#BTColumn – The moral status of prenatal life

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author(s) do not represent the official position of Barbados TODAY.

by Adrian Sobers

“In a world of empathy-based ethics, the moral sense is ultimately the aesthetic sense. And that means that when the sacred order collapses, morality is simply a matter of taste, not truth.” – (Carl Trueman)

Absent a common foundation–sacred or other–on which political/ethical discussions can be had, public discourse is inevitably reduced to a matter of taste leaving us all none the wiser. Further still, any position can be dismissed with sophomoric muddleheaded sloganeering: true for you not true for me; judge not; who are you to force your morality (you know how it goes).

Carl Trueman details the fascinating intellectual history of how we went from truth to taste in The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. Even when we get the occasional odd glimpse of the old foundation, it has crumbled beyond recognition. This unfortunate state of affairs requires an anthropological correction.

A society that does not adequately answer what it means to be human–contrary to what advances in STEM promise, or what healthy GDP figures might suggest–is as good as dead: morally and metaphysically. Sociologist John Evans has shown empirically that our anthropological premises strongly correlate with our view about who is included in our legal and moral community.

The circle of who is included in the aforementioned community, both at the individual and communal level, expands and contracts in lockstep with our anthropology.
In the cancerous cancel culture of death, this circle miraculously expands to include various endangered species of animals, but curiously shrinks when it comes to one of the most vulnerable categories of human beings: the unborn.

We’re “inclusive”; but not that inclusive.

Professor Carter Snead (What It Means to Be Human) makes the point that, “At the very deepest level, law and public policy exist for the protection and flourishing of persons.

Thus, all law and public policy are necessarily built upon presuppositions about what it means to be and thrive as persons. Accordingly, the pathway to the deepest understanding of the law requires a searching anthropological inquiry.” There is no need to repeat the professor’s correction here, you can (and should) read it for yourself. Especially in light of the abortion debate taking center stage again.

His survey of the nearly fifty years of the US Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence alone is worth it. Especially “the most important abortion case that most people have never heard of” that was decided on the same day as Roe: Doe v. Bolton.

Minor digression concerning America’s abortion jurisprudence.

It is interesting to observe that, all of a sudden, Americans (especially our woke Leftist friends): don’t parrot “follow the science” on this issue; remembered that there are two genders (only one of which can menstruate or get pregnant); don’t have an issue “assuming” gender having reimposed the ban on men who author opinions/decide on abortion in the public square/judiciary. But that is for another time.

Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue) noticed the turn in modern moral philosophy that embraced the theory of “emotivism”, the philosophical doctrine of demons that equates/reduces statements of moral judgment to expressions of personal approval/disapproval. Since nothing is objectively binding, Homo Sapiens (at the individual and collective level), is the measure of everything (Judges 21:25).

For French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, rather than observe any external standard or opinion, the source of moral authority is the voice of nature within (le sentiment de l’existence).

Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed a similar sentiment in Journals, “A man contains all that is needful to his government within himself. He is made a law unto himself.” Emerson’s last sentence is the altar on which the culture will ultimately die.

It is no surprise that it is also what American abortion jurisprudence is grounded on. In discussing the anthropology of Roe and Doe, Professor Carter Snead notes that the US Supreme Court’s theory of “personhood” boils down to this: “the moral status of prenatal life remain strictly a matter of private judgment, to be decided by each individual according to her own values and interests.” In a word: emotivism.

On this doctrine, the statement “robbery is wrong” translates to “I personally disapprove of robbery.” (If you take issue with the translation, pray tell, who are you to “judge” or “force your morality”?) Now swap robbery with: racism, then slavery, and finally abortion. In all of our doing we do well not to confuse emotivism with genuine empathy. Having the latter invariably means calling out the former.

As Nassim Taleb said in another context: “If you see fraud and don’t say fraud, you are a fraud.” With that out of the way, we can, finally, proceed to think more clearly about the long overdue anthropological correction our culture needs.

Adrian Sobers is a prolific letter writer and commentator on issues of national interest.