George Will: The Abortion Argument We Missed

Washington Post Writers Group ^ | December 1, 2005 | George F. Will

[RWR8189]

WASHINGTON -- Henry J. Friendly, who died in 1986, was perhaps the most distinguished American judge never to serve on the Supreme Court, and he almost spared the nation the poisonous consequences of that court's 1973 truncation of democratic debate about abortion policy. The story of that missed blessing was told recently by Judge A. Raymond Randolph of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, in an address to the Federalist Society.

In 1970, Friendly, then on the Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, was a member of a three-judge panel that heard the first abortion-rights case ever filed in a federal court, alleging the unconstitutionality of New York's abortion laws. Friendly wrote a preliminary opinion that was never issued because, in that pre-Roe era, democracy was allowed to function: New York's Legislature legalized abortion on demand during the first 24 weeks of pregnancy, causing the three-judge panel to dismiss the case as moot.

In 1965, the Supreme Court, citing a constitutional right to privacy, struck down a Connecticut law criminalizing the use of contraceptives. In 1968, a University of Alabama law professor, although acknowledging that legislative reforms of abortion laws were advancing nationwide, suggested a route to reform -- judicial fiat -- that would be quicker and easier than democratic persuasion. The tactic would be to get courts -- ideally, the Supreme Court -- to declare, building on the Connecticut case, that restrictions on abortions violate a privacy right that is a ``penumbral right emanating from values'' embodied in various provisions of the U.S. Constitution, as applied to the states through the 14th Amendment.

Which is what the Supreme Court did in 1973. But in 1970, when that argument reached Friendly, he warned in his preliminary opinion about the argument's ``disturbing sweep,'' and its invitation to

[ez]

Of course, the usual argument by many conservatives that abortion should be left up to the states is completely specious and immoral.

I disagree. If you are unable to outlaw abortion, sending the matter back to the states would save the lives of all the children in the states that DO outlaw abortion. That is neither specious nor immoral.

Perhaps you know that Roe can be reversed and that furthermore, abortion can be made illegal on the Federal level, but I don't see that happening. Staying true to the Tenth Amendment and sending the matter back to the states is the best course....then work to get all the states to do the right thing.

[Busywhiskers]

"Democrats, after three decades of political difficulties, have reason to believe,... that they...would have been better off if Friendly's preliminary opinion had been issued..."

Live by sword, die by the sword.

[Alberta's Child]

This is a non sequitur. I said there is no effective check which I think is historically obvious. Prove me wrong. Show me how the court's lack of enforcement power has checked Roe.

Actually, your argument is a non sequitur -- because it is based on the assumption that there is some kind of concerted opposition to Roe v. Wade at the Federal level. This is going to disappoint a lot of people, but there is no serious opposition to Roe in the Federal government, despite all the political wrangling on this issue over the years. Contrary to popular belief (and despite what conservative legal experts like Mark Levin have been saying for years), the Roe decision was not the result of some kind of usurpation of the legislative authority of Congress on the part of the Supreme Court. The truth is that in 1973 Congress was perfectly content to let a bunch of unelected judges carry the ball on this issue -- because the Supreme Court has long implemented a social agenda in this country that Congress fully supports but simply doesn't have the b@lls to legislate themselves.

The same holds true today. Both political parties have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo on the Federal level with regard to abortion -- the Democrats to placate their special interests, and the Republicans to keep the issue as a topic of political discussion (because many conservatives vote for GOP candidates on this issue alone).

Congress has any number of methods at its disposal to deal with a renegade Federal court. The fact that these methods are rarely ever even discussed in Congress tells me that Congress isn't too concerned about these so-called "Men in Black."

For your point to have any merit, we'd have to find a specific case that meets two criteria: 1) it involves a Federal court decision; and 2) it was controversial enough to garner widespread opposition that exposed the court's utter lack of power to enforce its decision.

[Alberta's Child]

Ping for some interesting comments.

