By J.D.R. Brown (The Cascade) – Email
Date Posted: October 17, 2011
Print Edition: October 12, 2011
It is understandable that so many in our society get so outraged over what they see as the needless and unjust killing of innocents. The issue of abortion has been discussed and debated to death in the 23 years since the Supreme Court of Canada struck down all laws regulating abortion in this country, and in that time nothing persuasively original has appeared on either side of the debate. The same stale arguments are constantly run and rerun, and those with entrenched opinions are very rarely swayed; it is thus no surprise for committed proponents to reach new levels of absurdity in their arguments. And that is just what one finds when reading Ms. Groen’s piece on infanticide.
The crux of Ms. Groen’s argument is that the lack of an abortion law and the so-called “blurred moral boundaries” concerning abortion leads to infanticide: the killing of infants and small children. She points to a tragic incident in Alberta where a young woman secretly gave birth to a child and then promptly killed it through strangulation, and tossed the corpse over the fence and into the neighbour’s yard. This, she says, is proof that there is a trend of infanticide sweeping the country as a natural consequence of the “logic of abortion.”
Hogwash. A single case does not a trend make. The actions of this young woman are unspeakable and abhorrent, certainly. But they are no more the result of the “logic of abortion” than the September 11th attacks being a result of Osama bin Laden’s hatred of freedom. It is a gross simplification and mischaracterization of what are obviously complicated and potentially contradictory motives to say that this young woman killed her baby because abortion is legal and socially acceptable. There are a myriad of justifications and explanations for why this young woman did as she did, but the existence of readily available, sanitary, on-demand abortions is almost certainly not one of them. On the contrary, were abortion illegal or effectively unattainable for the average person, it is far more likely that there would be an actual increase in the instances of infanticides.
The essence of this case, and Ms. Groen’s argument, is her characterization of what personhood ought to be and what value life ought to have. There is no need to spell out reasons for rejecting the absurdity of Peter Singer’s utilitarian justification for the killing of babies as Ms. Groen does, but on this issue we are of one mind. Killing babies because they are not self governing or rational beings is a poor excuse at best. The true problem arises when all human life is valued universally. When that happens, it is not easy at all to choose between the interests of mothers and babies.
She never says so, but I get the distinct impression from reading Ms. Groen’s piece that when faced with a conflict between the interests of the mother and the interests of the baby (whether unborn or otherwise) she will lean toward the interests of the baby. Without more from her, it is impossible to give a properly charitable account of what the argument might look like. Nevertheless, deferring to the interests of the baby without good reason is itself arbitrary.
When faced with two equally valuable persons, there is no easy way to choose between their interests. If one wishes to be fair (and we really ought to want to be fair), then it is absolutely necessary to consider things such as rationality and self governance, as well as things such as open futures. A total consideration of the situation and the persons in question is the bare minimum in my view, which is why I am quite uncomfortable with categorically damning women for wanting access to, let alone actually getting, abortions. It is conceivable that there are situations in which women get abortions which some might want to label as “unnecessary” or “frivolous” (perhaps even “murderous”) or something along those lines. Even so, outlawing abortion will never eliminate these instances totally nor will it even begin to answer the bigger philosophical question of choosing between lives of equivalent value. Equating abortion to infanticide is as constructive.
The abortion debate is so insufferable because nothing new ever gets said. To see abortion equated with infanticide might be worth a few points for hyperbole, but the argument remains bad regardless. And apart from everything else, using the death of a baby and the potential imprisonment of the mother in a clumsy attempt to argue for a ban on abortion writ large is simply bad taste.
