The Arguments Against Abortion Are Truly Out of This World

Of all the arguments against abortion, the one I find most ridiculous is the “if my mom had an abortion, I wouldn’t be here” reasoning.

So what? If my mom had a headache the night I was conceived, I wouldn’t be here either.

My mom had a miscarriage in 1968. If she had carried the baby to term and had given birth in ’69, it’s certain I would not be here, because my parents would not have wanted another child so soon. So I owe my life to the early termination of a pregnancy.

But again, why does any of that matter? A million things could have happened to prevent my existing. It's futile to dwell on the what-haves, near-misses and might-have-beens. Once I emerged into the world, I became a person—not in some Platonic, image-of-God way, but by my importance to family, community and society. By joining the whirl (and whorl) of existence.

I also find offensive the idea that parents of special-needs children have some special right to comment on the morality of abortion. The dynamic is the same whether the child is born healthy or sick, conventionally formed or not; once in the world, the infant joins the community of man. There is no cosmic symbolism to the birth of a special-needs child; this child is loved for who they are, like any other child.

Worst of all is the notion that mothers who sacrifice their lives on behalf of an unborn child are nobler, more saintly, than the rest. There is a Catholic saint, Gianna Beretta Molla, who was canonized for her refusal to save her life by having surgery that would, as an unintended consequence, end the life of her first-term fetus. She eventually died after giving birth, leaving behind a husband and four children.

Here we have a sacrifice on behalf of an idea—that of the inviolability of a zygote implanted on the placenta—taking precedence over the prerogatives of the born. Her choice was truly not “of this world” because it put a theory of personhood above the actuality of personhood, and turned the suffering of the body into a signifier of a higher cause (what could be more Catholic than that!). The mother-to-be becomes mortal vessel for the divine spark. Perhaps this is best understood as the dehumanization of a woman as tradeoff for the humanization of the embryo.

Believing that people are formed in the word and by the world means believing that the world matters; it is not just a symbol or staging ground for some higher or future purpose. Each one of us is here because of a series of dynamics, adaptations and choices stretching back millions of years; not random, but beautiful. This includes the choice of whether and how our parents decided to get pregnant and have a baby.

Campus Free Speech and Snowflakes

In his much-discussed Times piece, “What Snowflakes Get Right About Free Speech,” Ulrich Baer cites the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard to bolster his claim that some speech should be banned on college campuses because it has a chilling effect on marginalized groups.

“Lyotard," he writes, "shifted attention away from the content of free speech to the way certain topics restrict speech as a public good."

Essentially this is an argument about legitimization. Giving Holocaust deniers an equal voice with Holocaust survivors elevates their position while diminishing those of the people bearing witness to personal and collective suffering.

I understand this argument but do not believe it follows that censoring viewpoints from a university campus is necessary to “ensure the conditions of free speech for a greater group of people.”

Baer’s argument that students curious abut the views of Richard Spencer or Ann Coulter can simply can go to the Internet undermines the central logic of campus free speech—that airing ideas in a university setting brings perspective (and tools for refutation) that are not available to someone browsing Reddit.

I would argue that the high profile of figures like Spencer is a result of, rather than threat to, the gains of traditionally disenfranchised groups in recent decades. Unfortunately for bigots, the genie is out of the battle; no amount of rhetoric will prevent members of Hillel at Auburn from participating in debate as fully recognized members of the community.

Maybe We're All 'Snowflakes' Now...

Baer thinks giving the Ann Coulters of the world a platform necessarily forces some groups “to defend their human worth.” But Coulter herself, who like many on the Right suffer from a victimhood complex making them feel as if they are the ones being denied (ethnic or cultural) rights, speaks in these same terms.

So perhaps the paradigm shift effected by identity politics has changed the terms of discourse—even for racists—from notions of inherent superiority to those of ethnic nationalism and cultural integrity. This too is odious, but the politics-based debates of today do not foreclose the possibility of disenfranchised groups maintaining a voice in the same way that pseudo-scientific, mytho-folkloric and religion-based arguments of the past did.