At First Things, Wesley Smith compares attitudes: Simon Barnes’ towards his Downs Syndrome son (blogged here last week) and Peter Singer’s toward..a lot of people.
What a stark difference between the attitudes of these two men toward the weakest and most vulnerable among us, a difference that can be described literally as the distinction between loving and killing. And indeed, for those familiar with Singer’s writing, it is striking how often he writes of satisfying personal desires and how rarely he writes of sacrifice and love. Which, when you think about it, provides vivid clarity about the stakes we face in the ongoing contest for societal dominance between the sanctity/equality of life ethic and Singer’s proposed “quality of life” ethic: The former opens the door to the potential for unconditional love, while the latter presumes the power to coolly dismiss some of us from life based on defective workmanship. The choice we make about these contrasting paths will determine whether we remain a moral society committed to the pursuit of universal human rights.
I was particularly struck by Justice Steven’s remark about whether the “other entity” is identified as a child or as a fetus might depend on whether it is more than half-in or half-out of the woman just prior to the moment of “cranial evacuation.” It was also sobering to hear Justice Ginsburg note that any “medical procedures” take place inside of the woman’s (mother’s) womb are permissible since they cannot be considered infanticide. These particular discussions introduced two other phrases that captured my attention: the “spatial line” and the “anatomical landmark”. In other words, the geographic location (something which I have previously addressed in earlier discussions about abortion and the law) may have a bearing on the legality or illegality of the abortion procedure and the “rights” under review by a court. However, I find that this preoccupation with geography dismisses the reality that this and all abortion cases ultimately deal with the lives of two human beings rather than one. The problems that geography poses for Constitutional law has been previously demonstrated in cases like Dred Scott v. Sanford. Moreover, I find that the legal fictions built upon these troublesome euphemisms mask the awkward reality that one human being, in the minds of some lawyers, can be sacrificed so that the other human being, the woman, may have a better chance at survival in some hypothetical situation. This point becomes all the more poignant when one realizes that what challenges the survival of the second may itself be a fiction—but a fiction which nonetheless permits the sacrifice of the first human being in any case.
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