We began with the problem of using pluralism as a defense of abortion. As an alternative defense, Laurie Shrag proposed articulating an abortion-tolerant viewview which includes respect for life - specifically the life of children who are desired, can be cared for, etc. Such a worldview may come across to anti-abortion folk as reasonable and legitimate as it shares with them the value of respecting life - and thereby contribute to free expression for, and peaceful, respectful relations between the abortion-resistant and the abortion-tolerant.
Such a worldview may helpfully exploit religious sources: the primary source which emerges here is Judaism, with its understanding of the fetus as not fully human until it is born (drawing its first breath), feticide as a property crime, etc.
Important agreements emerge here:
1) Our "respect for life" cannot be artificially restricted to the issue of abortion only, but must rather pervade our moral stances in related domains - a point first raised by Howard Hunt as a critique of some anti-abortion stances.2) We further seem to agree that abortion is not a positive good, not a choice we want anyone to have to make, so that we may commonly (i.e., abortion-tolerant and abortion-resistant together) work to eliminate the conditions which encourage women to consider abortion in the first place.
The reader can helpfully compare these agreements with those articulated by Danial Callahan and Sidney Callahan and by James Gustafson, especially in his conclusion. As well, these sorts of agreements form the basis of "common ground" movements, both among Catholics and Protestants, and within the Catholic community. But the difficulties those movements have faced in praxis point to the central, theoretical issues raised in this discussion thread - namely, how far such common ground may be staked out, and whether such hoped-for common grounds will suffice to sustain a shared public sphere in a religiously pluralistic society. See "A central issue," below.)
Disagreements:
1) Abortion-tolerant folk see abortion raising metaphysical, not empirically-decidable issues, thus forcing us into diverse religious and moral frameworks. Our abortion-resistant representative believes rather that these issues are empirically decidable - and that there is consensus over when human life begins, how and to what extent it is to be protected, etc. (I refer to Helen Alvare as abortion-resistant, not anti-abortion, because she hints that abortion under very limited circumstances may be permissible - which coincides with my understanding of Catholic teaching as well. This point should be developed: the Jewish tradition several of us find attractive also holds for abortion only under limited circumstances. What agreements and disagreements are there here?)2) The abortion-tolerant folk hope for a compromise in the public sphere which will include the option of abortion. The abortion-resistant view acknowledges the facts of pluralism, but likewise seeks to persuade others - partly through the witness of social activism which addresses the conditions that incline women to consider abortion - that opposition to abortion is the proper view.
A central issue - and three positions.
Can we establish a rational public sphere which rests on shared premises (Seyla Benhabib, with reference to Habermas and Rawls - cf. our background materials on these in the Meta-ethics forum), vis-a-vis the diversity of moral and religious frameworks represented in our society? Benhabib seems to point to a common ground of shared assumptions that might make such a "working" public sphere possible (in part as she sees that religious positions are not irrational - and thus more obviously opposed to public rationality - but rather incorporate rationality within their frameworks of belief).Laurie Shrage's original project is aimed in this direction, but she further points to important obstacles as well - most centrally, that our first-level disagreements regarding when human life begins, etc., will further infect our second-level effort to determine whether or not sufficient consensus regarding shared assumptions in the public sphere prevails. (This obstacle is suggested in part just by the difference apparent in this forum between the abortion-tolerant folk's tendency to focus on diversity of views, vs. the abortion-resistant folk's tendency to emphasize that consensus already obtains.)
Helen Alvare thinks that Shrage's project will not work - but Helen further believes precisely that there is no great disagreement in the first place, suggesting that the Catholic position will ultimately coincide with the position we take in the public sphere.
From my perspective, this forum has thus succeeded in encouraging exchanges of views which help clarify important differences (including, for example, the exchange between Laurie Shrage and Seyla Benhabib over rationality and the public sphere), in articulating important and helpful points of agreement and disagreement, and in refining our understanding of the defining question of this forum, namely, can conversational ethics "work" in the face of deep religious differences as shaping our beliefs on such issues as abortion?
