On January 12, 2009 Samantha Heiges, age 23, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for drowning her newborn in Burnsville, Minnesota. If she had arranged for a doctor to kill the child a few weeks earlier she would be a free woman.
What are the differences between this child before and after birth that would justify its protection just after birth but not just before? There are none. This is why Abraham Lincoln's reasoning about slavery is relevant in ways he could not foresee. He wrote:You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own.There are no morally relevant differences between white and black or between child-in-the-womb and child-outside-the-womb that would give a right to either to enslave or kill the other.
You do not mean color exactly? You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own.
But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest; you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you. ("Fragments: On Slavery")
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Please Think This Through: Lincoln’s Logic on Slavery Applied to Abortion
John Piper:
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3 comments:
Pardon me for being dense, but that seems to be a non-sequitur. Is Piper saying that abortion is based on a prejudicial feeling of superiority based on arbitrary premises? It seems to me that this is a large intellectual leap and a desperate attempt on Piper's part to find support in a popular historic figure.
I will emphasize that I have been and always will be opposed to be abortion. However, I can't stand idly by and let poor understandings of history and ill rhetoric support (or rather, fail to support) the sanctity of life.
ray-thejake,
I first saw Lincoln's fragment cited in Natural Rights and the Right to Choose (Cambridge University Press, 2002) by Professor Hadley Arkes. Interestingly enough, he says that in his experience, no one who has heard this argument has failed to grasp intuitively the import: "There was nothing one could cite to disqualify the black man as a human being, and justify the enslavement of blacks, that would not apply to many whites as well." Substitute "unborn" for "black man" and "the born" for whites" and I think you'll see how the logic works.
BTW, on Lincoln and slavery, you might want to check out Allen Guelzo's Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America.
Best,
JT
> Is Piper saying that abortion is
> based on a prejudicial feeling of
> superiority based on arbitrary
> premises?
Why not?
Could you kill any other class of Human Beings if you didn't feel that they were inferior to the point of not being worthy of the dignity of life?
The born/unborn distinction with regard to abortion is no less arbitrary than the white/colored distinction in regards to slavery.
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