Yog^sothoth
May 8th 2003, 08:49 PM
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Tiptoeing Around Infanticide: Libertarian Defense of Abortion Proves Too Much
By Scott Klusendorf (copyright 2003)
My beef with Libertarian philosopher Jan Narveson is not what he says, but what he won’t say given the premise of his argument. It’s his loss of nerve that’s problematic.
In his article “Why Libertarians Should be Pro-Choice Regarding Abortion,” [1] exactly two paragraphs outline his argument. The remaining six strain to tell us why we shouldn’t think it counterintuitive.
Narveson’s larger purpose is to tell us who is and is not a subject of libertarian rights. He argues that humans have value (and hence, rights) not in virtue of the kind of thing they are (members of a natural kind or species), but only because of an acquired property, in this case, the immediate capacity to make conscious, deliberate choices. Because fetuses lack this acquired property, they have no rights. A woman’s choice to abort, then, does not negatively effect the fetus (i.e., deny its right to “liberty”) since it has yet to develop into a subject of rights.
Right away there are counter examples that underscore the arbitrary nature of Narveson’s claim. Newborns, like fetuses, cannot make conscious, deliberate choices, so what’s wrong with infanticide? What principled reason can he give for saying, “No, you can’t do that?”
It’s here that Narveson shrinks from the counterintuitive nature of his claim. He offers three replies to the infanticide problem, none persuasive, none principled. First, we are told that newborns differ from fetuses in that “very soon” the newborn will have the immediate capacity for making conscious choices. But isn’t that true of the fetus as well? Even if it weren’t, why should we accept Narveson’s arbitrary claim that “sooner” matters more than later? And why is consciousness decisive and not something else? The problem for Narveson is that one either is or is not a subject of rights. [2] If newborns do not yet qualify because they lack self-consciousness, the mere fact that “very soon” they will qualify is irrelevant. Seventeen year-olds do not have a right to vote even though they soon will. Hence, if self-consciousness, as a matter of principle, determines who is and is not a subject of rights, newborns and fetuses both lose and can be treated as property.
Unlike Narveson, Peter Singer in Practical Ethics bites the bullet and applies the principle consistently. Singer agrees that abortion is morally permissible but contends that any argument used to justify abortion works equally well to justify infanticide. [3] If self-consciousness makes one valuable as a subject of rights, and newborns like fetuses lack that property, it follows that fetus and newborn are both disqualified. You can’t draw an arbitrary line at birth that spares the newborn. Hence, infanticide, like abortion, is morally permissible.
Lincoln raised a similar point with slavery, noting that any argument used to disqualify blacks as subjects of rights works equally well to disqualify many whites.
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 a 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 a slave to the first man you meet with an intellect superior to your own.
But you say 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. [4]
As Patrick Lee and Robert George point out, if humans have value only because of some acquired property like skin color or consciousness, and not in virtue of the kind of thing they are, then it follows that since these acquired properties come in varying degrees, basic human rights come in varying degrees. Do we really want to say that those with more self-consciousness are more human than those with less? This relegates the proposition that all men are created equal to the ash heap of history. [5]
Narveson’s second argument is a bait and switch that abandons moral philosophy altogether in favor of social science. We’re told not to worry about infanticide because it’s a rather “odd” practical problem. “Anyone who voluntarily has a baby certainly doesn’t want to destroy it. Ideally, all infants are wanted infants, and there should not be a problem with infanticide.” (Emphasis added.) Setting aside for the moment the highly questionable assertion that “wanted” children before birth will be treated well after (a premise soundly refuted by Lenoski, Fontana, Ney, et al. [6]), Narveson’s reply still misses the mark. The question is not “Do parents want to destroy their newborns?” but “Why shouldn’t they destroy their unwanted newborns given Narveson’s claim that consciousness bestows basic human rights?” The latter is a distinctly moral problem requiring a moral solution. Remember: Narveson is supposed to tell us who is and is not a subject of rights. How does the fact that infanticide is unpopular speak to that question? How does it get around the objection that any argument justifying infanticide flies in the face of our basic moral intuitions?
Suppose a 19th century defender of slavery made the following claim: “Yes, Mr. Lincoln, you are correct that any argument used to disqualify Blacks as subjects of rights based on some acquired property like skin color or intelligence also disqualifies many Whites. However, this is a rather ‘odd’ problem, one we needn’t take seriously. After all, few people that I know want to enslave Whites as they do Blacks.”
What if they did?
Clearly, Narveson ignores the moral question and answers a preference one that he likes better. His final attempt to dismiss our moral intuitions fares just as poorly. “Born babies, unlike fetuses, are readily portable, and indeed are very often transferred to others…So long as there are willing parental-role assuming persons ready to take on any unwanted infant, there again should in principle be no problem about infanticide.”
