Is Abortion a Moral Issue? A Fascinating Debate on the Left

America has been embroiled in a seemingly endless debate over the issue of abortion for four decades now, but the most fascinating dispute on this issue may now be among those who consider themselves, in one way or another, advocates of abortion rights.

An unprecedented view into this debate is available on the pages of Slate.com--a prominent Web site that features some of the liveliest reporting available anywhere today. Nevertheless, this exchange between writers William Saletan and Katha Pollitt did not begin on the Internet, but in the pages of The New York Times and The Nation.

Saletan fired the first salvo, suggesting in an op/ed commentary published in The New York Times that pro-choicers should admit that abortion is "bad" and that those who support abortion rights should work toward a truly dramatic reduction in the total number of abortions.

Saletan's argument is not exactly new, either for himself or for the movement he supports. In his 2004 book, Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War, Saletan offered some of the most incisive and perceptive analysis of the national abortion debate. In essence, Saletan argued that America has settled on a fragile consensus he described as "conservative pro-choice." Americans are quite squeamish about abortion itself, but have resisted efforts to eliminate access to abortion altogether.

Even those who disagree with Saletan must take his argument seriously. Those of us who yearn to see America affirm the sanctity of all human life, born and preborn, must acknowledge that we have much work to do in terms of changing public opinion--the task of reaching the hearts and minds of millions of individual citizens.

That process of reaching hearts and minds is Saletan's concern as well, even as he is a strong defender of abortion rights. As he sees it, support for abortion rights is diminishing as the pro-life movement has been largely successful in focusing upon the moral status of the fetus and the objectionable--even horrible--nature of abortion itself.

Writing on the thirty-third anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Saletan boldly argued: "It's time for the abortion-rights movement to declare war on abortion."

That was a rather amazing statement, and Saletan clearly intended to catch the attention of abortion-rights advocates.

"If you support abortion rights, this idea may strike you as nuts," Saletan acknowledged. "But look at your predicament. Most Americans support Roe and think women, not the government, should make abortion decisions. Yet they've entrusted Congress and the White House to politicians who oppose legal abortion, and they haven't stopped the confirmations to the Supreme Court of John G. Roberts Jr. and . . . Samuel A. Alito Jr."

In terms of political analysis, Saletan reminded his pro-choice readers that abortion may have been a "winning issue" for their side sixteen years ago, but no more. "You have a problem," he advised.

His candid analysis was offered so that the pro-abortion movement might awaken from its slumber. "The problem is abortion," he summarized. In order to make his point, he raised the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act and the Unborn Victims of Violence Act--both passed overwhelmingly by Congress and signed into law by President Bush--and reminded: "And most Americans supported both bills, because they agree with your opponents about the simplest thing: It's bad to kill a fetus."

Significantly, Saletan then offered his own moral analysis. "They're right. It is bad," he confirmed. "This is why the issue hasn't gone away. Abortion, like race-conscious hiring, generates moral friction. Most people will tolerate it as a lesser evil or a temporary measure, but they'll never fully accept it. They want a world in which it's less necessary. If you grow complacent or try to institutionalize it, they'll run out of patience. That's what happened to affirmative action. And it'll happen to abortion, if you stay hunkered down behind Roe."

Instead, Saletan argued that the pro-abortion movement should coalesce around an agenda of lowering the total number of abortions and increasing the use of contraceptives.

All this was just too much for Katha Pollitt, a fire-brand liberal who serves as a regular columnist for The Nation, one of America's most influential journals of liberal opinion.

Pollitt was shocked--absolutely shocked--that Saletan was ready to speak of abortion in moral terms. This is a move she emphatically rejects. "Inevitably, attacking abortion as a great evil means attacking providers and patients. If abortion is so bad, why not stigmatize the doctors who perform them? Deny the clinic a permit in your town? Make women feel guilty and ashamed for choosing it and make them sweat so they won't screw up again?"

