Alexis de Tocqueville was a French historian with a great interest in and fondness for the United States. He published his masterpiece, Democracy in America, in 1835 following his extensive travels and investigation of the country. In one chapter, he outlines the (then) present state and likely future of each of three races inhabiting the continent- whites, blacks, and Indians.
According to his summary, blacks were slaves. They were unfree and coerced into working for others. Whites, on the other hand, were middle class. They were free (like aristocrats), but nevertheless had to work (like slaves). Finally, the Indians were aristocrats. They were akin to the European nobility, since they looked with disdain on manual labor and took pride in their focus upon activities they deemed nobler, such as hunting and combat (1). Or at any rate, this is the portrait Tocqueville paints.
Tocqueville notes an important exception to this picture, however: southern whites had an aristocratic culture. They marginalized the value of productive work, instead favoring fighting and hunting- just as medieval nobles did. Nevertheless, the southerner wished to enjoy the trappings of modern life. Luxuries were generally acquired by trading with the North and Europe. Consequently, far from being the independently-spirited farmers Jefferson hoped would preserve liberty, the landed class was dependent upon the cities and maintained its standard of living through the work of slaves.
A normal sense of justice rebels against such a state of affairs. How then, was this subjugation justified? There were five general sorts of arguments.
1. First, there were positive goods in the southern way of life- goods that would have been threatened by the disappearance of slavery. This way of life is often poorly defined, both by its proponents and detractors. Undoubtedly, however, it included an ethic that was inspired by the classical Roman stoics, especially Cicero and Marcus Aurelius. The southern land owning class saw itself as embodying and propagating classical virtues. Many of these virtues- notably andreia (courage) and humanitas (a virtue that aids in rhetoric, is inseparable from honesty, and comes from studying 'good letters')- are undermined by modern forms of economic and social life, in which lesser, mediocre virtues, such as timeliness, are of greater practical importance.
The South wished to maintain a pre-modern way of life, but without giving up a modern standard of living. The only way to achieve this end was through the subjugation of a slave class, who would carry out productive work. The resulting economic order benefited, not only the slave-holders who were most free to embody Stoic virtue, but also the majority of whites who did not own slaves, but were still 1. kept from the bottom of the social ladder and elevated over an entire race, 2. made safe from the possible violence of an insurrection, and 3. allowed to live in a moral order they largely preferred.
2. A second important argument for slavery apologists was that, if freed, the very large number of slaves would be at liberty to revolt effectively: they could gather at will, engage in free political speech, accumulate arms, etc. It was expected that, if slavery ended, grave harm would be inflicted upon whites. In the eyes of many southerners, this was a matter of life and death.
3. A third argument (which almost contradicts the second) was that blacks benefited from slavery. This claim was often premised on ideologically racist notions that will be discussed later. It was also premised on the idea that the labor and conditions on a plantation were more humane than those endured by workers in the north. To this, abolitionists retorted how strange it is no white man tries to make himself a slave.
4. A fourth argument was that invoking moral claims against slavery is inappropriate, since morality ought to be separated from politics, at least with respect to such a divisive issue. This was the position of Senator Stephen Douglas. In his September 16th Wooster speech, he declared that no "tribunal on earth can decide the question of the morality of slavery or any other institution. I deal with slavery as a political question involving questions of public policy."
Such a view runs clean contrary to pre-modern ethics, and especially Stoic morals. In classical Greece and Rome, political treatises were always moral treatises. For Cicero, the laws of a nation have legitimacy only if they concur with a universally binding, natural moral law. Every policy question is, at heart, a moral question.
So the fourth argument is in tension with the first rationalization for slavery that was mentioned, since the slavery apologist abandons the classical understanding of politics. The idea that politics is about resolving disputes in a morally neutral way is completely modern and incompatible with classical notions of virtue.
Of course, those who try to separate morality from politics never really succeed in doing so. Instead, they re-moralize the law with a newfangled morality. They introduce into law the "ethics of complacency," as Chantal Delsol has called it. According to this ethic, not being concerned with the moral decisions of one's neighbor (and not troubling them about it) is among the noblest virtues. Complacency about the surrounding moral order is confused with tolerance and justified in the name of tranquility and brotherhood among citizens, as well as commerce.
5. There is one final contradiction to throw into this pot of rationalizations. The political rights of white men were justified by a moral claim: that they have equal natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It was denied, however, that blacks enjoy equal inherent dignity and equal natural rights. Assertions about natural rights are claims about right and wrong, good and evil. To say x is a natural right is, in part, to say I have wronged my neighbor if I deprive him of x. Thus, claims about morality animated the political discourse of slavery apologists, even of those who claimed to remove ethics from slave law.
