Escape from the Moral Dimension

Ever since Barack Obama said in the Compulsion Forum that there’s a “moral dimension” to abortion, some of us in the Atheosphere have been arguing about morality. Although I hate like hell to get involved in philosophical masturbation (I much prefer the physical kind), I can’t resist an opportunity to piss off some of my fellow atheists. So here, in brief, are some random thoughts about morality, numbered for the convenience of commenters.

1. For an issue to have a moral dimension, there must be some question of “what’s right?” and “what’s wrong?” Obviously, not all issues have such a dimension. However, people who love judging others can invent moral dilemmas where they don’t exist. That doesn’t mean the rest of us have to blindly accept those issues as posing moral questions. Example: whether or not to eat meat is a moral issue for some vegetarians. It isn’t for me, though, no matter how much they protest. I don’t see any rightness or wrongness to argue about. If I engage in a debate about whether or not it’s moral to indulge in a slice of meatloaf, I’m validating the premise that there is a right and a wrong at issue. I’m not willing to make that concession.


2. The negative version of the Golden Rule — don’t do to anybody else what you wouldn’t want them to do to you — may be evolutionarily hardwired into our brains. Even if it isn’t, it makes rational sense. For me, the Golden Rule means: Don’t harm anyone. Don’t steal. Don’t cheat. Don’t use physical or psychological threats to impose your ideas on others. Don’t lie. But even those most basic moral precepts aren’t accepted as universals. Cultures throughout history, and all over the globe, have found ways to justify violating those simple rules. Some people in the Atheosphere, in fact, have actually defended polticians’ lying as “that’s what you have to do to get elected.” Maybe so, but it’s immoral nonetheless.


3. Jumping off from the Golden Rule: my idea of morality is avoiding those actions that are immoral. An action that poses a moral problem is either moral (what’s right) or immoral (what’s wrong). One may (and I do) take the position that the morality scale is not a line with gradations of rightness and wrongness. Neutral actions (those that don’t pose moral questions) and right actions are equivalent; we’re not collecting points for an afterlife. In other words, if one is not immoral, one is automatically behaving “morally.”


4. It follows, therefore, that there’s no such thing as moral “high ground” or “low ground.” Morality is not terrain. Some actions, as I’ve said, are off the map entirely, neither right nor wrong. Other actions seem to be right; they’re conscious decisions not to violate the Golden Rule. Immoral actions are all those things we do or say that are “wrong,” that do break the Golden Rule. Sometimes, immoralities have to be given relative weight: Which one is less “wrong” under the circumstances. That’s why waging war, for instance, is always immoral, but may be less so, under some conditions, than not waging war. So-called white lies are always immoral, but may be less so, under some conditions, than telling the truth.


5. Freethinkers realize that, humans being the flawed creatures we are, ideas about morality are relative. Each person has to think through his or her own code. That means constantly debating within yourself about which immoralities are less bad than others when two “rules” conflict. Is killing ever an option if it could mean saving others? Is stealing by the government OK if it redistributes wealth to the neediest? Is it all right to force your ideas on others when those ideas might build a better world? For atheists, deciding what is and isn’t immoral is, ultimately — and unfortunately — a personal choice.


6. Religionists, on the other hand, think that morals are absolute, dictated from on high. They’re things that you should do in addition to things that you shouldn’t. Thus, the onerous positive version of the Golden Rule: Do unto others.... In fact, I’d argue that the religionists’ version of the Golden Rule sees morality through a lens held in the wrong direction. In the version of morality I’ve been writing about, being moral is the natural state of humans; one has to take specific wrong actions to be immoral. In the god-driven version of morality, being immoral is the natural state of humans; one has to take specific right actions to be moral. If you don’t, you’re eternally fucked. But are morals right because a god says they are, or does the god say they are because they’re right? Can you say “Euthyphro”? In reality, of course, the various “holy” books contain so many vague, conflicting, or despicable “morals,” that, again, a workable, humane code comes down to a personal choice. But in the religious version, the godpusher feels justified in butting into others’ lives, telling people what they must do as well as what they mustn’t.


