard, bird, monkey, nor blueberry.
Birth control methods have evolved which prevent the emergence of a zygot, hence inhibit the first cell division of human life: long term injectable, sheath, pill, sterilization (reversible, or not) and other contraceptives effectively prevent this meiosis event.
Why don't men and women use these effective means of birth control contraception? Is human life so disposable that it doesn't deserve the leastest consideration?
Mr. Douthat, I am sure you control your body and what you do with it. Is it possible that someday you can accept that a woman has that same right. We are not baby ovens, we are human beings just like you and we have the absolute ability and desire to do with our bodies whatever we want including when, how and why to have or not have a child.
7
While we argue over this there are women who are pregnant and don't want to be. Some of them don't want children. Others know that they/their families cannot support one more mouth to feed. Some women have had prenatal tests run and learned that the fetus they carry has a defect that is incompatible with life. Other women, who should not be pregnant for various reasons have become pregnant because their birth control failed.
Abortion has been around for as long as there have been humans able to perform it. When there weren't as many of us as there are today it was understandable to treat it as a horrible crime. But what's the real crime here: forcing women to have children they don't want, can't support, or might kill them, or allowing abortion up to the point where the fetus can survive on its own without extraordinary technical intervention?
I was an unwanted child, an abused child, and I live with those legacies. I vote for allowing abortion. It's not selfish not to bring an unwanted child into the world. It's not selfish to decide that one wants to have enough for one's existing children. It's not selfish to decide that one cannot cope with the demands of a severely handicapped child, especially when one considers how little our society provides in assistance. It's a real shame we don't examine the motives of people who want children as closely as we do those who want abortions. Perhaps we'd have a happier society.
9/17/2019 1:10pm 2nd submit
7
Ross, however do you ever undo the knots into which you contort? You do this a lot.
Yes, science. Science SHOULD and MUST rule.
The Bible? Beautiful poetry about life and the physical sphere. But it’s not science. Remember that. Again and again and again.
Put it front and center. Share it with gusto with your fellow right wingers. And then be quiet.
5
There is no party of science, and science is not in opposition to religion; science is what keeping religious people from killing each other. Water freezes at a certain temperature and all parties agree, regardless of their metaphysics. Therefore rather killing each other, let us find what we can agree upon, and live together with all, regardless of their personal sacred beliefs. This is America: built on the fact that you can not kill an idea by killing a body. All are included or none are.
Talk about cherry picking. Come on Russ, no one I know, no politician I've heard, claims what you claim. I'm sure that there are women and men who do believe it's the "right" of any mother to end her pregnancy at any time, but I never hear a pol proclaim it. The first trimester rule is the one most people agree with and has been the standard for years. Late term abortions are exceedingly rare and heartbreaking for the mother and partner, nobody really asks for it.
4
Have you missed the debates?
Most of this is very sound, as per usual, but you are falling into the trap that you and your fellow intelligent and thoughtful conservative pundits most often descend into, that being you are making claims about shifts in the wider orthodoxy of liberals with no evidence whatsoever. You mention “legislation pressed by activists” with no specifics in either case. I haven’t heard any Democratic candidate insist that personhood by definition doesn’t start until birth, but I did hear some version of “safe, legal, and rare” during the first debate. And you cite Dr. Wen’s claim as to why she was fired, which of course is subjective; moreover, Planned Parenthood is not an arm of the Democratic Party.
Your supposed “progressive interpretation” of Mayor Pete’s words is exactly right: No progressive wants to curtail the rights of women. I am personally uncomfortable with the idea of abortion, despite my total lack of religion, but I am firmly pro-choice. I would urge a partner of mine against an abortion in almost any circumstance, doing so with more insistence the later she got in her pregnancy. But I would never vote to take that right away from her. And I do not and have never felt out of the mainstream on the left with those views. MAYBE the discussion has shifted in the circles you run in, but there’s the other trap you pundits fall into: The twitter elite are not the same as the voters at large.
1
It seems obvious enough that Buttigieg is illustrating the confusion that the Bible offers on when a fetus is human, or ensouled as Thomas Aquinas would have said it. The multitude of opinions on when hominization occurs – from fertilization to brain development to viability to the first breath – allows for a continuum of opportunities for abortion from none to when the woman chooses. Buttigieg chooses the latter. His statement may be nuanced, but it isn’t muddled
1
I for one don't look for religious instruction from any politician - certainly not the mayor of an Indiana backwater half my age. Besides which, if I were to, which of his 'faith-based' views on homosexuality should I treat as credible? The one before or after he came out?
I also don't use a New York Times columnist as my touchstone for scientific inquiry and analysis. Mr. Douthat is hardly qualified to weigh-in on any question of science let alone the "scientific" definition of personhood - for which there is none.
2
Why do so many men get their shorts all in a twist on the subject of abortion? It is not even your call to make these decisions for women. Men can do what men can do support a pro life stance. I could make a long list that doesn't include harassing women.
5
Would it be too much to refer to any Bible statements regarding life before first breath? What about the Gospel account of Mary's visit to her cousin Elizabeth in Luke 1:44 "For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy." That baby was John the Baptist who displayed independent life, including movement and emotions, before birth. Yes, the Bible has lots of things to say on this matter.
1
Such convoluted nonsense.
There are two caveats that are missing from this confusing screed. (i) The author is a practicing Catholic and politically and spiritually conservative. (ii) The author made no effort to ask Buttigieg what he meant, look at his other statements that would have clarified his 'women decide' position or place the discussion in the context of his Episcopal faith.
Douthat has purposely cherry picked a quote that would allow him to write what he wanted to write while obscuring an important, straightforward and settled-in-law issue in the purple robes of religious orthodoxy.
The 'breath' that is missing is the breath of fresh air from a lucid treatment of abortion --one that concludes by leaving the decision in the hands of the mother. And also a call for easy access to morning after and abortion inducing medications so we can abort the entire discussion.
5
Eagerly awaiting the "fetus reciting Shakespeare in sign language." I think I may safely say that Mr Douthat will have convinced me at that point.
4
I think Pete Buttigieg is absolutely clear: the Bible can be interpreted to fit any argument. What matters is that the interpretation -- the choice -- is the woman's to make.
I am, however, still puzzling over this convoluted bit of "logic" from your column:
Our side of the debate has the simplest and most scientifically coherent definition of personhood, and our difficulty comes in persuading people that this logical coherence should outweigh the muddle of moral intuitions on the status of the embryo and the requirements of female equality.
Leaving aside how exactly you think your side "has the simplest and most scientifically coherent definition of personhood" -- what you seem to be saying is that your definition of scientific "fact" trumps others' sense of morality -- what kind of nonsensical religious creed is that?
If you ask me, only one person seems muddled in this argument, and it's not Pete Buttigieg or any of those who agree with him.
5
To me, the idea that a legal right to life begins with the infant's first breath outside the womb is not at all mystical. It’s practical. The infant's ability to draw its first breath is indeed the moment when we become sure the infant hasn’t been born dead,
4
There is a position that one can not enforce "good-Samaritan-ism"; more to the point, we can not force a person to do acts of charity or protection -- especially when it endangers their own life. Thus, we can not force a person to give blood -- even in order to save another person's life.
Thus, we can not force a woman to bear a child.
Thus, a woman can remove a fetus, which lives parasitically, from her body. One the other hand, neither that woman nor anyone else has the right to kill that fetus -- even by depriving it of food or other necessities.
So, a fetus can be removed, but it must be sustained as far as possible.
What about that position?
2
Remember that episode of the original Star Trek series when the crew visited the planet that formed its society around a found "holy" book about the Gangsters of old Chicago. How ridiculous to build an entire society on information an ancient book! Yet here we are. How amazingly uncivilized we remain, 2,000 years on.
At the the gangster book was factual, rather than fantasy.
1
This is the Jewish position as well. That shouldn't matter, but it does to religious people like Douthat who think that the with words of deities should matter at all in policy discussions in a not-theocratic nation.
In Jewish law and tradition, a fetus isn't a person until first breath. Even during birth, until it's half out, it's not a person and anything you do to save the life of the mother is acceptable, even if the fetus dies. After the halfway point, you may have to make hard choices because now there are two people.
So why should one religious tradition get to claim the abortion ground? Judaism is pro-choice. The Satanic Temple has bodily autonomy as one of its core tenets- forced pregnancy is an abomination and blasphemy to them. If your religion doesn't allow abortions then don't get one, but don't impose your flawed, harmful religious views on others.
4
When I left the Catholic Church, I came to realize that, not only did it have a lot of the wrong answers, but also it was asking a lot of the wrong questions. The question is not, “When does life begin?” It is, “Who did God put in charge of new life?” A mother, of course, is the goddess of a fetal life — the creator, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent — until first breath, when civil society takes over.
6
Mr. Douthat claims that the Democratic party "would allow abortion absolutely throughout pregnancy." I am a democrat and this is not what I believe. Furthermore, when I go to the Democratic party's web site and read their platform, https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-platform/ensure-the-health-and-safety-of-all-americans/, I can not find any statement of his claim. As usual, a Republican is making false claims about what members of the Democratic party claim and want to do.
5
If a mother abuses her child, she will be prosecuted and no one would say, since she's the mother, she is somehow absolved on the premise, she can do anything to that child. So it is absurd (and anti-scientific) for extremist pro-abortion forces (abortion anytime, any reason) to argue there is some right for a woman to have a "doctor" extinguish the life of a viable human being. Do we really want to provide an absolute right to any human being, female or male, to decide the fate of this viable human being? At that stage in life development, sorry, no one gets to snuff it out on the premise that it would produce some sort of hardship or inconvenience. Human rights can't be dictated by the all-powerful over the powerless.
Likewise, there is the specious, coarse, violent argument by abortion extremists that this taking of viable human life is rare. First, even it were one, it is still wrong. Can these same pro-abortion extremists truly see their argument about a hate crime that killed "only" one of a group be dismissed as not that bad because, hey, it was only one? Of course not. But here's a fact that's often conveniently overlooked and under-reported: The pro-choice Guttmacher Institute has documented that the vast majority of abortions that dispose of viable human beings is actually into the thousands annually--- between 4,000 and 6,000 --- and that most of these are not to save the life of the mother nor for severe health issues of the aborted. An inconvenient truth.
1
I always enjoy reading Mr. Douthat’s opinions and arguments. They bring a lovely whiff of Medieval days into my morning.
6
The difficulty is that a president who threatens Iran and sides with Saudi Arabia has no moral credibility when it comes to defending fetal life.
Let us face it, he is not the "humane" president.
What I hope for is that Trump will make one more appointment to the Supreme Court, Roe v Wade will be overturned, and a Democrat elected in 2020.
Let blue New York allow abortion on demand for 24 weeks. But at least SOME states should be permitted to sharply limit abortion just as France and Germany already do.
1
There is no other way to describe what Ross is doing here except to say he's lying. He's focused on what Buttigieg said to create his own fantasy world of fetuses being aborted at birth, or at least so close to birth that they're viable.
1.3% of abortions in 2014 were after 21 weeks. In many states, including that bacchanal of liberalism New York, it's illegal to abort a viable fetus late in the pregnancy.
So, what is Ross doing here?
Like all anti-abortionists, Ross needs you to keep your focus on the fetus while he stays firmly fixed on the woman. Buttigieg mentioned breathing babies and abortion in the same segment, which is perfectly suited to Ross' gruesome straw man. In the meantime, he'll keep working to undercut a woman's right to privacy and her ability to control her own body.
3
Enought!! abortion is not a political issue. It is a moral issue and you cannot legislate morals--or we would be sending every young male who impregnates a girl in the backseat of his car to jail. What ever happened to separation of church an state?
5
What does the Bible say about abortion? Pro-life Bible followers often cite passages such as Psalms 139:13, "You knit me together in my mother's womb," or "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. (Psalm 139). Life clearly develops in the womb, but neither passage says or implies that the fertilized egg is the same as a living human.
The clearest Bible passage, however, is Exodus 21: 22-24: "When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman's husband demands, paying as much as the judges determine. If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth."
The miscarriage caused by fighting is a harm, and the one who causes it must pay the husband (note: not the wife), but it is not treated as murder. The fetus is important, but not regarded as a human life as is the pregnant woman.
1
So you're stating that the Jewish faith is just "mysticism"? But your faith is, somehow, infallibly sound? Also, your 'based in science' arguments are no more scientifically pristine than those of the anti-vax movement.
6
As usual, I strongly disagree with Mr. Douthat. He repeats the false claim that progressive states have enacted laws allowing abortions up to the minute of birth without also explaining that in these difficult cases the life of the mother is paramount. Why is this intentional misrepresentation of the statutes in Virginia or New York necessary for him?
Here is the true intent of these laws: In Virginia a third-trimester abortion is only possible if a doctor determines that a birth would compromise the mental or physical health of the mother. In New York a third-trimester abortion is allowed if continued pregnancy would endanger the mother's life or if the fetus is not viable.
It is this conservative lying machine, because these zealots clearly have no reasonable argument, that discourages intelligent debate about the abortion issue.
4
Come on. Republicans make it very clear in their actions and their words that the right to life is absolute starting from conception, but this right is nullified as soon as birth has occurred. And in particular when you have a fetus in your womb, your right to life is conditional on that of this fetus alone.
1
"...the most important thing is the person who should be drawing the line is the woman making the decision." This is the crux of the matter and what I need to know about a candidate. Further, this attempt to conflate Buttigieg with a strange discovery regarding a physician is disingenuous, and Mr. Douthat should be ashamed.
3
Ah, Ross - when did you realize that yours was the one true voice, that you alone could correctly interpret (the translated to English) scripture? With your gifts, could please A) cause men to stop impregnating women who don't at that moment wish to have a baby? and B) bring peace to the middle east? Thanks!
1
Mr. Douthat is apparently saying that the issue is personhood.
It's not.
The issue is something far less mystical. The issue is jurisdiction.
A fetus is not under the jurisdiction of any local, state or national government. A fetus cannot be considered a city or state resident, cannot be counted in the national census, cannot be taken as a tax deduction, cannot get a social security card, cannot even legally get a name, until it is born.
The fetus is under the jurisdiction of the one who is pregnant with it. Period. That is why any decisions, right or wrong, about the pregnancy are NOT the business of any local, state or national government.
Here's another way to look at it: Lots of Canadians agree (along with the last four popes, as it happens) that in a country like the U.S. that is capable of keeping killers in jail, legal execution is murder. Does this give Canadians the right to invade North Dakota to prevent an execution? Why not?
Simple--jurisdiction.
No mysticism necessary.
4
@Al Luongo
I always thought the issues were puritanism, punishment, and power. I never thought about jurisdiction - excellent point.
This should be in the NYT Picks section.
In modern open democracies the abortion debate has been settled by sensible policies and rational actions. Research shows that the provision of good sex education and freely available cheap contraception is the best way to reduce abortion. I see no attempt by so called “pro life” US politicians to introduce, promote and fund these demonstrably more effective measures. Instead these politicians are anti education and contraception, deny welfare to living children in poor families and health care to everyone. They’re not “prolife” , seems to me they are more likely to be gun toting bigots and misogynistic control freaks. Most of the western world has moved on from the abortion debate since contraception became freely available, only in the USA is this issue used to manipulate elections and exert social control.
3
When Saint Pete isn't bemoaning that he has to endure tough debates during an election even with competing Democrats, his deep faith seems to have established a direct line to God being sure God is weeping over carbon emissions, plastic bags, and restrictions against unlimited migration across the southern border ... and now immediately demanding Brett Kavanaugh's impeachment over questionable allegations. What was it the Bible says about bearing false witness?
However, it seems Saint Pete's connection to Divinity suddenly gets crackly and hard to hear when it comes to God's opinion on very late term third trimester abortions ... by amazing coincidence when it involves taking a position that could outrage the woke Left voter base of the Democratic Party during the primaries. Maybe God wants Saint Pete in the White House no matter what it takes?
As far as the Biblical phrase regarding breath of life, breath was a also poetic word in Hebrew to denote spirit -- not only literal breath. But even if we decide to take the word literally, perhaps Saint Pete can clarify if this would mean that if a baby (uh, I mean fetus) is born, now out of the uterine tract but is having difficulty taking its first breath and would need an MD's assistance, does this mean that the mother is still entitled legally to have the baby (oops, I mean fetus, again) to be aborted if at that moment she decides she doesn't want the burden of motherhood after all, since it has taken a breath yet?
1
“But the conservative claim that he believes that personhood is mystically imparted via the inhalation of oxygen is the more accurate description of his actual legal position, and the emerging orthodoxy of his party.“
I’m glad you quoted Buttigieg, since he neither said nor implied that he believes oxygen inhalation is the start of life. He was intelligently pointing out that ancients saw breath as spirit (the root of “spirit” is in fact “breath.”) God breathes into a clay model of a man, and Adam becomes a living being (check your creation myths, Christians!)
As a religious man, a Christian, Buttigieg discusses these biblical passages he himself has read and pondered.
Nothing in the Bible is scientific. The writing is pre-science. Not a single bible writer knew anything about conception as science understands it. Breath for them was life itself. God is the source of breath, the divine breather, if you will.
No pro choice person adopts this thinking, which is indeed magical. Every pro choice person I know uses fetal viability as their ruling guideline on determining when to rule out abortion as a woman’s choice.