This is hardly a principled response. Infanticide was popular in ancient Rome. Many parents wanted to destroy (or abandon) unwanted baby girls to make room for male offspring. Was this in principle wrong or did young females cease to be subjects of rights simply because no one wished to adopt them? (If unwanted females were not killed outright, they were dumped outside the city gate to starve to death.) As for infants being “readily portable,” this too suffers greatly as a principle for who lives and who dies. Suppose an unwanted child is born 50 miles outside Nome Alaska, far from any possible adoptive family. Clearly, this child is not portable in any meaningful sense of the word. Is it permissible for parents to kill him?
Narveson never resolves the issue. He concludes with a whimper: “Infants in particular and children generally are loved by someone, and that someone should certainly have the right to exercise that love over a child that others don’t want.” Translation: Newborns have value only because they are wanted and loved.
Suppose they are not wanted. What then?
It’s left to Singer to state the matter explicitly: Infanticide may be wrong in some cases, but only for its impact on other interested parties. “We should certainly put very strict conditions on permissible infanticide,” he writes, “but these conditions might owe more to the effects of infanticide on others than to the intrinsic wrongness of killing an infant.” [7]
Elsewhere, Narveson makes it clear that he will not defend his arbitrary assertion that “complex personal consciousness” determines human value. “Here I have only tired to identify which sorts of features we think qualify an entity for rights, and not to develop a theory of why those are good reasons for attributing rights to the entities that happen to have them (namely, us).” [8] If Narveson won’t argue for his view, why should the reader accept it? How, exactly, does he expect the reader to arrive at the conclusion that the fetus is not a subject of rights?
Despite all his hedging, Narveson ultimately cannot escape the premise of his own argument. As Francis Beckwith points out, “It is not clear why he considers infanticide a ‘problem.’ After all, if his premises--which he maintains are true--lead him to the belief that newborns are not entitled to protection, then that entailment, that belief, is true.” One could, Beckwith continues, “turn the tables on Narveson with the following: ‘Since your premises do lead to infanticide--and you admit it’s a problem--then your premises must flawed. Consequently, your reasons for allowing abortion are not what reason requires.’” [9]
[1] Article is posted on Narveson’s website at http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~jnarveso/abortion.htm
[2] While not talking directly of Narveson, Patrick Lee develops this either/or theme in his speech, “Human Embryos and Fetuses are Subjects of Rights, the Olaf Tollefsen Lecture, November 14, 2002: humanembryos.htm
[3]Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997) pp. 169-171.
[4] The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (Rutgers University Press, 1953) vol. II, p. 222.
[5] Robert P. George, “Cloning Addendum,” National Review on-Line, July 15, 2002; Patrick Lee, “Human Embryos and Fetuses are Subjects of Rights.” (See note #2 above.)
[6] E. Lenoski, "Translating injury data into preventive health care services: Physical child abuse," Dept. of Pediatrics, University of Southern California, unpublished, 1976, cited in Stephen M. Krason, Abortion: Politics Morality, and the Constitution (Lanham, MD: University Press in America, 1984) p. 320; Vincent Fontana, Somewhere a Child is Crying ( New York: Macmillan, 1973), pp. 239-40; Philip Ney, M.D., "Relationship between Abortion and Child Abuse," Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 24:610, 1979.
[7] Singer, p. 173.
[8] Narveson, Moral Matters, 2nd edition (Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 1993), chapter 9. Emphasis added.
[9] Beckwith provided this quote in a private correspondence with the author.
6
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Related Resources:
Pro-Life 101: A Step-by-Step Guide to Making Your Case Persuasively (http://www.str.org/cgi-bin/shop.pl/task=detail/SID=1011222500/item=BK163)
Making Abortion Unthinkable Video Set (http://www.str.org/cgi-bin/shop.pl/task=detail/SID=1011222500/item=VT110)
300
Notice - The featuring of a particular ministry does not constitute endorsement of every single item or point of view published by said ministry by each and every member of TheologyWeb leadership. We strive to have a varied cross-section of representations of differing opinions on secondary Christian issues. The only requirement for the featuring of a particular ministry is that said ministry subscribes to the essentials artictulated in the TheologyWeb statement of faith found here in our Mission Statement (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/mission/)
Tiptoeing Around Infanticide: Libertarian Defense of Abortion Proves Too Much
By Scott Klusendorf (copyright 2003)
My beef with Libertarian philosopher Jan Narveson is not what he says, but what he won’t say given the premise of his argument. It’s his loss of nerve that’s problematic.