[Ditto]

Contrary to popular belief (and despite what conservative legal experts like Mark Levin have been saying for years), the Roe decision was not the result of some kind of usurpation of the legislative authority of Congress on the part of the Supreme Court. The truth is that in 1973 Congress was perfectly content to let a bunch of unelected judges carry the ball on this issue --

I agree with that, and I also agree that this is nothing new. Roe was no different than Dred Scott. In the 1850s, Congress was at loggerheads on how to treat the issues surrounding slavery so the Court simply made their decision for them -- a decision that only hastened the national tragedy. The same was true over a century later with Roe.

In a world where elected leaders respected the Constitution congressmen of both sides of the slavery and abortion issues would have joined together and condemned the court for meddling in the political process. Instead, the winners gloat and the losers whine, but neither question why the court stepped into the political realm in the first place.

The fault is with Congress, and ultimately with the people who elect them.

[Alberta's Child]

Ping.

[djreece]

The right of all humans, born and unborn, to life comes from God, not from our founders. They acknowledged and expounded our preexisting rights given to us by our Creator.

[djreece]

Well said in posts #63 and #65!

[edsheppa]

The truth is that in 1973 Congress was perfectly content to let a bunch of unelected judges carry the ball on this issue

FYI, Congress is not "the governed" - you and I and the rest of the citizens are. If the governed in this country had an effective check on judicial arrogance, either Roe would not have happened or it would have been substantially modified as the majority do support limited regulation of abortion and a substantial majority oppose it as a form of birth control. In 1973, opinion was even more sharply against abortion.

Or perhaps you'd prefer a more recent opinion. Let's talk Kelo. Do you doubt that the great majority abhor the concept of government condemning residential areas to line the pockets of fat cat developers? Now, I happen to think that, as a matter of law and precedent, the court had Kelo right. The dissent didn't even make an argument based on law. O'Connor's lament about the decision working to the benefit of the powerful was laughable - the same can be said about *any* government action, shall we prohibit them all?

But I also admit I am very much in the minority. Tell me what effective checks the majority have been able to employ against Kelo.

Also, try to learn what non sequitur means. My argument may be wrong (i.e. the Constitution may, unbeknownst to me, have effective checks on the courts), but being wrong doesn't make it a non sequitur. You posts, on the other hand, are non sequiturs because I was discussing effective checks but you wrote instead about lack of enforcement powers, lack of Congressional concern etc.

In fact, it is curious you don't see that your points support my argument. I'd say it is clear that the court's lack of enforcement power can never be an effective check. We rightfully cherish the rule of law. For the Congress and Executive to arbitrarily ignore court rulings would be a disaster.

[Henry Belden]

If the governed in this country had an effective check on judicial arrogance. . . . Tell me what effective checks the majority have been able to employ against Kelo.

We live in a constitutional republic, not a democracy. Government powers are distributed horizontally between legislative, executive and judicial federal branches and vertically between the federal and state levels.

My argument may be wrong (i.e. the Constitution may, unbeknownst to me, have effective checks on the courts),

The significant applicable clause has come up many, many times at FR: "The supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make." (Art. III, Sec. 2) Like every other power, this may be used for good or evil.

Congress may:

1) Create new avenues for judicial review, as happened during the recent Terry Schiavo case.

2) Remove entire subjects from judicial review. Significant examples include the post-Civil War reconstruction acts (see ex parte Milligan, 1869), the Clinton-Gingrich anti-terror laws passed in 1995 in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, most recently the so-called Patriot Acts (protecting the "National Security Letter" language, basically an end-run around the Fourth Amendment stricture against Writs of Assistance).

I have to agree with Alberta's Child and ditto on this one.

[edsheppa]

We live in a constitutional republic, not a democracy.

True, but the founding document of this country says, among many other insightful things, that governments derive their legitimacy from the consent of the governed. I agree with that philosophy of government, do you?