We prefer this less than crystal clear guideline to a ferociously “science-based” definition wiling to turn a teenage victim of a brutal attack into a legally mandated incubator for her rapist’s offspring.
4
And Ross speaks as...an officer of the Church? No. A lifelong Catholic? No. A theologian, perhaps? No.
Ross wishes to weigh in on the personal of women’s choices with his meat-cleaver morality (on this side of the cleaver, right, the other side, evil) with the breezy and dismissive air of a frat boy tossing an empty beer can at at a homeless person.
2
Buttigieg is as Margaret Spease , below says is quite clear. Jewish religious doctrine focuses on breath as the beginning of life. In the story of Judah and Tamar, when he thought she was pregnant by another called for her death for adultery- instead of waiting for the birth before her execution. Several historians have written that prior to the 19th century most Catholic authors did not regard termination of pregnancy before "quickening" or "ensoulment" as an abortion. And in many cases it was seen as associated with sexual infidelity.
In any case, today's restrictions are primarily based on control of women and their private medical decisions. Life beginning at conception is a religious argument and there is nothing wrong with reinforcing the separation of Church and State except in the eyes of the American Taliban, Evangelicals, who engage in the most extraordinary verbal gymnastics to make excuses for Trump.
6
I never comment on these things, but, really? Talk about a straw man... not only are late-term abortions past the point of viability exceedingly rare and heartbreaking events, but they are never, ever done out of some sort of whimsical "choice". I challenge Mr. Douthat to find a single case of a woman who is 8 months pregnant who sought and obtained an abortion anywhere in this country for reasons other than a devastating diagnosis in the fetus or a very strong likelihood of death for the mother (and even in the latter case, the baby would almost always be delivered if past viability). Women who seek these procedures are experiencing pain and heartbreak that you, Mr. Douthat, could never imagine. This is literally the worst thing that will ever happen to them. They are suffering enough, for godsakes leave them alone already.
8
Personhood is a legal, not a "scientific" concept, as Mr. Douthat certainly knows. The Catholic dogma that zygotes are persons is "rigorous"--meaning unworkable--because it is simplistic. What a joke to call it "science." The biological IS yields no automatic legal OUGHT, except for fanatics.
3
Have you ever been in the room when a baby was born? It's scary. Anything can happen.
All life is contingent until the baby is out and breathing on its own. Even then the outcome isn't settled.
Anyway, the right wing's pro-lifery isn't as principled as you say. If it were, you guys would care what happens after a child is born. Instead you seem to think that life STOPS at birth.
You refuse to guarantee access to medical care. You don't support paid family leave. You get squeamish if women breastfeed in public. You won't tolerate universal pre-K, even though it's pretty much settled fact that such programs set kids up to succeed in school and dramatically reduce violent crime. You love guns and prisons. (You like anything that can be used to punish people, but you block any attempt to help people get a good start in life, even if it costs less than the punitive alternative.)
Face it: You care more about what happens in the nine months leading up to a kid's birthday than you do the 80+ or so years afterward. You're not pro-life. You just want to boss women around.
11
Using scripture or any religious text to justify any women's rights is no different than than a faith group like the Taliban making law in a Democracy. We do NOT live in midevil times, or theocracy where the reigning faith makes the laws. Always interesting to me that the dictates of the bible are NEVER applied so stringently to men and their rights, only to those of women applied by male majorities. This article/author twists over and over trying to make a point that is specious to start while trying to sound like he is saying something important. Leave Pete out of your personal machinations.
4
Douthat, like the other conservative contributors to the Times, buries a poisonous barb amidst a swirl of confusingly misinterpreted criticisms. The idea that the progressive position is to allow abortions throughout pregnancy for any reason is objectively incorrect. No one is advocating late-term abortions, excepting cases wherein the health of the mother or child are in grave question. The broader point of what Buttigieg means in his quote is obviously misinterpreted here(likely with the intention to distort), but inserting the absurd premise that progressives believe every abortion is a just abortion is neither relevant nor true.
4
With all due respect to Mr. Douthat, he has freely admitted that his scriptural familiarity does not extend much beyond the depth contained in a children’s Bible.
Pete Buttigieg, rather impressively, has a philosophical understanding of Christianity which doesn’t pretend that William James never existed.
It takes some chutzpah to accuse any person of “magical thinking,” when one’s own approach to faith doesn’t even require the will to believe.
2
Ross Douthat totally misunderstands and misrepresents Pete Buttegieg's comments on abortion. His point is that anti-abortion Christians like to use the Holy Scriptures to support their position. But what they refuse to recognize is that these texts lend themselves to different interpretations. Thus, for instance, it contains passages that say that life begins with breathing. But these "devout Christians" choose to overlook that definition, choosing the passages that can be interpreted in a way that fits their preconceptions. That was the point Mayor Pete wanted to make. He was NOT advocating that breathing be the definition of life! He was not in these comments making a commitment to any definition of life; he was simply saying that [1] we as a nation have to decide democratically what limits if any there should be to abortion, but that [2] in any event, some abortions need to be legalized and, within those parameters, women should be free to choose to have an abortion or not to have.
4
I don't mind principled opposition to abortion, I even agree that as gestation progresses along the rights of the child should become more and more of a factor. I don't know of anyone who would be okay with it in the third trimester except in profoundly difficult and unusual situations which, frankly, are not made any easier by the injection of politics.
What really bothers me is sophistry from people like Douthat, who should really know better. Instead of arguing the case, he created a strawman of the pro-life arguments and proceeds to attack it disingenuously. This is the New York Times. He can do better.
6
I'm sure Ross is making a point somewhere in the article, but the linguistic gymnastics are exhausting.
This feels like the 9th-grade book report where the "really smart kid" decided to unleash the dictionary to prove intellectual superiority, You won the battle, but made absolutely zero impact on the war.
5
The definition of human life seems a convoluted sideshow. No right, even that of life is unfettered. Human life is frequently and legally taken to protect the self, others, and society. The degree to which that young life threatens the physical, emotional, and economic life of the mother needs to be argued and balanced. Not sure courts or congress are the best place to do it, I'm more inclined to respect the result of individual conscience.
1
When Douthat lavishes the same honor onto immigrant children, speaks out against the death penalty and promotes an assault weapons ban, maybe we'll care what he has to say about personhood rights.
5
Although he's conservative (I am not), I read Mr. Douthat regularly because he tends to take a sensible approach to things. But I'm surprised and unhappy with the assumptions and innuendoes in this piece.
He berates Mr. Buttigeig for being in lockstep with a "progressive catechism" and implies that he would shape laws to support his personal religious beliefs.
Yet in the linchpin quotation of Douthat's piece, Buttigeit says no such thing. Rather, he says we disagree on when life begins and he illustrates by citing "breath of life" as an alternative to the view that conception is the only standard. And Douthat shouldn't imply that this is either Buttigeig's personal belief or that it would be his stance either in any argument or in creating laws.
He also says that the mother should make decisions with regard to abortion. This is what really sticks in his craws, since if mothers can call the shots, we as a nation can't make laws to enforce of their views. of pro-lifers.
I'm okay if Mr. Douthat wants to disagree, and I think Mr. Buttigeig would be too. I'm also okay if he wants to argue with his thumb on the scale. But please fight fair rather than set up a straw man so you can knock it down.
4
Until Republicans want to support a child financially and socially, regardless of the mother’s financial condition- this has to be the woman’s choice, since she alone must raise the child.
The onus is on the mother, replete with society’s glaring and judgmental eye.
Give mothers $50,000 per year mother’s pay and $50,000 for life as mothers pension, treat all mothers as public heroines and watch American women reproduce.
Until such honors and financial guarantees are in place, until everyone agrees children are important and to be supported in every sense socially- society has no business weighing in.
I am Catholic and think abortion is terrible. But I’m quite certain women who have abortions also experience them as terrible.
No one want to have an abortion- perhaps, Ross, you should lend your fine mind to getting society to support mothers, instead of railing at those women, who forced back on to their own devices, in all areas of socioeconomic life, are left with little choice as to how to attempt to care for their offspring or to avoid having them- that is too, too bleak.
3
No state allows abortion after the point of viability, and I've never heard anyone, Democratic or otherwise, advocate for that. This entire piece is based on a dishonest and hysterical interpretation of what pro-choice people (including Buttigieg) want.
2
This convoluted exercise in absurdity is a great example of what happen when you bring religion into a discuss: nonsense. Could we please separate church and state?
3
Maybe Ross as a newspaper man could do something novel like interview Pete Buttigieg about his abortion stance instead of conjecturing and supposing his way to prove an idiotic point. Does life begin at conception, does life begin at first heartbeat, does life begin at viability, does life begin at first breath - what does it matter? A pregnant woman doesn't want to make the effort to bring the collection of cells growing within her to term and currently has 3 months to decide its fate. Do you want to jail her for murdering her potential child? Do you want to pay her for incubating what will be someone else's child? Do you expect her to make the effort necessary to raise that child into a healthy adult? Maybe you should be working to create a better world that a woman would want to bring a child into instead of condemning her to every-lasting damnation.
I am tired of people believing they know and understand God's will. They point to the Bible as if it is written divinely without any meddling or manipulation by thousands of years of men with intentions and purposes that may or may not represent anything divine. I hate the idea that flawed human beings feel the need to fight for the Entity that gave them life and a universe to inhabit. I hate the idea that a Supreme Being would fault you for living in a country that condoned abortion and expect you to spend your short life striving for women to be forced to have children they don't want.
My God is greater.
5
The democratic party’s "absolutely-no-restrictions line" - seriously, Ross?
4
respect life ... in every phase.
2
Ross missed the most important part from Mayor Pete's quote: Not where the line is drawn, but who draws it...
4
I gather that the Bible also suggests that men who believe that their wives have been unfaithful can make their wives drink an abortive potion so they miscarry any pregnancy that might have resulted from their dalliance with another man. So even the Bible's supposed "pro-life" stance is conditional at best.
1
It absolutely always is conditional! Because it’s not ACTUALLY about life at all! It’s about property and inheritance. A man‘s wife (property) gets to birth HIS children (also property until they come of age/get married and become someone else‘s property), so that the man has someone (sons) to inherit the rest of his property. He doesn’t want another man‘s children taking resources away from his own offspring.
Once you understand that it becomes crystal clear why women cannot be allowed to make the choice to abort. The argument in the Bible is coherent and it’s not about the woman‘s body or the fetus‘ life.
1
Ross stay out of this one. You are revealing yourself as a John Proctor, ready to holler witch at any moment.
Being a lapsed Catholic, I shake my head at how effective the inculcation of toxic manhood has been in the church. And other religions as well.
This coming from a philosophy of supposed life!
Have you no common sense sir?
5
The ideal Democratic ticket would be Elizabeth Warren for president and Pete Buttigieg as vice president. Warren has the more mature ideas and plans, and has a skilled staff around her. As a woman, Warren would never allow the old white men in Congress to destroy Roe vs. Wade. Likewise, if the old white men on SCOTUS were to play the Evangelical card, Warren would help the new Congress to legislate new laws that keeps all these old white men from making women's decisions for them.
Pete Buttigieg is very intelligent, with significant acumen, and he has most of the credentials required for the presidency. His comments, as published in this article, are unambiguous - he supports a woman's right to decide for herself whether to abort, rather than be subjected to religious rules written by the American Taliban. But Pete is still very young, and could learn a lot as the VP in a Warren presidency. He would then make a great next president, after Elizabeth gets us back on track.
2
Ross says "The difficulty of the pro-life position, the extremism inherent in any anti-abortion politics, rests not in our mysticism but in our biological-philosophical rigor. Our side of the debate has the simplest and most scientifically coherent definition of personhood..."
I can accept that the anti-abortion position is simple (as is personhood begins at birth), but don't understand why he thinks it is "scientifically coherent." Can anyone explain?
For that matter, how is the definition of personhood subject to the criteria of scientific coherence? That question is just as nonsensical as it would be to talk about the "scientific coherence" of a definition of freedom or marriage.
1
This article is an example of elite opinion journalism gone wrong. The religious (Catholic convert) and conservative author Douthat exhibits bad faith in his attempt to criticize Buttigieg for his distinctive liberal Protestant form of Christian democratic politics that seeks to unify, not divide, the American people. To associate Mayor Pete’s platform of hope for social justice for each and all with, of all things, abortion doctors, preys upon the credulity of Douthat’s loyal conservative and right-wing base of readers. This ploy makes it impossible for this devoted subscriber of the Times (and Catholic woman and writer) in the Heartland of America to take Douthat’s work seriously. It is Douthat’s ideologically-driven journalism that is discredited here not the substance of Buttigieg’s smart, interesting (and politically needed) consensus-building presidential campaign strategy. NYT, please give this opinion-making platform to a different and more deserving voice in the future!
8
How about this. If you don’t believe in abortion, don’t get one.
9
Mr. Douthat - if you are opposed to abortion then you should not have one. Your choice.
8
Quoting the bible is an empty argument for a modern person.
5
The Bible has slavery.
The Bible has polygamy - for men.
In the Bible they stone a woman to death for adultery.
Funny, they never stone a man to death for adultery.
Not only was the Bible written by man, it was written by men.
8
Some would say this is the First Commandment...
Genesis 1:27-28
And God created man in His image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the sky and over all the beasts that tread upon the earth."
3
“[F]ill the earth and subdue it.” Arguably, this command has already been fulfilled.
2
@Tom Loredo
Commandments are not checklist items. You don't just say, "Done that--what's next?"
1
Let me begin by saying unequivocally that I believe that the decisions about pregnancy belong to women. What I want to address in my comment here is the approach to abortion that conservative Christians have embraced: prohibition of abortions, and even in some cases abortion banned for victims of rape and incest.
Wouldn't a more pragmatic, compassionate (and I would argue more Christian response) be to understand why women seek abortion and then address those causes. I have read that 83% of abortions are due to economic issues. These include lack of adequate health care, the cost of contraception, little to no paid maternity leave, the expense of child care for working women, job loss. The Netherlands has very liberal abortion regulations, yet one of the lowest rates of abortion. Why? Because it has a robust safety net and support system for women.
In my opinion Conservative Christians have sold out on the love and compassion proclaimed by Jesus. If Conservative Christians really wanted to reduce the number of abortions and remain in the Republican Party, they should immediately demand an affordable national health care program and the other benefits listed above. And since you march under the banner of "pro-life, I would also expect an urgent call for strict gun control from the president and al Republican lawmakers.
In Canada, the UK and Western Europe, most Conservative Christians strongly support national health care and gun control
6
I hear many voices from both sides oversimplifying a heartbreakingly complex issue. Some on the pro-choice side that assert there is no humanity before birth, that unborn babies are just tissue clumps and that the only rights which need to be considered are those of the woman. Some on the pro-life side speak exclusively of the child and simply leave out the rights, needs and experiences of pregnant women as though they were simply containers for the all-important baby, not human beings.
Science can describe the progression from zygote to embryo to fetus to infant to toddler and beyond, but science can't settle the question of when in that progress a human being with full human rights emerges. Different societies have drawn that line in different places. My instinct is to err on the side of granting, not denying, humanity; on that basis I can understand asserting that life and human rights begin at conception.
This assertion doesn't settle the abortion dilemma. A child in the womb makes extreme demands on the woman who carries it. I believe that people who need organs donated are fully human, but I am not convinced that our laws should require Mr. Douthat to give one of his kidneys at any time if a younger person needs one. I honor organ donors, but I don't think it is right to compel such a gift. (And for those who say it's the woman's decision to conceive the child--that's very often not the case.)
3
Ross you can argue with the legal definition of person-hood, life etc all you want. The real issue is not about the definition, meaning or legality. It is about the moral and ethical implications of abortion - in certain cases abortion is the humane and compassionate thing to do.
All the holier than thou dogmatic people like you do is throw dogma, ideology, words, definitions etc.
Ross Douthat and people like him lack empathy - empathy for women (and families) that want to have a child but are faced with almost certain unviable 'human life' outside the womb.
3
It seems to me that a fetus becomes a person through the act of living. Until a child reaches the age of six(ish) and can prepare a simple meal, dress themself, and care for their hygiene they are a parasite. Through living, even if they have medical problems that limit their independence, they become human. Fertilization and breath and birth alone or together do not make us human.
2
When pregnant I could feel my daughter’s consciousness and ability to respond third trimester. But we are discussing Legal Personhood, in which the rights of the mother should supersede.
These bible thumping pro lifers: my last comment was about Valeria, the born immigrant toddler GOP policies helped doom. So pick: then immigrants are people too.
Yes we need to pack the courts to balance Kavanaugh and Gorusch.
3
Explain the morality of murder for war.
3
When one man's word mill takes on making his mysticism more scientific than another's, the end product is nonsensical mush. Face it, Mr. Douthat, you want to tell women what to do.
1
Meanwhile the Trump administration pursues savage cuts to SNAP which will lead to more hunger and deprivation among living, breathing children, and Mr. Douthat has nothing to say about that.
3
I'll bet a columnist with the NYT could land an an actual interview with a presidential candidate to find out exactly what that candidate meant by a cryptic quote on a controversial topic. It would be a win-win-win situation: for the columnist, for the candidate, and for the reader.
3
Ross, you are too smart to not know that this entire fight is about controlling women. There are too many proofs to list here why that is so, and besides, I am certain you have heard them all.