Furthermore, she warned that abortion might soon "join obesity and smoking as unacceptable behavior in polite society."

Taken by itself, this is a truly amazing comment. At the very least, it suggests that, in Katha Pollit's social circle, obesity and smoking are taken as genuine moral issues, when abortion--the killing of an unborn human--is not.

But there's more. Consider this statement: "The trouble with thinking in terms of zero abortions is that you make abortion so hateful you do the antichoicers' work for them. You accept that the zygote/embryo/fetus has some kind of claim to be born." Did you get that? Any honest reading of her words would lead to the inevitable conclusion that Pollitt believes that the unborn human has no "claim to be born."

Pollitt was responding directly to Saletan's op/ed in The New York Times. In her view, Saletan was simply giving away the store by admitting that abortion was indeed a serious moral issue and that it is a "bad" reality in and of itself.

From their initial exchange in the Times and The Nation, Saletan and Pollitt continued their debate at Slate.com. Their exchange took the form of lengthy letters addressed to each other, with Saletan first clarifying what he really intended to say as he argued about abortion in moral terms. "I'm no fan of the language of sin," he clarified. "But I don't see why we have to shrink from words like good and bad. It's bad to cause a pregnancy in a situation where you're going to end up having an abortion. It's bad to cause a pregnancy in a situation where you can't be a good mom or dad. Our high rates of unintended pregnancy and abortion are a collective moral problem. If we don't want the government to tell us what to do, we'd better address the problem individually."

Beyond this, Saletan also told Pollitt that his purpose was not to create a movement that would combine pro-choicers with the pro-life. Instead, "I'm trying to form a coalition with the public," he suggested.

Saletan is an ardent supporter of abortion rights, but he positions himself in something of a centrist position--at least his position looks somewhat centrist with Katha Pollitt as background. He is concerned that when Pollitt dismisses any claim to life on the part of the fetus, she confuses the fetus with the zygote, "alienating people who see the difference and might support us if they realize we care about it." This is an interesting move, and a move I believe to be destined to fail.

Why? Because Saletan's effort to suggest that the fetus might have some claim to life while the zygote evidently does not, is based in no clear or compelling scientific definition of life. The human continuum begins with the union of the sperm and the egg and continues throughout gestation and life until natural death. At no point along this continuum does the life suddenly "become" human. Such arguments are based upon convenient abstractions or arbitrarily chosen capacities or characteristics. Pollitt's position is truly abhorrent and radical, but it is at least consistent.

Responding to Saletan, Pollitt accuses him of offering no real rationale for why abortion should be seen as "so outrageous, so terribly morally offensive, so wrong." She is willing to speak of abortion as a "difficult" decision, but that is about all. She explains that opposition to abortion is really an extension of an effort to deny sexual freedom to women, and to stigmatize sex outside of marriage. She identifies this with what she sees as the nation's "already broad, deep strain of sexual Puritanism, shame and blame."

Responding to Pollitt, Saletan clarified his position: "This is why I use the word 'bad.' It upsets many people on the left, but for the same reason, it wakes up people in the middle. It's new, and in my opinion, it's true. (I don't use the word 'wrong,' because to me that implies a prohibitive conclusion. 'Bad' is a consideration. Abortion can be a less-bad option than continuing a pregnancy. In that case, it's bad but not wrong.)"

Pollitt remained unmoved. "Morality has to do with rights and duties and obligations between people," she insisted. "So, no: I do not think terminating a pregnancy is wrong. A potential person is not a person, any more than an acorn is an oak tree. I don't think women should have to give birth just because a sperm met an egg. I think women have the right to consult their own wishes, needs, and capacities and produce only loved, wanted children they can care for--or even no children at all. I think we would all be better off as a society if we respected women's ability to make these decisions for themselves and concentrated on caring well for the born. There is certainly enough work there to keep us all very busy."

