Douthat: Making abortion like assisted suicide would be pro-life win
… [I]t’s possible to accept that no government can “stop” assisted suicide or abortion completely… without believing that either practice should therefore be legalized and legitimated.
Avoiding the police-state scenario doesn’t require treating self-slaughter as a protected right, and effectively licensing the Jack Kevorkians of the world to cater to anyone who wants to die badly enough to take the plunge.
That’s how our laws treat abortion, and the result is a kind of abortion industry — in which the country’s largest abortion provider doubles as a major Democratic interest group, and for-profit freelancers take advantage of the vulnerable….
If the right to die really became “a lot like” the right to abortion in America, there would be Swiss-style thanatoriums in most American cities, the Hemlock Society would be a major lobbying group (boasting, no doubt, that most of its resources go to palliative care rather than assisted suicide), and Kermit Gosnell-style thanatists would prey on the elderly while the courts looked the other way.
But… here’s a counter-scenario for Saletan: If we treated abortion the way, say, Oregon treats assisted suicide, it would only be legally sanctioned in rare cases… and even then it would have to be approved by 2 physicians and hedged around by waiting periods. That kind of regime would represent an enormous victory for pro-lifers….
~ Ross Douthat, disagreeing with William Saletan’s likening of assisted suicide to abortion, NY Times, June 6
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Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
How can Douthat’s argument be correct? In England and Wales access to abortion is already (theoretically at least) subject to two medical professionals confirming that the woman has satisfied one of the four criteria for accessing abortion set out in the Abortion Act 1967. Yet in spite of these (apparent) safeguards, abortion in England and Wales s no less controversial in the eyes of the prolife movement.
Maybe my understanding of the prolife movement’s argument is unrefined, but as I understand it regulated abortion is not enough, nothing short of a total ban on abortion would be classified as a, to use Douthat’s phrase, ‘victory for pro-lifers’
@medicineandlaw: Without knowing the entirety of your “understanding of the prolife movement’s argument”, I will hedge a guess that it is, indeed, unrefined.
Here it is in a nutshell: Abortion brutally ends the life of a human being. That human being has a right to life.
With that in mind, how could anything less than a total ban be acceptable? If you are confused by an incrementalist approach to reducing abortions in the U.S., it is because many believe saving some lives is better than saving none.
Douthat is saying it is far easier to abort than to have your suicide assisted in Oregon. She is talking about the case in the United States, not England or Wales.
My favorite line:
“…the Hemlock Society would be a major lobbying group (boasting, no doubt, that most of its resources go to palliative care rather than assisted suicide)…”
ZING!
@klynn73 – Thank you for your reply. Perhaps my previous point was unclear (or maybe I have misunderstood your position).
Essentially my understanding of the prolife movement argument is that abortion, under any cirucmstances is wrong. Thus, based on this understanding, my point was that, to those in the prolife movement, Douthat’s statement that a move towards a more regulated system governing abortion would be an ‘enormous victory for the pro-lifers’ is incorrect. In hindsight I accept that it would represent a form of victory – making it harder to obtain an abortion is, indeed, one step further along the continuum towards a total ban – but for those who do not take an incrementalist approach to abortion (and, unless I have misunderstod you, I gather you do not follow an incrementalist approach) such a move may well amount to no victory at all.
As a final point, I do understand that Douthat was referring to the position in America and not the position in England and Wales, however, I think there is a lot to be learned by comparing experiences and approaches to dealing with a common issue. My point was therefore that even in those countries where an approach has been taken that (supposedly) adopts a very regulated approach to abortion, I would suggest that there are many in the prolife movement for whom this is not enough and such feelings may well be replicated in the USA if the approach suggested by Douthat were adopted.
I believe incremental pro-life gains are very good, very strategic. But the war on children won’t be over until there is no legal abortion worldwide. Sigh. But obviously, the war on the elderly, disabled, and depressed must be won, too. The culture of death says better dead than face hardship. I disagree. Better let the flame of life burn on its own than to play God.
I think that is a fair point, medicine and law. For some pro-lifers, as you pointed out, it would be “step in the right direction”, winning a big battle with the goal of winning the war in mind. On teh other hand, tehre is somewhat of a rift in teh pro-life movement between “personhood” vs. “incramentalism”, where the former would in no way shape or form consider it a victory but the latter would. So your point is well taken.
For what it’s worth: I’m of the firm opinion that incremental gains are all well and good, and that they should be seized whenever possible… but not at the expense of the fight to ban abortion completely, and not at the expense of giving any false impression of embracing “middle ground” or compromise as anything but a stepping-stone to absolute abolition. To accept “common ground” on abortion, in the sense of deliberately choosing to concede “some abortion deaths”, should be unthinkable; even from an honesty point of view: if I (hypothetically) were to vote for a “partial” gain (e.g. some abortion restriction), but I ever gave the impression to opponents that I would “settle for this, in exchange for [x]”, I’d be blatantly dishonest. If an abortion-tolerant opponent were to say to me, “If you give up fighting for abortions in cases of rape, I’ll vote with you to ban all others”, I could not possibly say “yes”; it would be a clear case of immoral deception. On the other hand, I could licitly say, “I’ll vote with you to ban the other types, but my choice to do so says nothing about my future efforts to secure a total ban.”
I think that is a good point, Paladin. Any restriction on abortion (though I will always support mother’s life exceptions), is a step in the right direction, as long as it isn’t dishonest. You can’t say “Oh sure, I will vote for this restriction, and promise not to fight for more restrictions” and then turn around and do, That is dishonest and hypocritical. We can vote for a restriction while being clear we aren’t given up haven’t it completely illegal (except for the imminent danger of the mother, IMHO).