Man Bites Blog

Andrew Sullivan approvingly posts and e-mail calling the pro-life movement absurd because:

The pro-life position requires acceptance of a notion that is both religious in origin and odious to common sense, that even the earliest zygote should be treated as a person. The philosophical gedanken often used to exhibit the absurdity of this position is whether, caught in a burning fertility clinic, and able to save only one, you would choose to rescue a child? Or a tray holding thousands of viable embryos, ready for implantation into would-be mothers?

I don’t think this proves what the writer or Sullivan think it does.  There are two major problems with using this hypothetical as a basis for public policy:

1. Our reasons for judgement in these situations might be influenced by factors that are not altogether good.  Fatherly instinct might lead me to save my daughter from a burning school before others.  Racism might lead me to save only white children.  Sexism might lead me to save boys.
   Using this hypothetical as a substitute for grappling with the difficult moral questions may paper over moral errors in that judgement.  Are we so sure that our instinct to save the four year old rather than the embryos is sound, and not motivated by similar sentiments as those that might lead me to save people of my own race first?
2. A lower priority in the burning building does not imply that it is OK to actively kill those lower on the priority for the benefit of those higher.

 The e-mailer continues… 

The pro-choice position is not just about arguing the consequence of that difference should include more reproductive freedom than the pro-life movement desires. It also is about preserving sanity in how these issues are argued.

It seems to me that this e-mail is more of an attempt to preserve sanity by avoiding difficult questions, and labeling those with inconvenient answers absurd.

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