Laurie Shrage began our discussion by countering a pluralist defense of abortion (i.e., one which takes the lack of consensus regarding this issue as grounds for relinquishing the decision to the individuals involved, such as Roe v. Wade argues) with the resulting dilemma: the lack of consensus can be taken 'liberally,' so as to allow for abortion - and thereby violate the deeply-held beliefs of those for whom abortion is murder - or it can be taken 'conservatively,' so as to violate the deeply-held beliefs of those for whom abortion is thought to be an important right. (Her comments should be reviewed: http://www.lcl.cmu.edu/CAAE/Home/Forum/abortion/shrage_ques.html)
To escape this dilemma, she (A) suggests an alternative direction of inquiry for our forum - and (B) further sets up more modest, and likely more realistic goals for us to aim towards.
(A) As an alternative direction, Laurie Shrage argues that
those who wish to defend liberal and permissive abortion laws need to articulate an understanding of human life, persons, and pregnancy that is compatible with some range of abortion practices.
This means, further, that:
Our struggle with anti-abortionists is then to convince them that this world view is reasonable and legitimate, and that in a society in which anti-abortion and abortion-tolerant world views are prevalent, we need to work out ways to allow each world view to express itself while maintaining peaceful and respectful relations between different groups.
She refers us to Patricia Mann's "cyborgian" view of pregnancy as a starting point for such an abortion-tolerant world view, partly because it
is powerful and appealing and may capture the cultural sentiments of many people in industrialized contemporary societies. On this view, children are products of the nurturing acts and decisions, enabled by biology and technology. Children are not products of supernatural or natural forces but are the result of the efforts of agents to commit to them. Unwanted children are not children at all but represent organic conditions that can be managed.
Laurie Shrage further appeals to Barbara Katz Rothman, who suggests
that the distinction we make between abortion and contraception is a cultural one, and that abortion is viewed by many women as a type of contraception, one resorted to when other steps to avoid procreation fail.
Taken together, Shrage suggests that
on some world views, tolerance for abortion represents a commitment to care for persons who have already been created and an unwillingness to force people to make children that they are unable or unprepared to care for.
In light of her project to develop such a world view, Shrage hopes to find in this forum "the resources different systems of religious belief can contribute to the project of developing a positive, abortion-tolerant account of life, persons, and pregnancy." This turn towards religious traditions as sources for abortion-tolerant worldviews rests not only on the recognition that many women participate in religious community - but also on the hope that a religiously-informed abortion-tolerant worldview might "make the abortion practices many women accept intelligible to those they offend." If her proposed worldview succeeds in this,
... then perhaps we can move away from 'pro- choice' defenses of abortion, which oppose women's freedom to children's lives, and move toward accounts of abortion practices that tie them to different ways of revering life.
(B) Shrage closes her first posting by pointing out that
...the purpose of ethical dialogue is not to win universal assent to a particular view, but to promote the cultural understanding and mutual intelligibility necessary to forge political compromises.....To move the debate over abortion forward, those of us who tolerate some range of abortion practices need to make abortion opponents see the coherent views of life and personhood that inform our attitudes and customs. If we can do this, then we are in a better position to negotiate laws and policies that permit women access to abortion.
Howard Hunt responds to Laurie Shrage's interest in religious resources in two ways. One,
I find that I must apply the term 'nurturing choices and decisions' in a most liberal manner, for many of those who parent children in the physical sense have given little or no thought to the consequences of the act which leads to procreation. I would think much of the debate could be resolved if there were more thought given to when a child is desired, wanted and, when the family is ready to take on that responsibility.
In addition, rather than relying on the cyborgean view, Hunt points to Jewish understandings as candidates for the religious sources Laurie Shrage seeks:
The Jewish community, as I understand it, sees the fetus taking on human status when it draws breath - as in God breathing the breath of life into the first humans per the Creation stories in Genesis. Also, refer to the situation in law in which two men fight and the woman attempts to intervene; should she be injured in such a way as to cause a miscarriage - another way of speaking of an abortion - her husband is to set a monetary penalty against the assailant. This is very much different from the penalties assessed against one who murders another - which requires, under that system, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and a life for a life.
(For a more elaborate discussion of these points, see the notes on Rabbi Feldman, included in our background materials.)
Hunt further hopes that we might find some common ground in this dialogue, though he also recognizes how difficult that will be, given the radically divergent views at work here. He enjoins us: "May cool, calm thought be the order of the day as we discuss this very hotly contested issue in our common life!"
