Hard Issues 2: Abortion

Let's start with the temperance movement.  At the Deed of Union in 1932, the new Methodist Church in Great Britain supported very different ethical issues to the ones it supports today.  One of these was temperance.  Temperance was something of a misnomer because the temperate were anything but temperate.  Their rejection of alcohol was absolute.  I once shared a flat with someone who had signed the pledge.  He was not even permitted vinegar on his chips.  Vinegar is brewed.  Some people might remember non-brewed condiment, an alternative to vinegar.  Thanks to epredator for his helpful picture.

There are still a few Methodists who are teetotal.  But overall, the extreme views of the earlier decades of the twentieth centuries have long since disappeared.  Most Methodists these days enjoy a drink and so overwhelmingly they are in fact temperate.  What did decades of moral outrage achieve?  The temperance movement was powerful and not restricted to Methodism.  These days Alcoholics Anonymous and similar organsiations still work behind the scenes.  People still suffer from alcoholism.  But even hard drugs and the criminal networks that support them do not engender the same moral outrage.  Alcohol no longer has the profile it had. 

Most Methodists are still concerned about alcohol and other drugs but it is no longer a reason for extreme emotional investment.  It is hard to argue that the world is a worse place because the anger no longer has such a huge profile.

I am a vegetarian because I believe factory farming is unnecessary and cruel.  Too much meat is eaten; if people were prepared to eat less meat there would be no need for factory farms and more food available.  I should by the same token be against vivisection.  I would like to be but but feel I cannot oppose vivisection because the anti-vivisection cause is discredited by its violence.

The abortion debate repeats both these problems.  It's hectoring, extremist tone suggests a basic insecurity.  If you don't have the arguments, dig in your heels and shout.  This inevitably leads to violence and quite how murdering doctors supports a so-called pro-life cause beats me. 

But what angers me most is that it leaves me little room to have my own view.  I can be pro or anti abortion.  I have no other option.  Let us make a few concessions to the anti-abortionists.

1. Abortion is killing.  There's no getting around that fact.  Of course, about 50% of conceptions are aborted naturally.  Medics strive to reduce this number and these days many foetuses that would have been aborted grow to maturity.  The boundaries are fuzzier than they were.
2. The embryo is human from conception.  If you're extreme about this of course, there is no other view to hold.  If you claim humanity comes later, you encounter the sorites paradox; when does the tadpole become a frog? The problem for the extreme view is that we know of many other instances where one thing becomes another but the exact time the change happens is unclear.
3. The fact of killing cheapens human life in general.  Of course it does.  And yet Christians have blessed troops going to war, to kill.  No-one claims they have a cheapened view of life.  It seems some do and some don't but it is hard to tell.

But let us for the sake of argument concede these points (I'm sure there are others, add them in too if you like).  It does not follow logically that abortion should not be legal.  Take away a woman's right to choose; she may not have the baby because she will choose to have an abortion illegally.  I prefer to know what is happening.  This should allow us the opportunity to have an informed debate about how to reduce the number of abortions.  Extremism prevents this debate happening.

There is another problem.  Women have always been at a disadvantage.  The option to conduct your own life as you choose should be available.  If women should not make certain choices society should use argument rather than prohibition to make its case.  Hectoring and threatening, do not do the job.

Behind this is an understanding of the role of women where they are to be exploited and not permitted to make their own way in society.  I'll consider this further in my next post.