It is not about life, or when life begins. It is about keeping women from realizing their potential. If their true potential is just popping out a lot of kids (in wedlock, mind you) then hear, hear! But woe to the woman who has set her sights elsewhere…
4
Weird. 1300 words about abortion and the word "woman" appears 1 time. (Technically 2 times, but the other is a quote from Buttigieg).
Douthat spends so much time going through painful mental contortions about when life begins - a completely unanswerable question. Perhaps he should start by asking a simpler question - "Does a woman have a right to determine what happens to her own body" - then go from there.
12
@Ophelia
Women, like men, have a right to determine what happens to their own bodies. The right, however, is not absolute, but conditional. A woman cannot simply decide to use her body as a happening to inflict harm upon others -including a life in being.
Why do people agonize so much over abortion when contraception is so readily available? An ounce of prevention is worth many 'cures' -if you consider abortion as a 'cure' for pregnancy that is.
@Jane
"A woman cannot simply decide to use her body as a happening to inflict harm upon others -including a life in being."
You've misinterpreted the argument. The fetus is using her body. She determines who uses it. She determines whether her body gestates. She is not simply using her body to inflict harm, she is withdrawing life support from a fetus who has no right to it. It dies because it can't survive without it. It is true in 100% of cases, all of the time, absolutely, that no one has the right to use my organs to sustain their health or life. This rule even applies to my body after I am dead.
"Why do people agonize so much over abortion when contraception is so readily available? "
Because it's not always readily available to everyone, but even when it is, it sometimes fails. I want the ability to direct the course of my own life. I do not want decisions of such a tremendous magnitude as --whether, when, and with whom to have a child-- to be made because of some arbitrary occurrence--because a piece of latex snapped, or I accidentally drank too much grapefruit juice, or my IUD shifted out of place.
My life, my body, I control it. The availability of abortion is a safe guard.
6
@Jane
Do you believe that a father should be compelled, against his will, to provide a life saving kidney or liver lobe to his own child when he is the only perfect match?
3
I assume most NYT Times commenters will hate this response, but in case there's anybody interested in such things, I'll give it a try.
I find it mysterious (not mystical) that people like Ross Douthat who consider themselves well educated have no compunction about using the word "mystical" in a sense utterly at variance with the actual definition.
Perhaps he was influenced by the wag (Google has several different sources) who stated that "mysticism begins in mist and ends in schism."
in any case, pointing back to the Mysteries of ancient Greece, mysticism - at least, as it has been referred to since Evelyn Underhill wrote her tome on mysticism in the West - has referred simply to "turning within." This involves looking directly at what it is in our psyches that originates the world we experience.
In this sense, if you follow the thinking of renowned neuroscientist Anil Seth, science is the most mystical pursuit of all contemporary endeavors.
Dr. Seth tells us that the moon we see in the sky, the chair on which we sit, the stars in the Milky Way galaxy, the car we drive to work - every phenomenon we experience - is a construct of our brain. By implication, even the tangible "brain" is a construct as well.
Dr. Seth goes on to tell us that when we are pondering the issue of abortion, unions, Saudi Arabia or anything else on today's Times' front page, we are "looking within" at a brain construct.
Now, how many angels dance on a pin?
www.remember-to-breathe.org
3
Ross makes his point, which is interesting, only by applying his preferred mysticism in a different way to Buttigieg.
To steal a phrase, it's a Douthatian triangulation that from the moment of conception, the rights of a zygote supersede the rights of the bearer to a secondary status as host. It's the Gilead argument on a micro level.
There is a real philosophical argument here. Agreed.
It has clear moral implications for all. Agreed.
There is no clear guidance from the mother ship. Agreed.
The current, Roe v. Wade solution is Solomonic - half the baby. Agreed.
Both sides are using the most extreme, unlikely and distasteful cases to try to club the other side into submission. Agreed.
None of this is working on a societal level, for anyone. Among other things, it brought us Trump. And a likely sexual predator on the Supreme Court. Agreed.
In that instance, shouldn't we count on the ethics of the most-involved party - the mother - to make the most-correct decision? It's her life, after all. And her conscience, too.
1
Sidenote: from the moment of conception on, men have no legal rights over their unborn child. The mother controls whether the fetus is brought to term, as if it were--legally, mind you--an appendage of her body. She can even sue for child support for the unborn fetus, whose life she may choose to terminate. The father has obligations, but no rights.
You can go on and on about how fair or unfair this is. My point is that the legal system contradicts itself: if the fetus is a human being, then you can't terminate a pregnancy; but if it is not a human being, then you shouldn't be able to sue for child support, as there is no child. The parents are jointly and equally responsible for the child's welfare, but one has an entirely different set of rights than the other.
@GP Since it's the woman who has to carry the child in her body, at considerable personal risk, I think it's only right that she has more of the right to make decisions.
7
I don't always agree with Mr. Douthat but i usually respect his analysis and fairness. Unfortunately here he has just cast that off, apparently finding Buttigieg's exegetic point about not letting Scripture claim dominion over law to be too restrictive on the attack he wants to levy on pro-choice believers. How does he do it? Here is the three-card monte move that Douthat pulls to launch into his tour of horrible infanticide scenarios ending with the completely unrelated Klopfer example (geographical proximity is not substantive relevance, Ross!). Douthat admits, "The progressive interpretation is probably the more accurate description of what was going through Buttigieg’s mind when he was answering the question. But the conservative claim that he believes that personhood is mystically imparted via the inhalation of oxygen is the more accurate description of his actual legal position, and the emerging orthodoxy of his party." What? How do you engraft this legal position onto Buttigieg's mind when you just admitted that is not what he is thinking? That is just a cheap card trick to segue to the rest of the article which speciously claims that legislation exists which doesn't and would violate federal law and that there is an emerging orthodoxy to terminate completely viable babies. The support he offers is zero, and plucked anecdotes about Leanna Wen's employment dispute and the demented preservation of fetuses of some aberrant doctor prove nothing. You palmed a card Ross.
Ross, you win.
Although you do the exact flip-flop you charge Pete with pursuing but in reverse, let's say you're right.
Personhood begins when you say it does. Youdaboss.
Then what? What does that mean? You oppose all abortions everywhere for every reason and privilege the fetus, uh baby, over the mother at every turn.
Because in addition to becoming the sole being on the planet who can say unequivocally when life begins you can also create an infallible list of whose life matters more than who else.
So...we know Mom is stuck, baby rules, and it all starts whenever you say.
Now what? You give us babies galore. What do we do with 'em? If Mom gets sick and can't feed baby, who has that responsibility? If Mom falls down the basement steps and is rendered terminally out of it do we keep her artificially going until baby pops then pull the plug?
Speaking of death and plugs, does this mean you claim dominion over every medical decision?
Because while you speak only of babies you're saddled with the rest of us now.
So, what, no death penalty? Ample food, medical care, housing, clothing, education benefits?
An end to war? An end to the death penalty? An end to all Trumpian forms of discrimination? An end to the very idea "immigrant"?
Because, Ross, you can't pick and choose, not if you're going blast the other side for inconsistency.
Now that you've abandoned the Bible for science, I need you to explain yourself, spool the implications, tell me your theory.
1
It is profoundly disturbing that we continue to be caught up in the abortion argument - among many others (such as lethal weapon management or if we should preserve the environment or not) - that should have been settled long ago. But common sense has never prevailed for more than a minute. The all too human need to be right and have power over others supersedes the interest in any kind of informed judgment.
We have enormous problems to solve that will require cooperation for a common cause across the planet but we'd rather bludgeon each other with differences in our personal philosophies. It's a side show. Our founders tried to keep religion out of government. A failed experiment.
Our sophisticated technology allows us to think we're advanced but we haven't changed a bit in the ways that matter in 10,000 years.
It’s a good thing Trump killed irony, or else this article would be too ironic to bear.
5
This is an exceedingly illogical article that doesn't make any sense. Once a baby is BORN, and is breathing in this world, it's a human being with rights and personhood. How is that "magical thinking"?
5
I just love it when self-proclaimed small government conservatives seek to have the federal government codify specific elements of their religious credo into law with the gall to call it “freedom.” They seek to imperil everything from public schools to the health of all the nation’s women, imposing what is nothing else but their own version of sharia law.
As another commenter observed, Douthat cares nothing for the suffering and abuse of living children, but indulges the obsession that is the so-called pro-life movement, masking it as a “philosophy”.
Douthat must see Mayor Pete as a real threat if he must descend to banging yet again on his big old abortion drum and dredging up the gruesome story of a local doctor with a morbid and gruesome predilection.
For the meantime, the First Amendment protects me from zealots like Douthat and his compatriots who strive to tell me how to live my life down to the smallest detail. They seek to take women’s lives back to the Middle Ages, or forward to Gilead, and cannot wait to dispatch our Constitution in favor of a theocracy like that of Saudi Arabia.
3
The reality is that human societies for thousands of years took a very different view about the inception of human life. It began when the child, already born, was accepted into society. In some societies, this took the form of the baby being lifted off the ground by the father. In others, it took the form of the baby not being taken out to lie in a field overnight. In early modern France it took the form of the baby not being passed through a slot in the wall of an "orphanage" where all the babies were left to die. In any event, there was no presumption that a born child had any right to life until his parents, his father, or someone else in authority concluded that he did. The Catholic Church took a different view, but it took them nearly 2,000 years to impose that view on western society.
1
I find Mr. Douthat’s journalistic gymnastics morally irresponsible. However one may interpret the Bible, Pete’s comment was clear: whatever one’s Biblical basis for moral judgment, it’s the woman’s judgment to make. Period.
4
How colossally arrogant Douthat and the other men who want to decide whether women should or should not be allowed abortions. How detestable are the 'parties' who decide whether a human being must be subjected to a life of servitude, in incessant thrall to another--a child she does not want.
I wish Douthat and his "religious" ilk could be forced to carry an unwanted child for nine months, in an ever-encumbered body, go through the delights of labor and delivery and then spend the next two decades serving that child at great self-sacrifice and expense of lifetime.
And if Douthat miscarries, or chooses to terminate a pregnancy, be brought up for murder by the same merciless, "religious" parties whose business, they have decided, is to punish other people for perceived sexual sin.
If you want children, have them.
Don't try to invent and untangle and juggle semantics and philosophies of parties who should have no right to dictate what women should or should not do. When does "personhood" begin for women?
Leave women alone to lead their lives as they need to.
And keep your religion to yourself. Please.
10
I feel sorry for both of you. I endured years of cognitive dissonance before just stopping one day. You can too.
2
A good example of the negative contribution of religion.
When to allow abortion is certainly a problem. Maybe the Bible can offer guidance. But after you've read the Bible you are no closer to an answer. Even if you read it again, or many times, or spend your whole life studying it, you still don't have an answer for abortion.
Rather you get sidetracked by a host of extraneous questions. Is the soul in the sperm? Is it in the egg? Does it miraculously enter the zygote? All at once or over a period of time? Will I get answers if I pray harder? Will abortion providers burn in a lake of fire in the next life? Is it God's will that I shoot an abortionist or does He just want me to lie down on the sidewalk in front of the clinic? And what does Allah tell us? What does the Buddha say?
All this does is muddy the waters. Religion doesn't advance you a millimeter closer to the solution of a difficult question. It just complicates things even more by adding many unnecessary entities and conflicting doctrines and raises the level of confusion while claiming to provide clarity.
2
"The progressive interpretation is probably the more accurate description of what was going through Buttigieg’s mind when he was answering the question."
After stating the above you spend the rest of the article attacking it from the conservative interpretation.
Just had to get all that mystecism nonsense in their didn't you -By rearranging the context of your commentary.?
ps ANY consideration for the mere potential of life is faith based -period. - Keep it to yourselves
3
"A case for legal abortion that’s organized around brain development or fetal viability, for instance, has difficulties insofar as both definitions are moving targets"
To say that fetal viability is a moving target is problematic. It is only a "moving target" if you factor in the sophisticated technology required to keep increasingly younger fetuses alive. But that raises other moral issues. Should a person be kept alive just because the technology exists to allow it? My father has Alzheimers he is allowed to have a medical directive that says "comfort measures only". We do not have to keep him alive just because technology allows us to. Why should a family be required to keep a fetus/premature baby alive just because the technology is there? Who pays for it? What are the opportunity costs in the system for others, already born and viable who need medical care? What about the potential for disabilities and on-going medical needs sometimes resulting from extreme early birth that may be beyond the family's financial capacity to manage? Who pays? If fetal viability is used a a cut-off for legal abortion, it should be viability with no heroic interventions. A family should be allowed, if they choose, to let their child die in peace if it is not born viable. If Jesus were a preemie, he would have died. And he was God's own son, right?
4
Step out, Ross. This does not concern you. You are a man, who will never have a pregnancy, intended or unintended. Also whatever your moral or religious judgments or feelings about abortion are, they are irrelevant to me. So just step out.
8
Why are we talking about this? Here's an argument you can throw at 'conservatives' when they are trying to dictate your reproductive rights. It uses the same premise they love to spout about immigration reform when saying "The border must be secured FIRST!". Let's stipulate that we must ensure first that humans with feet on the ground stop killing each other first. Then we can have a conversation about when life mysticism and all of that.
In which Ross “Life Begins at Conception” Douthat argues that Pete Buttigieg has drawn an arbitrary bright-line rule for when life begins.
7
You mean "How the faith-based party sacrilegiously plays God," Ross?
Besides, try telling Noah that God isn't pro-choice!
1
The analysis of any issue or problem, when undertaken through the lens of the theology of a toxic, delusional and thoroughly misogynist institution is bound to end in absurdity.
4
Attempts at science and philosophical posturing aside, it’s still none of your business.
There are dozens of topics to discuss instead involving moral philosophies that eschew science to cause pain, suffering, and death of already born and living human beings but you guys still just can’t over the fact that women fought for and finally won the rights to vote, live fully realized, vitally sexual lives that aren’t constrained by men and their anti-scientific desert tribal religions, and decide if they want to shoulder the burden of carrying their fetuses. Talk about obsession. This isn’t about “life”; it’s about loss of control.
Meanwhile, it’s green lights, no speed limits, and no moral quandary whatsoever for stockpiling guns and ammunition, stripping health care from the poor, caging already born children, ransacking the planet, and more. Get over it already and instead obsess over the pain, suffering, death, and deprecation of humanity caused by religion and its unholy and unbiblical alignment throughout history with war-mongering, gun-fetishizing, melanin-fearing, gay-bashing, feminine-hating, wealth-worshiping, science-rejecting conservative power.
6
Why would anyone feel the need for more information about Ross Douthat’s opinions on abortion? He’s made them perfectly clear numerous times. It’s a “sin” and should be against the law.
The basic conservative male Catholic view. How about he shifts his focus outlawing birth control?
5
bottom line: bible says nothing about abortion, or anything clear about beginning of life. The evangelical's/Catholic's attachment to "life" beginning at conception makes no sense biologically or biblically. Guess they do not know that about 30% of conceptuses are naturally lost in the next menses or a week or so later (that late period...) ? did their God decide that those"souls" do not matter? Is thus their God the most prolific abortionist of all?
4
Wow. What a piece of character assassination from Ross Douthat and the NYT ( As I understand it, it is the NYT editors who would choose the "abortion mysticism of Pete Buttigieg" headline).
As the quoted selection makes clear, Buttigieg did not say how he interpreted "first breath." And yet you have entire piece and a gratuitous headline built on it.
By contrast, the Mayor has been absolutely clear from the outset of the campaign that women don't need the government telling them whether to have an abortion or not. This is an entirely mainstream, non-mystical, position which I am reasonably sure is shared by the vast majority of the Times' editors.
And as to that headline, Douthat ascribes the mysticism -- which I think is a silly argument, but that is a whole different issue -- to Democrats generally, not particularly to Buttigieg.
The Times has always been my newspaper of choice but this is a cheap shot. You people should be embarrassed.
6
When the Democrats talk about Climate Change, they rely on pure, hard, scientific facts and chastise anyone who disagrees with them.
And now, when Democrats talk about abortion they rely on mysticism and completely ignore hard, scientific facts.
It is science and reason that convinced me that a fetus is as every bit human and a newborn and has every legal right of any child.
1
This drips with disdain for Pete's daring to suggest that "his Christian piety" aligns with democratic positions. The irony is huge, given that we've been schooled for about 40 years about all the ways that Republicanism is the one true faith.
6
Why does the NYT present an op-ed by an ultra-conservative Catholic (therefore, in consort with the evangelicals and other hypocritical Trump supporters) without a counter or contrary opinion of a liberal, non-sectarian voice?
It is an unfair practice that favors one agenda over another. Let Fox News and the other truth deniers do the Republicans' dirty
work.
2
Once again Mr. Douthat raises abortion. He wraps it around a candidate, an out candidate. Fine Mr. Douthat, but coming from you its' a non starter. The decision is not yours.
4
Men have always been far more adept at those existential questions of “who should live, and who should die”, haven’t we? That “divine spark” that Ross and his buddies in various religious cloaks seek to defend from the vagaries of the female mind and person is apparently expendable in the millions when it comes to the execution of “man’s” well thought out wars and other economic adventures and sanctions. Drop a few nukes, fire bomb Dresden, starve the Iranians into submission, kill ten or twenty thousand Yemeni civilians from a great height, make all those decisions about life and death. Men have that prerogative. Religion tells us that men hold these superior powers through divine decree. It is a man's Job to say who will liv and who will die. Sorry ladies.
