PHIL 211 South University Rape and Incest Paper Wenz portrays it as an inconsistency that Americans so often oppose abortion but are willing to make except

PHIL 211 South University Rape and Incest Paper Wenz portrays it as an inconsistency that Americans so often oppose abortion but are willing to make exception for conceptions resulting from rape or incest. Is it inconsistent? (Should rape and incest be linked like that?) 400-600 words Abortion: Libertarianism, Feminism,
Communitarianism, Theocracy, and Social
Conservatism
Abortion Stories
It was February 1936 when they got the news. Married only five
months, she was pregnant. They wanted children eventually, but it
was the middle of the Great Depression, and they couldn’t afford a
place of their own. They stayed some months with his parents and
some with her mother, recently widowed. Trained as a commercial
artist, Alberta painted ties; trained as an engineer, Irv worked for his
older brother selling auto parts. Each earned $15 to $25 per week.
Lucky for them, Alberta had an aunt whose third husband was a
doctor practicing in Toronto. Alberta took the train alone to visit her
aunt; Irv stayed home working; husbands weren’t welcome
companions or observers. When she came back, Alberta was no
longer pregnant and the couple continued their search for the
American dream. My older brother was born two-and-a-half years
later.
My parents agreed on most political matters because my father
had strong opinions and my mother didn’t. She was passionate
only about abortion. She’d say, “A woman’s abortion is nobody
else’s damn business.” (Ladies didn’t say “damn” very loud.)
Here’s a more recent abortion story by Eliza:
I’m not sorry about the abortion, but I am sorry for the
conception. I was 19 years old, a sophomore in college, and
searching for love and acceptance in men. Looking back, I think
mostly I wanted to feel attractive and sexy. An old friend came
into town, Dan…. We had unprotected intercourse, but he pulled
out. It was the mentality of “it’ll never happen to me.”
Weeks after he had left town, I had to leave one of my classes to
violently throw up outside. That was when I first had fears…. A
few days later … one of my closest friends … drove me to
Safeway and bought the tests for me and then we holed up in a
bathroom stall of our church-both tests were positive.
So important to my experience is my family and how blessed I
am to have them. I went to my sister and we sat on her front
porch and cried together. And then we went home to our parents’
house and told them…. All I could do was bury my face in my
mother’s chest and tell her how sorry I was.
In the coming days, I felt numb. Dan was still calling and writing
letters, but I was short with him each time he called until he
finally stopped contacting me at all. It was my burden, my
decision…. I have never spoken to him again and I never want to.
I knew I was supposed to make a decision, but I felt numb and
scared and separated from all my peers. Looking back, I realize
now how rare and amazing it is that I have a family who I always
knew would support my decision, whatever it might be…. My
mother researched clinics and she and my sister went with me to
the appointment. I remember that the clinic seemed scary and that
my doctor had kind, sad eyes…. Afterward, the three of us drove
home in the sunshine and my mother bought matching necklaces
for us, so that we would always remember what we had gone
through as a family.
I left the church I was attending because they pronounced
abortion as a sin. The spiritual aspects of my abortion were only
between myself and God and it angered me that the church
thought they were entitled an opinion also. I returned to the open
and affirming church I was raised in and found a hero in the
pastor. I told him my story and later that year he officiated over
my marriage. The man I married became my boyfriend at the end
of the same year I had my abortion. We had only been dating a
month when I told him, and when he held me while I cried, I
knew he might be someone I could marry.
Peter S. Wenz on the Abortion Controversy – page 1 of 15
I made my choice and I do not regret it and I know I never will. I
am a better, more empathetic person because of it…. I have a
college degree and a career, a happy and fulfilling marriage, and
the promise that the conception of our first child will be a joyous
occasion. I made my choice and because I know the importance
of that freedom, I will … fight for others to have that same choice.
The positive argument for conception as the decisive moment of
humanization is that at conception the new being receives the
genetic code. It is this genetic information which determines his
characteristics, which is the biological carrier of the possibility of
human wisdom, which makes him a self-evolving being. A being
with a human genetic code is a man.
Eliza’s view could be justified on feminist grounds. Feminists
believe no one should be disadvantaged for being a woman.