Finally, Hunt connects the abortion discussion with other issues involving sanctity of life - capital punishment, warfare, killing to protect property - suggesting that the insistence that we respect life in the arena of abortion should carry over into other arenas as well.
Seyla Benhabib first offers an alternative understanding of pluralism - the pluralism of 'political liberalism" - over against the simple pluralism criticized by Laurie Shrage. Benhabib does so in part because, like Laurie Shrage, she thinks there is a genuine dilemma in juxtaposing a putative "right to life" over against a supposed "right to choice," - i.e., it is by no means obvious as to which should take precedence over the other.
Instead of a debate about rights, Benhabib argues that
at this stage in the advancment of human knowledge and civilization, there is no reasonable and rational (ie. cognitively proven) way to arbitrate arguments not so much about when life begins but as to whether the fetus is a form of life that deserves immediate and absolute protection, from inception onwards.
As "metaphysical" questions (i.e., beyond the boundaries of [empirical] experience and thus not resolvable through the natural sciences), these questions are "answered" only within a given system of moral beliefs and values. Given this turn to what, presumably, will be an inevitably diverse and incommensurable plurality of moral, including religious, belief systems,
the political pluralist would argue that public institutions in our polity must rest upon such premises as we can all share without appeal to divisive religious and metaphysical and moral views. The burdens of proof in the public sphere impose certain constraints about what can and cannot be marshalled as 'reasonable grounds' to justify belief.
As additional grounds for her political liberalism, Benhabib points to still further ways in which moral and religious beliefs will divide in the abortion issue - beginning with the recognition that because something is a life-form does not automatically issue in unconditional protection; this means that
Even if we agree that the fetus is a life-form, it does not follow, without the introduction of other controversial premises, that this life form is owed unconditional protection.
In addition,
Consider also that the fetus as a life form can be given unconditional protection only against the body and life of another person - there is a very deep metaphysical issue here about the 'two in one' of the body of the pregnant woman, which I would like to develop at a later point.
Given these various key points in the abortion question - metaphysical points where diverse moral and religious belief systems offer diverse beliefs which cannot be resolved on empirical grounds -
...at all points in the abortion debate we should be clear that the language of 'rights' is a language about moral claims, not juridical or political entitlements. There is no reasonable way to recast the debate in terms of the latter without violating the premises of political liberalism.
Of course, it is possible to violate these premises - but, in an admittedly polemical close, Benhabib observes that to do so would ally us with "clerical and fundamentalist regimes of all ilks, authoritarian-statist regimes, i.e. China...."
Laurie Shrage offered a quick response to Benhabib, beginning with her observation
that public institutions in our polity must rest upon such premises as we can all share without appeal to divisive religious and metaphysical and moral views.
Shrage counters that
the laws and regulations we now have regarding abortion appeal to 'devisive metaphysical views.' For, if 'there is no reasonable and rational (i.e., cognitively proven) way to arbitrate arguments not so much about when life begins but as to whether the fetus is a form of life that deserves immediate and absolute protection, from inception onwards' (Benhabib) then there is no rational way to prove that life or personhood begins at the moment of birth or after 24 weeks of gestation, which are the values or metaphysical views that our current laws inscribe.
Given this, "...we cannot avoid addressing and debating these religious or metaphysical questions...." (Shrage also makes a comment here regarding what she takes to be Benhabib's characterization of the abortion-tolerant side as appealing to ideals of 'rationality' while characterizing the anti-abortion group as irrational and dogmatic: Benhabib and Shrage will later clarify this as a misunderstanding of Benhabib's position)
Shrage follows Howard Hunt's turn towards Jewish sensibilities - not simply in terms of conceptions regarding the beginnings of life, the conditions under which feticide may be permissible, etc., but also with regard to the larger issue:
I agree with Rabbi Feldman, that if anti-abortionists see abortion as murder, then there can be no discussion about women's political or legal rights until we resolve whether abortion is murder. Moreover, Feldman suggests that whether abortion constitutes murder is a question that rests on the moral and legal status of the fetus. 'And the difference between fetal life and human life is not determined by the biologist or the physician but by the metaphysician. It's the determination of the culture or the religion that declares not when life begins but when life begins to be human.' (Feldman) I think those who are abortion tolerant need to begin to articulate their views about when life begins to be human.