1
While we argue over this there are women who are pregnant and don't want to be. Some of them don't want children. Others know that they/their families cannot support one more mouth to feed. Some women have had prenatal tests run and learned that the fetus they carry has a defect that is incompatible with life. Other women, who should not be pregnant for various reasons have become pregnant because their birth control failed.
Abortion has been around for as long as there have been humans able to perform it. When there weren't as many of us as there are today it was understandable to treat it as a horrible crime. But what's the real crime here: forcing women to have children they don't want, can't support, or might kill them, or allowing abortion up to the point where the fetus can survive on its own without extraordinary technical intervention?
I was an unwanted child, an abused child, and I live with those legacies. I vote for allowing abortion. It's not selfish not to bring an unwanted child into the world. It's not selfish to decide that one wants to have enough for one's existing children. It's not selfish to decide that one cannot cope with the demands of a severely handicapped child, especially when one considers how little our society provides in assistance. It's a real shame we don't examine the motives of people who want children as closely as we do those who want abortions. Perhaps we'd have a happier society.
9/17/2019 10:41am first submit
7
Since the columnist wants to outlaw all abortions, it's a bit disingenuous for him to appeal to science. After all, if personhood begins at conception, why is fetal development even relevant?
6
Putting aside Douthat's disingenuous simplification and misrepresentation of the facts and beliefs informing the liberal pro-choice position, he presents only one argument against a woman's right to choose.
"It requires believing that there is nothing that could give a fetus a right to life so long as it lives inside a woman; your unborn child could be reciting Shakespeare to you in sign language and it would still have no right to life."
Talk about a mystical and unscientific proposition! Assuming liberals position would not change in a world where fetuses study Shakespeare is, again, disingenuous.
4
What Buttigieg was saying, clearly, is that a woman owns her body and the cells growing within. Your Catholicism can not control my body. You can despise me for having an abortion (even despise me for making the horrible decision of a medical need to abort a baby I wanted but isn’t viable) but you can’t stop me. Well, you can, but you have no constitutional right to put your religious demands on my choices.
7
The issue most relevant is that the current wave of state level anti abortion laws are as draconian in their sweep of restrictions as the pro abortion side is with their unlimited possibility of abortion until birth. Little wonder people are so polarized. How did it get so out of control? Most often lost is any consideration of the mother and the decision she has to make, made now even more difficult in states that have eliminated abortion as an option in rape or incest assaults. This is not Gilead, nor should we go there, but neither is it Nazi Germany where dehumanization was taken to a level of national policy. The abortion debate mirrors our politics, polarized extremes, with common sense and a realistic middle ground screaming for attention, only to fall on deaf ears.
2
Life begins when a fetus is born and takes it's first breath. Responding to stimuli in utero does not make a fetus alive any more than beating heart muscle in a bucket of saline makes it alive. Glad to clear that up for you.
9
Genesis 2-7 “God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” Is the likely source of Buttigieg’s discussion. Buttigieg’s mistake is entertaining any religious reference to explain the equality of women before the Law. Incorporating the beliefs of any faith or the dogma of any faith in adjudicating the rights of any citizen is fundamentally flawed. Shariah law, laws that instituted slavery, and laws that apportioned Congressional seats are abhorrent to Americans. Ludicrous cherry picking of scientific information to buttress theological dictum is repugnant. Geocentricism was the dogma of Christianity and the law of the land. Creationism was the dogma of the Catholic Church. So far, no theologian has explained geocentric beliefs. Intelligent design is a silly reiteration of Thomas Acquinas’s 2nd proof of the existence of God, causation. There is no science supporting either, only sophistry that falls short of adolescent attempts to explain the dent in the family car.
There is a “miraculous” change at the moment of birth when the two chambered placental fetal heart morphs into the four chambered pulmonary centered baby heart. “Embryo-fetal circulation system - changes at birth http://www.embryology.ch/anglais/pcardio/umstellung02.html) explains the process that all fetus’ undergo at birth that are astounding, profound, and biologically sound.
Pro-life is a male supremacist Abrahamic denial of women.
2
I don't know anyone who espouses "any abortion for any reason until birth." It feels like Ross has in part swallowed the conservative talking points koolaid. This feels a bit like the hysterical "Libs want to take ALL gums away." Also, viability is not a moving target. Brain and bodily function cannot be sustained or accelerated to make an unviable organism viable. There is however a lot of false "science" trying to reinterpret "pain capable " etc. The road map laid down by Roe v Wade is sound .
5
Please, Ross, because you are such a wise and intelligent person, could you answer a few simple questions for me: When do you get a birth certificate? A social security number? Citizenship? A name?
Seems pretty simple to me: until these things happen, society in general and the state in particular have no valid mechanism to insert themselves into the discussion between a woman and her doctor.
5
Placental dysfunction, placental abruption, genetic abnormalities, congenital birth defects, umbilical cord complications, uterine rupture in which the fetus is expelled into the peritoneal cavity, and like its mother, often dies: God's will, right, Mr. Douthat?
9
What’s especially objectionable is the implication that women want to abort late-term fetuses on a whim. Can Russ or any other moralistic crusader name even one woman who’s done such a thing?
462
@Heartlander
They don't need to just name them. They need to understand how this decision came about. It's very easy ne' simple for Ross to stand so piously outside the process and point his righteous fingers.
38
@Heartlander
Exactly right.
22
@Heartlander
You forget that throughout history all the most horrific records of extermination of the most innocent and vulnerable of vibrant human beings were all claimed by the perpetrators to be carefully reasoned as "necessary" and perfectly justifiable. No one who commissions or carries out the deliberate killing of an innocent utterly defenseless human being ever claims that it is "on a whim."
5
Why, in 2019, is a woman’s right to do as she wishes with her own body still a hot topic for public debate?
5
As a woman, this column makes me so angry I could scream. No man, neither Douthat nor Buttigieg, has any right to say one word about abortion. Not one word. Period. Get off my body.
7
Yikkety-yakkety, argue morality.
A Person! A Zygote! Let's yell for an hour.
Until, as a nation, we care about children,
Our words are pure nonsense! It's all about power!
5
Thanks, Ross. Next time someone asks me to give an example of reductio ad absurdum, I'll reach for this:
"your unborn child could be reciting Shakespeare to you in sign language and it would still have no right to life."
I just skimmed the rest of the column because that was so silly. If sentient life is so sacred, stop eating meat and executing human beings.
At the age of 62, I no longer have to worry about forced incubation, but my daughter does and I am tired of it. The misogyny is disgusting. Women do not go around killing their babies willy-nilly. That's the sick underlying fantasy here, arising from a deep mistrust of women.
We are not breeding stock. Stop trying to render us passive vessels with no control over our reproductive lives.
11
No male person has the right to comment pro or con on abortion. This is a woman’s body and a woman’s decision. Period.
10
The the anti-abortionist hypocritical mysticism on the part of Christian fundamentalists who support Trump is astounding. To overturn Roe v. Wade, they reject every principle of the bible and many even been told by their pastors that Trump was sent by God. Appalling!
5
Ross, you are trying so hard to make a case for . . . what, exactly? This article reads like fantasy.
Bottom line, when it comes to abortion, it is completely a woman's business and choice. Period.
Mayor Pete is right. And so are you, Ross. He IS the smartest person in the room.
4
Hey Ross, I have no idea when life begins, and neither do you. Maybe you should have become a priest - that way you could shame more women and continue thinking you're right about everything. Your opinions regarding abortion, birth control and women's autonomy are 13th century. No one wants to hear them.
7
Actually, in the 13th century they believed like began at “quickening”, about 20 wks.
3
I appreciate Buttigieg trying to thread the political needle, but let’s Leave the Bible or any other “holy” text out of it. If we are gonna talk about the morality of a situation, then let’s start with a religious belief system that celebrates and worships a figurehead whose conception was the result of a “divine” rape. Let’s start there.
3
It is the mother's decision where to draw the line of 'personhood' life and death up until birth, that is what Buttigieg clearly said and there's nothing 'mystical' about it . Lets talk Womens Rights and the Misogyny of the Christian Right rather than parse the bible for Pete's sake
4
Grasping at straws with this characterization of Mayor Pete. No where has he ever said he supports late term abortions. No democratic candidate has said such a thing. I guess it is too painful to hear a devout Christian challenge many of the in-Christian behaviors of this administration and some of it’s hypocritical supporters. For example, why not mention the many, many claims of “God given right to bear arms” that have come in the wake of the murder of so many Americans by guns? “And why beholdeth the mote in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” Mathew 7:3-5.
7
"Our side of the debate has the simplest and most scientifically coherent definition of personhood."
So you say. I guess I'll have to wait for some other column for you to actually demonstrate it. There's nothing more coherent about "life begins at conception" than there is about "life begins when you take your first breath." There's nothing coherent about any of this and there probably never will be. Time to reread Agamben's "Homo Sacer."
2
Mystical? Excuse me, Mr. Douthat, but the Roman Catholic Church's determination of when a fetus becomes a human has never been dogmatically defined, and ideas about "ensoulment" have changed repeatedly through time precisely because they entirely based on mysticism. Conception? Quickening? Heatrbeat? Viability? Birth? It depends who you ask. It also depends what religious tradition you check. Until the 1970s, most American Protestant denominations (including Baptists, Evangelicals, and Fundamentalists) accepted abortion and did not regard it as murder. Their sudden change of heart, brought on by Roe v. Wade, was due to culture wars and the sexual revolution, not out of a newfound respect for fetal life. The Catholic Church's opposition to abortion is ancient, but as far as I can discover it is theologically much more closely related to its opposition to birth control than to its opposition to murder.
Defining personhood at birth is also arbitrary and based on values, not science; I grant you that. But don't try to pretend that you have consistent, rational science on your side. This debate is all about whose values are valued more: yours (who will never bear a child) or those of the woman involved.
7
This is a strange Opinion. While generously, and briefly, allowing that Buttigieg's comments were (probably) about the lack of definitive biblical guidance, the bulk of the article and headline take the position that he intended to advocate otherwise. All while acknowledging that this is simply a conservative interpretation that conveniently elides the woman's role.
Now it is clear what your opinion on Buttigieg is from your needless snide asides, but you are working so awfully hard to manufacture a justification for that opinion that you end up with a muddled commentary on abortion that appears to be answering questions no-one asked.
5
For Ross a women's personhood ends with conception.
11
Oh wonderful. The opinion of another man about the opinion of another man about the control of a woman's body.
7
Dear Ross:
I am not clear what you are trying to say.
Perhaps you’re advocating for nuance and compromise, as in, ‘we can’t call it personhood at conception, but we know it begins before birth.’ Maybe that’s your point.
Clearly, Buttigieg’s point is that those who claim a Biblically-sanctioned rationale for conception are missing the contrary Biblically sanctioned view — and by pointing this out, he should give those people pause.
We should all pause on this. Maybe that is what you are trying to say — that absolutism is wrong-headed.
Like Buttigieg, I would still defer, in this uncertain matter, to the woman carrying the fetus/baby/person/thing. It’s a hard choice, a who among us is free of contradictions?
I know animal-rights advocates who accept abortion and “pro-life” folks who consider it acceptable for some reason to kill animals. Let’s move forward.
1
Once again Douthat thinks that he and his Church actually have a Civil right to order others to do what they deem “right.”
As at the Battle of the Bulge: NUTS! (All double entendres working.)
4
Yes but we are not a country that allows individuals to decide what is a life and what is not. You are not allowed to kill. Period. So this cannot be a subjective thing.
It was subjective during slavery when blacks were considered a fraction of a person, and during the Holocaust when Jews were deemed less than human. Speaking of the subjectivity of personhood is no different than the thoughts that created some of the worst atrocities our world has seen. Why would progressives continue down that road, to continue that dangerous, intellectual lineage? I thought they were the ones who always claim to be on "the right side of history," or that the "arc of history bends toward justice." It appears they chose the genocidal lineage and are even now inexplicably justifying it with scripture.
1
Hey Ross. Glad to see you converted to Catholicism. It's just that you converted to a church that no longer exists except in the minds of a hierarchy which demeans women, ignores science, and protects pedophiles. Abortion wasn't nearly the big deal it is today in the Church until approximately 120 years ago. The stance on abortion reflects the continuing effort to deflect from the Church's moral corruption through its promotion through lack of action against those who protected pedophiles. Mayor Pete appears to know his Bible better than you.
5
Ross your attempts at obfuscation boggle the mind. But remember son, lots of big words and run-on sentences don't show intelligent thought. As RC Sister Agnes taught my class in third grade
"Clarity of words show clarity of ideas. Muddled words show a muddled mind."
5
Amazing how Ross can weave 1,000 words around a flawed straw man argument.
He admits as much when he (logically) interprets Buttigieg’s comments to refer to semantic arguments on a consensus issue. Not content with coherence, he immediately jumps his thought train off the logic rails by taking one phrase out of context, dragging it off far into the fever swamps.
To say that the entire pro-choice movement wants abortion on-demand up until the moment of actual birth is laughable. The entire column is woven around assumptions that progressives are consumed with spilling as much unborn blood as possible. This fallacy- embodied by conservative attempts to label pro-choice as “pro-abortion”- continues to exist only in the imaginations of conservatives (extreme ones, at that).
Ross continues to push the idea that pro-choice policy should be translated as “More Abortions!”, always sprinkling inflammatory words like “infanticide” into his work. It’s patently false and utterly detached from reality.
This is material more fit for posting on RedState or some other TownHall site.
It’s an embarrassment to see it in the Paper of Record.
8
Pro life men. Hush. You have no right voicing your opposition to abortion. Pro choice men speak up about your support of a woman having an abortion.
I am contrasting the different voices that are permitted to speak on the pro life/pro choice subject and it is very obvious that men who are pro life are not entitled to speak because it offends pro choice folks. I say speak out loud and often against abortion as you have freedom of speech and you have every right to say you are against abortion. Take a firm stand and do not let the left bully or harass you. Every voice matters in this debate especially those on the pro life side.
@KMW Anti-choice. Nothing "pro life" about forcing birth. Anti-choice males are the most hypocritical moral cowards going. They never speak about *their* responsibility to avoid impregnating women and they just about faint when you suggest getting a vasectomy. The arrogance is amazing. Everyone has a right to speak their opinion and I have the right to point out that anti-choice males have zero credibility.
9
You refer to Mayor Pete as a "pro-choice maximalist".
Judge not lest ye be judged.
So, Ross, I have to ask, are you an "ANTI-choice maximalist" or do you disagree with the Pope that all abortion is unacceptable?
Should "non-Catholics" (as the nuns of my youth called them) be subject to Catholic law? How about to Sharia law?
6
Well Ross, when you find a fetus or unborn baby who can recite Shakespeare as an example of why abortions shouldn’t be performed let us know. In the meantime, you are a forced birther, and have no serious place in this.
8
The Torah [what some people call the Old Testament] states that life begins at first breath. This is the Jewish belief and Jewish law of when an independent life begins. This is not Pete Buttigieg's original personal opinion.
Mr. Buttigieg - and every politician - is entitled to his/her own personal opinion based on his/her religious beliefs or any other beliefs. Hopefully, those personal beliefs are separated from political/policy beliefs which should follow the US Constitution and First Amendment. NY Governor Mario Cuomo was very clear about that, and his NY Republican colleagues blasted him, as did Cardinal O'Connor, for not legislating his Catholicism.
It seems to me that Mr. Buttigieg stated quite clearly that he believes that women should have the right to make "the decision" for themselves.
Other than that, it you'd like to know what Mr. Buttigieg's position as a Presidential candidate is in one sentence, then ask him.
6
I find myself questioning the reasons why I even read Douthat's writing, until I recognize my operative belief that it's vital to be informed about thoughts from the other side.
But, it becomes ever more difficult to digest his columns because of the intellectual dishonesty I find, the snide allusions he uses and the fossilized arguments he employs.
Maybe what I've realized is that I know more than enough now and can skip past his offerings.
His columns deservedly belong on the Opinion page where markedly opinionated writers can find space. Some days I'm simply dumbfounded at what I (will no longer) read.
6
@Alice I couldn't agree more! Why even bother with this guy? Waste of time.
2
Even the Catholic Church proclaimed that life begins at quickening- when the soul enters the body and the baby starts moving- at about 4 months
How about , if the fetus cannot survive out of the uterus, the woman gets to decide what to do!! Someone famous said that if men could become pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament Amen
3
Sorry Ross, but you're in the weeds on this one. Pete is a smart guy, and your babyish reference to his scholarship is immature - you sound a little jealous. Pete Buttigieg is saying that the moral dilemma with abortion will not be solved by simplistic legal means or by going to the bible (which no law put forth in a democracy should). You also hint that progressives believe there should be no boundaries -which is completely false. The decision should rest with the woman guided by a legitimate medical professional.
8
Cliff notes: you determined that Buttigieg meant one thing, and then you spent the rest of the bloated article attacking the other potential interpretation of his quote, which you already had determined was not the true intent / meaning. Solid 15 minutes I'll never get back
7
I can only conclude, Ross, because of your spitefulness, that you are jealous of Pete Buttigieg. Much like the head of your party is jealous of President Obama. In any event, this is not your issue. If you don't have, or have never had, a uterus, your participation in this discussion is totally abstract and theoretical. Let women sort this out; they are the ones who actually experience it.