I will say it again, we have no effective check on the judiciary. Let's look at the Schiavo case. The Congress was totally ineffective in getting he federal courts to review the facts of that case. Or take your other examples. Yes, the Congress can eliminate jurisdiction in some area totally, but that is far too coarse and heavy-handed a control and so they are naturally and justifiably loathe to do it and so it happens only in extreme circumstances.

What is required is a means that gives the courts ample room for deliberation but also keeps five unelected judges from creating policy to which the people do not consent.

[hosepipe]

George always misses the important part..
Killing live babies, on purpose, "IS" 1st degree murder..
NOT on purpose, is 2nd degree murder..

AND when a "doctor" does it, it is MALPRACTICE.. AND MURDER..

George has never been very smart..

[Sacajaweau]

False....Many special laws on the books already related to killing a policeman....

[illinoissmith]

"Of course, the usual argument by many conservatives that abortion should be left up to the states is completely specious and immoral.

Whether or not innocent people live or die is not a matter for the polls."

Whether innocent people live or die is not the crux of the argument. The crux of the argument is, when does human life begin. So long as pro-lifers insist on ignoring that this is the core disagreement, pro-lifers and moderate proponents of abortion will perpetually be talking past one another.

Moderate proponents of abortion agree with the idea that killing innocent people is bad and should be illegal. That is not where they disagree with you. They disagree with you on when the entity becomes a person.

We can almost all agree that killing an innocent person is bad and should be forbidden nation-wide.

We can almost all agree that killing a baby after birth is bad (Peter Singer excluded).

We can almost all agree that contraception *prior* to conception is perfectly acceptable (for example, condoms, -- I know that people oppose the pill on the grounds that it sometimes prevents a fertilized egg (that is, post-conception) from implanting, so opposition to the pill is in the realm of contention between the two points).

What we are having a lot of trouble agreeing on is at what point in between those two points (inclusive of those two points) an entity becomes a person, and what about any chosen point makes it the crucial point.

This is not an easy issue. It gets into what makes a human human, and what qualities of human beings have that cause them to deserve rights and legal protections, and slippery slopes, and so on. These are largely deep religious and philosophical questions. Religious and philosophical questions of this sort are notoriously difficult with regards to obtaining an answer that can be found, with warrant, to be true, and they are (relatedly) notoriously difficult for large numbers of free people to come to a consensus on. Therefore, so long as people have disagreements on religion and philosophy, and have difficulty obtaining objective warrant for one position or another, they are likely to have deep disagreements on this issue.

The idea of giving this issue to the states -- letting the people of each state decide where, how they will regulate between those two points, but keeping it federally fixed beyond either of those two points -- is one proposed way of dealing with the fact that this is a difficult issue more likely, if left to the federal government, to continue to wreak havoc in civil life than to be resolved any time soon.

We are all perfectly welcome to disagree with this, of course, but if we do, one way to prevent perpetually, uselessly, endlessly, talking past opponents is to admit that the point of contention is not whether killing innocent people is bad and should be forbidden by the federal government (to reiterate, the vast majority of Americans agree with this). Rather, we should admit that the disagreement is over whether the entity created upon conception is a full-fledged human being, and why or why not, and if not at what point does it become so, and why?

The upshot of this is that, if you believe conception in and of itself yields a person deserving of legal protections, you will be more effective if you give your opponent your reasons for believing this. Accusing them of simply being in favor of killing innocent people is a total waste of time, that does not at all address the point at which their perspective differs from yours.

[illinoissmith]

"The right of all humans, born and unborn, to life comes from God, not from our founders. They acknowledged and expounded our preexisting rights given to us by our Creator."

What of the belief that rights come from Nature (and only thereby indirectly from God, should God exist)?

Such a system would arguably be much to the credit of a proposed creator, as it would provide beings within the created system a common and readily accessible reference for determining the truth of a claim of rights.


Further, I think nature is the standard we actually use when addressing rights issues in contexts other than the prenatal.