In the end, Saletan appeared to have retreated somewhat from his argument about the moral status of abortion, but the very fact that he addressed the issue so clearly and candidly is telling in itself. As for Pollitt, she was eventually willing to admit that abortion is "icky." As she explained this term: "I think that expresses rather well how lots of people feel about abortion: They may not find it immoral or want to see it made illegal, but it disturbs them. It just seems like a bad thing."

Why should pro-lifers pay attention to this debate among advocates of abortion rights? The answer to that question is simple--the exchange between William Saletan and Katha Pollitt demonstrates the inherent weakness of the pro-abortion argument, or its pro-choice variant. Lacking any objective definition of human life and the status of the unborn, the pro-abortion movement is mired in a pattern of endless internal debates and confusions. Saletan's argument is less radical than Pollitt's, but his position is morally arbitrary, based more in pragmatic concern than in moral philosophy.

In any event, the exchange between William Saletan and Katha Pollitt indicates that the pro-abortion movement knows that it has work to do in reaching the hearts and minds of Americans. The pro-life movement had better remind itself of the same challenge. Both sides are locked in a race to reach the hearts and minds of those still stuck in the middle.

On the first point I don't rely exclusively on human form and function for empathy, although that's the basis for most of the emotion. The other part is reason, which you seem to be implying that I can't have since I am using the emotion.

I think that even if you want to use empathy as a foundation, it's not based on form but on identification. The audience of 2001: A Space Odyssey (and the sequel) can identify with the computer HAL and feel empathy for him as he "dies" even though the only think "human" about his is his voice. And that's where you'll have a problem convincing anyone to change their mind. A lot of pro-life people do, in fact, have empathy for the embryo. Not in the narrow sense that you are looking for (empathizing with the pain it experiences or thoughts it has) but in the broader sense that one might empathize with an artist that dies in his sleep before achieving his dreams. It's empathy in the form of picturing yourself in that same situation. I would never have lived had I been aborted, and I can't think of anything more terrible to wish on a person than non-existence.

I would maintain that reason tells me that the foam cube in your example was once a human and could again become a human. Of course that requires adding some sci-fi magic to my reason and your scenario (star trek) obviously allows that. I cannot have empathy for a foam cube in my closet in my house right now, but I can certainly have it in your scenario. I don't have to see the human form morph into the cube form although that would help. I can use whatever phyiscal evidence is available that the transformation occured along with eyewitness testimony, etc. That is no different from my reason in non-moral cases, it's just that in this case, there's an underlying emotion driving my moral choices.

So if you can feel empathy for a foam block based on what it was more importantly, what it could be in the future (Would you feel the same empathy for the foam block if it couldn't be restored and was simply the remains of a person?), to the point where crushing the foam cube might register as "murder", then why can't you feel the same empathy for a single cell or small cluster of cells based on what it could be in the future, such that killing it registers as "murder"? Why do you need it to look human? Are you really that hung up on form?

On the second point, the strongest empathy comes from seeing another being in pain, but I can also empathize with joy and any other reasonably strong emotion. Empathy is simply my experience of that same emotion. Seeing someone die "painlessly" is going to give me empathy for the subject since I would not want to die "painlessly" either. My knowledge of the certainty of death has been quite painful at some points in my life.

Thus I think your empathy is about much more than pain. It's about identification. Can you identify with an unborn child from fertilization? I can. We all passed through that moment.

On the third point I do not assume my sense of empathy is universal and proper. Like I said, it works for me and I have ample evidence that it works for many other people. I believe it can work for everyone although some will have to learn or relearn empathy.

Perhaps you don't assume that your sense of empathy is universal, but you do seem to assume that is should be universal and assume that it could be if people would only learn or relearn thinking the way you do. Can't you see how arrogant that really is? Why don't you learn my sense of empathy so you can feel the appropriate sense of empathy for the unborn at all points from fertilization onward? Why should I learn your sense of empathy?

