In one of Abraham Lincoln's 1860 speeches there is a passage that pours cool scorn on those who claim to think that slavery is wrong, but "denounce all attempts to restrain it": "You will not let us do a single thing as if it was wrong; there is no place where you will allow it to be even called wrong! . . . We must not call it wrong in politics because that is bringing morality into politics, and we must not call it wrong in the pulpit because that is bringing politics into religion. . . . And there is no single place, according to you, where this wrong thing can properly be called wrong."

It is not my intention to argue for any view about whether abortion and slavery are precise moral equivalents; but Lincoln's words do powerfully suggest, I think, certain parallels in the debates over the issues. As Lincoln's comment suggests, it is the nexus of religion and politics that most clouds our thinking. In an effort to let in some sunlight I will sketch the case against abortion—more precisely, for a prohibition on abortion and other attacks on nascent human life. I will respond to some common objections to this case. And then I will make arguments about the arguments I will just have finished making: that they do not imply theological commitments; that accepting and acting on them neither violates anyone's religious freedom nor undermines the separation of church and state, in any sense of that phrase worth worrying about.

The case against abortion—and also against research that destroys human embryos—begins with our beginnings: Each of us was once an embryo. When we were at that stage of development, we were living human organisms. The formation of the embryo marks the beginning of a new human life: a new and complete organism that belongs to the human species. Embryology textbooks say so, with no glimmer of uncertainty or ambiguity.

That new organism is alive rather than dead or inanimate. It is human rather than a member of some other species. It is an organism distinct from all others rather than a functional part of a larger organism, the way a kidney is part of a larger organism. It maintains its own organic unity over time. It directs its own development, according to its genetic template, through the embryonic, fetal, and subsequent stages. Such terms as "blastocyst," "adolescent," and "newborn" denote different stages of development in a being of the same type, not different types of beings—even if the parents of adolescents are sometimes tempted to disagree. At each of our earlier stages of life, we have been, as we are now, whole living members of the species Homo sapiens.

So the question that we need to answer is: Do all beings of this type—that is, whole living members of the human species—have a right not to be killed, simply because they are human beings? The answer, I believe, is yes. If human beings have intrinsic dignity and worth, then they have this dignity and worth simply because they are human beings (and as such, possessors of a rational nature). It follows that all human beings have this dignity and worth. They are equal in the fundamental rights that attach to being human. These rights—and to have any rights at all must be to have the right not to be killed—cannot depend on particular qualities that some human beings have and others do not. They cannot depend on race, or age, or sex; nor can they depend on stage of development, or location, or condition of dependency.

Most people believe these things, although they may not accept all their implications. But there is a contrary view. This view holds that there are no "human rights" in the sense of rights that come simply from being human. Rather, some human organisms have basic rights because of qualities that they, in particular, happen to have; and those human beings who do not have these qualities are not persons with rights.

So, for example, some people take the view that human beings become "persons," and acquire rights, only when they acquire the capacity for abstract mental functioning, and cease to be persons with rights when they lose this capacity. If "capacity" is taken to mean immediately exercisable capacity (as it usually is on this view), then abortion is permissible.

There are, however, difficulties with this view. I will list three.

First: The capacity for abstract mental functioning varies continuously. But it is impossible to identify, without arbitrariness, the minimum level one must have to enjoy rights. It is also impossible to explain why people who have more of the quality should not be regarded as greater in worth, dignity, and rights than people who have less of it. (This is true, and necessarily true, of any of the qualities generally proposed as the conditions of worth: self-awareness, rich interactions with others, the ability to experience pain and pleasure, etc.) The notion that all human beings are created equal becomes a self-evident lie.

Second: This arbitrariness makes it impossible to confine the category of lives deemed unworthy of protection to the unborn and the persistently vegetative. Newborns, for example, do not have the ability to perform abstract mental functions, either, as Peter Singer never tires of reminding us. People who are asleep or in a coma, even a reversible one, lack the immediately exercisable capacity for abstract mental functioning.

Third: Treating a difference of quantity as morally decisive requires treating a difference of kind as irrelevant. There is a radical difference that separates both an adult human being and a human fetus, on the one hand, from both a kitten and a sperm cell on the other. The first two are complete, living human organisms and the second two are not. To allow the deliberate killing of a human fetus ignores that basic difference while making a difference of degree—the adult's greater age and development of his capacities—the basis of a radical difference in treatment. To draw distinctions in this way is to violate the most basic canons of justice.

Abortion is thus not just wrong and immoral; it is unjust and a violation of rights. For that reason it is untenable to hold that it is wrong but should not be proscribed by law but merely, at most, discouraged. The only ground for considering abortion immoral is that it is the unjust taking of a human life; and to prevent such grave injustices is one of the principal justifications for the existence of governments. Indeed, for the law to allow abortion is itself an injustice, in just the same way that it would be unjust for the law to allow homicide to be committed against redheads.

I cannot improve on the treatment of this question by Princeton professor of politics Robert George. Commenting on former New York governor Mario Cuomo's defense of the "personally opposed" position, he writes:

Of course, it is possible for a person wielding public power to use that power to establish or preserve a legal right to abortion and even to provide public money for it while at the same time not wanting or willing anyone to exercise that right. But this does not get Cuomo off the hook. For someone who acts to protect legal abortion necessarily wills that abortion's unborn victims be denied the elementary legal protections against deliberate homicide that one favors for oneself and those whom one considers to be worthy of the law's protection. Thus one violates the most basic precept of normative social and political theory, the Golden Rule. One divides humanity into two classes: those whom one is willing to admit to the community of the commonly protected and those whom one wills to be excluded from it. By exposing members of the disfavored class to lethal violence, one deeply implicates oneself in the injustice of killing them—even if one sincerely hopes that no woman will act on her right to choose abortion. The goodness of what one hopes for does not redeem the evil of what one wills.