First let me put forward the observation that people determine which classes of beings have which rights primarily on the basis of what goes on inside those beings, or on the basis of what typically goes on inside members of that class of being (the latter helps prevent slippery slopes). So, for example, a blade of grass does not have a right to life of strength justifying the protection of the state because it does not have any mental activity whatsoever. A typical 8-year-old human being does have a great depth of mental activity, and accordingly an 8-year-old human being has a right to life enforced by the state.

Similarly, taking into account social connections and slippery slopes, it is often legal, and arguably ethical, to remove a clearly flat-line comatose person from life support. Such a decision is based largely on internal state. (Terry Schindler, recall, was *not* flat line (and at any rate did have family willing to care for her) and this was a large part of the reason her death by dehydration was utterly horrific.)

Main point: when dealing with non-human entities and even when dealing with born humans, the standard we use is we can explain in naturalistic terms - internal state, systems that avoid slippery slopes, etc.

So if we assume nature is the standard, what, exactly, grants, say, a three day old embryo full human rights, despite the fact that it does not (so far as I know) have mental activity at all, or, for that matter, even a brain?

I am familiar with the following arguments:

Early embryo has human rights because ...

(1) If left to the default-biologically-natural course of events, it will develop into a full-fledged human being.

Same could be said a sperm cell and an egg cell in two red-blooded 15-year-olds. That does not mean actions taken to prevent the default biologically natural course of events (parent-imposed curfews, say) and thereby prevent the existence of a potential human being are tantamount to murder.

(2) It has the potential to be a human being, so it should have human rights.

I may well have the potential to be a brain surgeon, aeronautical engineer, or concert violinist. However, it would certainly be inappropriate -- and in fact, it would in the former two cases be downright unethical -- to permit me certain of the rights and privileges of such folks in my current state. It would be at the point that I actually become a brain surgeon (etc.) that I should get the associated rights.

(3) It has human DNA and is alive.

As might be a sample of human skin cells in a laboratory.

(4) Prevention of slippery slopes.

This I think extremely important. However, if this is the only reason, it supports creating policy that guards against a slippery slope by creating a clear, firm boundary at some point significantly before the fetus/infant develops any awareness. This could quite possibly be done at the two week or one month point in the pregnancy, or perhaps even later. (I'm not an expert on CNS development.) At any rate, the line need not necessarily be drawn at conception, if this be the reason for it.

(5) Needed for deterrent effect on behavior harmful to social stability.

Essentially, the idea that without risk of pregnancy, women will be likely to be come sluts en masse (seen a state university lately?), destroying the relationship between the sexes that is necessary for creating a next generation in replacement numbers, and causing those who are born into the next generation to be raised largely in broken, sickly, homes.... largely resulting in the future generation consisting of broken, sick human beings, and thus a dying civilization.

Seems to make some sense, but at any rate, it affords some exceptions (exceptions for rape, for example), and it might not actually work quite as intended.

(6) Better to err on the side of caution.

What about if you are so far onto the side of caution (as many would consider regarding the 3 day old embryo) that the risk of evil to a sentient being is minuscule to non-existent (as the chance that the embryo is sentient at that point is miniscule to non-existent), and the biological and life costs to a sentient being (the pregnant woman) arguably great?

(7) Inherent value

If not for any of the above 6 reasons, on what grounds does the 3 day old embryo have inherent value? If my guess is correct and at this point in pregnancy the embryo has no awareness, then do you propose that it receives a soul before it grows a brain, the organ of consciousness? If souls are of such a nature, how on earth can you determine that a blade of grass does not similarly have a soul of such a type that it demands full legal protections of its that blade's right to life? With this system we should be prevented from moving or eating, that we ensure we harm no disembodied or plant-embodied souls which might exist.


I'm not trying to be nasty or snarky with any of this; I am afraid my frustration may come off as such. I just honestly do not get the extreme anti-abortion position, for the above reasons. I personally have no direct investment one way or the other in the abortion argument - I've never had an abortion, and I intend to never have one. I'm also not particularly emotionally attached to week old embryos or to any churches which proclaim that such embryos have full human rights.