This argument does contradict the fourth, but in practice they were used in tandem. Only by denying that blacks have equal natural rights could their legal rights become a merely political matter. We see an example of this fifth argument in the Lincoln-Douglas debates, in which Douglas declares:
"In his [Lincoln's] Chicago speech he says, in so many words, that it [the Declaration of Independence] includes the negroes, that they were endowed by the Almighty with the right of equality with the white man, and therefore that that right is divine—a right under the higher law; that the law of God makes them equal to the white man, and therefore that the law of the white man cannot deprive them of that right. This is Mr. Lincoln’s argument. He is conscientious in his belief. I do not question his sincerity; I do not doubt that he, in his conscience, believes that the Almighty made the negro equal to the white man. He thinks that the negro is his brother. I do not think that the negro is any kin of mine at all. And here is the difference between us. I believe that the Declaration of Independence, in the words “all men are created equal,” was intended to allude only to the people of the United States, to men of European birth or descent, being white men; that they were created equal..."
This metaphysical claim underlies Douglas' ethic of complacency, which he elsewhere manifests in the debates. He is not willing to declare it good or evil that a state denies citizenship to blacks. These differences are called a "matter of taste." With respect to each state, "It is their business." He is sure it is bad, however, for a state to "carry the doctrine outside of it and propose to interfere..." Douglas has "no disposition to quarrel" with persons of another state about the legal status of blacks.
Now I want to summarize the five parallel arguments abortion apologists offer.
1. The defender of abortion rights argues there are many positive goods in contemporary life that would be threatened if abortion were illegal. For them, these primarily are: 1. complete sexual freedom, and 2. complete freedom to pursue success, however defined. Without access to abortion, the exercise of either of these freedoms can place constraints on the other.
The pro-choicer falls into an age old temptation: the wish to impose the costs of one's choices on others. This perennial problem arises in innumerable forms. It is the desire to make a quasi-utopia, even at the cost of exclusion or exploitation, instead of accepting the ordinary consequences of one's decisions. The South wished to enjoy abundant leisure and abundant wealth. It was unwilling to adopt the work ethic of the north, or to accept a standard of living commensurate with its own work ethic. It's solution was to deprive blacks of both leisure and wealth.
In our own day, production that is more exploitative of workers and destructive to the environment is often outsourced to the Third World for the same reason. We cannot otherwise maintain our current standard of living, so our society tolerates such things. We also wish to benefit from prodigious government spending, but we do not burden ourselves with paying the whole cost of these benefits. Instead, we impoverish future generations who will bear heavier debts without receiving the same benefits we currently enjoy. This is done consciously and willfully, because we cannot bear the thought of suffering for posterity.
Likewise, very many contemporary people are not willing to uphold and practice traditional sexual purity, and are not willing to seriously curtail their pursuit of worldly success. Therefore, countless offspring are killed through violence: punctured, poisoned, dismembered, and perhaps even left to die on a cold table while others ignore them. This is all done so we can live as we please. Abortion is foundational to the modern sexual order, just as slavery was to the southern economic order.
2. A second argument is that, if abortion were outlawed, then huge numbers of women would die in dangerous, illegal abortions. This claim does not stand up to empirical scrutiny. It is true that, prior to the advent of penicillin, "back-alley" abortions (which, in reality, generally occurred in doctors' offices) led to fatal infections for many women. But things have changed substantially as medicine has advanced. In 1972, abortion was illegal in the majority of states. The CDC reported that 88 women died from abortion complications that year, including 39 who died from illegal abortions. Given the current state of medicine, the banning of abortion nationwide could be expected to lead to fewer deaths than the 39 that took place in 1972 (one year before Roe v Wade). Defending life is of the utmost importance for public policy. But this is also true of the lives of nearly 1 million fetuses who are killed in abortion each year.
Like the slavery apologist, the pro-choicer is committed to defending mass violence against the innocent in the very name of safety.
3. The defenders of slavery claimed the South's "peculiar institution" was actually compassionate to blacks. It preserved them from harsher conditions and a degree of liberty for which they were allegedly unsuited. Abortion apologists make a similarly perverse case. Abortion, we are told, is an act of kindness to the unborn. It is evidently better to be dead than to be poor, or adopted, or to have Down Syndrome. This, at any rate, is what we tell ourselves.
But it takes little moral perception to see that, as a matter of fact, blacks were enslaved in order to unfairly benefit whites, not for the sake of benefiting blacks. Likewise, it is quite clear that abortion is defended, not so much because we cannot stand the thought of a child growing up poor, but because we cannot stand the thought of a poor person being forced to endure parenthood, or needing to give up their child to foster or adoptive care, or of anyone having to raise a child with Down Syndrome.
And even if sincere compassion for the unborn is a part of one's rationale for abortion, one must admit this is peculiar. We are speaking, after all, about an act of violence that is directly, willfully carried out against the innocent: bodily destruction through instruments of death. How far we have fallen: we see compassion in the killing of millions of innocents.
