Non-Sequitors and Edge Cases
My last abolitionist post brought some comments, which I always enjoy. I’m always looking for serious, well-argued opponents to discuss all of the issues that I focus on.
But there are a couple of ways of diverting the argument away from the clear issues of child murder, and I think it is good to mention these. To get them ‘out of the way’, as it were. Two of the most popular are: Non-sequitur and Edge Cases.
Non-sequiturs
To use a non-sequitur is when you bring up an issue that isn’t actually related to the issue being discussed. From the modern Miriam Webster:
: a statement (such as a response) that does not follow logically from or is not clearly related to anything previously said
We were talking about the new restaurant when she threw in some non sequitur about her dog.
If, in this case, I make an argument showing how abortion is murder, it would be a non-sequitur to say, “Why don’t you focus instead on… child cancer… seat belt use… etc.”. These are non-sequiturs because abortion doesn’t become any more or less murder if we ‘work on child cancer’.
There are some arguments that lay behind these non-sequiturs that would make them more legitimate, but baldly shifting the issue like this isn’t one of them.
So for example:
“Yes, Abortion is murder. But we will never convince the majority of our society so it would be better to spend our political capital working…”
“Yes, Abortion is murder. But even if we were to pass laws against it, we would still have back alley abortions and chemical ones. So we would save more lives if we focused on stronger seat belt laws…”
In order for these arguments to work, they have to begin with “Yes, Abortion is murder.” Or, at the very least, “Even if abortion is murder…”. Because the arguments themselves don’t address the question at hand, “Is abortion is murder?”
You can’t make the argument, “Abortion isn’t murder because children are killed by cancer, or seat belts, or a lack of funding for maternal health care.”
So when Mark L says this:
>>Instead of fixating on abortion, try working on the soon to be :
Comment by Mark L on my post “We don’t stone Adulterers any more…”
(meaning the ‘soon to be humans’ I assume, children already born)…
This is a non-sequitur. An extreme non-sequitur and one that is rather common.
1) The fact that we have murdered 40 million children so far, by his own figures, makes it a rather important issue. The fact that they are being murdered by their own mother, in cooperation with a so-called doctor, with cooperation from various other friends and relatives, magnifies the issue dramatically.
2) It is a moral issue which affects the entire society and country. If a child dies in a car accident, it is a tragedy, but it is not normally a moral failing. Perhaps someone was speeding, perhaps someone was drunk, but almost never was someone trying to kill the child.
3) Most of the other ways of children dying are so varied that it is hard to even lump them together. Cancer? Well, we can do our best to do research. We can even get rid of some laws and regulations that lead to more deaths.1 But it isn't like there is one point of impact that affects the entire battle against child cancer, birth defects, etc. Mothers murdering their own children, and our entire society lying about it, is much more of a coherent issue.
4) It is a rather silly argument in light of what we have been discussing. Unless you are willing to say, "Yes, Abortion is murder but..." then deflecting to other causes of child mortality is rather silly.
5) I actually do work on some of the others right here on Substack. I am extremely pro-breastfeeding, for example, which is a known way of reducing child mortality. I am very pro-marriage, ditto.
Edge Cases
The second logical fallacy that is often brought up is that of edge cases. Hard cases. Ectopic pregnancies and women dying of cancer.
The problem with these edge cases is they only work after you have settled the clear cases. Once your society has said you can’t just shoot anyone you feel like, they can begin to discuss self-defence and accidents. If it is perfectly OK to shoot people, why do we need to discuss self-defence?
If you can’t admit to clear cases, why discuss edge cases?
Let me lay out some cases of child murder, under a wide range of circumstances and propose that these need to be answered more or less in order in order to have a logical discussion:
Case Number 1: The Chinese government arrests a woman pregnant with her second child. They take her to a government hospital, tie her down, and murder the baby in the womb.
Now probably 90% of the people who would be even willing to discuss this issue will agree that this is ‘a bad thing’. But what bad thing? Murder? Or mere, like, excessive government force?
Let us compare these two examples with the government taking a woman and removing her (healthy) uterus, or castrating a healthy male. Are these the same bad things?
Let us compare this with taking the same woman (not pregnant) and removing her perfectly healthy appendix. Is this the same set of bad things, or is one of these not like the other?
Are you willing to admit it is murder if the woman wanted the baby, and the government forcibly kills it? Or is it just a lack of informed consent?
Case Number 2: A pregnant woman is walking down the street, and a man assaults her. In the assault, he ends up killing her child. Perhaps with a bullet, perhaps with his fist, perhaps by reaching in and pulling the baby out and dashing her brains on the ground.
Probably everyone will agree that this is a bad thing. Perhaps even more than for #1! But what bad thing? Has a baby been murdered? Or is this a mere ‘involuntary termination of a pregnancy’?
Case Number 3: A young girl and her boyfriend commit fornication, and she ends up pregnant. After several dramatic and tearful arguments between her, her mother, her boyfriend, etc., the girl, who wished to keep her child, is ‘assisted’ to the child-murder site, and the child is murdered.
Is this murder? If so, who is guilty of it? Or is this just a ‘difficult moral dilemma with no good answers’? The mother wanted the child, but the child is now dead.
Case Number 4: An unmarried older woman gets pregnant. She’s not really sure which guy was responsible. She thinks she would like to keep the child but then finds out that both her work and her insurance don’t swing in that direction. It will cost her a lot of money to give birth, and she’ll probably lose her job. So, she reluctantly visits her local butcher.
Is this murder? If so, who is guilty of it? Or is this just a ‘difficult moral dilemma with no good answers’? The mother wanted the child… sort of… the child is now dead.
Case Number 5: There are an infinite number of cases between 4 and 5, but let’s do this one next. A married woman, who has a good job, as does her husband, a good house, plenty of room, well educated, yada yada… gets pregnant. After a very quick discussion with her husband, with them both on the same page, she goes and gets her ‘little problem’ taken care of. She might even do it at home with a pill.
Is there any difference between her baby and the ones above? Does a baby become a fetus when it isn’t wanted? Or does a fetus become a baby when it is wanted?
Conclusion
Make no mistake; I am willing to talk about child murder in all of its conceivable forms. But from a logical standpoint, the discussion must start with the clear cases. If you aren’t willing to say that a man who forcibly puts his hand into a woman’s vagina and into her womb, grabs the baby, rips her out, and tears her head off… if you aren’t willing to say that that is murder… then what is the point of discussing the ‘edge cases’?
The theological and biological reality is that the ‘embryo’ and ‘fetus’ are human beings at different levels of development… just as the toddler, pre-pubescent, teenager, adult, and post-menopausal woman are all human beings at different levels of development. Can we murder an infant because she cannot yet talk? Kill the pre-pubescent because he doesn’t yet have hair between his legs or a deep voice?
I am even willing to talk about all the other ways that children are killed, or have their health denigrated, etc. But not at the expense of ignoring the fact that they are literally murdered in their thousands.
Links
I link here to a law that does skip over some regulations. But a careful perusal of the site will reveal that it still leaves many in place. The ‘… having completed phase 1…’ requirement, for example.