8
Oh, goody, the Abortion scold returns. First : 2,246 “products of conception”, to be exact, carefully preserved. Well, yes. That’s what this particular specimen is called, upon removal or expulsion from a female body. And carefully preserved ? Sure, placed in a small usually plastic container, filled with formalin, a formaldehyde solution for preservation. This is standard procedure in any Medical Laboratory. And by the way, we are mostly talking about a tablespoon or two, of specimen. NOT large sized glass jars of full sized dead “ babies “ on display, as some are claiming. I’d guess that this doctor didn’t want to pay the fees for proper disposal and/or be bothered with the paperwork. Nothing sinister, just very strange and bizarre.
But hey, it’s makes a great story, and useful propaganda.
Once again, Sir : believe anything and everything your heart desires. But once you try to force ME and mine to live according to YOUR beliefs, we have a problem. You are NOT my master and owner, as much as you may wish, and pray towards.
Seriously.
11
Ross Douthat would have been considered a prescient thinker in 1478. Today he and his brand of medieval religion/delusion is an anachronism.
6
Good column. I came out early as a Buttigieg supporter and have made multiple donations. However, I find his remarks on this issue to be a cop-out lacking the intellectual honesty I had come to admire in him - and which has given me pause. He claims to be for science yet his opinion here is hardly science based. And punting/pandering entirely to each individual woman - even to the point of abortions at nine months - seems ludicrously subjective in matters of life and death.
It seems the left is pinging in response to the right’s ponging. Each side going to the extreme which is bad for compromise. I expected more from Mayor Pete.
1
Writes a guy whose party would make Jesus weep.
8
Cogent and interesting Ross. This is, really, quite a tortured analysis.
I am sick to death of the Bible, the Torah, the Koran and all religions who profess to 'know' a god.
We are in the 21st century, in a supposed democracy with separation of church and state and yet women are still oppressed by men because of their religions and their 'holy books'.
It's insane. Enough.
7
The most thoughtful, intelligent position on abortion was given by Carl Sagan and his wife a quarter of a century ago. In the age before tweets, when people thought more fully. It was published throughout the US in Parade magazine. Read it! http://www.2think.org/abortion.shtml
1
Ross, you’ve reached the apex of intellectual dishonesty with this piece. The tone is moreover mocking and derisive. You’ve taken false inferences and spun them into extremes. Shame on you. You’ve got issues, obviously.
9
And yet most Republicans are fine with the death penalty and the personal ownership of weapons of mass destruction.
Go figure.
4
@John
And Catholics created a just war doctrine to excuse any war that they deem beneficial.
4
The Life Force is constantly pouring forth expressions of itself, in kingdoms both both animal and vegetable. No theology can explain it and neither can atheism; it just seems to be a feature (if sometimes a bug) of our shared planet. The woods near my home are currently packed with fallen acorns, most of which will never become trees. Nature (another name for the Life Force) generates far more than is required for life to persist. In fact, if all those acorns survived to be trees, overcrowding would stunt the lot of them. Is Nature murderous? Perhaps there's a lesson to be drawn on the dangers of overcrowding. Nature knows enough to edit itself; the representatives of "God" are less flexible.
1
Where in your diatribe is any consideration of the woman who is carrying the fetus--on her well-being, on her choice, on how she came to be pregnant? Instead you engage in what we Jews call "pilpul"--engaging in intellectually vacuous discussion of the matter.
3
Ross, maybe you should let Mayor Pete speak for himself rather than put your warped sensibilities into his words. Plus, how does a "good Christian" such as yourself justify lies like "his support for his party’s absolutely-no-restrictions line"?
File this column solidly in the fake news file.
5
We should not care one thought what the bible says about anythng when it comes to how we make law.
1
"...your unborn child could be reciting Shakespeare to you in sign language and it would still have no right to life..." And what if it's reciting verses from the Koran, or the Kama Sutra? Don't you think that some of the extreme right would suddenly change their position? Please, Ross, stick to the realm of reality. And go back and read what Mayor Pete actually said, and what all of the democratic candidates say.
4
Why is the inhalation of oxygen more "mystical" (and therefore, presumably, more easily refuted as a valid criterion) than the fusion of two gametes, resulting in a zygote? Both are biological processes. Both are binary and simply defined thresholds. Seems to me that selective use of the implicit pejorative "mystical" pretty much telegraphs Mr. Douthat's predisposition.
6
While being agents of service and compassion, the people of the Bible have also caused so much pain and suffering throughout world history.
1
The liberal push about abortion is the mirror image of the conservative push about guns.
In both cases, people believe they are fighting to protect a fundamental right granted by natural law and/or the Constitution.
In both cases, the opposing side seems to refuse to admit that this thing they think so awful sometimes is better than the alternative.
In both cases, the defending side is terrified to give an inch, because they expect their opponents to take a mile. To be hyperbolic, universal background checks will result in locking up grandpas and eventually confiscating all guns, so no registry at all. Banning even late term abortion or allowing religious crisis pregnancy centers will lead the Handmaid's Tale.
Oh, and also, in both cases, the defenders' position tends to be "Don't ban (guns/abortion), fix everything else in society (e.g., mental illness, despair, poverty, rape) so that (gun deaths/abortions) don't happen/aren't necessary."
I believe that it is the position of the conservative movement to make the abortion debate related to the idea of personhood, as a legal strategy to overturn Roe. The liberal/progressive side must consider fetal personhood when responding to those conservative arguaments, but our personhood considerations primarily concern the mother. Mr. Douthat seems to have neglected to mention that the mother is also alive, and a person, who should autonomy over her own body, and should have her private medical decisions shielded from government intrusion.
4
@Patty
Roe was based on a right to privacy and by extension a right to bodily autonomy. Men also have these rights which is why the court has refused to force fathers to donate a life saving organ to their children. Even if you grant that a zygote or fetus is a “person” ( I don’t ) what gives that “person” the legal right to force another into involuntary servitude?
4
Mr. Douthat:
Why should anyone care about what any religion believes about this issue? You don't get to frame an argument based on what you believe. Should an atheist be allowed an opinion? Or are you implying that we live in a theocracy?
Your belief system is against the use of contraception. So, the real issue here is to discourage sex out of wedlock. And to punish those women who do. Is it possible that this is an ethical issue for some?
Is it possible that an unwanted child is not to be advocated for? How do you feel about government's responsibility for forcing women to give birth to a child they didn't want? How do you feel about federally funded orphanages? As a matter of civil rights shouldn't non- believers be exempt from the entire matter?
None of what you write here has any real logic behind it. All of it is an attempt to disenfranchise women from making decisions about their own lives and, ultimately, their own bodies. Believe what you want; let others believe what they will. This argument is not about abortion per se; it is about imposing an arbitrary viewpoint on everyone else. Not very
democratic and very un-American.
5
There is nothing mystical about breathing bestowing personhood. A child's first breath is the moment when it begins functioning as it's own entity. Before that, it is wholly dependent on the mother to breath for it, to supply it with life-sustaining oxygen, and to remove life-taking carbon dioxide.
When a child breathes on its own, should the mother die, the child will survive (as happens now rarely but still too often). When the child is dependent within the mother, if the mother dies, the child/fetus (choose your terminology) will die as well, absent significant medical intervention.
Even people millennia ago could recognize this phenomenon, which is likely why the bible passage says what it does.
Thus, there's a logic in choosing that as the moment when it is its own person. Is it the only logical moment? No, there are others you could take by shifting the criteria. But it's not mysticism.
1
Ross' comments and reasoning are really way out in left field since there was no mysticism evoked or suggested in the Buttgieg remarks he CHOSE (as pointed out by others) to quote. To me Mayor Pete was pointing out that you can find a lot of things in the Bible which most people do not find literally exact today and which can be used to defend widely different views. Therefore reasonable and moral people in a secular state should do their best to make a judgment not based exclusively on texts of one religion of a diminishing share if its population.
2
When a man wears a condom before sex, he is careful and reasonable. If a woman uses birth control she is loose and slutty. If a man gets a woman pregnant and suggests an abortion he is being thoughtful and responsible. If a woman feels that she wants an abortion she is a prostitute and a murderer , even if she is raped. If a man is drunk and has has sex with a woman he is sowing his oats, having some fun, the woman is a slut and got what she deserved. At the end of the day this is about controlling women’s reproductive rights by minimizing them as a person and reducing them to gestation machines. When men can have babies, feed babies, they should be able to make theses decisions. This is an agonizing decision best left to women and their physicians not legislators ( mostly men). It always affects the poor who bear the burdens of unwanted pregnancies, but not the wealthy who can always find a safe way to have and justify them. There will be no easy philosophical, religious or biological answer.
6
“he appears to believe that God’s will has finally been perfectly instantiated in the platform of a single political party 2,000 years after the birth of Christ”
No, Douthat. It’s the republicans who believe this! They tell us this constantly.
Im so sick of men over-philosophizing about a profound situation they will never face.
Pregnancies can result from mistakes, contraceptive failure and crime. Sometimes the fetus has terrible defects or a woman’s health is threatened. The only reasonable response to all this is that these decisions can only belong to the woman involved. Not the state. If you think abortion is immoral dont have one. It’s that simple.
Despite Douthat’s extreme intellectual display, what’s most true is that abortion is the conservative’s most effective wedge issue ever. It’s not about babies. Not at all.
10
So if so-called "First Breath is the definition of human life as such. I.e, what makes one a human being, then with this thinking the Last Breath makes one unhuman? Ridiculous!
5
The central hypocrisy of the pro-abortion movement is that it comes from conservatives who typically want government out of their lives. With every other issue they want less government involvement, with abortion they want the government to decide how a woman should use her body.
Ross also implicitly nods to the hypocrisy of focusing on the science of abortion while ignoring the science of climate change.
Al in all, Ross seems a tad jealous of the attention Mayor Pete gets for his intelligence.
3
@AppleFan
I think you meant to say "anti-abortion movement," correct?
1
The abortion issue has become a reason to “justifiably “ hate your political enemy. Hate is the animus of current political discourse. It explains how evangelicals can embrace a moral monster like Trump. Since opinions are based on moral convictions they are rigid and passionate. It has ruined millions of family holidays and threatens our social fabric. This is the most under rated issue tearing the country apart.
Combine this with the scandals plaguing the Catholic Church over sexual abuse. The scandals in every institution making a moral claim on either side of this issue further muddy the waters. It is too much and most voters are very conflicted on the issue.
A definite answer one way or another on this seems beyond reach and certain to further division.
If you could imagine our politics without this issue at this crisis, our way would be much clearer. Sadly,
we need leadership on this issue that does not exist at present. Until it arrives, we will be stuck in this partisan mess.
3
Men have always made the laws concerning abortion. It’s heartening to find one who says it’s up to the pregnant woman. Give women a safe alternative to back- alley- hanger abortions. If men had to go through this you know abortions would be legal.
I would like to live in a Pete Buttigieg’s America where honesty is of value.
10
Time to get beyond Pete, he is a smart guy, he speaks well. But his lack of ability to clean up his own house in South Bend, clearly shows he's not quite ready for prime time. He needs a few more years of seasoning and some new job experiences to show he is truly capable of the demands of the Presidency. We can easily see from our current experience, that experience is necessary for the job.
@Bill I would take a high school kid over Trump at this point- the Lakeland High School kids from Florida impressed me greatly. I do like Mayor Pete, though...
4
For all the talk of science and mysticism, the reality is simple. The fetus is ATTACHED to the mother. Until that relationship ends, I would no more tell a woman what to do with the fetus than tell her she can or cannot chop off her own arm. Last I heard, that wasn't a crime, just not a good idea (hence the RARE aspect of the mantra). The fact that in 2019 we can save, or rather continue to grow, a fetus outside the uterus is simply irrelevant. It's her body, it's her choice, legally. Talk to her, plead with her, make your case, curse her name for all I care, but the laws of our government need to stay out of it.
6
I am an atheist, but - for bureaucratic reasons - birth/first breath makes perfect sense as the place where the personhood line should be drawn.
In a sense, we draw the line there already. Consider:
- A fetus is not assigned a SSN. You don't get that until you are born.
- A woman cannot apply for child support for a fetus. She can only do that once it is born.
- A fetus cannot be claimed as a dependent for tax purposes. Again, this is only an option available to a born child.
Frankly, I can't wait till we have advanced in medical technology to the point where if a woman decides she doesn't want to be pregnant, the fetus (at any stage) can be removed from her body and simply placed in an artificial womb for the remainder of the gestation.Then we can maybe finally stop having these stupid arguments about abortion and abortion rights.
2
This argument is disingenuous, Mr. Douthat. And we have much bigger threats than Roe right now.
5
I prefer the realists in the room.
If you have the bucks in your purse, you get to choose when (if not where) you get an abortion.
Rely on the pious or the parsimonious to make the decision, and free will means nothing. Your job now is to raise a child who will burden you physically and mentally if unhealthy or unwanted. No help from the state other than encouragement to keep a stiff upper lip.
No, you can't afford to move to a place with clean water, so let's keep the fetus viable so it can die from contamination in due course.
3
Some people believe human life begins at conception, and purposefully ending a pregnancy at any stage is murder. After all, what is being conceived?...A human being.
This is not a silly idea. If a fertilized egg is cared for and nurtured, it will likely grow to become an adult human. The embryo is simply a very early stage in the life of a human.
1
@Raz Then the GOP should be all over expanding the welfare state to help the women carrying children, and making sure that poverty -- which hits single mothers with children the hardest -- is eradicated. Tell me where you see such 'pro-life' policies from the right?
1
Personhood begins at self-sustainability. Until then, it's just a parasite, a fetus, or a zygote. That "heartbeat" you think you detect is NOT a heartbeat, it's a pulse. There is no heart, as such. Read up on it, and don't contradict medical experts with religious zealotry, which is much less about "saving lives," than it is about men being in charge of women. We're not having anymore of that, guys. You want to "save lives?" How about supporting children, and their mothers, who are already here. That would be new and different...for you.
8
You have daughters, I believe, Mr. Douthat. Have you yet informed them that their human rights disappear once an egg is fertilized? Do they know that, to you, their personhood is contingent upon their willingness to breed? There is simply no right to survive via the forced use of an unwilling person’s body and yes, there is an actual person around the Almighty Fetus.
6
What Mr. Douthat fears, as evidenced by this piece, is someone smarter than he, cogently articulating a policy with which he disagrees. Rather than offer carefully considered points to defend his personal position, he offers veiled ridicule. He concludes with a story of a collection of aborted fetuses, clearly designed to shock the reader.
This type of piece gets us nowhere, which is precisely the destination Mr. Douthat wishes to take us. Time and the current composition of the Supreme Court are on his side. In the meantime, Mr. Douthat and others of his kind will continue to denigrate opposing views until they get what they want.
5
I once heard Buttigieg have this to say about late term abortions: "Sometimes, after the crib has been purchased and the room painted blue or pink, something goes terribly wrong." I think this might be the most intelligent thing I've heard any politician utter on the topic of late term abortions.
8
Ross says that "The first-breath definition, by contrast, has nothing to do with fetal development at all, which means that it requires a kind of magical thinking about what happens to the fetus when it passes through the birth canal."
Well, why not? Religion is based on magical thinking, not science or fact, so if you're going to quote scripture in support of your position on abortion, why not invoke magical thinking.
But despite Ross's sneer, the Old Testament does say that life begins with breath, and this is the criterion used by Jews, for whom the OT is the entire Bible. This is not an arbitrary criterion, nor is it magical. Profound physiological changes take place with the first breath, and as a result, the fetus that was dependent on the umbilical cord is suddenly transformed into an independent infant that exists separately from the mother.
Ross may call that transformation magical. As a physician, I simply call it marvelous.
When is it too late to terminate a pregnancy? At conception? At seven weeks? At seven months? Never?
A Conversation Between an Unborn Child and Mother at the Time of Conception
Unborn child: "Mom, I'm not sure if you want to have me or not. But nature has taken its course. You don't have to eat more or healthier. You don't have to exercise. You don't have to take vitamins. You don't have to see a doctor. You can even take drugs, drink alcohol, and party all night (God forbid). But I'm here and it's too late. We'll be fine."
Mother: "I choose..."
1
Anything can be, and has been, justified by the Bible, including such travesties as slavery and the oppression of women. A woman's right to control her own body and choose is none of anyone else's businesses. The state should, and must, keep off our backs and out of our bedrooms.
3
Personhood - from the perspective of the state - begins at birth. Always has. The state issues each of us a birth certificate, not a “conception certificate” or a “ heart starts beating certificate”... and everything ( age we can vote, age we are allowed to drink alcohol legally, age we start receiving social security benefits) is calculated from there.
4
Equally mystical is the belief that you can support the right to life while making the means to live inaccessible.
4
So your entire case seems to be built around the idea one simplistic argument that life begins with a beating heart is better than one that states that it begins with first breath. But then that's not really what Buttigieg is saying. It's merely that even if we take our guidance from scripture, the answer is nuanced and much more personal. There are strong moral arguments for having abortions, even late ones, especially when taking into consideration the totality of probable human suffering with difficult individual cases. They MUST be considered one by one. I'm surprised that a smart guy like you - a Harvard grad, even - can't get that. As much as you may strive for it, black and white don't exist in the this realm; it never will. But I see that you only use the very best straw for your 'man'.
