Abortion and the Church: A Note on a Quote

In a long opinion piece in Newsweek, Catholic theologian George Weigel offers the following:

...the Catholic Church's teaching on the intrinsic evil of abortion involves a first principle of justice that can be known by reason, that's one of the building blocks of a just society, and that ought never be compromised—which is why, for example, Catholic legislators were morally obliged to oppose legal segregation (another practice once upheld by a Supreme Court decision that denied human beings the full protection of the laws). Questions of war and peace, social-welfare policy, environmental policy and economic policy, on the other hand, are matters of prudential judgment on which people who affirm the same principles of Catholic social doctrine can reasonably differ. The pro-life, pro-Obama Catholics are thus putting the full weigh of their moral argument on contingent prudential judgments that, by definition, cannot bear that weight.

The syllogism Weigel wants you to conjure up would run something like this:

First principles of justice ought never be compromised.
Opposition to abortion follows from a first principle of justice.
Therefore, opposition to abortion ought never be compromised.

But there's a difficulty, and it's a big one: the second premise is not just obvious. Look carefully at Weigel's actual words: "the Catholic Church's teaching on the intrinsic evil of abortion involves a first principle of justice." The tricky term is "involves." Though we'd need to be careful to get the statement just right, let's agree that something like this is true and can be known by reason: it's always wrong to deliberately take an innocent person's life . Many Catholics -- and many other people -- believe that abortion violates this principle. But many others who accept the principle itself don't think abortion falls under it. They might agree that if it did, abortion would simply be wrong. What they don't accept is that a fetus -- especially very early in pregnancy -- is the sort of being that falls under the rule. It's not a question of whether the fetus is innocent. After all, the lamb that gave its life for my dinner was just as innocent as the fetus. Perhaps it's wrong to kill the lamb. There are serious arguments for just that conclusion, and though I'm not yet persuaded, I don't think the arguments are silly. If lambs are entitled to the same sort of moral consideration as you or I, then it's as unjust to kill them as it would be to kill an innocent toddler. In the case of lambs, the "if" is a very big one. And in the case of the fetus, especially early in pregnancy, the "if" still isn't small.

Therein lies the problem. Many people -- I'll confess I'm one -- can't really make sense of the idea that using the morning after pill is the moral equivalent of murder. My own guess is that many Catholics find the equivalence puzzling. But in the Church's view, the newly fertilized ovum has the same standing as you or I.

And now the problem is clear. Let's grant: we can know by reason that it would be utterly wrong and unjust to kill a toddler. But to get his conclusion, Weigel needs something a lot stronger: that reason settles the question in the case of the newly-fertilized ovum, and settles it on the side of equating the ovum with the toddler. He must say the same of embryos that are a bit past the newly-fertilized stage but still far from being babies. I can respect those who see things as he does, but with respect, I would point out that the thesis is open to reasonable doubt.

The case of killing animals is really worth keeping in mind. Some advocates of animal rights make cases that are both passionate and reasoned for a very strong conclusion: it's deeply wrong to kill other animals. My guess is that Weigel doesn't have fully adequate answers to all of their arguments; I know I don't. But my guess is that Weigel would think laws banning meat-eating would be bad laws that people would reasonably object to having imposed on them. The problems here are too knotty for laws, and humility counsels not being too quick to impose one's own dubitable convictions on others.

This is why Joe Biden got it more or less right, in spite of Weigel's talk about his " ill-advised... ventures into theology." One might well accept it as a matter of faith and private conscience that abortion is always as wrong as murder. But one might also understand that a decent, thoughtful and even faithful person looking at the same evidence might come to a different conclusion. If so, one might take a step further: on matters this murky, it's possible in good conscience to think that lawyers, politicians and voters should tread carefully

A final note: the point I've been making is smaller than it may seem. It certainly isn't intended as a defense of abortion on demand at all stages of pregnancy. But the arguments of Weigel and many other Catholic thinkers overshoot their mark. What reason alone can know here is far less than their conclusion require.