Shifting Responsibility for a Life

Jeff Miller quotes the following hypothetical dialogue from a piece by Steve Kellmeyer:

To see how this works, consider the following conversation between Rachel, a pro-life college student and Bill, her pro-abortion classmate:

Rachel: "Is the choice to have sex a choice to have a child?"

Bill: "No."

Rachel: "And you believe that at conception, the 'thing' conceived is not a child, right?"

Bill: "Exactly."

Rachel: "So, when exactly would you say that a child begins to exist?"

(NOTE: How Bill answers doesn't really matter. Rachel agrees, for the sake of argument, to use whatever time frame he chooses.)

Rachel: "And you believe that a woman may have an abortion for whatever reason she chooses?"

Bill: "Of course."

Rachel: "Do you believe men and women have equal rights?"

Bill: "As long as abortion is legal, yes."

Rachel: "All right. Who creates children?"

Bill: "What do you mean?"

Rachel: "Well, if there's no child at conception, the 'product of conception' has to become a child at some point before it's born. Therefore, the woman alone 'creates' the child through the act of gestation."

Bill: "Er, what are you driving at?"

Rachel: "It's simple. Your pro-abortion position entails the concept that sexual intercourse doesn't create children, gestation creates children. Intercourse merely creates a fertilized ovum, a 'tissue mass.' Men don't get pregnant. Men don't create children. Men simply provide one-half of a set of blueprints. The woman provides not only the other half, but the building site, the construction materials, she oversees the project, and she can destroy the whole thing anytime she wants. The man has got nothing to do with it. The existence of a child is not his responsibility - he has no choice in the matter, right? He's done nothing to create, and you already said that the decision to have sex is not a decision to have children. So, the idea of compelling child support from the man is really a carry-over from patriarchy, when men were thought to share responsibility for the existence of a child. Now that legal abortion has liberated us from those archaic ideas, we should throw away the last remnants of the old oppression. If the question of allowing the unborn child to live or be killed through abortion is the sole decision of the woman, it makes sense to ask why the man should be made to pay to support her lifestyle, her choice? If she can have an abortion for whatever reason she wants, then she is having a child for whatever reason she wants. In neither case does it have anything to do with the man."

The main problem with such arguments — exacerbated by the very fact that they are effective — is that they merely expand the logic that must be circumnavigated to accommodate an emotion-based opinion. The largest obstacle that pro-lifers face in making abortion illegal is that doing so shines a too-bright spotlight on the evil decision that so many people (who aren't evil, themselves) around the world have made.

To win the argument that an unborn child is, indeed, a human being and, therefore, has a right to live is to win the argument that millions of mothers have slaughtered their children. That's not an act that a mother easily faces. The avoidance of making such an admission is so powerful a motivation that attempts to force it can result in an ever-escalating series of cover-ups. One such cover-up came to mind upon reading a paragraph about euthanasia in another post of Jeff Miller's, which touches on a wide range of relevant issues:

After all the Netherlands was the first to legalized euthanasia and many pundits said that this is exactly where it would lead. When socialized medical costs meet expensive health care situations you know who is going to lose and pay with their life. Liberals send out so many mixed messages. It is alright to spend billions to reduce some pollutant down a another thousands of a percent even if the scientific case is rather dubious. But to spend money to keep someone living another day is just too extreme. Reasonable medical attention should be given but when it comes to government coffers you will soon need a coffin.

Jeff's post is worth reading for other reasons, but take a tangential moment to consider the effect that socialized healthcare might have on the discussion between Rachel and Bill. As with many areas of life, socialism erases the need for personal responsibility. Under a socialized medical regime, like a liberal arts sophomore palming everything off to a vague, faceless, and all-pervasive "society," hypothetical Bill can merely walk away from the consequences of his own assumptions and Rachel's logic, because the point is moot.

He can admit that the man is not responsible for the product of his sex and semen. But he can also say that the woman is not responsible for the product of her gestation — over which, of course, she has no physical control — because the cost is borne by "society" (which probably forced the poor tramp to live a life of careless sex in the first place). That the cost is borne in more ways than one, and that society's costs are inherently borne by its members, is a reality that such people need never address directly.