7. The word “moral” is loaded. When pious zealots use it, they always have their own warped religious teachings in mind. In debating an issue, the rest of us shouldn’t necessarily accept the word “moral” as a synonym for “right” just because someone claims that his or her position is such. Theists are quick to raise bogus moral questions where, often, there shouldn’t be any. One’s private sexual activity, for instance, is an instinct that’s outside the realm of right vs. wrong. It’s not a moral issue unless it involves force, physical or emotional. In that case, the moral dimension grows out of: Don’t harm anyone. That’s why, in my personal code, rape is immoral. Having sex with children is immoral — although I’m not sure I can define the age at which a person is no longer a child. Similarly, a so-called normal person having sex with a mentally handicapped partner may be a subject for moral discussion and examination. Incest between consenting adults, in cases where it may result in childbirth, is scientifically unwise, and, perhaps morally dubious from the potential child’s standpoint, at least in the medical sense; where there’s no threat of pregnancy, I don’t see how morals come into the picture. The stricture against multiple husbands and wives is a societal convenience, but not a moral issue. Gay sex is not a moral issue, whatsoever. And sex between unmarried heterosexuals is, of course, not questionable at all on moral grounds.


8. Societies codify their sense of morality through laws. Those laws, in democratic countries, are majoritarian. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone agrees with the “morals” being enforced, or even whether there really are any valid moral arguments involved. Freethinkers should refuse to let woo-ists dictate the terms of the national dialogue.


9. That’s why abortion — at least in the early stages of the pregnancy — is not a moral issue. In fact, for those of us who think there may indeed be a moral issue once the fetus has attained some level of brain function, or “consciousness,” let’s use two different terms for abortion instead of just one. I hope someone can come up with better terms than I have, but for the sake of this essay, let’s call removal of the fetal cells at the preconscious stage a “procedural pregnopause” or an “amniectomy.” Let’s call a so-called “late-term abortion” a “surgical miscarriage.” I’ll happily grant moral ambiguity to the question of whether or not to have a surgical miscarriage. But for atheists, for whom presupposing a soul is unthinkable, the procedural pregnopause has no moral dimension at all; there’s no right vs. wrong for those of us who don’t give credence to the idea that a magical spiritual spark is lit at conception. The only moral question that exists insofar as a procedural pregnopause: Is it right or wrong to force a woman to have a child? That’s not a moral question at all unless and until theocrats try to use physical or psychological threats to impose their ideas on others.


10. One last point: Ideas about the evolutionary and historical development of morality may be colored by one’s position on the authoritarian/libertarian scale. For an authoritarian, morality arises from a system that imposes the greatest sense of community. People should be encouraged to act together for the good of the species. For a libertarian like me (please do note the lowercase L) morality arises from a system that imposes the fewest constraints. People should, essentially, be free to do whatever they want unless their actions impinge on the freedom of others.

OK, readers, feel free to weigh in. But remember: There’s no moral dimension to commenting.

Exploded Women

Last year, linguist Geoffrey Nunberg published a book called Talking Right, the main argument of which was, essentially, that Republicans have seized control of the language. He discusses, among many other points, the fact that the word “values” has become a catchall used by conservatives to mean “morals.”

When Democrats try to push their own so-called “values” agenda, the term doesn’t have the same force. Why? Because liberals tend to use the word when referring to progressive domestic issues, like universal health care, and minimum-wage hikes, and equal opportunity employment. Economics are important to everyone, but a large segment of the American electorate likes to believe that they’ll always choose morals over money. They don’t, of course, but they do in the voting booth. The right-wing owns “values.”