Shrage responds to her own demand here:
I find the view that children are not mere biological creations, but social creations, attractive, and that what makes a creature human is its involvement in a network of social relations. Something like the possibility of communication must also exist for us to recognize another being as human.
Given this understanding of when life begins to be human, Shrage can rightly object that
Thus the common bumper sticker 'it's a child not a choice' cleverly begs the very issue, by insisting on a particular view of life. In doing so though, it ultimately makes Feldman's point: if we grant that 'it' is a child, then it doesn't make sense to talk about choice. To respond to this attack on abortion, we need to render cogent worldviews that do not see the fetus as a 'child' or as identical in moral status to other children.
Howard Hunt concurs with Shrage that "...the real challenge is to define our concept of when life becomes human in such a way that others understand and can reasonable engage in a discussion of our view." As well, he reiterates his attraction to the Jewish understanding "...that the fetus becomes a human person when he/she draws breath," as rooted in the second Genesis creation story. Hunt further reiterates his sense that the abortion debate would be resolved if the anti-abortion forces "...would work as hard to instill a true appreciation for the human life, and for each person as they do to stop abortions." This means for Hunt working to counter young men's beliefs that "it their natural right to have sex with as many young women as possible...." and our practice of making young women "...bear the mountain's share of the responsibility for contraception and child-rearing...."
Hunt further points to a central problem for dialogues such as this one: how is dialogue possible when one or more dialogical partners hold to views that seem to preclude dialogue? As Hunt puts it,
I remain convinced that an ideology which denies the validity of all others is detrimental to any reasonable dialogue aimed at resolving disputed ideas of practices. I will not deny any person their right to hold a particular concept, however, I will strongly denounce that person's right to force their view on another or to make law their particular religious concept which negates all other understandings and concepts [....] we must understand no one person or group has all the answers and that we need to open our systems of belief to the study of others even as we study their systems. In doing this, we can begin to see a bit of where the other is coming from and may be able to see why the other feels so strongly about their system. We might even find ourselves learning something new that will impact our own understanding of life.
Hunt has articulated here a version of the Habermasian requirement of perspective-taking in dialogue - though no one in this forum has entertained the hope that consensus may emerge here as well.
Hunt closes this posting by recounting a conversation concerning an anti-abortion referendum in Colorado and suggests a line of argument Benhabib has struggled to avoid - namely, one which casts the dilemma in terms of costs to women (if legal abortions are not available) vs. costs to the unborn (if legal abortions are available):
Maybe we need to revisit the headlines and news stories of the days before Roe vs. Wade, and ask how many women died in botched attempts to end their own pregnancies, how many women died because no legal, safe abortions were available, and do we want those same stories to repeat? We won't stop abortions, though we may send poor women to back alley clinics. Those who are rich will get their abortions, even if they must fly across the ocean to another country, or travel to another state. All we do is impact the lives of women who are struggling all the time to assess their ability to deal with this impending future human life. Is it better to force the child into a life of abuse, neglect and pain; or to end that developing life in abortion? That is a very difficult question to respond to, from any point of view.
Helen Alvare begins by observing that several of the issues broached in our forum so far - especially concerning the beginnings of human life and definitions of personhood - are not the main form of the contemporary debate:
With regard to personhood status, for example, it is my experience that the players in the abortion debate mostly understand the personhood argument as a kind of word game. A game in which the word person is, in the end, awarded to those whom we have previously decided are eligible for certain benefits. According to criteria that are often idiosyncratic. And with regard to the question of when human life begins, and begins to make its own claims upon us, there is a fair amount of willingness to start with the mundane medical realities about human life. Even by those on the pro-legal abortion side of the issue.
For Alvare, these medical realities support Catholic teaching - namely, that human life begins at conception. Alvare alludes here to the argument, made familiar by John T. Noonan in our background materials, that the conceptus cotains "all that is genetically determined about any human life." Further, over against various efforts to draw lines regarding when a life becomes human and thus requiring respect and protection, Alvare notes that such divisions
...have less to do with our common sense perhaps, than with our limited moral imaginations. As Richard John Neuhaus says, to those who complain that the two-day or two-week old conceptus doesn't look or seem like a human life, we can only reply that this is what a human being looks like at two-days or two-weeks old.
Alvare suggests that some of the heat in the abortion debate is the result of Roe v. Wade, which she sees as
the Supreme Court's inserting itself into a debate that had largely been settled by the citizens of the 50 states, one state at a time.