I would add that the injustice of the law would persist even if nobody actually took advantage of it, just as in my example legal impunity for killing redheads would be gravely unjust even if nobody hunted them down. The pro-life movement's slogan that every life should be welcomed in life and protected in law is a response to its recognition of a dual injustice. To effectuate that response requires not only cultural change but government action, and indeed requires both of them to reinforce each other.

The National Day of Prayer Task Force fosters widespread citizen participation in National Day of Prayer activities across the nation

The National Day of Prayer is an annual observance held on the first Thursday of May, inviting people of all faiths to pray for the nation. It was created in 1952 by a joint resolution of the United States Congress, and signed into law by President Harry S. Truman. Our Task Force is a privately funded organization whose purpose is to encourage participation on the National Day of Prayer. It exists to communicate with every individual the need for personal repentance and prayer, to create appropriate materials, and to mobilize the Christian community to intercede for America’s leaders and its families. The Task Force represents a Judeo Christian expression of the national observance, based on our understanding that this country was birthed in prayer and in reverence for the God of the Bible.

http://nationaldayofprayer.org/about/history/

Wisconsin District court Judge Barbara Crabb claims the National Day of Prayer violates the First Amendment

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2010/0415/Federal-judge-National-Day-of-Prayer-is-unconstitutional

Princeton’s Peter Singer claims we achieve “personhood” through acquiring characteristics.

Peter Singer is the Princeton bioethicist who first broke into the public's consciousness more than thirty years ago with Animal Liberation, a book in which he claimed that granting human beings special privileges based on being human is "speciesist"—discrimination against animals.

Instead of society being human centric, he asserted that the lives and well-being of animals deserve "equal consideration" with those of humans.

Singer's intent was (and is) to destroy human exceptionalism—the belief that human life matters morally simply because it is human—and replace it with a "quality of life" ethic in which being a "person" rather than a human is what matters morally.

Personhood status would be earned by possessing minimal cognitive capacities such as being self aware over time. This means, Singer wrote in Practical Ethics, that "some members of other species are persons: some members of our own species are not." The latter category includes the unborn, infants, people with catastrophic cognitive impairments.

One consequence of replacing the sanctity/equality of human life with the "quality of life" ethic would be the destruction of universal human rights.

lifenews.com

http://www.lifenews.com/bio2518.html

Staunch secularist, Christopher Hitchens, affirms the notion of "unborn child" as foundational to his pro-life stance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcYv9hAkenI

Princeton’s Robert George counters Singer, believing humans have intrinsic dignity and worth.

"Conventional stem-cell harvesting is quieter but bolder. It’s deliberate and industrial, not accidental and personal. In combination with cloning, it entails the mass production, exploitation and destruction of human embryos. Yet its victims don’t look human. You can’t protest outside a fertility clinic waving a picture of a blastocyst. You have to explain what it is and why people should care about it.

This is the task Robert George and Christopher Tollefsen undertake in “Embryo.” To reach a secular and skeptical public, they avoid religion and stake their case on science. George, a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton and a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, and Tollefsen, a philosopher at the University of South Carolina, locate humanity not in a soul but in a biological program. “To be a complete human organism,” they write, “an entity must possess a developmental program (including both its DNA and epigenetic factors) oriented toward developing a brain and central nervous system.” The program begins at conception; therefore, so does personhood.

The argument’s absolutism is crucial. In the last three months, scientists have announced two ways to get stem cells without killing embryos. One method is to extract a single cell from the very early embryo. The other is to reprogram adult cells to make them embryonic. But if embryos are morally equal to people, then the first method violates patient consent and the second leaves unresolved crises in embryo research and in vitro fertilization. George and Tollefsen would ban research that poses even slight risks to an embryo’s health. They would abolish production of spare I.V.F. embryos and require every fertilized embryo to be transferred to a womb.

The argument is brave but risky. Shifting the pro-life case from religion to science puts it at the mercy of scientific discovery, with all the attendant surprises. Indeed, the human program turns out to be quite complicated. It discredits the authors’ absolutism.

George and Tollefsen reason that the embryo is fully human and its life therefore inviolable, because its program is self-contained. “Nothing extrinsic to the developing organism itself acts on it to produce a new character or new direction of growth,” they write. The embryo has all the “structures necessary for providing the new individual with a suitable environment and adequate nutrition.” It can “get itself to the uterus,” “burrow” into the uterine wall and begin “taking in nourishment” from “a congenial environment.”

Nobody with a womb would describe pregnancy this way. The “congenial environment” is a woman. The embryo doesn’t “get itself” around her like some Horatio Alger hero. Her body sustains it, guides it and affects its direction of growth. Mother and child are a system.

While quoting from embryology textbooks, the authors omit passages that confound their bootstrap theory. One such passage reports that “the early embryo and the female reproductive tract influence one another” as the embryo is “being transported” to the uterus. Another observes that “implantation requires a high degree of preparation and coordination by both the embryo and the endometrium” — preparation that begins, on the womb’s part, well before conception. Maternal factors don’t just facilitate the embryo’s program; they direct it. Maternal RNA guides the embryo’s early organization. Later, factors in the womb apparently influence traits like sexual orientation.

Life’s program precedes, succeeds and transcends the individual. Hence the old riddle of which came first, the chicken or the egg. Everything overlaps. Within two weeks of conception, a female embryo’s primordial germ cells begin the assembly of her future children. Her primary oocytes are complete at birth."

New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/books/review/Saletan-t.html

Peter Singer's Great Ape Project that seeks to create a "moral community of equals" between human beings and chimpanzees, gorillas, and other primates, is now the public policy of Spain.

http://www.tothesource.org/4_29_2009/4_29_2009.htm

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