I thought about Nunberg’s book tonight while I was having dinner with a few old friends, all Roman Catholics. My buddies are pretty well resigned to the idea that I’m never going to find their Jesus; they’ve long since given up trying to get me to “think about it.” Likewise, I’ve thrown in the towel on asking them to offer me even the smallest proofs to support their superstitions. Basically, we discuss beer, cigars, and — if available — scantily-clad waitresses. (Digression: I asked our server, only half-kiddingly, “Do you object to being exploited?” and received the mouth-shutting reply, “I ain’ bein’ exploded, Hon. I jes’ dress this way ‘cause it’s parta my job.”)

Anyway, the most religiously zealous of my pals — I’ll call him Russell, because that’s his name — invariably finds some way to steer the conversation to the subject of abortion. He usually starts by asking, “Hey, atheist. I’m still pro-life. Are you still pro-abortion?”

“Well,” I say, “I wouldn’t put it exactly like that.”

“OK. Pro-choice.” He sings that “oy” vowel for a good five seconds, as if he were auditioning for a part in Fiddler on the Roof, before coming to rest on the sibilant. “Are you still pro-choi.....ce?”

Usually this question baits me into a long diatribe about women’s rights, and legislators’ usurpation of bodies that don’t belong to them. But suddenly tonight it hit me. How lame “pro-choice” — our side’s chosen term — sounds next to “pro-life.” And never mind that those people aren’t really pro-life, either on abortion rights or on so many other issues. They define themselves that way, and we, those of us who think they’re wrong about a woman’s right to choose, have to deal with that.

“Well,” I said, “I wouldn’t put it exactly in those words, either. Let’s say that I’m anti-forced-maternity.”

Our server, overhearing the last snippet of conversation as she wriggled toward our table with a pitcher of suds and a few platters of wings, said, “Hey, that don’ sound good, forced maternity. Who makes you do that?”

“Tell her, Russell,” I said to my friend.

But he didn’t.

Fetus!

HEADLINE:
SUPREME (PAPAL) COURT UPHOLDS FEDERAL BAN
ON SO-CALLED "PARTIAL-BIRTH" ABORTIONS:
“Impartial” Catholic majority votes against other justices

(to the tune of "Beat It!)
(For your singalong pleasure, download a midi file;
this site gives you several versions to choose from.)

They told her, “Don’t forget the Pope we revere.
No partial-birth abortion can be gotten here.
That thing inside your womb could become our next Scalia.”
That fetus, your fetus.

Alito says an operation’s forbid,
And Kennedy does, too. You know he ain’t no Yid.
They’ve gotta be tough, ’cause they worship that kid:
Your fetus. Hey, you gotta give birth.

Your fetus, fetus.
“Bring it ’round and have it meet us.”
’Bortions are gunky. God’s in control.
Doctors don’t matter. Cells have a soul.
Your fetus, fetus.
That fetus, fetus.

They’re out to get you if you plead with your doc.
“It ain’t about your health,” says Thomas. “That’s a crock!”
The Cath’lics are in charge, an’ your body’s in hock
To fetus, your fetus.

They really care about your embryo’s plight.
Your privacy don’t count, ’cause they have seen the light.
Judge Roberts’ Constitution says your unborn has a right.
That fetus — yeah, you’re gonna give birth!

Your fetus, fetus.
“Bring it ’round and have it meet us.”
’Bortions are gunky. God’s in control.
Doctors don’t matter. Cells have a soul.

Your fetus, fetus.
“Women's rights cannot retreat us.”
’Bortions are gunky. God's in control.
Doctors don’t matter. Cells have a soul.
Your fetus (fetus, fetus, fetus).
Fetus (fetus, fetus, fetus).

Florida's Worst Storms

The latest lie by the affright-to-lifers is the alleged rationale behind a new bill they’re trying to pass in Florida. Ostensibly, the legislation, if passed, would enable police to find and punish sexual abusers of young girls. Those who, like anti-abortionists, abuse young girls in nonsexual ways will not come under scrutiny.

SB 2546, which is still in its embryonic stage, would force healthcare providers to report to the cops whenever they found out that a girl under 16 is pregnant. If the girl reasonably chooses to have an abortion, samples of both her and the fetus’s DNA would have to be turned over to the authorities after the operation. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement would then have the job of identifying the male “culprit.”