3
Personhood is imparted when the fetus becomes conscious and not any sooner. Is anybody arguing that an unborn fetus is conscious? Is a man or woman who is brain dead and on life support still a person? Not as willing as every rational person is to pull the plug on them.
3
A baby that fails to take a first breath is not alive. There is no mysticism about this.
2
I'll take Buttegieg's "mystical claim" about abortion over unstated claims of a columnist, whatever those may be. In any event, he placed the issue squarely where it belongs: with the mother.
1
When will Ross Douthat and other male writers get it through their heads that they can (and should) stop trying so hard to weigh in so heavily on a woman’s right to choose? When will they stop insinuating that the decision to have an abortion is somehow a light and carefree one for women, or that we just can’t grasp the enormity of it?
When will they give women the intellectual and emotional respect they deserve, and stop questioning women’s fitness for making excruciating decisions?
Women are long overdue on producing hundreds of thousands of “think pieces” about controlling the male body—the body (Ross Douthat has one too) that is so integral to the creation of a pregnancy, yet knows nothing firsthand of the experience of carrying that pregnancy and being the person most responsible for the born of it.
Maybe if such an equally vast body of writing existed, more men would consider the inanity of putting their foot on the scale of this issue.
1
Russ:
You lost me in the second paragraph with two words: religious politics. Some people have figured out that the two are not compatible, including our founding fathers.
Late term abortions are performed because of medical necessity. I can guarantee that it would be hard to find any woman whose life and health weren’t at risk, who chooses, “Willy Nilly”, to have a late term abortion. Get a grip and stop being a man foisting his personal religious beliefs on women and their difficult health choices.
4
How ironic that it's the party of pro-choice pleading for the humane treatment of migrants and even undocumented immigrants (as Obama did even with his high rate of deportation) and the party of anti-choice not only imposing inhumane treatment on such people but are using the pleas for humanity by the Democrats and left against them in Trump's re-election campaign, and it's the likes of Trump who exploits undocumented workers to do his dirty work for next to nothing and with no benefits. Tell us again, conservatives, just how sacred "all human life" is, even as you cheer or at least remain silent as your leader and your media monsters smear, insult, and slander your opposition and condemn Democrats for their humanity toward vulnerable people.
3
We can always count on the mandatory birth movement to continue to innovate novel arguments as to why women shouldn’t be able to control their own bodies. But I must admit, I haven’t heard this one before — pretending to hide behind “science” to define personhood, which is of course not a scientific concept. But it doesn’t matter, as the argument is disingenuous and their interest in science is at best squishy, subject to being overridden by faith and/or politics whenever necessary.
There is nothing “maximalist” about the pro-choice position, no matter how many times you repeat that word (five times in this article, by my count). If a fetus can’t survive outside the womb, especially because it didn’t exist a week or a month ago, only the most “mystical” (another word Ross uses five times) definition would consider it a person, and put its rights above those of an adult woman. At least until it is born, as we all know that life begins with conception and ends with birth for you guys — we just force women to deliver ‘em, Lord, after that it’s in your divine hands.
Here’s an even simpler definition, if that’s too maximalist — it’s none of your business.
1
The argument pro-abortion rights centering around the”its my body” argument fall flat when you consider that people are obligated to do, and not do, things with your body all the time.. for example, you are obligated to care for and feed your baby, pets, etc. You are forbidden from ingesting certain substances and from engaging in activities that involve only your your body. Our laws do not allow you to do whatever you want to your body. Never has! So legally being able to kill your unborn human for any reason is an irrational notion in a society that values life.
Personhood is not a scientific question.
It belongs in the religion and philosophy departments
2
Mayor Pete does not seem interested in inflicting his mysticism on the general population. And unlike Conservatives, not even on poor women.
3
Ross, I almost never miss your columns as you usually present a thoughtful view that would be different than mine. But this has to be one of your worst. You completely miss the point of the abortion debate, turning it into an overly simplistic argument about when life begins instead of addressing the real problems of women unable to support a pregnancy, and a world that is unable to sustain an ever expanding human population.
2
My pro-choice position on abortion derives from an understanding that God or nature has given the woman carrying a living entity responsibility for all matters related to her and the entity’s well being.
What happens when the entity passes through the birth canal is not that the entity fundamentally changes, from a fetus to a human person, it is that the responsibility is now shared by the rest of human society.
1
Ross, why waste all these words when your position is that the male, celibate (hah), Catholic hierarchy should have control of every woman's reproductive health choices? Be a mensch, tell us what you really mean. From the instant of conception a woman's body belongs to the Mother Church.
3
A lot of words from a person who is never going to carry another human inside of himself.
Seems to me that the only thing that really matters to republicans is some sort of restriction. Never do folks like Douthat view this issue from a holistic position that views abortion rights along with access to healthcare, birth control and women’s rights. Instead we get arguments that amount to “how many angels can fit on the head if a pin.”
How many miscarriages or conceptions occur in America every year? A heck of lot more than human selected abortions. And who is responsible for these terminations? Nature. Or God if you want to argue it that way. Seems like we aren’t even talking about the biggest abortionist if you are in the life begins at conception tribe. Where is your bright line now?
3
Oh my goodness Ross, you are as outrageous as Laura Ingraham. No Democrat that I know, nor any candidate that I know of, supports an "absolutely-no-restrictions line".
Dems need to fight back against this lie. In addition, they need to say loudly and boldly that if abortion is your issue, then vote for Democrats. The numbers go down under their rule. If you want abortions numbers to go down, then vote for easier affordable access to birth control, better sex education in the schools. Stop pretending that McConnell and his ilk even care-he and others are using this issue...very successfully.
4
@LFK The right to lifers are also the same people who do not support the use of birth control. do not support the ACA, do not support daycare and subsistence for poor mothers, but do support the possession of Military Style Assault Weapons.
2
Why should a fetus be permitted to use a woman's body to survive – against her will and at great risk to her health – when an adult with a life-threatening disease is denied the same right?
Let's get rid of “voluntary” organ donation laws and instead make organ retrieval from sexually mature humans mandatory. If women can be forced to allow their bodies to be used by another “person” from conception to birth, people already out of the birth canal should have the same chance at survival.
Everyone must submit to DNA testing when applying for a driver's license. When blood, skin, bone marrow or a non-vital organ is needed by a dying person, a transplant retrieval team can swoop down on the nearest genetic match – man OR woman -- and drag them off to the hospital, kicking and screaming if necessary.
Now, everyone has equal “skin in the game” and anti-abortion laws stop being about punishing women for having sex.
Adult lives are no less precious and valuable than the life of a fetus.
3
"The pro-life position is rejected, when it is rejected, for leaning too heavily on scientific definitions, not for ignoring them." Mental gymnastics from a magical thinker.
1
Please. The Catholic Church is not America. Your personal interpretation of received dogma (a veritable buffet of treats) is not disproportionately interesting to a wider readership.
Your opinion of what women should be permitted to do with their bodies is of even less interest to me than your last column concerning a possible "schism" in your religion of choice.
2
The anti-choice movement is based on emotion overriding science.
I think that Mayor Pete made his position perfectly clear that he trusts the woman to make the decision for herself, not government, not some political pundit or some religious zealot. What is it that you don't understand about that Ross?
6
No one should be able to tell a woman what to do with her body. No one. Ever. The arguments are angels dancing on the head of a pin. The fact is that so far we do not know how to reproduce a human being except through sex and pushing the anatomical results of the sex act through the woman's system (oxygen, food) and out into the world. Folks, please pay more attention to the men and women who are in this world already, see that they have what they need to succeed in life, without prejudice, and try to make some sort of effort at not overwhelming the planet.
3
I respect Mr. Douthat’s right to practice whatever religion he chooses, though as a practicing Roman Catholic he would do well to restrain himself from criticizing Mr. Buttigeig - or anyone else - for their “mysticism”.
5
How about we stop fighting and work together to get women birth control and reduce unwanted pregnancies and reduce abortion by a lot.
Every pro-life and evangelical Christian I have ever talked with all use birth control.
1
Whether it is immigrant children at the border, making sure poor cities have safe drinking water or ensuring that poor working Americans are getting a fair wage and have access to affordable housing/healthcare.... anti-abortionists would have much more credibility if they were as passionate about these issues that affect both the unborn and the born.
4
Biblical quotes are beyond useless for two reasons. The first is that they can be cherry-picked to support one’s inherent bias. Choose the one you like and ignore the one that contradicts your position. The second and more serious problem is that the Bible is nothing but faith-based superstition. Even if more people in the United States consider themselves to be Christian - whatever that means - than any other religion, we are a pluralistic nation that gives equal rights to all of the numerous competing doctrines or lack of one. My advice is to debate all your “angels dancing on the head of a pin” nonsense inside your own chosen church or insane asylum and spare the rest of us in public forums.
1
I am a church librarian who took several religion courses in college. I have yet to find out what part of the Bible supposedly justifies evangelical positions on abortion, homosexuality, et al. In fact, I suspect evangelicals rarely read the Bible. They just make up agenda and claim that they found it there.
Example: one preacher declared that "God does not listen to the prayers of a Jew". This is not only anti-Semitic, but blatantly contradicts dozens of Biblical stories where God listens to the prayers of Jews: Jesus, Mary, Paul, Peter, and the prophets of the Old Testament. But the evangelicals elected this ignorant preacher as one of their leaders.
3
If Ross wanted to clarify what Mayor Pete meant in the quotes included here, why not ask him before speculating about their meaning?
6
When does a person become a person? When does a dog become a dog? When does a piece of cake become desert?
So many questions....
1
"How the party of religion decided that personhood begins where a woman's rights end." There, fixed it.
3
Despite the GOP’s false narrative, women rarely use abortion for birth control. We use it ONLY if birth control or something else goes wrong. 92% of abortions are in the first 12 weeks, during the embryo stage. The remaining 8% are when women are in the medical distress of our lives. Only 2% of abortions are sought after the 20th week and almost 100% of that 2% are for critical medical distress. 22-24 weeks is what is considered “viability.”
We liberals are just “whacky” in our belief that the 8% of women who need to access legal late(r) term abortions should have access just as they do in every other developed nation without being accused of committing a crime for deciding to induce labor to deliver their desperately wanted children who has its brain growing outside of its skull, or will be too fragile to hold or is already still born but she isn’t in labor. Don’t let the GOP and conservatives fool you. There is no liberal plot to rip healthy almost developed fetuses from their mother’s wombs
Why does Ross believe he deserves an equal seat in my medical exam with my doctor? Why is his religious belief more important than what is happening in the patient’s body? The fact the GOP has run on these lies for so long is astounding. I can think of no man who would tolerate the police state inside his medical exam room ready to criminalize him for making rational life decisions for which he will be solely responsible and by his body will bear the brunt.
I know, men should have reversible vascetamies so that they can control everything that decides what a woman does with her body. That way men can decide when life begins.
Absurd, right?
2
Douthat's views on abortion reflect his radical Catholicism. But the fact is that among professional ethicists AND among professional religious ethicists in the Christian tradition there is virtually no support for the pro-life position. For more see:
"Professional Philosophers Rarely Oppose Abortion"
https://reasonandmeaning.com/2019/05/19/professional-ethicists-rarely-oppose-abortion/
1
"Personhood" is neither a legal nor a medical concept. Legally, a person exists with the first breath. Medically life begins at conception. Conception does not create a legal person with rights. Fetal development does not begin with birth. It ends at birth.
Everything else is counting angels on pinheads, by the latter.
1
If only Douthatian conservatives could transfer some of their interest in the science of when life begins to the science of changing climate.
1
For being critical on the lack of “Science”in Pete’s statement, you did not cite actual science research in your piece. Also, not one democratic nominee is calling for abortion on an indefinite timeline up to the 40th week. The science tells us that there is actually a point of no return, because otherwise you may kill the mother in an attempt to abort! Why do you think women are forced to carry a still born when it is late in their pregnancy?
There are many Christians and Republicans who in early adulthood got pregnant or who fathered a child and had that child aborted. Among the people I know, the richer the parties were, the more likely it was that the pregnancy was terminated( "Honey, I love you and we will get married one day, but we can't have a baby until after law school/ seminary/ med school!") For any of them to now try to control abortion decisions for a woman or couple is the height of hypocrisy.
1
Wonderful opinion piece Ross. Well reasoned, and with a series of nice distinctions that cut along the metaphysical ligaments.
My body, my decision, no one else's business.
5
Some of remember history and the Catholic position that life begins when the soul enters the body.
It is not a scientific debate, it is not a political debate, it is a theological debate and it defies my imagination how this debate is anything more than challenging the foundation of the USA and the separation of church and state.
I recall the history of today's GOP and the 1964 convention which gave birth to the GOP of today that seeks to destroy the country that started with "We hold these truths to be self evident."
We need to discuss metaphysics and we need to understand why the GOP became the party that opposed the Civil Rights Act, the party that made heroes of the bombers that killed four beautiful children because their church believed in the self evident truths of equality, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We need to discuss why Reagan went to the site of the martyrdom of three brave young men who believed in America's promise so he could honour the lynch mob.
I do not know how I feel about abortion but I grew up in Catholic Quebec where even contraception was seen as immoral and where today the separation of church and state means that private dialogues between a woman and her family and doctor are simply none of my business.
It was the Canadian Prime Minister's father who said you cannot legislate morality. All too often our banality get in the way of our understanding.
I wonder why no one has brought up the topic of miscarriage. If the embryo is a living being, then a woman who miscarries can be prosecuted for a crime for not taking care of her health during the 9 month period.
1
Who cares what the Bible says about abortion? Anyone remember the Establishment clause separating church from state? Douthat’s arguments imply acceptance of the U. S. as a Christian theocracy.
8
The essential point here is the the decision to carry a fetus to term belongs to the pregnant woman and no one else. In the words used by Mr. Buttigieg, "... the most important thing is the person who should be drawing the line is the woman making the decision." Any other option, such as allowing a committee of holier-than-thou old men to make the decision by force, or by force of law, is morally indefensible and simply wrong.
7
"least scientifically defensible" since when does a woman's choice,protected under the constitution, need to have anything to do with science.
3
When I was a journalist, I would cover municipal meetings. The next morning, I'd read the coverage in the other local papers, and sometimes I couldn't tell I was at the same meeting. (One reporter was famous for writing as if he was there -- but he wasn't. He would steal quotes from those of us who were.)
Now, I'm supposed to believe that the Bible, with its many contradictions, doesn't represent the personal agendas of the ordinary men who translated, edited, transcribed, and interpreted it -- most of them not even in the same century?
That doesn't make sense, and neither does this kind of hairsplitting over what the Bible means. Clearly, it means whatever the person reading it wants it to mean -- because they're ignoring all the parts they don't like.
There is much of value in the Bible. Take what resonates, but don't turn it into law on the basis of its very existence. We are a secular society, and our Founders saw the dangers of church entwined with state.
7
The problem with the Catholic position on abortion, as described here by Douthat, is that it claims to be scientifically based. But all that science can tell you is that the conceptus, embryo or foetus (viz., the being in the womb) is the beginning of something that, given time, may turn out to be a person like its mother. Science cannot tell you that the foetus (etc) is a person. This is an interpretive, not a scientific question. Yet Douthat claims that "Our side of the debate has the simplest and most scientifically coherent definition of personhood ..." This is absurdly to turn a theological or a philosophical question into a scientific one. There is no clear sense in which a foetus, or an embryo, can be said to be a person without qualification, since to suppose that there is such a clear sense is immediately to deprive the pregnant woman of freedom to decide regarding her own life, which effectively deprives her of vital features of personhood. Besides that, for the Christian, interpretive and exegetical difficulties abound, since the Bible has little (nothing?) to say about abortion. The pregnant woman is a person in the full sense of being the centre of personal consciousness, and as such an individual with the shape of a life, with plans, purposes, the freedom to make decisions, and so on. Turning her into a being on the same level as a foetus is to deny things so important to her as a person as to make Douthat's and the Church's position incoherent.
6
Some years ago, I read an essay on the difference between legalistic and scientific thinking that would be helpful here. Mr. Douthat's arguments--even when they cite science--are legalistic thinking. This approach requires clear category distinctions--guilty v. not guilty, etc. Scientific thinking is process thinking: how does this work, what happens, etc. Science says life begins at conception; at that point the new life is single cell, clearly not a baby nor a person, but a human life. If the legal standard is only until life begins, then no abortion could ever be legal. Most fertilized egg cells, however, do not make it to implantation and a good percentage to those that do implant, abort early on. One might say that early abortions are simply giving nature a nudge. At some point in the pregnancy the developing life is a baby--legalists will demand a date-- but by then abortions are tragedies, not elective procedures. Women have been terminating unwanted pregnancies for all of recorded history. The genius of Roe should be applied to all abortion decisions: it is between a woman and her doctor, and nobody else's business. It is ironic that it was Roe that allowed Republicans to politicize abortion.
4
As usual Mr. Douthat sees the world through the lens of Catholic theology.
It is is his right, from the point of view of epistemology, to do so.
It is the "true faith" that, for him, provides the one and only standard for judgement on ANY issue.
Alas, the US is not a theocracy and the values of any religious group, while interesting, have no special status in public discourse or in governmental policy.