I have empathy for every unborn human lost as well. Like I said at the beginning, I have more empathy for those who had human form and function and were extinguished with pain or in your words "painlessly" passed from a peaceful living state in the womb into death.

And in the case where the mother's life is in danger, you would not be alone is using your stronger empathy for the mother to permit an abortion. Nor would you be alone in allowing abortion in the cases of rape or incest based on the pain it would cause the mother. But most abortions are not performed for those reasons. And most people reject those other reasons in polls, when given the option to state their opinion on individual justifications.

The idea of death in the womb causes me great anguish, but it requires human form and function to make that anguish complete, a single cell is not going to produce a full measure of empathy and thus not a full measure of moral outrage against that death.

And while the idea of people starving to death causes people a great deal of anguish, if they are out of sight and out of mind, they don't get a full measure of empathy, either. But I'll ask again, have you ever seen a picture of a fertilized egg or embryo that was implanted in a woman during IVF, hoping that it would result in the birth of a child? Have you ever seen an ultrasound of the beating heart of a 7 week old (actually at 5 weeks of life) unborn child? Of course you won't feel empathy for something you've never seen or tried to identify with, right? Could that be your problem?

Empathy alone does not produce consistent moral decisions, it also requires reason. Your rebuttal that your actions would not be the same as mine denies me that reason.

If you've already expressed your reasoning, I'm not finding it persuasive. Your reasoning seems to rely on everyone sharing your precise level of empathy for things. That's not going to happen. Again, your theory seems to rely on the hope that people will think just like you do.

Besides, there are many possible moral actions for each situation. It's true that empathy must be used or inaction will result. The example in your paper is good, if I do nothing or look away the train will kill five people. Empathy doesn't work if we close our eyes, ignore the abortion clinics, the culture of death, the train heading for those people.

Yes.

Liberals who can't punish criminals have no empathy for the victims. I don't look away from the silent scream and other evidence of immoral action just so I can pretend there was no moral wrong. That's what separates my liberalism from the mainstream liberalism you refer to.

Let me tell you the dirty little secret of the abortion debate. It's nearly impossible to be really happy or comfortable with the full implications of any position on the issue becaue the two choice are ultimately whether we kill helpless unborn children or force women who don't want to be pregnant to stay pregnant. The way most people with perfectly functioning senses of empathy resolve that problem is with a focus on one half of that equation and pretending the other half doesn't exist.

Supporters of abortion talk only of the woman and it goes to the point of absurdity where, for example, the feminist book The New Our Bodies, Ourselves showed a diagram of an abortion that included everything but the fetus. They do everything they can to dehumanize the fetus.

Similarly, those opposed to abortion are reluctant to talk about whether they'd punish pregnant women who seek abortions and even some pro-life people are willing to make exceptions for those cases where they can't ignore the needs of the woman (i.e., rape, incest, life of the mother).

But that's why both sides talk past each other, because to apply empathy to the situation and to acknowledge the points of the other side means that both choices are awful. So it ultimately comes down to choosing the lesser of two evils and people draw those lines differently for a variety of reasons. If you want to understand the full range of different world views that people have, discuss the issue of abortion deeply. And anyone that tells you the answer to abortion is easy is lying to you.

Like any other liberal philosophy, my reliance on empathy (and reason) for morality can easily be labelled "wishful thinking". But to say it won't result in complete agreement on moral issues is not a valid argument against it since there are multiple moral outcomes in many cases.

Take a look at what happened during Mao's Great Leap Forward. They rejected centuries of agricultural knowledge in favor of wishful thinking and 40 million people died. In Cambodia, they wanted to reshape the thinking of the population to create a better society and wound up killing a third of the population because they knew they wouldn't go along with the utopian schemes of the Khmer Rouge. I'm sorry but millions of people have died at the hands of people who think they can solve the worlds problems with new ideas that they have no evidence can work. What evidence do you have that your ideas will work?