State senator Ronda Storms, a Baptublican from the Tampa Bay area, is one of the sponsors of the bill. Thundering her support, Storms says that if a girl is “the victim of some sort of crime, then we are going to go after” the abuser. Sounds good, right? What kind of monster isn’t against child abuse?

The truth is: the state already obligates health care providers to report cases of child abuse. The new notification requirement is tied merely to the pregnant girl’s age, not to her specific circumstances. In other words, if a young pregnant woman is not yet sweet 16, the state is free to make her life really sour. Under the bill, the minute a pre-16’er is discovered to be in the family way by any medical professional, she’s ripe for governmental intervention.

Doctors and nurses will no longer be bound to keep their patient’s information confidential. On the contrary, these professionals would be compelled, under threat of losing their medical license, to report — within 24 hours of finding out — that an underage patient is pregnant. And the requirement won’t be limited strictly to physicians and their assistants: even orthodontists better brace themselves.

SB 2546 goes way beyond the typical repulsive anti-abortion legislation. A few years back, Ronda Storms, as a Hillsborough County Councilwoman, successfully spearheaded the defunding of a Planned Parenthood program to teach local teens about safe sex and pregnancy prevention. Now, what those youngsters don't know will hurt them. In the Tampa Bay area, and others like it, the new bill would be punitive. It’s clearly aimed at terrorizing teenagers of both genders who dare to abstain from abstention. Ronda Storms and her ilk are determined to enforce family values, even if they have to ruin entire families to do it.

Not surprisingly, Storms has also been a big windbag in pushing for the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment, the name of which is an out-and-out, or perhaps not-out-and-not-out, lie. The proposal should be called the Florida Gay Marriage and Substantial Equivalent Thereof Non-Recognition Amendment, since it reads. “Inasmuch as marriage is the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife, no other legal union that is treated as a marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized.” Bible thumpers like Ronda Storms want their thumping to be done in one way only.

When I looked up Ronda Storms’s bio on her member page at the Florida Senate’s Web site, I discovered that she was once on the “Value Adjustment Board.” It turns out that the VAB is simply involved in disputes between taxpayers and property assessors. But could you blame me for mistakenly thinking that it must have been a religio-fascistic organization?

Citizens of Florida should rain down letters, phone calls, and emails to Storms and her fellow Thugs for Christ. I urge everyone concerned to contact their state legislators and insist that SB 2546 be aborted.

Welcome to South Dakota, the Fetus State

The legislators of South Dakota should band together and take Jefferson’s face off Mt. Rushmore, replacing it with the bland effete puss usually used to represent Jesus. If they really get ambitious, they could scrape off the representations of the other presidents, too, and replace them with carvings of famous fetuses.

In November of 2006, the voters of South Dakota rejected—by a margin of 56% to 44%—a state law that banned abortion except to save the life of the mother. That law, deceitfully named The Women’s Health and Human Life Protection Act, had been signed the previous March by the Republican governor, Mike Rounds. Immediately, a petition to repeal the ban was circulated; it needed 16,7000 certified signatures to get on the ballot, and ultimately received more than twice that amount.

About three months ago, South Dakota's voting public spoke. Loudly.

End of story, right?

Of course not. That isn’t the way religious zealots work. A bomb—this one legislative, rather than physical—was called for. The theocrats within our country have never been the people’s representatives; they are the representatives of their odious imaginary god. The right of privacy be damned! And nowhere more so than in South Dakota, the offensive state motto of which is: “Under God, the people rule.” Maybe that should be changed to the more honest: “Under God, the rulers peep!”

For, lo!, in the state congress, the godpushers have introduced an invasive new anti-abortion bill. Okay, the pious thugs said, we heard our constitutents. Let’s allow exceptions for rape and incest, as well as to preserve the woman’s health. But how about upping the maximum penalty for a doctor’s disobeying the law? Ten years in prison, for a felony, ought to do it! (In the original bill, the maximum sentence was a far-too-lenient five years only.)

