Eyre Lines

I saw the first facebook mention of Richard Dawkins’ recent comment about it being (potentially) immoral not to abort a Downs Syndrome foetus and winced. For a very bright guy, occasionally Dawkins shows all the mental acumen of the average flea.

Firstly, a Twitter message is clearly entirely inadequate to do justice to the moral implications of the situation. I’m not sure the several additional messages and articles which have appeared following that tweet are adequate either, but a tweet is just blatantly a stupid way of doing this.

Secondly, within his own rationale (of reducing suffering), he was unable to arrive at the conclusion he did on the basis of the information available. He didn’t know enough about the circumstances.

Thirdly, he seems to have ignored the testimony of very many parents of Downs Syndrome children and of those who know Downs Syndrome people, which should have led him to question his blanket assumption that they were likely to suffer. In fact, on the evidence I have (which is also inadequate), it seems to me that a majority of Downs Syndrome children lead very happy, if tragically short, lives.

However, a principal reason why I winced was that I anticipated the storm of comment likely to emerge from conservative Christian voices. I needed only to wait for Sunday, and a sermon in which this was mentioned. This thing was, the preacher added that in a way he respected Dawkins for following his atheism to it’s rational conclusion, whereas so many atheists didn’t. His assumption, of course (shared by the vast majority of his congregation) was that any Christian would know that this was just wrong. Not necessarily wrong because of any consideration of the life quality of a Downs Syndrome person, but because abortion is just wrong in every case. Wrong because it is forbidden to kill another human being, and because a foetus is another human being.

It is not clear to me that the general course of Christianity historically has held this, far less the previous course of Judaism. It is correct to say that from a very early stage, Christianity generally has frowned on all forms of preventing new life arising from sexual relations, but the rationale for this has not historically been avoidance of killing, but the transmission of human life as a primary purpose of the sacrament of marriage. The focus was, therefore, on banning contraception until the mid 20th century. This is not, I think, now the majority position within Christianity, although it is still the declared position of the Catholic Church. Abortion, of course, was a somewhat aggravated case of contraception from the point of view of the Church.

I do not think, given the current overpopulation of the planet, that Christianity should be advocating for unlimited increase of humanity any more.

As the tenor of thinking in society generally shifted in favour of planned parenthood, abortion became the touchstone, but in conservative protestant churches on the alternative ground that it was the killing of another human being. This required a shift of thinking, as prior to then, a foetus had only generally been regarded (as were sperm) as a potential human being. Indeed, if you go back to (say) the Middle Ages, it is uncertain whether the church generally regarded under age children as being fully human beings; various states had “lesser crimes” of infanticide for small children, for instance, and children still lack many of the same rights or privileges attaching to adults more or less everywhere. An abortion, in other words, was wrong, but a far lesser wrong than was murder.

It has thus become an entirely tenable position within modern Liberal Christianity that, in certain circumstances, abortion is permissible; indeed, a major factor in decision making should be the alleviation of suffering (just as Dawkins proposed) both of the anticipated child, if born, and of the mother.

As it happens, as a result of my panentheism, I do think that abortion is always a wrong, as it results in the death of a living organism. I do, however, see a spectrum rather than a somewhat arbitrary fixed line, so it is also a wrong to kill a sperm (but a far lesser wrong), and it becomes progressively more wrong as a foetus progresses towards birth. But then, I also see it as a wrong to kill any living thing (a wrong which I commit on occasion, including euthanising pets who are in extreme pain and swatting insects, and which is extremely frequently committed on my behalf, bearing in mind that I eat meat – though vegetables are also alive…). I am not convinced that we draw the line between permissible and absolutely wrong in the right place. Indeed, I am not completely sure that a line should be drawn on one side of which is an absolute.

Of course, in point of fact, most laws in ostensibly Christian countries allow (and have allowed since the earliest Christian country) the killing of even adult human beings in some cases; self defence or the prevention of serious harm to others, for instance, war (which I massively disapprove of, though I’m not necessarily a pacifist – yet) or, in some places, as a punishment for offenders (which I might countenance only on the basis that it’s a better option than life in some prisons, and then as an option offered to the prisoner). There are even a few prominent Christian voices supporting voluntary euthanasia in some extreme cases, to reduce suffering (using, so far as I can see, the same “social hedonism” utilitarian argument which Dawkins was using). In Christianity, therefore, the killing of even another human being is at most a wrong which can be outweighed by a greater wrong.

Why not in the case of abortion? It clearly cannot be because killing is always an absolute wrong, because that is not what Christianity has historically held or what conservative Christianity holds now. Is it, perhaps, because it involves the killing of “an innocent”? How can it be, given that conventional Christianity has the concept of “original sin”, and there are therefore arguably no innocents anyhow?

The answer, I think, does not lie in logical argument. In fact, it lies in an emotional revulsion to using logical argument in the case of the taking of human life. I feel this myself (for any readers who wish to take exception to my argument, rest assured that I can echo Peter Rollins and say that I may offend them, but hey, I offend myself as well). I don’t think this is something for which we can find an answer in logic (although we may well find it in evolutionary biology). I have never killed another human being myself, but having at times spent significant amounts of time with soldiers (courtesy of being a Civil Defence Scientific Advisor) I know both that they more or less unanimously attest that there is something viscerally different about killing another human, something with a deep emotional impact which surprised some of them, and that meeting people for the first time, one of the questions everyone wants to ask (although some are hesitant to do so) is “have you ever killed someone?”.

Dawkins, in other words, was going to places which we are typically both fascinated by and repulsed by, and seemed unmoved by that. That isn’t the hallmark of an atheist, it’s the hallmark of someone who is intellectually brave. There have been plenty of intellectually brave Christian thinkers, and sometimes their logical excursions produce stomach-churning results too (and I’m thinking of Calvin’s predestination here).

Or maybe the intellectually foolish. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell the difference between brave and foolish.