No, I don't think you want to set up re-education camps or murder the people who don't agree with you but if that's not what you are going to do, then I don't know how you expect to get from where things are to where you think they should be. Your ideas aren't getting a very good reception here, how do you think they'll really fare in the larger world? Your arguments are not self-evident, yet you seem to think they should be.

Obviously everyone does not agree with your metaphysical definition of abortion as immoral. Some of the people who disagree with you have drawn their metaphysical line at birth.

Most of those people are not drawing that line for rational reasons. They draw the line there because they resent the fact that sex makes women pregnant when they don't want to be and resent the idea that a woman should have to live with an unwanted pregnancy. Women in the poorer parts of India murder born girls on the grounds that it's morally the same as the richer women who can afford prenatal sex tests and abort the girl babies. Peter Singer has argued that parents should be able to decide to euthanize born children. So the slippery line doesn't stop at birth. It keeps going, and infanticide was at least as popular a form of "planned parenthood" in ancient times as abortion. So what about the people, like Michael Tooley, who seek to draw the line after birth -- sometimes well after birth?

Then you and they are left to argue about lines and humanity. I don't have that problem and neither do millions like me.

Most of humanity doesn't have a problem because most of humanity doesn't want to think about the issue and generally doesn't. Having discussed abortion for years, it's really not that difficult to stun the average person with information about abortion that they just don't know. There is a reason why pro-choice pollsters ask people whether they support Roe v. Wade rather than abortion in particular cases. Most people don't understand Roe and when given a menu of situations in which they have to approve or disapprove of abortion, wind up sounding quite pro-life. Most people are simply ignorant on the issue, including women who have had them and men whose children were aborted.

Our properly developed empathy underlies our moral reasoning on abortion. We see human potential extinguished and imagine our own human potential being extinguished. But more importantly we see human form and function that triggers a much stronger empathy for that person.

I'd argue that the "looks" basis for empathy is a relative of the fact that kids pick on other kids who are ugly and people pick on people of other races that look differently than they do. Yes, it's a visceral response of being attracted to things that look pretty and look like they do but I'd hardly consider it proper. In fact, I'd argue that empathy limited to certain forms and features is more about selectively turning off one's empathy (which everything from military commanders to racists use to great effect) than about having a properly developed sense of empathy. You shouldn't feel more empathy for someone just because you like the way they look or suppress your empathy because they don't look human enough for you. Science fiction is full of plenty of cautionary tales about that, too.

Your approach has two flaws, although I admit it has worked for vast numbers of people and cultures through the ages. The first flaw is that you ignore empathy in your moral decision.

Not at all. I simply argue that it shouldn't be the foundation, at least not based on form and features in the way that you are using it. In my opinion, I can feel empathy and judge an act murder whether it's crushing a hypothetical foam block, an embryo, or a very deformed child who looks ugly. Yet you seem to reject the possibility that one could feel full and proper empathy for an embryo. I have no more trouble feeling empathy for an embryo that for some hypothetical Rwandan who was murdered about whom I know nothing else. My ability to identify with another person is not limited by how they look or how much I know about them.

You admit it exists, you admit you have it, but you simply ignore it and rely on metaphysics thus always getting into (and potentially losing) metaphysical arguments.

I've watched my metaphysical arguments convince people that abortion is wrong. I've also had a room-mate, who wasn't particularly interested in the issue, use my arguments to demolish a pro-choice woman's arguments because he thought she was a bigot and he wanted to piss her off. How many people have you persuaded?

The second flaw is that your metaphysical approach, like all others, requires line drawing that is ultimately impossible. There is no line, you just "wishfully" will one into existence.

The lines I draw seem plenty clear to everyone else that I've explained them two. There are only two, neither of which is at birth.

Likewise in the camp of your enemies, there is no line of "birth" that they can draw which also dooms their approach. They also ignore empathy and suppress it to the point of pathology. Hence the damage done to women from abortion.