Here’s the beauty part of the new bill for those determined to ram religion down the public’s throats (or up their privates, as the case may be). The onus is on the woman and her doctor to provide DNA evidence of rape or incest. In cases of rape, a woman would have to report the crime to police within 50 days of its occurrence, and her doctor would have to confirm that she had done this. Then, the doctor would have to work with law enforcement, offering blood from the aborted fetus for the authorities to test.

The incest provision is even more outrageous. Before an abortion could be performed, a doctor would have to get the pregnant patient to agree to report the incident as a crime and to provide the identity of the penis-owner. To date, no one has suggested that a cell phone photo of the offending member must also be presented.

To summarize the bill’s provisions: most abortions in South Dakota would be verboten, in direct contradiction to the Roe v. Wade decision. Abortions would be allowed when there had been a rape or incest, but only until the 17^th week of pregnancy, and the woman and her doctor would have to jump through holy hoops. Whenever the mother’s health might be a concern, a doctor could perform an abortion, but only after obtaining a concurring opinion from a colleague in another practice. This opinion, assumedly, would be charged to the patient. After the operation, the doctor would have to submit a written statement to the department of health, explaining the circumstances that justified his or her decision to abort the fetus. Use of thumbscrews and/or the iron maiden are, apparently, optional.

And the alleged purpose of this infuriating bill? Need you ask? The legislators hope that it will ultimately result in an overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court.

You can almost hear the sounds of Antonin Scalia’s hands rubbing together in glee, and picture the anticipatory saliva drooling down Clarence Thomas’s face.

Happy Birthday, Sanity

Monday is the 34^th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, in which a Texas law banning abortions was found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Opponents of choice have always had to argue that the fetus is a person. You may find it instructive and/or fun to read the transcript of the original argument of the case, which took place on December 13, 1971. You can read even more discussion of the fetus’s personhood in the transcript of the reargument, which occurred on October 11, 1972. (The reargument was scheduled to allow Justices Rehnquist and Powell to hear what the lawyers had to say; it's clear that most of the other justices had already made up their minds.) If you have time, you might enjoy listening to Texas’s nonsensical claims by clicking the appropriate audio button on the Oyez web site.

Whether or not the fetus is a “person” could not then, and still cannot now, be considered a scientific question. It is a lexico-theological issue, over which hovers the religious concept of “soul.” In the first argument, lawyer Jay Floyd, appearing for Texas Assistant Attorney General Wade, slipped in that very word near the end of his allotted time. To their discredit, none of the justices challenged him.

In the second argument, Robert C. Flowers replaced Floyd. Early on, Flowers said “... it is the position of the state of Texas that, upon conception, we have a human being; a person within the concept of the Constitution of the United States, and that of Texas, also.”

Justice Potter Stewart jumped on this statement: “Now how should that question be decided? Is it a legal question? A constitutional question? A medical question? A philosophical question? Or a religious question? Or what is it?”

Flowers waffled by placing that decision on the shoulders of first, “the legislature,” and, ultimately, the Court. The justices let Stewart’s pointed query die a-borning. He raised it again later, but Flowers continued to pass the buck. The Court cravenly ignored the religious implications; there was not even a pregnant pause. No one on the bench pointed out that none of the framers was a fetus.

If you don’t believe in a soul, you’ll have trouble accepting the personhood of a bundle of microscopic goo. Yes, it contains human cells, the building blocks of a person. But a Lego set isn’t the Taj Mahal.

A toenail clipping, a stray hair, an invisible droplet of saliva—all of these contain human DNA. Are they persons? Not to anyone who’s sane.

Soldiers, on the other hand, are clearly persons. But again, only to those who are sane.

Unfortunately, sanity may no longer be a desideratum, as it was when Roe v. Wade was correctly decided. Today, a son of Texas, having attained high office, has honed irrationality to an art. He opposes the aborting of cell clusters, as his state’s governmental forebears did, but asks the American public to extol the aborting of young people in uniform.

