The Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade of 1973 made abortion legal in the United States - but by no means settled the ethical, religious, or political controversies surrounding abortion. Indeed, the lack of consensus regarding abortion is apparent in on-going, contentious, and sometimes ugly debate - debate which has spilled over into real violence. The debate is so fractious, no doubt, because positions on abortion are drawn frequently on the basis of religious sensibilities and commitments - commitments and sensibilities which tend towards dogmatic insistence on the truth of one's own views, views which thus cannot be compromised.
These controversies are themselves part of the argument for abortion rights. The majority opinion in Roe v. Wade, authored by Justice Blackmun, refers specifically to the lack of theological, philosophical, and medical consensus regarding "when life begins" - better, when "personhood" (i.e., where "persons" are those entities possessed of basic rights) begins. In the absence of consensus, the argument runs - people should be free (up to a point) to follow their own fundamental convictions and beliefs.
This argument is of interest in our forum for three reasons. One, Roe v. Wade provides an interesting example of what the lack of consensus can mean: in this case, the lack of such consensus is used to argue in favor of abortion laws which demarcate a wide range of individual choices. In other words, the lack of consensus here is used as an argument to allow for a moral pluralism which acknowledges the legitimacy of diverse, often conflicting views on the issues of abortion.
Two, this argument is at the same time an important example in support of especially Habermas's claim that the notion of consensus, as a necessary condition of truth claims and democratic polity, operates as something like a moral "intuition." (That is, the argument runs, we often appeal to such consensus in moral argument - as exemplified in the Supreme Court decision - as important support for moral claims. This suggests a tacit recognition of such consensus as an important, perhaps primordial condition of truth, especially when crucial issues of rights and justice are at stake.) At the same time, however, our other "conversational" ethicists do not require such consensus as a necessary outcome of moral argument: Putnam (for whom Roe v Wade is a paradigm), Hampshire ('justice as strife'), and perhaps Rawls do not see 'convergence of claims' as a possiblitity here.
Nonetheless, each of these theorists stress the process of "open and informed" discussion. But this means, lastly, that the lack of consensus on abortion and the larger failure of dialogue between opposing viewpoints on abortion provide crucial challenges to the ability of conversational ethics to solve fundamental moral problems through conversation - much less, through achieving consensus. The challenge is ramified precisely as such conversations take place among discussants whose central beliefs are grounded in religious commitments: compromise and consensus, as frequently suggested hallmarks of rational discourse, seem much more elusive when discussants appeal to divergent principles and beliefs - principles and beliefs held to be absolute and ultimately beyond rational critique or justification, as part and parcel of a larger religious framework or worldview.
As an introduction to the challenges of sustaining dialogue and achieving consensus, our first background document, "Breaking through the Stereotypes," by Daniel Callahan ("pro-choice") and his wife Sidney Callahan ("pro-life"), outlines the elements of the more intractable debate between secular "pro-choice" and religious "pro-life" positions - a debate which, in their view cannot be resolved through dialogue because each side represents the Manichean opposite of the other. Over against this failure of dialogue, however, they report a more successful example of conversation between "liberal" pro-life women and "communitarian" pro-choice women - a conversation which uncovered both compatible moral beliefs and irreducible differences in worldviews. This dialogue thus stands as a first example of the possibility of on-going conversation across irreducible difference - a possible example of success for some forms of conversational ethics, even if Habermasian consensus per se is not achieved.
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