In his article “Why Libertarians Should be Pro-Choice Regarding Abortion,” [1] exactly two paragraphs outline his argument. The remaining six strain to tell us why we shouldn’t think it counterintuitive.
Narveson’s larger purpose is to tell us who is and is not a subject of libertarian rights. He argues that humans have value (and hence, rights) not in virtue of the kind of thing they are (members of a natural kind or species), but only because of an acquired property, in this case, the immediate capacity to make conscious, deliberate choices. Because fetuses lack this acquired property, they have no rights. A woman’s choice to abort, then, does not negatively effect the fetus (i.e., deny its right to “liberty”) since it has yet to develop into a subject of rights.
Right away there are counter examples that underscore the arbitrary nature of Narveson’s claim. Newborns, like fetuses, cannot make conscious, deliberate choices, so what’s wrong with infanticide? What principled reason can he give for saying, “No, you can’t do that?”
It’s here that Narveson shrinks from the counterintuitive nature of his claim. He offers three replies to the infanticide problem, none persuasive, none principled. First, we are told that newborns differ from fetuses in that “very soon” the newborn will have the immediate capacity for making conscious choices. But isn’t that true of the fetus as well? Even if it weren’t, why should we accept Narveson’s arbitrary claim that “sooner” matters more than later? And why is consciousness decisive and not something else? The problem for Narveson is that one either is or is not a subject of rights. [2] If newborns do not yet qualify because they lack self-consciousness, the mere fact that “very soon” they will qualify is irrelevant. Seventeen year-olds do not have a right to vote even though they soon will. Hence, if self-consciousness, as a matter of principle, determines who is and is not a subject of rights, newborns and fetuses both lose and can be treated as property.
Unlike Narveson, Peter Singer in Practical Ethics bites the bullet and applies the principle consistently. Singer agrees that abortion is morally permissible but contends that any argument used to justify abortion works equally well to justify infanticide. [3] If self-consciousness makes one valuable as a subject of rights, and newborns like fetuses lack that property, it follows that fetus and newborn are both disqualified. You can’t draw an arbitrary line at birth that spares the newborn. Hence, infanticide, like abortion, is morally permissible.
Lincoln raised a similar point with slavery, noting that any argument used to disqualify blacks as subjects of rights works equally well to disqualify many whites.
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 a 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 a slave to the first man you meet with an intellect superior to your own.
But you say 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. [4]
As Patrick Lee and Robert George point out, if humans have value only because of some acquired property like skin color or consciousness, and not in virtue of the kind of thing they are, then it follows that since these acquired properties come in varying degrees, basic human rights come in varying degrees. Do we really want to say that those with more self-consciousness are more human than those with less? This relegates the proposition that all men are created equal to the ash heap of history. [5]
Narveson’s second argument is a bait and switch that abandons moral philosophy altogether in favor of social science. We’re told not to worry about infanticide because it’s a rather “odd” practical problem. “Anyone who voluntarily has a baby certainly doesn’t want to destroy it. Ideally, all infants are wanted infants, and there should not be a problem with infanticide.” (Emphasis added.) Setting aside for the moment the highly questionable assertion that “wanted” children before birth will be treated well after (a premise soundly refuted by Lenoski, Fontana, Ney, et al. [6]), Narveson’s reply still misses the mark. The question is not “Do parents want to destroy their newborns?” but “Why shouldn’t they destroy their unwanted newborns given Narveson’s claim that consciousness bestows basic human rights?” The latter is a distinctly moral problem requiring a moral solution. Remember: Narveson is supposed to tell us who is and is not a subject of rights. How does the fact that infanticide is unpopular speak to that question? How does it get around the objection that any argument justifying infanticide flies in the face of our basic moral intuitions?
Suppose a 19th century defender of slavery made the following claim: “Yes, Mr. Lincoln, you are correct that any argument used to disqualify Blacks as subjects of rights based on some acquired property like skin color or intelligence also disqualifies many Whites. However, this is a rather ‘odd’ problem, one we needn’t take seriously. After all, few people that I know want to enslave Whites as they do Blacks.”
What if they did?
Clearly, Narveson ignores the moral question and answers a preference one that he likes better. His final attempt to dismiss our moral intuitions fares just as poorly. “Born babies, unlike fetuses, are readily portable, and indeed are very often transferred to others…So long as there are willing parental-role assuming persons ready to take on any unwanted infant, there again should in principle be no problem about infanticide.”
This is hardly a principled response. Infanticide was popular in ancient Rome. Many parents wanted to destroy (or abandon) unwanted baby girls to make room for male offspring. Was this in principle wrong or did young females cease to be subjects of rights simply because no one wished to adopt them? (If unwanted females were not killed outright, they were dumped outside the city gate to starve to death.) As for infants being “readily portable,” this too suffers greatly as a principle for who lives and who dies. Suppose an unwanted child is born 50 miles outside Nome Alaska, far from any possible adoptive family. Clearly, this child is not portable in any meaningful sense of the word. Is it permissible for parents to kill him?