I believe strongly in right and wrong, but I expect it to make sense.

[Mr Rogers]

So what WAS the arguement we missed?

What Will wrote is what conservatives have been arguing since...well, since before Roe vs Wade.

[publiusF27]

The Preamble to the Constitution states that the purpose of the Constitution is to promote "the general welfare" for ourselves and "our posterity," which includes the unborn.

That's true, and Article 1 Section 8 also says "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States;"

However,

The people who wrote it also had a thing or two to say about the words "general welfare."

"With respect to the two words ‘general welfare', I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." --James Madison

"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress. Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America." --James Madison

"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated." --Thomas Jefferson

So, where in Article 1 Section 8 does Congress find the power to pass laws regarding partial-birth abortion? The same place they go fishing for power in so many other cases: the commerce clause. Not the general welfare clause.

[wideawake]

This is not an easy issue.

Yes it is. 100 hundred years everyone realized that an unborn child was a unborn child - not an "aggressive growth" or a "tissue mass."

Everyone knows that the second/third trimester distinction drawn by the USSC is a purely arbitrary construct.

A human zygote is a human zygote precisely because it contains a complete and self-contained human genetic code.

There are no objective criteria by which to determine that a zygote is "not yet" human but that an embryo is, or a fetus is, or a newborn is, or a two year old is, etc.

There is no natural, objective dividing line that tells us that at 11:53:21 April 25, 2006 individual X is not yet human but at 11:53:22 April 25, 2006 they are now magically human.

A distinct human being is alive from conception until natural death and all attempts to divide this timeline into human/nonhuman are purely arbitrary and completely specious.

You reference Singer in passing - the meat of Singer's argument in favor of infanticide is that any qualitative criteria that can be established as defining "humanness" - self-awareness, capacity for language, physical autonomy and independence, etc. do not apply to newborns or the developmentally disabled any more than they do to unborn children.

Why should someone get charged with murder for killing a kid the night they take him home from a hospital when they could get away with having him killed at the same hospital the previous evening?

Anyone who claims that the unborn are not human is lying to others and to themselves.

The truth is abvious to anyone not engaged in special pleading.

[chronic_loser]

Did the Founders intend to protect unborn children as "persons" who would be subject to Constitional protections?

wrong question

Rather, did the "inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit...." (yeah, I know, wrong doc) envision a world view predicated on the individual having those rights due to a particular view of the world, man, and a Creator? In other words, our Constitution views the the law as a natural unfolding of the RIGHTS of the individual over the state, and the consequent rights of the state. I believe the Constitution sits on a foundation of a view of DERIVED rights, and not mere stipulated rights. If that is the case, then the basis for your answer is clear, it is just a matter of how we get there. If you try and hammer our modern post-Christian view back to 1789 to "make it work" in todays unbelieving world (tip of the hat to John Adams) then the answer is "I dunno" and the best we can do is advocate a state by state situation. That is my strategy as I think it is hard to argue that most of America will buy into a solid pro-life position. It is too "religious" for them.

By the way this comes from someone who helped form one of the first Metro Right to Life groups, studied under Francis Schaeffer when the majority of the Protestant world was asleep at the switch on the issue, has led abortion protests at clinics, had personal conversations with Joe Scheidler, and been interviewed on a number of local media outlets as a "spokesperson" for the pro life position. I am not a shrinking violet on the position, and I was a vocal advocate before most of the protestant church even knew it was an issue.

[illinoissmith]

"Yes it is. 100 hundred years everyone realized that an unborn child was a unborn child."

100 yeas ago, people died from pneumonia, and children worked long hours in factories. Having been standard 100 years ago is no argument whatsoever in favor of something being good or right.

"Everyone knows that the second/third trimester distinction drawn by the USSC is a purely arbitrary construct."

I never claimed that it wasn't. (For the record "everyone knows" is not evidence. It is demagoguery.) I'd be much more interested in knowing at what point awareness starts to happen, and at what point brainwaves begin, than what standards SCOTUS makes up from thin air.