Because the burdens of pregnancy directly affect only women, if
women can’t unburden themselves through abortion, they’re
disadvantaged relative to men. Abortion rights promote equality
between the sexes.
Noonan considers and rejects a later starting point for what he calls
“humanization” and others call “personhood.” Viability is when the
unborn can survive independently of the pregnant woman. Before
that time, owing to its dependence on her, some people claim the
unborn has no independent existence and therefore is not yet a
person.
Another view, compatible with feminism on this issue, is
libertarian. Adults should be able to choose their path of life with
minimal interference from others, especially the state. The state
interferes with individual rights when it outlaws abortion. Because
no one else is directly involved, state interference with abortion
denies women the right to self-determination owed all people as a
basic human right.
Noonan counters that “the perfection of artificial incubation may
make the fetus viable at any time: it may be removed and artificially
sustained.” Although that technology doesn’t yet exist, its scientific
possibility makes viability an unstable standard. Also, it seems
strange to say that the unborn goes from nonperson to person
depending on its physical location. What is more, Noonan notes,
“dependence is not ended by viability. The fetus is still absolutely
dependent on someone’s care.” If independence from needed care is
the criterion for personhood, newborns are not persons and
infanticide should be permitted along with abortion. A major theme
of those attributing personhood to the unborn is that withholding
protection from the unborn logically requires withholding it from
newborns as well.
Both of these rationales, feminist and libertarian, champion
individual rights.
The Rights of the Unborn
Many pro-life opponents of abortion rights accept the libertarian
premise that individuals should be self-determining so long as
they’re not harming others. But abortion harms others. Eliza’s
unborn was a person, they think, killed by abortion.
Philosopher John Noonan argues that humanization begins at
conception.
Pro-life law professor Robert George also finds viability an
inappropriate criterion for a right to life. He writes:
Independence should not be confused with distinctness. From the
beginning, the newly conceived human being, not its mother,
directs its integral organic functioning. It takes in nourishment
and converts it to energy. Given a hospitable environment, it will,
as Dianne Nutwell Irving says, “develop continuously without
Peter S. Wenz on the Abortion Controversy – page 2 of 15
any biological interruptions, or gaps, throughout the embryonic,
fetal, neo-natal, childhood and adulthood stages-until the death of
the organism.”
On this logic, the unborn has a right to life from the moment of
fertilization (when the genetic code is fixed).
Law professor Richard Stith rejects the alternative of birth as the
beginning of a right to life. Rights depend on a being’s nature. All
that changes at birth is location. Stith writes, “The birth-wall
thesis … claims that what something is depends upon where it is.”
This is obviously false. If the newborn has a right to life, so must
the unborn. If the unborn lacks a right to life, so must the newborn,
and infanticide should be legal.
On the other hand, abortion-rights advocates claim, many changes
in the unborn take place between fertilization and birth, and these
may account for the newborn having rights that the unborn lacks.
For example, at about eight weeks the unborn can respond to
stimuli, which may indicate the beginning of experience. We
usually treat sentient beings with more respect than the nonsentient. It’s no crime to bash a rock or carrot against a stone wall,
but it is to bash a puppy, because the puppy can experience life.
Perhaps the unborn, like the rock or carrot, has no rights before it’s
capable of experience, so abortion should be allowed during the
first eight weeks of pregnancy.
Perhaps it should be allowed even later in pregnancy because mere
sentience doesn’t confer a right to life, as many animals learn on
their first trip to a slaughterhouse. The distinctively human
capacities for reason and language are what confer a right to life.
Charles Gardner points out in the Nation that a “mature brain cell
pattern” associated with these traits “is not seen until the sixth or
seventh month.” Accordingly, if the mind is the basis for our right to
life, late-term fetuses have such a right along with newborns and all
other human beings, but abortion violates no right of the unborn in
the first two thirds (the first two trimesters) of pregnancy.
Right-to-life advocates reject this reasoning, because they reject
associating rights with capacities. They claim that the right to life
inheres in a certain kind of being. The being that becomes a baby,
child, and adult is the being created at fertilization. If newborns
have a right to life, so must fertilized eggs.