8
I am appalled by Douhat's thinking:
"Our side of the debate has the simplest and most scientifically coherent definition of personhood. . . . The pro-life position is rejected, when it is rejected, for leaning too heavily on scientific definitions, not for ignoring them."
"Scientific"? You expect science to tell us when personhood begins? Science will tell us that in early stages of development a fetus more closely resembles a fish with gills than a human who breathes air. "A person"? Only in the imagination of the parents-to-be, friends and relatives who look forward to welcoming a fully developed human infant.
A "person" from the moment of conception? Science tells us that the female body spontaneously expels half or more fertilized ova it produces. Medical science does not consider a woman pregnant unless and until a fertilized ovum implants and begins to develop in the uterus (or misplaced elsewhere). On Douthat's definition, God seems to waste many "persons" with impunity. And this author calls the ancient Hebrew definition "mystical"? The ancients had a coherent understanding of Nature manifesting the power of God.
There is nothing "simple" or "scientifically coherent" about Douthat's alternatives to "breath of life" thinking-- not that Buttigieg embraces it as a standard for personhood.
The difficulty--hard even to confront-- is that "personhood" is not science's discovery but a decision--ours to make--a decision we accord to "persons," i.e. pregnant women.
7
"your unborn child could be reciting Shakespeare to you in sign language and it would still have no right to life"
Such a typical conservative argument. Now I know Mr. Douthat knows that this could never happen but he still thinks it's a good argument. It's not. Arguments based on impossibilities are always bad arguments.
How many late-term abortions are because of anything but medical necessity? I am a liberal. I would have no problem with an abortion compromise that allowed abortions without any impediments up to a point and then forbade it without clearcut medical necessity. Hey Ross! would you support that?
I know most pro-lifers would not accept such a compromise. Nothing short of a total ban would satisfy them. This tends to provoke a similar absolutism on the pro-choice side.
12
“Nothing shortage of a total ban” favored by “most prolifers unless or until their daughter has a life threatening pregnancy or their lovers get pregnant.
3
Life begins when the law says it does. That has been the case for the Common Law for centuries.
4
Life and personhood are two entirely different things that have become conflated with the anti-abortion movement. Life is biological; personhood is social and political. Think, for example, of the insane persistence in American constitutional law that a corporation is a person. I'll tell you what: why don't we make a deal; we'll drop constitutional protections for corporations as persons in exchange for granting human personhood to viable life in the womb. This is, after all, as Mr. Swift put it, merely a "modest proposal."
2
In a democracy most issues are decided with compromise Neither side achieves its ultimate goal but rather an acceptable middle is agreed-upon
this article demonstrates clearly how important that principal has been in the resolution of the abortion issue in this country .the concept that life begins at conception is balanced with the belief that life may begin later , perhaps with the first breath. Roe v Wade represents a judicial compromise that has worked well for the country over these many decades It is not as many believe a victory for pro abortion advocates ;it is a compromise
Roe should be protected because it represents a successful political compromise that provides neither party a total moral victory The uncommitted should celebrate our successful national compromises and support them as monuments to democracy
4
Sadly we have to reflect on the disturbed and the immoral behaviors of two male doctors who never achieved anything near the ethics required of our profession. But they do NOT reflect the standards and ethics of abortion providers most of whom commit to membership in organizations that require higher levels of scrutiny to ensure safe, empathic and medically advanced care.
These two men were denied membership in professional societies that strive to be advocates of science, practice and regulations to support high quality reproductive care. They were outcasts or at least shunned by many. However it is crucial to remember that medicine, like law, has a terrible record of calling out professional miscreants. And US Gymnastics? Another doctor gone seriously bad.
Fetal remains makes the offense more repulsive to many. But more honest assessment of and self regulation by medical professionals is crucial. See something? Say something.
Ross repeatedly goes around an issue until he thinks he has obscured the complexities enough - or cherry-picked adequate quotes or canards - that he can declare himself the winner. Enough is never enough for him. I find it more useful to just stop reading, since I always know where he is going to end up anyway.
11
No, Ross, not at all. Birth (and first breath) is not a mystical experience that transforms a pre-nate into a person. It is a biological experience with many associated and well-understood biological cascades of events which transform the pre-nate, dependent on a person for oxygen, into an independent person capable of consuming oxygen from the air.
7
Other than taking an offhand comment from a Presidential candidate and maintaining it is a practically plank in a Party platform that won’t be drafted and approved until almost a year from now, not to mention mis-characterizing the views of millions of people who are pro-choice, Mr. Douthat makes the claim that the anti-legal abortion side is the “scientific” one. This claim, in the face of “heartbeat” bills that ban legal abortion before there is a heart to beat, of an anti-choice legislator who sponsored a bill to re-implant in the uterus a fetus removed from an ectopic pregnancy (a medical procedure that does not exist) and when informed of this admitted he didn’t know much about it, of anti-choice legislators in some states attempting to force doctors to tell patients that medication abortions can be stopped halfway through (also not possible), to believing certain forms of birth control are abortifacients when they have been scientifically proven not to be, is risible, to say the least. Taking bits and pieces of science and twisting it to fit a political agenda is an even sorrier activity than taking bits and pieces of religious texts to do so, since religion is not-fact based and can therefore be anything the person wants it to be. And trying to characterize this twisting of science as something fact-based is disingenuous at best, Mr. Douthat.
10
@Clare, yes, right, and important to point out that in the Hobby Lobby decision, SCOTUS endowed a *demonstrably false* empirical claim (contraceptives are abortifacients) with the constitutional protection of a religious tenet.
In a rule the Dept. of Labor is currently proposing, Trumpistry hopes to expand that decision to give for-profit corporations the "right" to fire or refuse to hire employees who have same-sex relationships, or who use contraceptives, or whose personal choices violate any claim an employer can call freedom of "religious exercise."
For-profit corporations have become the administration's proxy for dismantling individuals' freedom of conscience by subjecting it to the "Christian dominionism" of entrpreneurs.
3
This is all so beside the point. Jesus’ teachings are summed up in the Great Commission (make disciples of all nations) and the Great Commandment (Love...). Not, stop the evildoers. Love them.
When a woman is in crisis, will she be more likely to come to belief by being loved and supported in making a decision she believes is right for her, or by being told she can’t have an abortion because Christians say so?
What about that woman right in front of you? Stop arguing how many angels are on the head of a pin and show some (what used to be) Christian compassion.
5
One of the things that draws converts like Mr. Douthat to Catholicism is the beauty and clarity of having strict and absolute laws of moral conduct. But that's not where real life happens. The fact is that Catholic women have early abortions just as often as non-Catholic women. And I have personally witnessed what happens when shocked and frightened Catholic couples are told the wife's health is at serious risk if a mid- or late-term pregnancy continues, or they face the heartbreaking news that their fetus has some catastrophic abnormality. Those Catholic couples often choose to terminate (just like the rest of us), in defiance of their faith.
My point is simply that it is arrogant and dishonest to make rules for other people whose consequences you are not going to have to live with, most especially when evidence shows that you yourself will likely break the rules if actually confronted with the situation.
Add to that the glaring hypocrisy of male clerics decrying from the pulpit the moral choices of women while they rape children at epidemic levels with the complicit protection of their all-male hierarchy.
20
Just what we need. Another man using his religion to justify dictating what a woman does with her body. These guys don’t think much of women. They think we view pregnancy as some inconsequential minor blip in our lives. Apparently they have no idea how difficult the decision to abort a pregnancy is. But don’t let that stop you from trying to stop women from using birth control too. Make it difficult to avoid pregnancy in the first place. Then we will be stuck. You guys just want to control women. If it were men who got pregnant, abortion would be sacrosanct.
9
As a Catholic (former) I found myself on the outside of the abortion question early. The Church's single and narrow minded position on abortion, and ignorance of the biology related to women's reproductive health was the first "unsupportable" that ultimately led me away.
As a student of Theology (2 masters degrees), I am somewhat familiar with Catholic thought. And I am dismayed at Catholic bishops, and Republican governors and legislators who support and institute repressive women's health legislation, but actively kill programs that support a woman's health during pregnancy, or the life of the child after. Across the rest of the spectrum of Life affirming practices (including the death penalty) they withdraw support.
They hold up Pope John Paul II as the paragon, but fail to live by his own instructions: “Where life is involved, the service of charity must be profoundly consistent. It cannot tolerate bias and discrimination, for human life is sacred and inviolable at every stage and in every situation; it is an indivisible good. We need then to show care for all life and for the life of everyone” (EV, 87)
I have recently been reading Matthew's Gospel and this quote pops out: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces."
Mr. Douthat and religious conservatives ignore the teachings of their favorite pope and wrap themselves in a righteousness consistent with that of the Pharisees.
4
I am a Democrat who dislikes abortion, and even more dislike the treatment of it as some holy thing that should be defended under any circumstance at all cost. I also realize that the reasons women arrive at the decision to have one are complicated and are not helped by dogmatically pounding our view of the issue over them. Our view of life should inform our attitude to life at every stage, from conception to death. We have no problem hounding a woman for having an abortion but condemn that child to a life of misery and poverty. We also do not consider them when they do not look like us so we drop bombs mercilessly on them. On the other hand we easily discard the unborn child, but oppose the taking of the life of the mature individual even after he has committed some gruesome murder. Abortion is a horrible thing for the woman who feels she has no other choice but to do it, and the community which has grown to trivialize all human life. We African American Democrats of faith need to make our voices heard on this issue. We do not need to be pressured to accept abortions as a thing to be venerated in our society. We also need to declare firmly that the government should, on this issue, stay out of the medical offices of doctors and their female patients. Let their moral compasses and their consciences decide.
7
As troubling as the barbaric acts involved is the sobering recognition that millions of people aren't all that troubled by the idea of killing their own offspring.
How can this be morally sane? How can it be adaptive, in terms of what's good for our species?
I feel as though many of my fellow human beings inhabit a different moral realm entirely.
1
@Eddie
We no longer inhabit a world with a high death rate for young children (at least with the countries that have decent public health systems), hence we no longer need high birth rates. Therefore, given the dangerous levels of overpopulation and the environmental destruction that accompanies it, the “adaptive” thing that would be best for our species would be to drastically reduce reproduction, either through birth control or through abortion when necessary.
3
The thing is, Mr. Douthat, that a woman is a person. Even a pregnant woman is a person. That and the fact that the United States is not a theocracy, and not everyone is nearly as much concerned with what is or isn't in the Bible as you seem to be. It's not mysticism. Persons have autonomy about their own bodies. Even women. Pete Buttegieg recognizes that. You can twist yourself into all kinds of a biblical pretzel, but what you really want is to deny women the right to personhood during their childbearing years. You and your Bible don't get to do that. Sorry.
11
Life is created by unprotected sex. It’s impossible, or at least very difficult. to draw a logical line in fetal development before which that life can be terminated and after which it cannot. It’s also undeniable that the person most affected by pregnancy is an individual woman, who will have to live with the results of termination or continuation for the rest of her life. For the man - not so much. So if you really want to stop abortion - collect a young man’s sperm and then sterilize him. He can have all the sex his hormones desire without ruining anyone’s life. If he by chance matures enough to want children, he has his saved sperm and science, and also the possibility of having the vasectomy reversed. That won’t prevent every unwanted pregnancy, but it will certainly reduce the numbers. For those who believe life begins at conception, every avoided abortion should be considered a victory. For those who don’t want to force women to give birth for all the reasons they shouldn’t have to, reduction is also a victory. Yes, government required sterilization of all young men sounds draconian, or worse, and would undoubtedly cause much individual grief (lost sprem, botched ops, psychological pain), but would it be any worse than what we go through fighting over this insoluble issue?
2
we trust and are willing to empower the state to kill people in our name whenever it suits our (or their) inclinations - war (which always includes "collateral damage"), criminal executions (which inevitably includes 'wrongful convictions'), "justifiable homicide" (by police or individuals), etcetera. on what grounds do we so *self-righteously* justify violating a woman's privacy relative to her own body, of which a fetus is just a part of, until the umbilical cord is cut.
my Buddhist religion prohibits 'killing' ALL 'sentient' life (without qualification) including a fetus, although it can be understood to be tolerant depending on the circumstances. I personally am tolerant in some of the examples, I mentioned above, and I am tolerant relative to abortions. but, that is just my religion - more accurately: my understanding of my religion.
The Bible in general and the New Testament in particular have little to say about sex and, as far as I know, abortion. For this reason, I’ve long wondered why fundamentalists rely on scripture so heavily to justify their positions on these issues. The Founding Fathers, Enlightenment rationalists to a man, would scratch their whigs if they could hear our politicians opining In dreadful seriousness on private matters.
2
The issue I'd like to hear Ross address is how the right co-opted terms like "Life", "Freedom", "God" and "Love of Country" for partisan political purposes whose only true goal is naked power. The nasty polarization of politics in the country coincides with a cynical appeal to morally ambiguous concepts by the right-winged monied class who have no interest in following their own moral rules. Hence, the Trump-Pence team. It's grotesque.
5
Where is the outrage that women are not protected from work to go receive prenatal care or to care for their babies after they've had them?
3
Forget about defining person hood for a second, lets talk about taking care of the babies surviving without a father to provide for them. Simply allow, fund, and direct that the cops collect DNA until the father is found. Once found, he is on the hook for 21 years, wages garnished as required. If he does not have enough money during the 21 years, he keeps contributing to a pool of money set aside for people like him until he has paid what he should have with interest. Every man who does not voluntarily provide his DNA will be fined to pay for the DNA test and future subsidies for the cost of condoms or male sterilization. Any employer, anywhere in the country, who does not check the national registry of absent fathers before paying employees and contract laborers will be fined. (This tool could be used against rapist and those employing undocumented immigrants too.) All of this will still be less terrifying for dads than for some 15 year old moms who will be raising the child without a father. It will also catch a lot of men messing around with underage girls. While Draconian it puts the sexes at a somewhat more equal risk of consequences. If all of this takes a constitutional amendment, fine. Let the politicians stand up in front of their daughters cast their votes, and tell their daughters why they think boys should be less responsible for their actions.
2
It appears Tom is not engaged in clever snark, and may actual believe the things he’s posting.
Now I have the perfect example of an ad hominem attack. You attack Pete by linking him to an abortion provider who happened to live in South Bend and also dredge up as much other dirt as you can find.
I suppose that his success in reaching voters who want a progressive centrist for president must be getting to you, Ross.
Americans just want to get on with our lives.
The Trump detour has set our land and the world back years. We are really not interested in your mystical take on life. We just want to deal with major issues like climate change, healthcare for all, fair wages, welcoming those who wish to become Americans, and many other things.
Mayor Pete is a breath of fresh air in an election that is filled with much vituperation, attacks, and name calling. Unlike Bernie and his milder version, Warren, Biden, Castro and others, he doesn't yell, attack, wave his hands at debates, and appeal to our baser instincts.
He is the perfect antidote to Trump.
Five months is an eternity in politics.
When the dust finally settles, he will be our nominee and lead us to reclaiming America for all Americans.
8
Wait, wait, when did the Republican Party (or the Catholic Church, Mr. Douthat's go to source of scriptural advice) accept science as the basis for anything, let alone anti-abortion-ism? Since they don't want to own up to the bible thumping, theologically based decisions they have been pushing for many years, which no longer plays so well among the educated?
Show me a Republican who accepts the science of climate change, who accepts the science of human sexual variety, who accepts the science of evolution - then that person can mount a defence of Republican-Science based decisions.
5
The left using the Bible to support abortion is just as bad as the right using it to prohibit it. So much development occurs in a fetus’ first 90 days that it’s ridiculous to argue that this is not a form of human life. I support abortion on demand, but not based on some religious doctrine that flies in the face of science.
2
@Rebecca
A fetus IS human. But is it a person, with all the rights of a person? This is the point that science as well as theology are unsure about--except for those dogmatists usually associated with certain churches, whether it's the Roman Catholic Church or another one.
2
"Our side of the debate has the simplest and most scientifically coherent definition of personhood. . . ."
There's no such thing as a scientifically coherent definition of "personhood." "Personhood" is a word, in this case one subject to lots of different interpretations, and it's not the business of science to define words like that, though it can reasonably and effectively study how words acquire their social meanings. In the case of unborn entities, the best science can do is establish an entity's qualities--brain and nervous system development, ability to react to a stimulus, and so on--at any given stage. But when one becomes a "person," and more to the point, when a society decides to recognize specific legal rights and protections for one, is socially determined through the kind of process American society is going through with abortion right now. Different societies make that decision in different ways. In our society, one can argue for changes in the laws governing those rights and protections, but one has no business trying to impose one's religious pronouncements on those who don't accept one's religious beliefs. In that respect, Mayor Pete's mysticism is no better or worse than that of right-wingers; neither of them has any right to dictate law, and the history of mysticism-based law is replete with examples of why we should resist such a thing.
6
* Roe v Wade is a compromise that satisfies neither side of the debate but allows this secular society with Constitutional guarantees for religious freedom to go forward.
* Abortion should trouble everyone, but even worse is the horror of women butchered or forced to bear the product of rape or a severely damaged fetus that nature failed to eliminate (usually the case in a miscarriage) or forced to bear children when incompetent (say, taking drugs throughout and after pregnancy). I'd like to know how many evangelicals are foster parents (my daughter is not an evangelical; she has four foster children).