There are those on the pro-abortion side who require fully-formed human mental capacity for them to feel empathy. I find the life and future of an embryo sufficient to feel empathy for it. You might require two arms, two legs, and a beating heart. Others require self awareness. Which is more "proper" and who gets to decide?

Lines, tipping points, whatever you want to call them, are not a strong basis for morality.

Sure they are. The human mind is a patter matching and categorizing machine. So strong is our desire to see patterns that we see pictures in clouds and optical illusions. We categorize and draw lines. It's what we do. We distinguish murder from homicide by drawing lines. First degree murder form second degree murder by drawing lines. Battery from murder by drawing lines. And so on. Life is full of lines and real or imaginary, they are quite useful. Without lines, we have a subjective puddle of mud. If that were satisfying, we could dispense with laws and suggested penalties and just have random mobs of people administer justice on individuals based on how they feel about what they did.

Only empathy can be, has been and will be.

All of the other metaphysical lines drawn throughout time have been derived from an empathetic reaction followed by reason. When lines are drawn codified into law by politics, there is an underlying emotion that the legislators are experiencing. When lines are used to enforce laws, there are underlying emotions that created those laws.

Are you talking about "emotion" or "empathy"? Not the same thing. You also seem to be implying a hierarchy that doesn't exist and that the brain scan research doesn't show. You seem to think empathy always comes first. Empathy, as well as emotion, and utilitarian reasoning happen at the same time. The one that makes the strongest case wins.

But the strength of a people to resist evil, to draw their own meaningful and moral lines comes from the strength of their own individual empathies.

Strong empathy, alone, does not allow people to resist evil. That liberals find it so easy to feel everyone's pain but so difficult to fight not only crime but terrorism is evidence of this. They care so much and identify with others so much that they care about the bad guys as much as the good guys and empathize with the plight of the bad guys so much that they excuse their behavior, no matter how awful. Empathy, alone, is as useless as reasoning alone. Fully formed morality requires an emotional component and a rational component (and that's what the brain scan research also shows). You are doing the flip side of what people do when they deny any role for emotion or empathy in moral decisions. You are trying to get rid of an important half of the process because you find it difficult to work with.

That empathy is what often lacks in criminals and by the time laws are enforced it is too late.

Too little empathy is bad. To much empathy is bad. Empathy is naturally balanced by reason. You need both. The lack of either one produces defective decisions. But what you also need to recognize is that rational logic is how people explain their empathy and emotions. You can't give me your sense of empathy but you can explain it, quantify it, and (gasp!) draw some lines to explain how it works in practice. You seem to believe that just because the discussion happens with the language of reason that no empathy or emotion is involved. Of course that's not true.

Deterring people from committing abortion is going to require us to help them identify and emphasize with the humanity within them. Your job, with your beliefs, is to help women understand and empathize with the humanity within them back to the point of conception.

That's one way to do it.

It is a difficult job since the cell lacks human form and function, but you can, like I do, reason about human potential and humanity. But if you choose to ignore empathy and rely on solely metaphysical lines, you will lose the strongest force for good, the emotion that underlies goodness.

There is no way to directly convey empathy. Explaining why the embryo is like a fetus and a fetus is like a baby serves the purpose of linking a baby with an embryo for the purpose of empathy. It's a rational "metaphysical" discussion but it can also be persuasive if it addresses the characteristics a person is dwelling on. For example, my arguments directed at you addressed your concerns about how human an unborn child looks. My point is to give you examples where looks don't matter and to provide an analysis of why they don't matter. That can influence your empathy by giving you a different way to think of the unborn. The wagging goes both ways, not just one way like you suggest.

No clearly it is up to each individual to cultivate empathy in themselves and others. That certain groups don't do this and those same groups have high rates of abortion is evidence enough for me, bearing in mind that those same groups have above average awareness of your metaphysical definitions of morality.