4. Defenders of abortion posit we should separate law from ethics. "You can't legislate morality" is a popular saying. There are a few problems with this. The first is that, like the slavery apologist, the pro-choicer really interjects their own moral theory into law. This is why they respond to restrictions on abortion with moral indignation.
Second, the attempted separation of morality from law, far from preserving freedom, is a dire threat to it. Tyranny just is government without due moral constraint.
5. Finally, like the defender of slavery, the pro-choicer defends his description of abortion as "not a moral issue" by making a claim about morality. He asserts the fetus has little or no moral worth. The fetus is bereft of natural rights, or at least those rights that would preclude it from being killed at will. The abortion apologist is forced to posit a vast inequality between 1. an infant who has just been born and 2. a fetus who will be born tomorrow. This difference in dignity justifies a difference in treatment.
Much like the defenders of slavery, pro-choicers tie themselves into logical pretzels to justify this way of thinking. No incoherence is wild enough to deter them.
The fetus is not alive, they may say. To this, I reply that if single-celled organisms are alive, then surely an organism with a beating heart and brain waves is very much alive.
"Well of course the fetus is alive," the retort comes, "but it is not human." To this, I point out that "fetus" demarcates a life-stage, not a difference in species. This is not an opinion. This is a point of fact- a fact that is readily conceded in the discussion of any other type of animal, and even of human beings if abortion is not the topic of discussion. I would also point out a newly fertilized zygote is likewise in a different life-stage, not a different species, from ourselves.
"You know what I mean. The fetus is human, it is homo sapien, but not a person. It does not have inalienable rights." The pro-choicer is in the awkward position of claiming there are humans who are not persons. At this point, they find themselves in a cohort of the monsters of modernity- and not in an incidental respect, but precisely in that belief most central to their justifying mass homicide or chattel enslavement.
They also cannot offer a respectable reason for not excluding additional groups of humans from personhood. After all, why are fetuses so excluded? Is it because they are dependent? But all children are heavily dependent, and even adults depend on others to a very great extent. Does our personhood come in degrees, and is it determined by our level of dependence?
Or perhaps personhood is a function of blobbiness. A "blob" of cells is not a person, but you and I are. To this, I reply that each of our bodies are blobs of cells. Do we become more or less a person, depending on how well-defined our body shape is? Does this sliding scale of personhood take into account bodily defects? And why should a well-defined body shape confer upon me the right to life? What does one thing have to do with the other? (Never mind that surgical abortions occur well after any plausibly defined "blob of cells" phase of human life).
Or maybe personhood comes from being wanted. After all, abortion apologists frequently act as if there is a world of difference between an unborn child who is wanted, and one who is not. To kill the one is heinous; to kill the other is just fine. But many children and adults are unwanted by others. Are they non-persons? Are we lesser in our personhood, depending on how unwanted we are?
Or maybe fetuses are not persons because they cannot exercise rationality. But neither can infants, or the insane, or the comatose.
Invariably, the explanation as to why fetuses are not persons is ad-hoc. The procedure the pro-choicer follows is not to investigate the nature of fetuses, conclude they are non-persons, and then say abortion is justified. Rather, they set out to defend the legality of abortion, and then think of reasons fetuses are not persons. If you persuade them one reason does not work, they look for another. In the meantime, each reason offered denies or gravely undermines the personhood of vast swathes of humanity.
Finally, if the pro-choicer concedes fetuses are alive, human, and persons, they still defend abortion on the grounds it is justified killing. After all, even persons can sometimes be justifiably killed.
But this turns out to be an even more dangerous line of argument. Typically, a person who takes this tact believes that all, or virtually all, abortions are justified. Consider then, the implications. If fetuses are persons who can be justifiably killed for financial reasons, emotional health, personal freedom, or success, it thereby logically follows these are legitimate reasons for killing persons. If that is the case then, frankly, many people can justifiably kill their family, friends, or co-workers.
Before closing, I want to note that pro-lifers often underestimate how much change we are asking of society. Like the abolitionists, we are demanding a change in law so radical, it can only succeed if an entire way of life is largely abandoned. Laws that respect the lives of the unborn are only sustainable, in the long run, in a culture of life. Such a culture is almost necessarily a culture of self-control, of modesty, of care, and of reverence. To forge such a way of life requires countless small acts of virtue and of encouragement, and many heroic acts of love on the part of very many persons, especially parents. This is, however, the right course. The only alternative is a culture in which life itself is less valued than enjoyment and gain, and where countless perish so we can live as we please.
(1) Here I am following a summary by Peter Augustine Lawler, found at First Principles http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/articles.aspx?article=1477. The full text of the final chapter of Democracy in America is available here http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/detoc/1_ch18.htm.