In Alvare's view, prior to Roe v. Wade - and today, for that matter - there was/is little debate as to
when human life begins or whether the unborn were persons. Rather, there existed a general consensus, reflected in the similar laws enacted across the country, that unborn life ought to be protected against killing, but that abortion would be permitted in some very limited instances.
Over against the opening direction suggested by Laurie Shrage - given this view of American history and contemporary culture, Alvare observes that
a project to make acceptance of even some legal abortion compatible with the theme of reverence for life is not likely to succeed widely.
From Alvare's perspective, abortion advocacy groups have been attempting to undertake just such a project - with "enough success to get by politically, but never enough to recast the abortion debate." For Alvare, a strong example of this is offered by the recent debate over partial-birth abortion:
The overt emotionalism of the anecdotal stories of five women who claimed they needed partial birth abortions in order to save their own lives or to have future children, swept the legal debate. (This occurred even though the medical evidence pointed to the impossibility of each of their claims). But the image that lingered in the public consciousness remained the killing of a mostly born human.
For Alvare, Laurie Shrage's program of developing an abortion-tolerant worldview which includes ways of respecting life, where such respect is perhaps offered as a possible bridge to those whose respect for life precludes abortion, simply will not work:
But even while accounts of abortion practice that tie abortion to different ways of revering life have been promoted for a considerable amount of time, they have not and probably will not succeed in making abortion practices tolerable or intelligible to those offended by killing the unborn. This is because no matter the pro-life rationale proposed by any woman seeking an abortion, no abortion is constituted simply of the mother's reasoning, or even the abortion's indirect effects. In the end, every abortion is also a direct destruction of life. For every life intended to be revered through an abortion, one is permanently destroyed.
Over against Laurie Shrages' proposed (and for Alvare, unlikely) bridge between the abortion-tolerant and the abortion-resistant, Alvare offers an alternative set of bridges to an abortion-tolerant culture, beginning with the acceptance of women who have had abortions into a religious community opposed to abortion:
But while the intelligibility of the practice of abortion is not likely to be communicated to pro-life persons, they can well understand and accept the women who are considering or who have had abortions. They even understand these women - as does Catholic theology - as mostly not culpable. Thus the integration of post-aborted women into the pro-life movement. Thus the operation of several thousand crisis pregnancy centers by the pro-life community. Thus the Project Rachel post-abortion reconciliation program. Thus the pro-life work of the Catholic Church to make abortions less tempting. Work such as the largest social-services network for poor women and children in the United States. Work like lobbying for laws which make it easier for women to bear and rear children.
I would observe that this sort of service to those in need answers Hunt's critique of the pro-life position which ostensibly focuses solely on the unborn while ignoring other crucial ways of respecting life. And it is clearly rooted in precisely one of the moral/religious belief-systems agreed upon by Shrage and Benhabib (consistent with Feldman) as necessary in order to "answer" the central, metaphysical points of contention in the abortion debate.
Finally, over against the abortion-tolerant worldview and political pluralism endorsed by Shrage, Hunt, and Benhabib - views which seek to make room for a kind of philosophical and religious "peaceful coexistence" in which both the abortion-resistant and the abortion-tolerant may share something of a common political life (recall Laurie Shrage's opening comment, "in a society in which anti-abortion and abortion-tolerant world views are prevalent, we need to work out ways to allow each world view to express itself while maintaining peaceful and respectful relations between different groups.") - Alvare suggests, rather, that this religious activism, as focused on service to persons, is an appropriate way for religious communities to express and seek to convert others to its beliefs, within a pluralistic society which forbids outright coercion into a single view:
This disposition toward persons is not a bad way for daily witnessing to the Church's ability - even talent - for for living in a pluralistic society while working diligently to inspire the respect for all life necessary to end abortion.
Seyla Benhabib responds to what she sees as a misunderstanding associated with a the distinction, crucial to political liberalism, between 'private reasons' and 'public justifications.' In doing so she provides both a definition of rationality and its presence within religiously-based worldviews:
Rationality is, among other things, a consistency of action, belief and conduct.
For Benhabib, it is clear that for the millions of women and men who oppose abortion out of religious grounds, with few exceptions such opposition incorporates such rationality, i.e.,
the rationality of consistently held and practiced religious beliefs which then dictate a certain position on the abortion question.