* The closer a fetus gets to birth, the more abortion looks like infanticide.
* The genius of the Republican party is to persuade people (based on controversial issues like abortion) to vote against their own interests. To be pro-life while supporting exploitation of poor people, mass incarceration, and so on... is immoral.
* The Hyde Amendment allowed people to support Planned Parenthood. Increasingly, far right and far left tribes demand uncompromising devotion to one absolutist position or the other.
* At least Mayor Pete is trying to promote dialog over exchanges of illustrations of the fallacy catalog -- ad hominem, red herring, equivocation, etc.
1
Talk about magical thinking...an embryo signing Shakespeare. I am afraid Mr. Douthat relinquished his hold on not only rigor but rationality with that one.
Readers should note also that the words "she" and "her" appear only in the context of a legal contest, not the question of abortion. Wearing such blinders makes the whole question so much easier for Mr. Douthat.
5
Stop—just stop. I don’t want to hear any arguments from you or from Buttigieg, either, that are based on your religion. I don’t care what your religion instructs you to believe.
There are a lot of other things I could add here about the question of abortion, and none of them would be favorable to your point of view. But let’s not cloud the issue with that. Religion should be completely irrelevant to the legislative process.
10
I remain struck by the fact that Evangelicals can picket women’s health clinics all day long to prevent access to low-cost Pap smears and birth control in the name of “God’s law,” but have no objection to capital executions because that’s “man’s law.” Apparently the rules regarding moral consistency apply only to Democratic presidential candidates.
6
"the most important thing is the person who should be drawing the line is the woman making the decision."
There it is Brother Douthat, Buttigiegism in simple words.
What Douthat fails to mention is that religious textbooks were written by men for a patriarchal, medieval society where male might makes right.
But humans have evolved since the biblical age and have fairly recognized that females deserve some freedom over their own lives and bodies unsubjected to the ejaculatory whims of misogynists who can conveniently walk away from their acts of sexually gratification.
Is it a man's world or a man's AND woman's world ?
The Bible was written to sustain male power and misogyny.
Modernity was written to level the playing field between males and females and provide females with a little bit of sovereignty, which patriarchs, misogynists and medievalists take great offense to.
No one is pro-abortion; some just think women deserve a little control over their own bodies and think religion is a manmade bucket of cruel misogyny that belongs somewhere in 4th century philosophy.
And perhaps people would respect 'pro-lifers' point of view if they at least supported the basics of free modern contraception and healthcare for all which would make the abortion rate sink like a stone in record time.
But 'pro-lifers' can't handle that kind of sensible public policy, preferring instead to abort the planet with 7.6 billion humans with 'be fruitful and multiply' nonsense.
Nice GOPeople.
8
Mysticism has nothing to do with it!
The Constitution and the Bible are perfectly clear on the matter. The Constitution applies to persons born or naturalized. The Bible applies to "man born of woman". A newborn is a person; a fetus is the promise of a person.
There is no pro-abortion movement. Pro-choice advocates do not recommend abortion. They demand that the mother, not politicians, judges, or busybodies be granted the basic human right to manage her own reproductive affairs.
There are many reasons why a woman would choose to abort the fetus she carries in her body. The most frivolous choice is to abort a healthy fetus because the pregnancy is accidental, and the young mother is not willing or able to support a child. The young woman probably was ignorant or careless about contraception, or unable to obtain contraceptives.
The most difficult moral choice is to abort because of medical indication that the fetus is defective or nonviable. Certainly, a moral person would not deliberately give birth to a child that is doomed to suffer and die prematurely.
Abortion is a moral choice. Judging the morality of others, and coercing a person to abide by another's morality is politics, not religion or morality.
The no-choice advocates who meddle in the personal affairs of young women could spend their efforts more effectively by campaigning for sex education, ready availability of contraceptives, and child support. Otherwise, their self-proclaimed "morality" is hypocrisy.
8
The disgust with which Douthat describes an abortion doctor who kept fetal remains is not supported by the article he links, and betrays a squeamishness about biology that ought to disqualify him from the abortion debate. His glee about the possible overturning of Roe by a illegitimate Supreme Court says even more about Douthat.
If conservatives were protectors of life, they would attend more to the living and less to the unborn.
7
Ross,
You read too much into a simple statement of my candidate Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Just focus on two points.
1. Life begins at the breath outside the womb. (Theologically)
and knowing that you still have choice to draw the line, but please
2. Leave the decision where to draw the line to the woman.(Individual Privacy Rights and women's rights)
7
This all supposes that we humans can decide everything in a rational way but irrationality prevails everywhere. "Life is sacred" according to most of us and yet in the parts of our nation where religion is most popular the death penalty is also most popular. Internal contradictions abound. If I had been aborted would the universe be a better or worse place? I am not certain that I can say one way or the other but I will have to trust my mothers judgement on that. Is life really worth living or do we choose to live because that's what our DNA forces us to do? Whatever answer we accept I think that ultimately it will be shown to be foolish.
2
Every religion has a slightly different take on when a "person" is created. However, we have folks who have decided that from the time the sperm might meet the egg, we need to protect this "person" from the actions of the carrying of the person, often called a woman. Obviously, the woman is not competent to decide whether or not she can emotional, physically or financially go forward with a birth of this person, so we need the state to make sure there are no legal ways to get contraceptives, no abortion clinics available and no health providers even mentioning the possibility of abortion. This is the problem today, that women are once again being classified as breeders who do not have the intellect to decide what they should or should not do. I so wish that those who scream that they are pro life would also worry about housing costs, food availability, decent education that leads to a person as an adult, not as a person carried in a womb, able to earn a living, and health care, so this person is healthy and doesn't, like typhus Mary of historic fame, spread disease throughout society. That would be pro life. If folks are concerned about deformed persons whose medical chances of survival outside the womb are limited, please provide parents the financial support they need to keep such children alive and comfortable. Please help them so that they don't deprive other children of necessities and that they give all of their children the best possible life. That's pro-life.
5
Cherry picking what the Bible says seems to define modern religious conservatives, who somehow never seem able to picture their doctrines being useful guidance for living breathing individuals.
4
Mr. Douthat,
The Bible states that God put the breath of life into Adam. He became a living being. Before that, he was not.
3
I am a Christian and I do believe that abortion is a tragedy and always the product of some evil, though I think that in many cases, neither the pregnant woman, nor the doctor who performs the abortion, is the cause of the evil. Sometimes for instance people get abortions when they find out that something is terribly wrong with their much wanted, growing child. While they have made a tragic choice to abort, I don't think that that choice is evil. All the evil, in those cases, is Satan's evil, for causing the child's disorder in the first place.
Despite my belief that life is sacred from the beginning, I don't think it's fair to say that the life-begins-at-conception side is more scientific. Clearly, an independent human organism is present from conception. But if we were all single celled organisms, we wouldn't value life in the first place. A single-celled human organism is not like a 6 month old unborn baby. Who is not like a full term newborn. Who is not like a 6 month old born baby. Who is not like a 6 year old.
The science says only that the organism becomes gradually more complex and self-supporting. Science says absolutely nothing about value or dessert or when the right to life begins. Those sorts of claims are always laid over the empirical facts, on the basis of their fit with a broader vision (again, not empirically determined) of the meaning of life.
3
It is interesting that the Democrats are talking about the separation of church and state. Someone should have informed Pete Buttigieg of this fact. He quotes the bible and brings up his faith a lot. When Mike Pence discussed his faith, he was ridiculed. So much hypocrisy coming from the Democrats.
If Mr. Buttigieg was really sincere about his deep faith and spirituality, I would think think he would be against abortion. I guess not. He is more interested in appealing to the left wing of his party.
1
@KMW
You assume the anti-legal abortion position is the most “moral.” For those of us who care what happens to women and that they not be reduced to forced breeders by the government, the pro-choice position is the most moral. Mayor Pete recognizes the morality of not reducing women to walking uteri. Good for him.
4
@KMW
Who are you to judge the validity of someone else's religious beliefs? This kind of self-righteousness is one of the reasons why so-called "pro-life" people are often viewed with derision, along with the hypocrisy about the death penalty, the refusal to acknowledge that controlling womens' behavior is a primary motivation, and the outright lying about the frequency of late-term abortion and why some women elect to have this procedure in order to keep from dying. Remove the thorn from your own eye first.
3
So ridiculous to see Ross argue that anti abortion positions are just too scientific to be popular. I’m unaware that the Vatican or the evangelicals have based their view on science as opposed to fanaticism. What is clear is that both— and Ross has oscillated between them— rest on a devaluation of a woman’s right to choose and control her own body.
3
Oh, wow. I'm sure this is the most pressing issue that we need to be worrying about today: not a world on fire, rapid depletion of resources, runaway inequality, greed and inexcusable poverty and suffering. Just, you know, how someone who won't be president hasn't addressed what women are allowed to do with their bodies.
3
As a companion reading, I suggest a December 2018 NYT article on the relationship between fetal rights a women’s rights:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/28/opinion/pregnancy-women-pro-life-abortion.html
This op-ed piece is puzzling. I don’t see how Buttigieg’s (wrong, in my view) stance on fetal personhood can be defined as “mysticism.” Seems like an awfully broad slapdown. Jewish law dictates that a child is a person at first breath. Mysticism is defined as (per Oxford Dictionary): “belief characterized by self-delusion or dreamy confusion of thought, especially when based on the assumption of occult qualities or mysterious agencies.” So, Mr. Douthat?
I know where I draw the line between fetus and unborn person. Others may see it differently. I think Buttigieg’s “first breath” line of demarcation is outrageous, but he at least he has a doctrinal basis for it. What galls me most about the entire abortion rights debate is the revolting spectacle of men grabbing control of a woman’s uterus.
And by the way, it is not pro-life and pro-choice but anti-choice and pro-choice. Pro-choice advocated are not anti-life.
2
There are plenty of cases, for instance soldiers, police, self-defense, even standing your ground, where killing a person is perfectly legal. Conservative christians as a group support expanding the freedom to kill people if there is any provocation, completely ignoring Jesus' admonition to turn the other cheek. There are plenty of sins that are perfectly legal. Conservatives aren't clamoring to have adultery made a capital offense even though there is plenty of support for that idea in the Bible. It's Fox news, not the Bible, where conservative christians get their inspiration, and Fox cares not at all about murder, only about defeating Democrats so that businesses can have lower taxes.
4
Buttigieg is making two simple points, both of them quite clear:
1. The Bible does not specify that life begins at conception. Therefore, those who are radically anti-abortion are taking a position that contradicts the Bible. (In fact, the Bible even recommends abortion if a man’s wife gets pregnant through infidelity). Plus, science is indeterminate about personhood.
2. Men should not be making moral decisions for women.
Douthat’s intellectual contortions seem to be presupposing that women who choose abortion are moral voids, who need men like Douthat to explain science and philosophy to them. He adopts the false premise that women blindly abort and murder viable babies. He ignores the facts about actual late term abortions. I can only assume that all these mental gymnastics are necessary because Buttigieg has exposed a critical flaw in the link between Christian fundamentalism and Republican politics.
945
@Margaret Speas
I've never met an anti-abortion advocate (never, ever) who also believes in comprehensive sex education in the public schools AND public funding for birth control.
Which is funny. If you truly believed that every abortion was a literal cold-blooded murder, wouldn't you want to provide bullet-proof vests (condoms and other birth control) to protect the innocent children murdered by these irresponsible adults?
99
@Margaret Speas
Psalm 139:13-16 “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”
8
It's a little weird to say that "the Bible" "recommends." That is not in any way a clear statement. As for #2, I am eternally grateful that my wife has stepped in on some moral decisions I had been about to make.
17
Guess he’s scaring you all on the right, and the Dems. He’s got a genuine quality like an Obama (without the overbearing self-importance and ambition).
Roe is the law. Pols use pro and con Roe as their way of grifting the American voter. It’s not about a real belief, it’s about power and money.
Viability will undercut Roe. Then we can discuss pro or anti choice.
67
@Becky Beech What do you think of Sagan’s discussion?
@Becky Beech I find Buttigieg to be more aloof, more ambitious and more of a "know it all" than Obama.
Obama was professorial but he could be very self-depracating. Buttigieg isn't too bad in these respects, but he is no Obama.
8
@Becky Beech
Viability hasn’t changed more than a week or two further back since Roe, and there are no signs it will change more anytime soon. There are structural barriers to pushing viability back much farther than it is with either current technology or any available technology in the foreseeable future. The idea that viability will destroy the basis for Roe is anti-choice wishful thinking, with no basis in fact.
24
If pro-lifers wholeheartedly supported women’s access to birth control that is low-cost and readily available, and if they supported evidenced-based Sex Ed that is widely taught throughout this country- two things that can prevent the incidences of abortion- than maybe I could take their views on this issue a little more seriously.
8
"Our side of the debate has the simplest and most scientifically coherent definition of personhood...." This claim by Mr. Douthat is nonsense. Science can tell us about the physical characteristics of the fetus at different stages of development. It cannot tell us whether the fetus, thus characterized, is a person. That is a philosophical question. There is nothing "scientific" about the claim that a person exists from the moment of conception.
6
"Our side of the debate has the simplest and most scientifically coherent definition of personhood...." This claim by Mr. Douthat is nonsense. Science can tell us about the physical characteristics of the fetus at different stages of development. It cannot tell us whether the fetus, thus characterized, is a person. That is a philosophical question. There is nothing "scientific" about the claim that a person exists from the moment of conception.
4
Tony - long time since Sancti 89. Correct answer btw.
I will never understand why men think this is any of their business. Every male candidate should recuse himself from expressing any opinion. No one is pro-abortion. It is a profoundly difficult decision whether made for heartbreaking medical reasons or due to desperation. Even worse is the seeming lack of an attempt to understand that these debates and rash of restrictive laws primarily hurt women of limited means. I am a middle class, well educated, aging Boomer. The older I get the more liberal I become. I think this liberalism comes from rejecting a lifetime of men thinking they know what's best for me or any other woman.
16
@Thinkingwoman, exactly right.
Look at Mr. Douthat’s mess of left-brained chop-logic in this piece, all to say that the sperm decides when a person is made. I.e., the man decides that a new person has been made, via his sperm.
This twisted view is deemed scientific fact — the woman, the mother (or-not) to be, has no say over her part in the creation of a new life.
As a man, I’m offended by this ongoing male insult to womanhood and motherhood. SHE gets to decide whether to bring her embryo into the world. It has lived within her unfertilized since her own birth, along with about 100,000 other oocytes. SHE gets to decide whether one particular fertilization is wanted or not. She will live with whatever decision she makes for the rest of her life.
The spermocentric man will not.
2
Mayor Pete does not represent the Democratic Party in its entirety, so I don't feel his answers are a window into the position of liberals or Dems writ large.
The simplest thing to say is that viability is an important determinant of personhood; at the same time, viability is an extremely complex subject where judgment of the best course of action best lies with a doctor and the pregnant woman. It is unlikely laws and lawyers and judges can draw finely-grained rules around which decisions are correct, considering the vast complexity of medical conditions of both mother and child. So the best course of action is to allow choice.
Personally I am comfortable with the idea that a healthy 3rd trimester fetus in a health mother should not be aborted. I could possibly be okay with laws around this. But having been through a 2nd trimester abortion for reasons of health of the fetus, I think this may remain too grey and curtail a woman's right to bodily autonomy - will a determination of "healthy" become the subject of litigation and punishment?
Most people recognize that when a woman's life is in danger from pregnancy, it is right to save her life even if the child will die as a result regardless of the stage of fetal development. It is only consistent that she and her doctors are the ones to make choices. Not you, me, or Mayor Pete.
7
Thank you, Ross Douthat, for the thoughtful piece. Concerning fetal personhood, when a human is conceived, what else is it but a human?
Concerning viability, a baby two weeks, or two months, out of the womb is no more able to live on their own than a fetus (baby?) still in the womb. Breathing isn't the only measure of being able to live on one's own - viability.
We are all aware, distressingly, of people out of the womb for 32 years and still not living on their own.
It is really difficult for people like me who don't agree with anything else the jaundiced republicans stand for other than the the right to live; and who agree with virtually everything that caring progressives believe, except the right to end the life of children most vulnerable - those still in the womb.
3
Life ends with our last breath, so it is logical to say it begins with our first. With the breath, the life force enters, and at our death it exits.
A beating heart is a biological muscle that sustains the viability of the body. But we are not our bodies. We are something more.
Anyone who believes in an afterlife, must also accept the existence of a beforelife. And thus, a new soul (the life force) is not formed at conception, but has always existed. And can't be destroyed. Ever. That's the definition of energy. The life force is an energy that enters and exits with the breath.
3
In Mr. Douthat's strained attempt to smear Pete Buttigieg, he fails to mention his own "mysticism," (to put it politely) that of conservative Catholic doctrine, wherein it was decided, despite no Biblical reference, nor other evidence of any sort whatsoever, that a "soul" is inserted by the Catholic god into a zygote just after conception.
Abortion, despite extremist efforts on both sides to simplify it into bumper sticker slogans, is a very complicated and serious matter politically, morally, and practically. Mr. Douthat and his church have done absolutely nothing to help society deal with the issue in a decent and honest manner.
20
Not too far from Trump's smears of Democrats on this issue.