The Morality of Abortion
Morality is the foundation for all human behaviour. Every act is either good or evil. Or, more likely, some combination thereof. This is the premise of the overwhelming majority of human beings for all of human history.
However it is not shared by everyone… at least when they do ‘philosophy’. I read an article recently which spoke of the ‘evolutionary psychology of abortion policy’. It was a fascinating article, both for the things it got right, and the things it got wrong.
Evolution and Morality
When human beings give moral reasons for their actions, these reasons are almost always a mask for totally amoral underlying motivations. If we take a naturalistic, evolutionary view of human psychology then it can’t be any other way. “Sanctity of life” and “bodily autonomy” are abstractions that don’t have anything to do with promoting one’s own evolutionary interests. When people attribute moral motivations like these to themselves or others, the moral motivations are almost always a mask for more biologically plausible motivations.
The author here makes an excellent point. One that evolutionists have tried forever to deny. If we begin from evolutionary and naturalistic thinking, we cannot end up with morality. All we can end up with is excuses.
If all of our moral reasoning is the result of our genes and our hormones and neurones firing as fate determines in our brains: then there is no right or wrong, there is no good or evil, there is simply chemical desire and gene-mediated will.
Whence the Groups?
These authors split people up into two groups they call “Freewheelers” and “Ring-bearers”. These groups refer to those who have more sexual partners and get married later in life (freewheelers) and those who have fewer sexual partners and get married earlier in life (ring-bearers). I’ll adopt these terms for the purpose of this post.
One huge problem with this article, is that he proposes two large ‘groups’ of people who have differing desires vis a vis abortion (well, vis a vis lots of things, but he examines them in light of abortion) and yet the article lacks any explanation of where these groups come from. He says that group A justifies their behaviour with reasoning B; and group X justifies their behaviour with reasoning Y; but he never gets into how group A and group X came to exist in the first place.
His explanations of who the groups are should leave pretty much anyone at least guessing that they might differ by.. their moral reasoning. Their understanding of what the good is; what things are evil and sinful. But if these groups are based upon their morality, then his entire thesis falls apart.
Pre or Post, or is Post also Pre?
Should we believe the stories that ring-bearers and freewheelers use to justify their policy preferences? Is the ring-bearers’ opposition to abortion and contraception really motivated by a deep-seated commitment to the sanctity of life? Is the freewheelers’ pro-choice attitude truly driven by a commitment to bodily autonomy?
The stories told by ring-bearers and freewheelers are just that — stories used for justification, and not reflections of real underlying motivations. Again, this is not to say that either party is consciously lying. Social conservatives genuinely believe in the sanctity of life just as progressives genuinely believe in the importance of bodily autonomy. These beliefs are genuine in the sense that they need not involve any conscious deception on the part of the believer. Nevertheless, the stated reasons people give for opposing or favoring legalized abortion are post-hoc rationalizations rather than reflections of real underlying motivations.
Is there anything in your life that you do well? That you have worked on for years, and finally arrived at a point where you can accomplish the action almost without thought?And you can accomplish it well?
If that is true for you, then, for most people, what is also true is that if you were asked to explain an action that you just took almost automatically, it would take you quite awhile to come up with an explanation.
You see a reason that you did something is not necessarily the same as a reason that you thought through before you did the thing. The tennis player may leap across the court, reach his racket out, and with a certain angle and twist and velocity hit the ball. He may, if he is any good, have hit the ball somewhere where the player on the other side of the court will not be able to return it. Or will have a hard time returning it.
He almost certainly would not have gone through an entire reasoning process on the way to the ball. One that included every angle and every bit of velocity, and that included his reasoning about the direction and angle to the other player, and to the part of the court that would be most effective at having him be unable to reach it.
But that does not mean that the commentator, sitting in his little booth, who has played tennis for years, would not be able to re-create the reasoning that the tennis player did not do. But that was nonetheless the reason for the way he hit it.
Supposing that these two groups have moral reasoning. Supposing that for years, or even most of their life, they have been taught to make moral judgments, had moral judgments made over their actions, made moral judgements daily about others… it is not at all unreasonable to put them in the same category as the tennis player. They know what the right thing is. They know what coincides with their moral precepts. But they didn’t have to think it through! They just hit the ball.
Correlation
If abortion policy was really about the sanctity of life vs. bodily autonomy, then opinions about abortion should have little to no correlation with people’s sexual habits. But that’s not the case. Instead, the strong opinions people have on the availability of abortion and contraception are more plausibly explained by the fact that ring-bearers and freewheelers thrive in different kinds of societies.
Umm, what? I’ve read this several times and I can’t even begin to guess what he means here. It would seem not only obvious, but incredibly obvious, that the opposite was true.
Suppose, if you will, that there exists two groups of people. One has one set of moral beliefs, understandings, and instincts. The other, another. It stands to reason, at least to me, that this set of beliefs would act itself out in several areas. So here we see Group A, the Ring Bearers, both having a certain set of beliefs about marriage, chastity, and the like… and another has a different set.
As these judgements affect different areas of their life, they don’t necessarily reason out all of the connections. This is right, that is wrong. Rape is wrong, jumping into a river to save a child is right. You don’t have to write a book on it first. Nor do you do so afterwards. You shoot the would be rapist, and rescue the child, and then go about your life.
Not of equal weight
The most important response to this article is: these arguments are not of equal weight. No one’s right to personal autonomy outweighs someone else’s right to life. The rights are not even in the same universe. If your actions lead directly to someone else dying… you are a murderer, not a ‘free agent’.
Conclusion
Evolution as a theory is deficient in pretty much every area. One of the most significant is in the area of explaining moral reasoning. They try, but they are doomed to fail. Cause if evolution is right, then so is rape… as long as you don’t get caught. If evolution is right, then encouraging others to murder their children is profitable… as long as you don’t murder your child, or let anyone else do so. Vive la genes, and all that.
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Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,
Von
Links
Pizza Discussion
The “Pizza Discussion” is a letter exchange with
. In it we discuss issues of the importance of religion, God, and morality… comparing them to the importance of Pizza and Sushi. It started when he posted a post entitled‘Religion’and specifically comes from this line: “Arguing over religion strikes me as the same as arguing over whether sushi or pizza is better.”
has also contributed.
I have to wonder if the Evolution theory is actually at the root of the current “woke” ideology?
I’ve always believed that the end of wokeism is to devour itself and everyone it can touch. If you follow the path all the way out, every “in line with the current accepted thought” human experience is worshipped and postulated until the final flaws are discovered and by then it’s too late because they’re fatally and irreversibly damaged.
A soft life begets weak minds and weak minds beget dishonest ideas…