Always One Too Many

When people say there are too many abortions in society, do they have a figure in mind of what's acceptable? 100% abortions would be unacceptable, obviously, as would a number that kept the birthrate too low for a sustainable population. But what then? Would any abortion that was done as a means of birth control be one too many? Would any abortion be too many?

The problem of course is that we can easily find examples of where we can validate a sense of outrage. That we could easily do better by eradication of such waste. Perhaps it's easy to give examples of teenagers who got pregnant instead of staying abstinent and then using abortion to shirk their responsibility.

Another example is taxation. It's easy to feel outraged over government waste, that one's tax level is always going to be too high because there's always government spending on useless things. I remember a few years ago a news report complaining about a painting that the New South Wales government spent a 6-figure sum to purchase which was white paint on white canvas. Not purchasing that would have saved each New South Wales taxpayer around five cents!


The kind of argument is somewhat deceptive, as it provides a small point of agreement with the implication being the implicit support of total eradication. It's easy to gesture to a reduction, but to what extent does it entail? For those who wish to see an end to abortion, getting pro-choice people to agree to wanting to reduce abortions is really an implicit mandate for condemning the practice. Likewise libertarians will see any and all taxation as stealing, using waste as the mandate for a reduction from what there is now.

Sometimes it is important to argue for reduction, and reduction can be a good thing. Perhaps it's important to reduce spending in a time when the budget won't allow for it, but then it's too high in regard to an external constraint. The Iraq War might have cost the American taxpayer hundreds of billions at a time when there's a high deficit, but is the outrage in that case really about the money or the act of war? For those opposing the war, they would do well to steer away from the costs because their outrage is not with the fiscal cost but with war itself.

But reduction for reduction's sake is a weasel argument, a means to gather support for a position that people would otherwise find unfavourable, through finding smaller favourable elements that both sides can agree on. If I agree that funding the high arts is a waste of taxpayer money (I don't, for the record) it doesn't mean that I think taxes could or should go lower. Likewise if I agree that using abortion as a method of birth control is something bad (I don't, for the record) it doesn't mean that I wish to see the end of abortion.

The Chimpanzee Stem Cell

A thought experiment:

The stem-cell debate had been dogging scientists. There was uncertainty over funding, supply of material, and the risk of even being arrested. Despite all the ethics committees and agreements on good practices, the denial by those who believed it an affront to human nature meant the issue was not going to go away any time soon. Contemplating moving to another country or another field of study seemed like good career moves, but there was a reason they were studying stem cells after all.

One day, a stem cell research lab had called a conference announcing that they would no longer work on human stem cells. They had developed a way of doing their research that allowed for work to continue. The process was two-fold. First they would take stem cells from a chimpanzee. Then they would reprogram these cells to have the genome contained to be identical to ours. Most genes were nearly identical to begin with, requiring only slight adjustments, and the rest were programmed artificially and cultured in bacteria. For all intents and purposes, it was identical to a human stem cell, but it wasn't human. Stem cell research could continue, but now harassed by animal welfare advocates instead of pro-lifers.

While this might be scientifically-impossible (or taking too much effort to be worthwhile), such a scenario is an interesting way to tease out just what is wrong with stem cell research. The objection that the process is destroying human life is taken right out of the equation. So we're left with what is identical to a human cell, but not derived from human cells.

Of course, this might create new objections. That science is destroying human dignity by engaging in such acts. Using chimpanzees in that way might (justifiably) spark a heated reaction. But I think the core problem is at the point of reproduction and that life begins at conception.

Morning Scepticism: Quality

It's not be fruitful and add, it's be fruitful and multiply. And this happens regardless of whether someone holds Genesis 1:28 as a command from God. And multiply we have, in the last 200 years the human population has increased from about 1 billion to nearly 7 billion. There's only a finite amount of resources available and they are being pushed to the limits already, is there really any good reason not to educate on family planning and birth control? We've multiplied enough already, why is the opposition to pro-life pro-choice instead of pro-quality?

Pro-life?

Another abortion clinic doctor has been murdered, shot in the lobby of the church where he worshipped. This is a lamentable loss of life, a tragedy that someone found the need to forfeit the life of another. What I really don't get is why people who spend their time protesting abortion clinics call themselves pro-life. They aren't pro-life at all, they simply are anti-abortion; perhaps at best they are pro-foetus. But in terms of actually being for protecting the survival of life, the effort is greatly misdirected.

So much time and effort is going into stopping abortion, protesting and harassing people for doing their job and condemning those who use the service. Whether abortion is moral or ethical, the fact remains that it is legal. So to harass and intimidate those who work at a clinic or those who use the practice is a bad way of going about things. Are we not civil? Protesting doesn't have to use intimidation, and to punish the staff or even the customers for use of a legal service is contrary to the notion of an open society. Yes, they have the right to protest, but actions have consequences. Asking for moral decency from those claiming the moral high-ground surely isn't too much to ask for. What is that slogan again? Hate the sin, not the sinner.

35 million people starve to death every year, many more are killed through conflicts and natural disasters, then there is preventable illness as well. Would anyone seriously argue that mass starvation where children are suffering down to their last breath is a less of an evil than abortion itself? At best one could argue that these are equal evils, that sin is sin regardless of severity. But to argue that abortion is a great evil while there are millions of people who don't even get the bare minimum sustenance seems like a misguided effort. The money and effort that the pro-life movement could be put to far better use feeding those who are suffering and dying. So why isn't this the case?

I was recently speaking to a philosopher friend on the matter, and he mentioned that it was not that abortion was any more an evil than starving children, but that it was universally recognised that starving children was an evil. There's no point in protesting against starvation because there is no need to get awareness about the issue out there. In effect, there is no moral high-ground in taking a view that is unanimously held. While that time spent protesting could have been used to raise money to help bring better farming practices to those countries in need - trying to get the issue in the political spotlight and getting governments to act in order to bring a sustainable future to the most vulnerable people on the planet, instead the practice of protesting is to make one feel morally superior. Actually doing something beyond that? Well that would get in the way of personal satisfaction.

If one really wanted to get the number of abortions down, then it seems the best means of doing so is to try to emulate societies that have low abortion rates. And in terms of low teen pregnancy, one needs look no further than the Netherlands. That's right, the country that is known for its red light district and pot-selling coffee shops has one of the lowest teen pregnancy and abortion rates in the world. So why is this the case? By all indications, this comes down to having a comprehensive sex education system. They have the highest contraceptive use among teenagers in Europe.

So what does that suggest? To me, if these "pro-life" people really cared about preventing abortion, then the focus should be on educating people. Forego the abstinence-only education and pushing sex-before-marriage as a sin. It's not working, the huge teen pregnancy rate in the US is testament to that. The fact is that teenagers are having sex, so if stopping abortion is what they really want to achieve, then following a model that allows for the severe reduction in abortion seems to be the best way to achieve that. Stop putting children in the dark about sexuality, give them advice on how to use contraception because it should be obvious to anyone that the current model is not working.

But that would be pragmatic, and I have a feeling that this issue is never about actually doing something useful to limit abortions. If this is about feeling morally superior then the anti-abortion movement makes sense. But it's almost impossible to reconcile the behaviour of those who protest abortion but on the same token reject the notion of actually educating children about sex. What do they honestly think is going to happen when information they receive comes through hearsay as opposed from those who actually are in the know? But this issue is not about that, it's about feeling morally-superior as opposed to doing something useful.