"A human zygote is a human zygote precisely because it contains a complete and self-contained human genetic code."

A skin cell kept alive on a dish in a lab likewise contains "complete and self-contained human genetic code". Does that make it a human zygote?

But this is an interesting start; you are pinpointing the qualities you believe distinguish between things that do have rights, and things that do not.

It would help me understand your case better if you were to:

(1) Pinpoint the qualities that *accurately* distinguish those entities which you claim have rights from those entities which you claim do not. The quality "complete and self-contained human genetic code" is not specific enough, as it is had by many things that you do not (presumably) believe have human rights (lab skin cell, above). Further conditional qualities would help clarify things. State of normal growth, maybe?

(2) Explain what it is about those qualities that confer rights. Why is genetic code important?

My guess is that you either (a) think souls come along with genetic codes, or (b) believe that setting some standard other than genetic code could lead to a slippery slope in which conscious people with minds and brains are murdered.

I think the former is difficult to defend (If a scientist could tweak DNA from a human blood cell in two or three places, did he cause that DNA to become attached to a soul? Do identical twins share a soul?).

I think that the latter makes some degree of sense, but that if slippery slope aversion is the ground, other systems could do similar work.

"There is no natural, objective dividing line that tells us that at 11:53:21 April 25, 2006 individual X is not yet human but at 11:53:22 April 25, 2006 they are now magically human."

Straw man. Of course, we are dealing with growth, so there is a gradual process from single-celled organism to conscious being.

My guess is that there is some point at which the brain begins to develop some rudimentary structure and activity, and another point at which the brain begins to develop a rudimentary, intermittent awareness and capacity for awareness.

One thing that makes a good deal of sense to me is to find out where, in the faster-developing of fetuses, these points start, and then (to be on the safe side) take the date two weeks or a month before one of the above dates (I'm not sure which of the two), and set that as a hard limit.

The purpose of the two week buffer would be to help ensure not to kill a person capable of awareness. Given that the demarcation line's position is relevantly reasoned, it should not be difficult to keep that demarcation line stable on the grounds of avoiding a slippery slope.

"A distinct human being is alive from conception until natural death and all attempts to divide this timeline into human/nonhuman are purely arbitrary and completely specious."

Brain and mind development, and correlates (brainwaves, say), are not arbitrary. The capacity for internal state and consciousness in humans is what causes us to distinguish ourselves from everything else we encounter in the world. You break this down, and one can just as easily claim a dandelion has rights as yourself.

Dividing the timeline up is not specious, but a matter that follows from the interaction of (a) a need to prevent slippery slopes, (b) recognizing that it is internal life and consciousness that makes humans what they are, and (c) recognizing that the prenatal stage is a time of nervous system growth, and involves gradual change.

"Why should someone get charged with murder for killing a kid the night they take him home from a hospital when they could get away with having him killed at the same hospital the previous evening?"

You are attacking a straw man. Most people who are not of the "at conception" believers are not partial-birth abortion supporters either, but moderates who see the gradual changes, and think that one set of regulations is appropriate at one end and a different set at the other.

How about this, for just an example:

- Hefty fines and perhaps also jail time if abortion occurs after the point at which (including some 2 weeks buffer time) it is reasonably possible that the infant has begun to develop basic brain structure and rudimentary brain activity.

- Murder charges if after the point at which (including some 2 weeks buffer time) it is reasonably possible the infant has begun to develop even intermittent consciousness.

The point being recognition of the fact that the process is gradual, and developing a system that will find the beginnings of the relevant qualities, and hinge law on them, plus a buffer period to be on the side of safety.

"You reference Singer in passing - the meat of Singer's argument in favor of infanticide is that any qualitative criteria that can be established as defining "humanness" - self-awareness, capacity for language, physical autonomy and independence, etc. do not apply to newborns or the developmentally disabled any more than they do to unborn children."

