Abortion and liberalism

New contributor at Right Reason, Christopher Tollefsen, offers an intriguing argument that (a certain kind of) opposition to abortion has nothing to do with conservatism per se and, in fact, might be best seen as a legacy of modernity and liberalism

Tollefsen suggests that “conservative” arguments against abortion, such as those that rely on tradition or emphasize the value of having children and families, don’t get at what’s really wrong with the practice, namely that it commits an injustice against a human being. But the idea that individual human beings are intrinsically deserving of protection from harm is in many ways a liberal notion (though one with a Christian pedigree):

It is true, however, and I think important, that abortion is linked with a host of bad social consequences, though it is also true that such consequences are not all recognized as bad. These consequences should be seen as symptoms and signs of the deeper wrong of widespread feticide. As deep a pathology as the widespread acceptance and practice of abortion must, I should think, corrupt any number of the practices, institutions, and attitudes that surround it. It is clear, for example, that it has made it very difficult for candidates to the Supreme Court to speak openly and honestly on certain matters. But it is important to get the order of explanation right here – abortion is not bad because of its consequences. Rather, it has bad consequences because it is bad.

But our ability to recognize the particular evil of abortion – that it is a killing of human beings, and wrong for that reason – seems to me modern, and even liberal. For the view that all human beings are owed equal respect just as persons is arguably a consequence of the Enlightenment’s appropriation of what was otherwise a primarily Christian viewpoint, not widely shared outside the Christian world. And the biological evidence that allows us to see that abortion is a killing of human beings, rather than an offense against human life more abstractly, or against the good of marriage, is evidence only available to us in the last century. It has always been possible to see, with right reason, that abortion is gravely wrong; but recognition of the true nature of that wrong has deepened in these two ways in the modern era. Being pro-life for the right reasons is not really a matter of being conservative.

The ensuing comment thread is also full of good discussion.

I’m generally sympathetic to the line of thought Tollefsen discusses here. If you think that all human beings deserve, simply in virtue of being human, protection from unjust harm, then I find it impossible to see how you can draw a non-abritrary line after which a fetus comes to deserve protection other than at conception itself. In other words, I can’t see any good grounds for exempting fetuses from the general rule that human beings have a right to life.

Obviously that doesn’t settle the issue of what laws are desirable or feasible regarding abortion, since not everyone perceives it as a gravely immoral act. Effective laws, it seems to me, require a certain degree of underlying moral consensus. And ironically, the absence of such a consensus may also be a legacy of modern liberalism.