Abortion-rights advocates, by contrast, claim that traits are always
the bases for rights. Americans get the right to vote when they turn
eighteen and the right to drink hard liquor at twenty-one. Most
places, they must complete driver’s education and be sixteen years
old to get a driver’s license. A license to practice medicine or law
takes more training and time. Assuming that newborns have a right
to life, the unborn has the same right when it differs from newborns
only in ways that clearly don’t matter, such as location. Pro-lifers
are correct that birth makes no difference. But having the
distinctively human traits possessed by newborns is required, and
these don’t develop until at least the seventh month of gestation.
Right-to-life advocates counter that we do sometimes attribute
rights on the basis of potential. Children have a right to education to
develop their potential. Children with special intellectual gifts or
disabilities usually have the right to appropriate special educational
attention. The unborn has the potential and tendency from the
moment of fertilization to develop all distinctively human traits that
confer a right to life, so it should be nurtured, just as we nurture
school children, to make that potential a reality.
In sum, the two sides agree that individual rights are the proper
basis for resolving questions about abortion’s permissibility. But
Peter S. Wenz on the Abortion Controversy – page 3 of 15
one side concentrates on the woman’s right and the other on the
right of the unborn. Against the right of the unborn, pro-choice (proabortion-rights) thinkers claim that at least through the first two
trimesters, the unborn lacks traits necessary for human rights. Prolife thinkers counter that it’s the same being throughout pregnancy,
birth, and later life, and that a right to life inheres in the kind of
being it is-human-not in the traits it possesses at any given time.
It seems neither side has an irresistible argument. Reasonable
people can differ about the unborn’s right to life, at least before the
third trimester of pregnancy.
Polls back up Gordon’s observations. An ABC News/Washington
Post poll conducted in January 2003 found that whereas 57 percent
of Americans favored legalized abortion in “All or Most Cases,”
and 42 percent thought abortion should be legal “To End Unwanted
Pregnancy,” only 23 percent thought a late-term procedure called
“partial-birth abortion” should be legal and even fewer, 11 percent,
approved of abortions after six or more months of pregnancy.’ It
seems most Americans find abortion early in pregnancy less
troubling than abortion later, as if the unborn’s right to life increases
with age.
John Noonan rejects reliance on popular opinion.
Social Status of the Unborn
Another approach to abortion rights concerns social perceptions
and norms. The pro-choice side notes that current modes of thinking
and acting differentiate between the unborn early and late in
pregnancy. Novelist Mary Gordon writes:
We habitually consider, for example, a seven-week-old fetus to be
different from a seven-month-old one. We can tell this by the way
we respond to the involuntary loss of the one against the other.
We have different language for the experience of the involuntary
expulsion of the fetus from the womb…. If it occurs early in the
pregnancy, we call it a miscarriage; if late, we call it a stillbirth….
Our ritual and religious practices underscore the fact that we
make distinctions among fetuses. If a woman took the bloody
matter-indistinguishable from a heavy period-of an early
miscarriage and insisted upon putting it in a tiny coffin and
marking its grave, we would have serious concerns about her
mental health. By the same token, we would feel squeamish
about flushing a seven-month-old fetus down the toilet.
Feeling is notoriously an unsure guide to the humanity of others.
Many groups of humans have had difficulty in feeling that
persons of another tongue, color, religion, sex, are as human as
they…. Any attempt to limit humanity to exclude some groups
runs the risk of furnishing authority and precedent for excluding
other groups…. To decide who is human on the basis of the
sentiments of a given society has led to consequences which
rational men would characterize as monstrous.
There are two themes here. One associates protecting the unborn
from abortion with protecting Jews from Nazis and blacks from
slaveholders. Society is wrong in all these cases when it fails to
recognize humanity in others. The second theme is a slippery slope
argument. If we don’t protect the unborn now, the elderly, the ill, the
outcast, and others will eventually be considered expendable as
well.
Gordon addresses fears of a slippery slope.