It is irrational, however - in a pluralistic society, at least,
to want to base public doctrine and policy on a set of beliefs the justification of which cannot be shared by others on the basis of non-secterian and generally and reasonably agreed upon premises. And such is the abortion issue. There are no premises which would be shared either by all major religions or by known systems of philosophical ethics which would allow us to decide the question, in a 'public' forum, as to whether or not a specific individual should or should not undertake an abortion at a specific point in time.
This reiterates the earlier point that - contrary to Helen Alvare's view which sees a widely shared consensus on the question of when human life begins, a consensus further supported by empirical data (especially the presence of the complete genetic "code" in the conceptus) - such questions are metaphysical rather than empirical, and can thus only be "decided" within the framework of a given religious and/or moral belief system: and in a pluralistic society, by definition, there will be a plurality of such systems.
Benhabib also thinks that Roe v. Wade is frequently and crucially misunderstood in this debate. For Benhabib, Roe v. Wade is precisely about metaphysical/moral choices in a pluralistic society which does not agree on when human life begins and what protections it deserves:
I understand the decision of the Supreme Court not to criminalize the practice of abortion in the first trimester, not as a decision conceding that the fetus is not worthy of protection or is not moral entity. The judges write repeatedly in the Roe v Wade decision, and too much for my comfort in fact, that 'the state has an interest in protecting future life.' Rather, Justice Blackmun states explicitly that because there are no shared public premises which can settle the moral question in the public forum, that therefore it should be left up to the individual involved. In other words, the decision is and always will remain a moral one - because abortion, whether we like it or not, involves a tragic choice between incommensurable goods - to continue life and become a parent or not to continue that life and not to become a parent. What the Supreme Court said is that this decision must be left up to the individual precisely because it is so intimate and personal. (emphasis added, CE)
Again, abortion - especially in the first trimester - raises "tough metaphysical questions":
For most of us there is an invisible line between stopping a process in our bodies and killing a baby- the more life develops, the closer the fetus comes to viability, all the more do we step over that line. May be in recognition of this, the medieval church wrote of 'quickening,' which does not begin at inception - was it at thirty days for boys and forty for girl babies - it is when the soul inhabits the body. The Old Testament reference to 'drawing breath' may be expressing the same intuition. It is at this limit point also that life becomes 'life worthy of moral, legal and political protection,' i.e. personhood begins. These are really tough issues in metaphysics and moral philosophy as well as legal doctrine.
While rationality may inform given religious positions, then,
I do not mean to suggest that there is one 'rational' point of view on the matter at all, but there is an important disjunction in a pluralist, liberal-democratic polity between private reasons and public justifications.
Finally, Laurie Shrage offers responses to several points raised thus far, beginning with Helen Alvare who has emphasized that abortion always involves the destruction of (genetically) human life. Laurie notes that "few who are abortion-tolerant would deny that abortion involves the destruction of human life." But this acknowledgement does not lead in any simple and straightforward way to Helen Alvare's opposition to abortion. Rather, echoing the point first raised by Howard Hunt, Shrage observes that
...we must think very carefully about any practice that inevitably results in the destruction of human life: war, suicide, doctor-assisted suicide, etc. To think about this, the ideals and values that inform and shape practices that result in the loss of human life need to be considered and studied, and not merely dismissed in favor of practices that preserve human life at any cost. What I am proposing is that we look at the moral ideals and worldviews that inform the kind of practice of abortion that we have in our society today.
She further agrees with Howard Hunt that metaphysical and religious questions cannot be set aside in this debate. She further makes explicit for us an important point of agreement between abortion-resistant and abortion-tolerant folk:
...we need to think about the social forces that result in a high rate of unwanted pregnances and not merely accept this rate as inevitable. I think Alvare, Hunt and I would all agree that abortion isn't always the best remedy for an unwanted pregnancy and that there can be many different reasons a pregnancy is not desired. Some of these reasons can be better addressed by assisting women with much of the financial and care-taking responsibilities that parenting involves.
