A consistent ethic of killing

W. James Antle III has an article in the American Conservative on the attempts, from adherents of a “consistent life” ethic to Joseph Bottum’s “new fusionism,” to extend pro-life principles to other issues. He cautions against drawing facile policy implications from a general principle of “reverence for life”:

Opposition to the shedding of innocent blood is a moral question, but attempts to order society and international relations justly often turn on prudential questions. One can agree that if human life is too sacred to be snuffed out by the abortionist that there is also an obligation to care for the children who thus enter the world. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that the welfare state, especially as constituted before the mid-1990s welfare reform in this country, is the best means to this end.

Similarly, the dignity of human life that is violated by abortion and euthanasia is also affronted by tyranny and oppression. But it does not follow that the proper corrective is U.S. war on a massive scale to effect regime change in oppressive countries.

In recent years, pro-lifers have awakened to the fact that opposing abortion requires more than lobbying for legal restrictions. It also requires compassionate treatment of women and children and efforts to make the horrible option of abortion seem unnecessary. This is a weighing of means and ends.

But as pro-lifers have tried to broaden their focus to issues far removed from abortion, they have often sidestepped questions about means in pursuit of noble ends. Food, health care, and employment for all are each worthwhile goals. But serious thought is required about the means, especially given decades of evidence regarding the failures of welfare statism and socialism.

I think he makes a fair point. Which policies are actually conducive to the protection and flourishing of human life is a matter of empirical investigation and can’t, by and large, be deduced from moral principles alone. However, that doesn’t mean that issue like abortion, war, capital punishment, and euthanasia are unconnected. For instance, in his essay “Toward a consistent natural-law ethic of killing,” Catholic philosopher Germain Grisez argues for a ethic of killing that unites opposition to capital punishment, most abortions, and strict limits on warfare. The logical connection is that these are all forms of killing and are naturally governed by the same set of moral principles.

Grisez argues that it is never permissible to intend the death of another human being. Killing can be justified only as a forseeable side-effect of another morally licit action aimed at preserving one’s life or the life of another innocent person (or persons). In the case of self-defense, for instance, the morally licit act is the use of necessary and sufficient force to repulse an attack on one’s person; the death of the attacker is not what is intended, only putting a stop to their aggression (Grisez is here following Thomas Aquinas’ account of justifiable self-defense). This line of reasoning, he thinks, rules out capital punishment altogether since the community almost always has alternatives for self-protection that don’t involve killing the offender (e.g. imprisonment, banishment).

He extends the same logic to warfare. Force is justified only as a form of communal self-defense*, and only the amount necessary to stop the aggression of the enemy force. Gratuitous slaughter of enemy soldiers is never justified, and the intentional targeting of civilians is, of course, prohibited. He argues, compellingly, that the U.S. policy of nuclear deterrence is morally unjustifiable insofar as it involves the targeting of civilian populations.

The point of Grisez’s article is simply that the same principles should govern the taking of human life in all cases. The state has no more authority to take human life than individuals would under the same circumstances. Thus no appeal to “realism” can justify loosening restraints on killing even during warfare.

So, devotees of a “consistent life” ethic are not necessarily wrong to see a tight connection between abortion, war, capital punishment, and euthanasia. However, I agree with Antle that things like anti-poverty policy, trade policy, or what have you require a great deal more empirical evidence to determine what will work best. It may be a mistake to make a certain position on those issues part of a whole “pro-life” package.**
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*Grisez doesn’t discuss the case of a nation coming to the aid of a third party, either another nation threatened by aggression or people being threatened by their own government. It’s hard to see how his argument could categorically rule these out as possible instances of justified military action, though.
**Though it is interesting to note that some of the more independent pro-life groups like the NRLC looked askance on welfare reform in the 90s on the grounds that cutting aid to single mothers and “family caps” would result in more abortions, while the more traditionally Republican-alingned groups like the Christian Coaltion supported it.