Ok, so, I set up this blog almost a
year ago, intending to post regularly and I've let the year go by and
posted nothing. I apologise.God willing, it's my hope that I'll be
able to get into a routine of at least semi-regular posting, but you
never know.
What finally spurred me back into the
attempt to blog was reading this article by Ms. Mary Elizabeth
Williams. On one level, I have to congratulate Ms. Williams, like
Peter Singer, she has at least this to be said for her, she is a lot
more consistent than many on her side of the political divide.
However much I disagree with her, I have to at least congratulate her
for her honesty in facing up to the rather obvious fact that a foetus
is a life, indeed a human life.
In attempting to reconcile this
acknowledgement with her “pro-choice” position, she argues that
all life is not equally valuable and that the life of the mother is
more important than the life of the foetus she carries.
My first thought in response to this
was that, if you are going to argue for the greater value of one life
over another, you should seek to lay out in detail a criterion by
which such value will be determined; Ms. Williams never really does
this, or even, so far as I can see, attempts to do so. This matters.
Let me offer a hypothetical scenario.
Imagine a person who is working in a job of considerable national
importance; let's further imagine that this person has a large family
to support. Now, let us further suppose this person is in need of a
heart transplant and is facing death soon if a compatible donor is
not found and that the normal sources have failed to find a match. To
add to this, let's imagine that a person with a compatible heart has
been identified; he or she is unemployed, no job prospects and no
close family.
Would Ms. Williams decide the second
persons life was worth less than the first and support putting him or
her to death (painlessly of course) so this his or her heart can be
harvested? I feel reasonably confident she would not, but, having
told us that lives are not of equal value, I doubt she could
consistently defend this position.
My second thought was along a different
line. Even if we accept that the life of the mother is more valuable
than the life she carries, that is still not a justification for
abortion in most cases. I can understand (though I would still
disagree with) a view that says that the life of the mother is more
valuable than that of her child and therefore abortion must be
allowed where continuing the pregnancy would threaten the health of
the mother. It must be noted, however, that these are a very small
minority of pregnancies. If a woman does not feel she can be a
mother, there is an alternative open. In any developed country I'm
aware of (certainly in Australia) the number of couples wanting to
adopt a child is far larger than the number of children available to
be adopted. Under such circumstances, even if it could be established
that a woman's life is more valuable than the life she carries, that
would justify abortion in only a small number of cases. To justify
the rest, you would essentially have to show that the life of the
foetus is less valuable than nine months of inconvenience to the
woman in question.
In short, Ms. Williams is to be
congratulated for her willingness to face up to the reality that her
“pro-choice” position involves ending human lives. Her attempts
to justify this, however, simply will not stand up.