That's an overly simplistic analysis. I attended a pro-choice march in DC as a counter-protester in college. I wound up in discussion with a nice pro-choice guy who volunteered caring for babies with AIDS. It would be difficult to argue that he wasn't empathic and didn't care about others. But his empathy worked different than mind did. To convince him that abortion was wrong, I'd have to get him to consider the fetus the equivalent of a baby. Waxing poetic about empathy in the abstract wouldn't get me there. Getting him to explain his lines and questioning their validity might, and has for me in the past.

Thanks for your responses. Here's some answers to some of your questions, even if they were meant to be rhetorical. I am hung up on human form because I believe that triggers the strongest empathy. Your foam block example requires reason, not empathy. Reason is also required to understand the potential of a single-celled human being. The sense of empathy I mostly think of is triggered by visual and tactile inputs, can you see it without a microscope and hold it in your hand? Suppose the foam blocks were replaced by invisible specks of dust. Or suppose the foam block had never once been human, only had the potential to become human in the future. Those scenarios would not have been as compelling. Anyway it's sci-fi and artificial.

Thus I have somewhat limited ability to identify emotionally with a single-celled human being in general. In any particular case I would have more. If I were a woman with my own inside, that is far too hypothetical for me to know what I would think, but I would hope that I would have natural empathy for it and want to protect it. Because I myself passed though that stage doesn't do much emotionally for me, although it is a powerful reasoning tool.

I'm sorry but millions of people have died at the hands of people who think they can solve the worlds problems with new ideas that they have no evidence can work. What evidence do you have that your ideas will work?

My thesis is that empathy is the basis of morality along with more and more reason as situations become more complex. In cases where the situation is complex like sending the evil rich city people to the country to become farmers the results of using emotions of any sort are usually disasterous. In simpler situations like diverting the train to save 5 people (with no negative consequences) an emotional response is usually ok. To specifically answer your question, I have seen lots of anecdotal evidence that groups of people with well-developed empathy have better moral group behavior than those without. My measurements may be somewhat circular.

Your ideas aren't getting a very good reception here, how do you think they'll really fare in the larger world?

Too many people here are, in my opinion, trying to diminish the importance of empathy in order to inflate the importance of their metaphysical choices. That leads to arguments as I pointed out. Your examples of where you won those arguments are not that compelling because it seems like you were dealing with people who had a lot of empathy and were able to perform the same rationalizations that you have. I don't think those are bad rationalizations and in fact the feedback from reason to help produce more empathy is critical. Your own experiences are valuable and I have not had those, only observed still pictures, with and without magnification, online.

I'd argue that empathy limited to certain forms and features is more about selectively turning off one's empathy

I said form and function. A single celled human has no functions that are any different from any other cell in your body. Well developed empathy cannot be turned off easily. Just as empathy is difficult to develop it is also difficult to undo. Pure reason, on the other hand, can be switched off all too easily. The cases of bigotry that you give seem to be examples of lack of empathy combined with faulty reasoning.

On the line drawing, you seem to be merging politics and law with metaphysics. The former is derived from the latter, but law is really only about drawing lines and metaphysics starts with the reality that there are no lines. Pointing out lines from the law does not validate metaphysical lines in any way.

The rest of your points are good. Too much empathy is clearly bad and has led to great evils. We strongly agree there needs to be a mix of empathy and reason. I just wanted to add that empathy can be slowly formed by reason and by seeing examples of it. It can't be conveyed directly as you say, but we all learn it indirectly (and may also have some wired in). Your debate with the pro-choicer was another example of debating with someone with lots of empathy. Your reason should have been enough to convince him of the value of the fetus despite his stronger empathy for the women. I believe that it's possible, but difficult. The empathy for the embryo may be real, not a rationalization as I said, but it is harder because of missing forms and functions that trigger the empathy (like the voice and reason of HAL triggered empathy).

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