The new/old abortion battle
Carlin, David R. Jr.
Supreme Court terminated the nationwide debate in the state capitols by usurping jurisdiction. And when this happens, all those Americans in the middle will no longer be able to avoid the issue....
...Every person's individual view of the good life is just as valid as every other person's...
...I simply choose...
...What ultimately divides the prolife from the prochoice party is not simply a dis- agreement on the right to abortion but a much deeper philosophical disagreement, from which their differences on abortion follow the way a conclusion follows from its premises...
...They fear a long, painful, and disfiguring death, or death in a vegetative state hooked to sophisti- cated machines while hospital bills eat up their insurance and savings...
...How is it then in the counlry of the old...
...Prolifers con- sider abortion to be a far greater evil than prohibitionists considered alcohol...
...The deeper philosophical disagreement is this: The prochoicers are moral agnostics...
...and they are content that this should be so...
...Yet if we frame the question in the right way, it may produce a certain amount of light as well...
...The huge controversy that waits around OF SEVERAL MINDS the comer is bound to produce much bit- temess...
...that some views of the good life are plainly superior to others...
...Many understand very clearly that they are moral agnostics and that this agnosticism implies moral anarchy...
...There are no precedents for living in that extended time, no history of people having ever done so...
...Old friends will stop speaking...
...The former have no belief in the objec- tivity of moral values, or at least no con- fidence that those values can be known...
...Fortunately, there is no chance of that happening this time around...
...If you and I differ in our moral views, there is no way either of us can prove the other wrong...
...I believe the prolife party is already pretty much aware of the moral epistemology that underlies its position...
...So it is likely to be the hottest moral struggle since the abolition/slavery fight of the 1830s, '40s, and '50s...
...and that we are not reduced to sheer choice when searching for direction in life...
...I choose...
...there is no alternative...
...But among the prochoice party and its sympa- thizers, some are aware, some are not...
...From this moral agnosticism the prolifer dissents totally, believing instead that moral values are objective realities...
...But if there is no science of the good life and no inner light to reveal it to me, how do I find my values and my moral code...
...The reason for all this intensity and unpleasantness has to do with more than just abortion versus choice, important though those subjects are...
...See, Commonweal Supplement, August 9, 1991...
...In fact, it will probably be fiercer than the prohibition battle, since the oppos- ing parties stand further apart in their views in the current controversy...
...Today's is the first large population of elderly to live such long and such active lives...
...The battle will oth- erwise be exceedingly intense and distaste- ful...
...As we know, the life expectancy of the average American has been extended more than thirty years since the turn of the century...
...But others are far from having thought the matter through...
...This promises to be the deepest and most intense moral controversy to rock the nation since Prohibition, perhaps since slavery...
...When they vote for their fifty governors and their 7,461 state legislators, they will be forced to take into consideration the position can- didates hold on the abortion/choice ques- tion...
...Brother will argue against brother, sister against sister, parents against children...
...All in all, it will be a very unpleasant business...
...While value agnostics on the abortion question, they reserve the right to be value dogmatists on other questions...
...Thus there can be no agreement as to what constitutes the good life for human beings...
...that differ- ences between right and wrong are know- able...
...Political careers will be made and bro- ken...
...the prolifers are not...
...A manual for suicide is a runaway on the best seller list...
...Generations have thought of long life as a blessing...
...In the world of the moral agnostic, choice is the essential action and tolerance the supreme virtue...
...I don't say this to suggest that the country is on the verge of falling apart or plunging into civil war...
...And when it does dawn on them, many among them will recoil from their position...
...the psalms promise that the days of the upright "shall be long in the land...
...But they are the twin peaks of a much larger moral iceberg...
...At all events, such a framing of the question will be a service to clarity in what will probably be the most important public debate in the next generation...
...Whatever the benefits of a longer life they seem to be overshadowed by the spectral fears haunting the elderly...
...We have a strong national government now, which was not the case in the middle of the 1800s...
...Small-scale warfare is about to be replaced by total war...
...They fear that their families will be overburdened by their 13 September 1991:505...
...One of our supposedly most civilized states, the state of Washington, advances toward the legal- ization of euthanasia...
...It has not yet dawned on them that you can't have it both ways, at least not in the long run...
...Abigail McCarthy THE COUNTRY OF THE OLD BETI'ER THAN WE THINK o be old in America is to live in a strange uncharted coun- try...
...If the prolife party can frame the abortion question as part of the larger question --moral skepticism and nihilism versus moral rationality and order--then some of the marginal prochoicers and their fellow travelers may be won over...
...But apparently the old in this new extended time do not feel blessed...
...But the avoidance of civil war may be one of the few consolations the years to come will have to offer...
...all we can do is tolerate our mutual differences...
...Besides, the prolife/prochoice division does not cut sharply along sectional lines, even though the prolife party tends to be stronger in the South than elsewhere...
...and prochoicers consider the right to abortion a far more sacred right than the "wets" con- sidered their right to drink...
Vol. 118 • September 1991 • No. 15
