Abortion and Slavery: The Same Old Arguments

In an article on Slate, pro-choicer
Mary Elizabeth Williams argues
that the unborn are living human beings:

I know women who have
been relieved at their abortions and grieved over their miscarriages. Why can’t
we agree that how they felt about their pregnancies was vastly different, but
that it’s pretty silly to pretend that what was growing inside of them wasn’t
the same? Fetuses aren’t selective like that. They don’t qualify as human life
only if they’re intended to be born.

When we try to act
like a pregnancy doesn’t involve human life, we wind up drawing stupid semantic
lines in the sand: first trimester abortion vs. second trimester vs. late term,
dancing around the issue trying to decide if there’s a single magic moment when
a fetus becomes a person. Are you human only when you’re born? Only when you’re
viable outside of the womb? Are you less of a human life when you look like a
tadpole than when you can suck on your thumb?

But then she says, “So what?”

Here’s the
complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal. That’s a difficult
thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like
death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers.
Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in
whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her
circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the
non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.

Yesterday
I wrote about how our worldview affects our view of human beings, which affects
the way we treat human beings. For Williams, the live, unborn human being is, as she says, “a
life worth sacrificing”—worth sacrificing if “the boss” wants to get rid of him
for the sake of the life she would rather have.

How is this complete power of one human
being over another not slavery? For Williams, this isn’t a problem, because in
her view, “all life is not equal.” She’s bought the idea of instrumental human
value—that is, the idea that human beings are on a scale of worth, according to
their characteristics and abilities. And apparently, if you’re higher up on
that scale, then your desires trump the natural rights of someone who is lower.

Abraham Lincoln commented on the
absurdity and danger of citing instrumental value to justify the use of power to
impose one’s will on other human beings (thanks to Scott
Klusendorf for pointing to this):

You say A. is white,
and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to
enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first
man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own.

You do not mean color
exactly? You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the
blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this
rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior
to your own.

But, say you, it is a
question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest; you
have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his
interest, he has the right to enslave you.

The arguments for slavery were the same
as the arguments now for abortion: Human
beings are only instrumentally valuable. Some people are worth less than others
because they lack particular qualities that I have. Therefore, my desires trump
their rights.

The arguments against slavery were the
same as the arguments now against abortion: All
human beings are intrinsically valuable and have equal natural rights,
regardless of their characteristics.

The arguments are the same then and now
because the two options presenting themselves to us haven’t changed and won’t
ever change. Slavery and abortion aren’t just random, unconnected controversial
issues, they’re rooted in our view of human beings, and they illustrate the two
possible directions in which our country can go as we move forward. Will we
embrace intrinsic human value or instrumental human value?

Whatever we decide as a nation, don’t
think for a moment that the principle we settle on will only be applied to abortion.