Ends, means, and the seamless garment

Graham at Leaving Münster (a very good site, by the way) writes a thought-provoking post on what it means to be “pro-life”:

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been anti-abortion. Okay, I know the party-line: we’re not anti-abortion, we’re pro-life. Well, that’s bollocks.

I’m not even sure what “pro-life” means? We’re in favour of Life? As in, existence or as a concept? Surely if we wanna be pro anything, we need to be pro the living. And that doesn’t stop at birth.

I know people who are anti-abortion who couldn’t give a toss about campaigns like Make Poverty History or One or the whole issue of trade justice. How is that pro the living? Or is it simpy the unborn living with which we concern ourselves?

And how do we make sense of those who voted for Bush because of his stand on Abortion but didn’t seem as bothered by the innocent deaths of Iraqi babies and their mothers?

How on earth is that pro Life?!

This isn’t just about the nutters who blow up abortion clinics (pro Life?) or hassle women on their way in (pro the living?), it’s about being consistent. And, surely, the only consistent life ethic is, er, a Consistent Life Ethic.

I agree with a lot of what Graham is saying here, and I’ve expressed strong sympathies with a “consistent life” ethic before.

Still, as I mentioned in a comment over there, I am somewhat wary of including under the “consistent life” too much in the way of specific policy prescriptions on a variety of issues. Not because I think issues other than abortion (or war, capital punishment, etc.) are unimportant, but because I think there are well-intentioned people on various sides of issues like trade.

Trade is indisputably a “life” issue in that it affects the very livelihood of billions of people. Nevertheless, what the right trade policy is depends a lot on (among other things) complex empirical information requiring analysis and interpretation.

Some people who are very much on the side of the poor think that trade liberalization is the best way to increase the material well-being of the world’s poor. Others favor various schemes of “fair trade.” For the layman it’s often not clear what the best policy is.

Plus, there is a chance that throwing a lot of disparate positions together may dilute the focus of a “seamless garment” approach. As Mary Meehan has written:

Although an advocate of the consistent-ethic philosophy, I have long thought it a mistake to toss welfare issues into the mix as though they are on the same level as abortion, the death penalty, euthanasia, and war. Whether one supports rent subsidies or the food stamp program is just not on a par with whether one supports direct killing. And some Democrats, including pro-life ones, are so eager to support government social programs that they forget their Jeffersonian, small-government roots. An immense and powerful government invariably threatens civil liberties and tends to view citizens as its wards instead of its masters.

Maybe I’m being too pedantic, but if we’re going to talk about a consistent life ethic, then we’re talking about certain normative positions. Everyone (or nearly everyone) agrees that it’s important to help poor people improve their standard of living. Where disagreement arises is over the question of means – what welfare program, what trade policy, etc. will best do the job.

By contrast, the rightness or wrongness of abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, and war are fundamentally normative questions that don’t require a great deal of empirical evidence to resolve.

Graham correctly points out that not knowing what the answer is can become an excuse for not doing anything. We shouldn’t say “Oh trade policy is too complicated” and think that justifies taking no action.

Which is why I think C.S. Lewis (“Another Lewis quote??” Yes, I know, C.S. Lewis is virtually the patron saint of this blog. So sue me) was right in saying that what we need is professionals in the various fields, motivated by Christian love, to help devise policies that will put the Golden Rule into practice:

The second thing to get clear is that Christianity has not, and does not profess to have, a detalied political programme for applying “Do as you would be done by” to a particular society at a particular moment. It could not have. It is meant for all men at all times and the particular programme which suited one place or time would not suit another. And, anyhow, that is not how Christianity works. When it tells you to feed the hungry it does not give you lessons in cookery. When it tells you to read the Scriptures it does not give you lessons in Hebrew or Greek, or even in English grammar. It was never intended to replace or supersede the ordinary human arts and sciences: it is rather a director which will set them all to the right jobs, and a source of energy which will give them all new life, if only they will put themselves at its disposal.

People say, “The Church ought to give us a lead.” That is true if they mean it in the right way, but false if they mean it in the wrong way. By the Church they ought to mean the whole body of practicing Christians. And when they say that the Church should give us a lead, they ought to mean that some Christians–those who happen to have the right talents–should be economists and statesmen, and that all economists and statesmen should be Christians,and that their whole efforts in politics and economics should be directed to putting “Do as you would be done by” into action. If that happened, and if we others were really ready to take it, then we should find the Christian solution for our own social problems pretty quickly. But, of course, when they ask for a lead from the Church most people mean they want the clergy to put out a political programme. That is silly. The clergy are those particular people within the whole Church who have been specially trained and set aside to look after what concerns us as creatures who are going to live forever: and we are asking them to do a quite different job for which they have not been trained. The job is really on us, on the laymen. The application of Christian principles, say, to trade unionism or education, must come from Christian trade unionists and Christian schoolmasters: just as Christian literature comes from Christian novelists and dramatists–not from the bench of bishops getting together and trying to write plays and novels in their spare time. (Mere Christianity, pp. 79-80)

Of course, layman also have the responsibility of sifting through the conflicting claims of experts. “Christian economists” and “Christian statesmen” tend to come down on different sides of constestable issues just like everyone else. Maybe the problem is that they haven’t fully integrated their faith with their secular training? Is this a role that, say, Christian colleges should fill?

I guess my main point is that ethics tells us what ends we should seek, and what means are morally permissible in seeking them, but it doesn’t tell us what are the most efficient or effective ways to meet those ends. That belongs to the messier world of empirical investigation, so maybe we should be careful about elevating certain methods to the level of first principles.