Narveson never resolves the issue. He concludes with a whimper: “Infants in particular and children generally are loved by someone, and that someone should certainly have the right to exercise that love over a child that others don’t want.” Translation: Newborns have value only because they are wanted and loved.
Suppose they are not wanted. What then?
It’s left to Singer to state the matter explicitly: Infanticide may be wrong in some cases, but only for its impact on other interested parties. “We should certainly put very strict conditions on permissible infanticide,” he writes, “but these conditions might owe more to the effects of infanticide on others than to the intrinsic wrongness of killing an infant.” [7]
Elsewhere, Narveson makes it clear that he will not defend his arbitrary assertion that “complex personal consciousness” determines human value. “Here I have only tired to identify which sorts of features we think qualify an entity for rights, and not to develop a theory of why those are good reasons for attributing rights to the entities that happen to have them (namely, us).” [8] If Narveson won’t argue for his view, why should the reader accept it? How, exactly, does he expect the reader to arrive at the conclusion that the fetus is not a subject of rights?
Despite all his hedging, Narveson ultimately cannot escape the premise of his own argument. As Francis Beckwith points out, “It is not clear why he considers infanticide a ‘problem.’ After all, if his premises--which he maintains are true--lead him to the belief that newborns are not entitled to protection, then that entailment, that belief, is true.” One could, Beckwith continues, “turn the tables on Narveson with the following: ‘Since your premises do lead to infanticide--and you admit it’s a problem--then your premises must flawed. Consequently, your reasons for allowing abortion are not what reason requires.’” [9]
[1] Article is posted on Narveson’s website at http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~jnarveso/abortion.htm
[2] While not talking directly of Narveson, Patrick Lee develops this either/or theme in his speech, “Human Embryos and Fetuses are Subjects of Rights, the Olaf Tollefsen Lecture, November 14, 2002: humanembryos.htm
[3]Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997) pp. 169-171.
[4] The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (Rutgers University Press, 1953) vol. II, p. 222.
[5] Robert P. George, “Cloning Addendum,” National Review on-Line, July 15, 2002; Patrick Lee, “Human Embryos and Fetuses are Subjects of Rights.” (See note #2 above.)
[6] E. Lenoski, "Translating injury data into preventive health care services: Physical child abuse," Dept. of Pediatrics, University of Southern California, unpublished, 1976, cited in Stephen M. Krason, Abortion: Politics Morality, and the Constitution (Lanham, MD: University Press in America, 1984) p. 320; Vincent Fontana, Somewhere a Child is Crying ( New York: Macmillan, 1973), pp. 239-40; Philip Ney, M.D., "Relationship between Abortion and Child Abuse," Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 24:610, 1979.
[7] Singer, p. 173.
[8] Narveson, Moral Matters, 2nd edition (Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 1993), chapter 9. Emphasis added.
[9] Beckwith provided this quote in a private correspondence with the author.
6
Our Mission
Stand to Reason trains Christians to think more clearly about their faith and to make an even-handed, incisive, yet gracious defense for classical Christianity and classical Christian values in the public square.
Our Strategy
Stand to Reason has a strategy to change the world God gives us access to. Our plan has six parts, and we're working our plan very intentionally.
Radio
Self-directed Training Curricula
Public Speaking and Seminars
Publications
Cyberspace
Outposts
Stand to Reason's website includes over 300 free commentaries on issues like abortion, homosexuality, the reliability of the Bible, the deity of Christ, and more. Visit str.org to research your next school assignment, small group topic, or for personal enrichment and study.
Tina Thompson, Product Manager
Stand to Reason - Equipping Ambassadors for Christ in knowledge, wisdom, and
character.
To place an order call 1-800-2-REASON or visit www.str.org.
Related Resources:
Pro-Life 101: A Step-by-Step Guide to Making Your Case Persuasively (http://www.str.org/cgi-bin/shop.pl/task=detail/SID=1011222500/item=BK163)
Making Abortion Unthinkable Video Set (http://www.str.org/cgi-bin/shop.pl/task=detail/SID=1011222500/item=VT110)
300
Notice - The featuring of a particular ministry does not constitute endorsement of every single item or point of view published by said ministry by each and every member of TheologyWeb leadership. We strive to have a varied cross-section of representations of differing opinions on secondary Christian issues. The only requirement for the featuring of a particular ministry is that said ministry subscribes to the essentials artictulated in the TheologyWeb statement of faith found here in our Mission Statement (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/mission/)