If Justice Stewart were still alive, he might wonder: "Now how should that question be decided? Is it a philosophical question? Or a religious question? Or what is it?”

Now, It's Everybody's Concern

Perhaps it's because I've been on the road since Friday, that I've been thinking so much about Keroack. I'm referring, of course, to Eric Keroack, the newly appointed family-planning honcho at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Until his appointment to the Office of Population Affairs, Dr. Keroack had been the medical director for A Woman's Concern, a so-called Pregnancy Health Center in Dorchester, Massachusetts. The group's primary concern does not seem, however, to be a woman or her health. No, its primary concern is spreading the usual agenda of the nation's bible bullies. Here's what's good: abstinence until marriage. Here's what's bad: contraception and abortion. In other words: Baby machines are our business, our only business.

Keroack has now been put in charge of $283 million taxpayer dollars to spread the Gospel of Keep-Your-Legs-Closed. Because there's no senatorial advise-and-consent for Keroack's position, the public must just grin and bear it—as so many young women will unfortunately find out.

In naming Dr. Keroack to his new job, President Butch once again proves how slimily religious—or religiously slimy—he can be. While he doesn't believe that single women should have sex, he has no difficulty in making sure that they get screwed.

Abortion Rights and the First Amendment

South Dakota is allowing its electorate to vote on whether or not to repeal an anti-abortion law, HB 1215, which passed last spring. Both sides of the abortion issue are gearing up for a court challenge—either to that law, should the repeal fail, or to some hypothetical similar law that may pass at a later time in a different state.

The text of HB 1215 includes the following language:

“The Legislature accepts and concurs with the conclusion of the South Dakota Task Force to Study Abortion, based upon written materials, scientific studies, and testimony of witnesses presented to the task force, that life begins at the time of conception, a conclusion confirmed by scientific advances since the 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade, including the fact that each human being is totally unique immediately at fertilization.” (italics mine)

It seems to me that a talented lawyer could make an excellent case that such an abortion ban flies in the face of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

First of all, let’s seemingly digress for a second and rid ourselves of some ridiculous terminology. In so doing, I hope to establish the basis of what I believe is a First Amendment argument.

The people opposed to abortion call themselves “pro-life.” However, that’s a dubious term. Do all these people refrain from swatting mosquitoes, pulling weeds, or killing plants and animals for food? It’s probably safe to say that they don’t. How then are they pro-life? OK, let’s say that they’re merely pro-human-life. Are they all against capital punishment and war? Again, probably not.

So, in the main, the people who oppose abortion are really pro-fetus. More specifically, they are pro- the belief that the Fetus is Human. Let’s call them pro-FisH. You can recognize many of them from the medallions on the bumpers of their cars. Those medallions, we should not forget, are symbols declaring specific religious belief.

A human being is clearly alive from the moment of birth until the moment of death. Whether or not that human being is alive as a human being before birth and/or after death is a religious question, not a legal—or even a scientific—one. Science can tell us that the fetus is a potential human, but it cannot honestly say that the embryo is a human, in all the variant definitions of that term. An egg is a potential bird but no one would eat an omelet and claim that he was having a chicken dinner. It would take an outrageous leap of faith to maintain that position.

The definition of human-hood is, of course, inextricably woven into the concept of “soul.” Many pro-FisHes believe that the soul enters the embryo at the moment of conception. Hence, to them, the fetus is a human life. It follows from such a belief that killing the fetus is the same as killing a human—and it’s only a short theological hop to a ban on abortion.

However, many Americans—most, if we believe the polls—do NOT subscribe to the religious definition of a fetus as a human. A law banning abortion as the killing of a human imposes a sectarian definition of "human" on the entire populace.

But the First Amendment says the government may not favor one religious viewpoint over another. Doing so would be the Establishment of a Religion, and, as such, strictly forbidden.

Therefore, HB 1215 is unconstitutional.