Singer's system, if ever implemented, will lead to horrific things. Still, there is zero running away from the fact that qualities must be used to distinguish between different entities we come in contact with. You do it yourself; on this issue, the quality you claim is of significance in determining humanness is "complete and self-contained human genetic code". Booga booga about using qualities will not help anyone escape using qualities, it will merely make those who claim such an escape look hypocritical, in the process making Singer appear more convincing and honest.

My strategy is this. There may well be all manner of narrow specific qualities that make up humanness, and there may well be many folks who, due to various circumstances, lack one or another, or a bunch, of them. Rather than have a panel of experts quibble over which people have what and whether they should be allowed to live, I think it far safer (in terms of preserving life in borderline cases and difficult to determine cases, and of preventing selective holocausts of those experts happen to dislike at some point in time) to look at the base source of those qualities, and use that as the fundamental determinative quality.

The base source of humanness, source of all the human qualities, is a human (human in terms of DNA) mind capable of some activity (not flat line, not totally absent) or consciousness (consciousness of any sort, not self-awareness; that is very high-level, that is one of the many many narrow human qualities). If this baseline is present, I trust no panel of experts to take life, as this is the source of many many various human qualities, and the proposition that an expert has power to determine that all are defunct, let alone the idea that the expert will refrain from using that power for twisted ends, is severely doubtful, and involves costs far too dangerous to risk.

This is, for the record, similar to what I believe the hard-Pro-Life side does, but I believe the are even further on the side of caution (sticking to just DNA), further than I believe necessary to prevent the horrors Singer's system would produce, and also, they are more willing to explain their position in terms of religious mystery than in terms like these.

Do not for a moment believe that Singer's system is the result of honest exploration of the relationship between qualities and humanness. Singer has a specific agenda, given his beliefs on pleasure and his beliefs on economics and government. His political and economic beliefs cause him to see any allowance to life, if over-given out of care to prevent harm in cases where circumstances are uncertain, or if given in cases where that life exists under less than ideal (by his standard) circumstances, as a direct cost to the happiness of healthy people (healthy, as determined by a panel of experts).

This causes him to construct a system which merrily glides down every slippery slope imaginable in the quest to maximize the resources philosopher kings can send to the healthy people.

He is obsessed with having experts and central powers make life and death determinations (he is apparently ignorant of the fact that experts and central powers are not only imperfect, but also not necessarily deeply interested in the cases that come their way ("other person's problem" syndrome), and to the fact that they are prone to misuse power to their benefit; rather he sees them as near-infallible potential dispensers of Right) instead of leaving things up to the individuals involved and putting a reasonable safety buffer on the side of life, in the same way a communist is obsessed with having experts make economic decisions, rather than let the individuals involved work out their economic decisions themselves.

"Anyone who claims that the unborn are not human is lying to others and to themselves."

Anyone who claims that a zygote of 1 day, lacking completely in consciousness, brain activity, and a mind, is identical in terms of human rights to both an unborn infant of 8 months gestation and to a child of 12 years of age helps further, via the patent absurdity of this position, the widespread adoption of Singer's philosophy, because, though it will lead to many more evils in practice, it does at least attempt to address issue 2 at the top of this post: what it is about the claimed relevant qualities that confer human rights.

If the horrific implications of politician- and academic-selected "experts" appointed to determine who should live and who should die, under the guise of centrally state-planned pleasure maximization, etc., ever comes to pass, those opponents of Singer et al. who are too cocksure to bother making reasoned and complete arguments, will not be fully free of blame.

"The truth is obvious to anyone not engaged in special pleading."

Despite the fact that this is an ad hominem, I'm going to clarify that I have never used the pill, never plan to use it, never had an abortion, never plan to, etc. If you can explain to me in a reasonable way why abortion and the pill are really murder, fine, ban them both, it will affect my life not one iota.

My "special pleading", if you wish to call it that, is for ethics to make sense and be reasonable, as I believe that accepting nonsense or hand waving in beliefs on ethics paves the way for evil.