Many anti-choice people fear [a] slippery slope toward a brave
new world where handicapped children are left on mountains to
starve and the old are put out in the snow. But if we look at the
history of abortion …. excepting … the People’s Republic of
Peter S. Wenz on the Abortion Controversy – page 4 of 15
China (which practices forced abortion), there seems to be a real
link between repressive anti-abortion stances and repressive
governments. Abortion was banned in Fascist Italy and Nazi
Germany…. It is paid for by the governments of Denmark,
England, and the Netherlands, which have national health and
welfare systems that foster the health and well-being of mothers,
children, the old and the handicapped.
Technological developments since Noonan wrote in 1970 may also
allay fears of a slippery slope. The unborn have increasing social
visibility. Debra Rosenberg writes in Newsweek, “new high-tech
fetal ultrasound images allow prospective parents to see tiny fingers
and toes, arms, legs and a beating heart as early as 12 weeks….
These images … pack such an emotional punch that even the most
hard-line abortion-rights supporters may find themselves
questioning their beliefs.”” To the extent that abortion rights depend
on social perceptions and norms, fetuses twelve weeks or older may
receive increased protection, owing to their increased visibility.
Abortion Rights as Religious Freedom
The increasing visibility of and empathy toward the unborn worries
the pro-choice camp. They argue that social perceptions should not
impair the fundamental right of women to control their own bodies.
A major reason we have our Bill of Rights is to protect individuals
from popular perceptions and electoral majorities that would deny
fundamental rights and curtail basic freedoms.
The First Amendment protects religious freedom. It begins:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This statement
contains what are called the Establishment Clause and the Free
Exercise Clause. Although not the original understanding, the
Establishment Clause now means that no government agency-local,
state, and federal-may show preference for one religion over
another or for religious over secular views. So, for example, a
publicly funded Christmas display at the courthouse may
unconstitutionally establish religion. Adding a Chanukah menorah,
Kwanza welcome, and model Stonehenge may convert the display
into a constitutional celebration of the season.
Some people believe that restrictions on abortion violate the
Establishment Clause. They accuse abortion opponents of being
theocrats attempting to confine everyone’s behavior to what their
religion finds acceptable. The Catechism of the Catholic Church,
for example, states: “Human life must be respected and protected
absolutely from the moment of conception.” The Church wants to
impose this religious view on everyone: “The inalienable right to
life of every innocent human individual is a constitutive element of
a civil society and its legislation.” Another staunch opponent of
abortion rights is the Christian Coalition. Imposing their religious
morality on everyone seems to violate the Establishment Clause.
This reasoning is flawed. Faith-based advocacy for a social cause
doesn’t turn government action for that cause into an establishment
of religion. Catholics, for example, advocate feeding the hungry,
healing the sick, and housing the homeless. They run soup kitchens,
hospitals, and shelters to meet people’s needs. The government can
do these things as well, without establishing religion, because there
are secular justifications. Secular utilitarians, for example, may
believe that such programs promote the greatest good for the
greatest number. Although taxes needed to provide low-cost
housing may reduce taxpayers’ well being, that reduction is less
than the increase in well being among poor people provided decent
places to live, utilitarians might think. Whether they’re right or
wrong, their reasoning is entirely secular.
Peter S. Wenz on the Abortion Controversy – page 5 of 15
Similarly, government action to curtail abortions doesn’t become
religious and violate the Establishment Clause simply because
religious groups concur.
common human biological traits. Blacks and whites can have
children together, which makes them the same species. Blacks and
whites can speak the same languages and do other species-specific
tasks, such as write and do math. Genetics adds additional proof.
There’s no stalemate here.
On the other hand, there must be a secular justification for
government action. We saw that both pro-life and pro-choice
advocates appeal to secular political philosophies that emphasize
individual rights-one side concentrating on the rights of women, the
other on rights of the unborn. But the unborn have rights only if
they are persons-hence the centrality of the debate on the
personhood of the unborn.
The stalemate regarding the unborn resembles religious
disagreements. Some people believe that God exists; others don’t.
Some believe that Jesus is the son of God sent to Earth to redeem
sinners; others don’t. Some believe that there’s life after death;
others don’t. Some believe that there’s a heaven and hell; others
don’t. As with the rights of the unborn, reasons are given on both
sides, some of them based…
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