In this way, Shrage endorses the sorts of religiously-inspired "service activism" (my term) noted by Alvare as the signature of the Church in a pluralistic society. (This is also the point of agreement, it's worth noting, that has inspired "common ground" movements in the past, both between abortion-resistant Catholics and abortion-tolerant Protestants, and within the Catholic Church itself. It is further important to note, however, that these movements seem to falter easily. This suggests that even if we discern common ground, inhabiting that shared space - consistent with the (rational) public sphere Benhabib points us towards, in good Habermasian and Rawlsian fashion - is apparently problematic.)
Laurie further responds to Seyla Benhabib's effort to clarify an apparent disagreement over "irrationality" in anti-abortion views. The clarification however, does not resolve, but relocates their disagreement:
...our basic disagreement rests on not how much rationality we attribute to anti-abortion views, but on what we see as the basis for public policy. Benhabib states: 'it is 'irrational' to want to base public doctrine and policy on a set of beliefs the justification of which cannot be shared by others on the basis of non-secterian and generally and reasonably agreed upon premises.' This implies that good or rational public doctrines and policies are based on beliefs that can be shared across religions and worldviews.
This comment takes us to one of the central issues of this forum - namely, can "conversational ethics," including a Habermasian approach which stresses consensus as necessary to democratic dialogue and polity, in fact succeed in such contentious debates as abortion, where much of the disagreement derives precisely from the diversity of the a_rational (not "irrational") religious frameworks we appeal to in order to answer the metaphysical and moral (as opposed to empirical) issues involved?
Seyla Benhabib's comments at least point to the need for such rational resolution, especially as she has observed that, as an alternative, "we cannot base public doctrine and policy on a set of beliefs the justification of which cannot be shared by others on the basis of non-secterian and generally and reasonably agreed upon premises." Laurie Shrage takes Benhabib to head us therby towards a "common ground" approach - one which Shrage approaches cautiously:
...I would be more sympathetic to [Benhabib's "common ground" approach] if I thought there were more common ground, or that common ground did not often mean assent to dominant cultural views.
If such common ground is to emerge, then, Shrage tells us, its advocates must "...articulate the shared beliefs that they believe inform good abortion policy." But for Shrage, the shared beliefs she finds indicated by Benhabib may not be sufficient to achieve the goal of establishing and sustaining the rational public sphere:
Benhabib suggests in her earlier post, in a manner similar to Rawls, that the Enlightenment ideal of individual liberty is a widely enough shared ideal to guide public policy on abortion. According to this ideal, governments should leave it to individuals to decide those questions for which there is little public consensus. Yet how do we decide when there is or isn't sufficient public agreement to set policies that override individual judgment: regarding for example gay marriage, euthanasia, drug use, racial and gender integration and equality?
Shrage argues here that the first-level disagreements (rooted in diverse moral and religious belief systems) will further lead to disagreement at a second level - precisely on the question of whether or not there is sufficient agreement in the public sphere to establish public policies:
I will contend that our judgments about what we do and can agree to across our differences are shaped by those very differences. To anti-abortionists like Alvare, it looks like there is a strong public consensus against the taking of human life.
That is, over against the tendency of the abortion-tolerant in this forum to stress diversity and pluralism of belief - Shrage sees an important link between Helen Alvare's (first level) anti-abortion stand and her (second level) view that there is no great disagreement over when human life begins, etc.
This important challenge to the possibility of consensus on even the second-level question of whether or not we deeply disagree, finally, brings us back to the dilemma Shrage presented us with at the outset:
Moreover, when there is no public consensus on an issue, I fail to see why granting individuals maximum freedom to do as they wish is preferable to forging democratically bargained compromises between opposing groups that grant some validity to conflicting perspectives. While, like many liberals, I am wary of increasing governmental control over citizens' lives, I am also wary of individual liberty claims that lead to inadequate gun control, inadequate protection for workers, and so on. The liberty to do what one wants when there is no public consensus needs to be balanced against needs for safety, minimal standards of living, and so on.
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"the unforced force" of the better, rational argument,respect for others' views, and
an empathic perspective-taking ("solidarity" in both feminist and Habermasian senses),
we hope these exchanges will result in discursive equality, freedom, and fair play. We, in turn, will follow especially Habermas's "rules of reason": No one with the competency to speak and act may be excluded from discourse; everyone is allowed to question and/or introduce any assertion whatever as well as express her attitudes, desires, and needs; no one may be prevented, by internal or external coercion, from exercising these rights. (Readers' contributions received via e-mail and/or fax will be added to these archives on a regular basis.)
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