Speaking Tonight on a World After Roe
Speaking across a moral chasm
I’ll be speaking on a panel run by FemCatholic tonight at 9p ET. (Late enough that my 3mo probably won’t make an appearance). I’ve really appreciated your reading suggestions from earlier this week.
My maternity leave officially ends on Monday, but I’ve come back a little early to help my colleagues at Braver Angels plan a debate responsive to the possible overturning of Roe.
We want to give attendees the chance to debate abortion itself, but also to answer the question:
How do we live alongside people who advocate for and are complicit in grave moral evil?
Abortion is the issue where I think both sides would claim the urgency of William Lloyd Garrison in his abolitionist newspaper The Liberator:
I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; — but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead.
We’re planning how to structure our debate to help both sides give voice to this urgency, while still doing something more than shouting at each other. We’re finalizing our plans (and I’ll share the registration link when it’s up) but one idea I proposed was starting the debate by having people write their answers to two questions:
My hope is that it helps us understand what it is we disagree about. Without this starting point there is no productive debate. There is almost no support for abortion in the third trimester, which is a reminder that much of the substantive debate isn't about whether a woman should control her body or not, but about when we should say there's a body and when we should say there are two human bodies. Or, to paraphrase CS Lewis, it is not that people don't object to killing witches, it is that people don't believe witches exist. ("You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.")
On your question about "grave moral evil". the first thing I did was to stop thinking about people onvolved in efforts to prohibit legal abortion as involved in evil. the second was to refine the differences between the two "sides", rather that people were commited mor to one positive value more than another. The two values are respect for life and respect for women's moral agency. There may have been a time in history when ethical dilemmas came down to obvious choice between good and evil. That time is mostly over; instead we are faced with competing goods where both can not be honored. Whichever one is chosen, ther is loss and we regret the loss. It is hard to maintain this balance as it requires not thinking your value is the better one.