The GOD Delusion (44 page)

Returning
to the American Taliban, listen to Randall Terry, founder of Operation
Rescue, an organization for intimidating abortion providers. 'When I,
or people like me, are running the country, you'd better flee, because
we will find you, we will try you, and we'll execute you. I mean every
word of it. I will make it part of my mission to see to it that they
are tried and executed.' Terry was here referring to doctors who
provide abortions, and his Christian inspiration is clearly shown by
other statements:

I
want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to
let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good . .. Our goal is
a Christian nation. We have a Biblical duty, we are called by God, to
conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism.

Our
goal must be simple. We must have a Christian nation built on God's
law, on the Ten Commandments. No apologies.
¹²⁷

This
ambition to achieve what can only be called a Christian fascist state
is entirely typical of the American Taliban. It is an almost exact
mirror image of the Islamic fascist state so ardently sought by many
people in other parts of the world. Randall Terry is not - yet - in
political power. But no observer of the American political scene at the
time of writing (2006) can afford to be sanguine.

A
consequentialist or utilitarian is likely to approach the abortion
question in a very different way, by trying to weigh up suffering. Does
the embryo suffer? (Presumably not if it is aborted before it has a
nervous system; and even if it is old enough to have a nervous system
it surely suffers less than, say, an adult cow in a slaughterhouse.)
Does the pregnant woman, or her family, suffer if she does not have an
abortion? Very possibly so; and, in any case, given that the embryo
lacks a nervous system, shouldn't the mother's well-developed nervous
system have the choice?

This
is not to deny that a consequentialist might have grounds to oppose
abortion. 'Slippery slope' arguments can be framed by consequentialists
(though I wouldn't in this case). Maybe embryos don't suffer, but a
culture that tolerates the taking of human life risks going too far:
where will it all end? In infanticide? The moment of birth provides a
natural Rubicon for defining rules, and one could argue that it is hard
to find another one earlier in embryonic development. Slippery slope
arguments could therefore lead us to give the moment of birth more
significance than utilitarianism, narrowly interpreted, would prefer.

Arguments
against euthanasia, too, can be framed in slippery slope terms. Let's
invent an imaginary quotation from a moral philosopher: 'If you allow
doctors to put terminal patients out of their agony, the next thing you
know everybody will be bumping off their granny to get her money. We
philosophers may have grown out of absolutism, but society needs the
discipline of absolute rules such as "Thou shalt not kill," otherwise
it doesn't know where to stop. Under some circumstances absolutism
might, for all the wrong reasons in a less than ideal world, have
better
consequences
than naive consequentialism!
We philosophers might have a hard time prohibiting the eating of people
who were already dead and unmourned - say road-killed tramps. But, for
slippery slope reasons, the absolutist taboo against cannibalism is too
valuable to lose.'

Slippery
slope arguments might be seen as a way in which consequentialists
can reimport a form of indirect absolutism. But the religious foes of
abortion don't bother with slippery slopes. For them, the issue is much
simpler. An embryo is a 'baby', killing it is murder, and that's that:
end of discussion. Much follows from this absolutist stance. For a
start, embryonic stem-cell research must cease, despite its huge
potential for medical science, because it entails the deaths of
embryonic cells. The inconsistency is apparent when you reflect that
society already accepts IVF (in vitro fertilization), in which doctors
routinely stimulate women to produce surplus eggs, to be fertilized
outside the body. As many as a dozen viable zygotes may be produced, of
which two or three are then implanted in the uterus. The expectation is
that, of these, only one or possibly two will survive. IVF, therefore,
kills conceptuses at two stages of the procedure, and society in
general has no problem with this. For twenty-five years, IVF has been a
standard procedure for bringing joy into the lives of childless couples.

Religious
absolutists, however, can have problems with IVF. The
Guardian
of 3 June 2005 carried a bizarre story under the headline
'Christian couples answer call to save embryos left by IVF'. The story
is about an organization called Snowflakes which seeks to 'rescue'
surplus embryos left over at IVF clinics. 'We really felt like the Lord
was calling us to try to give one of these embryos - these children - a
chance to live,' said a woman in Washington State, whose fourth child
resulted from this 'unexpected alliance that conservative Christians
have been forming with the world of test-tube babies'. Worried about
that alliance, her husband had consulted a church elder, who advised,
'If you want to free the slaves, you sometimes have to make a deal with
the slave trader.' I wonder what these people would say if they knew
that the majority of conceived embryos spontaneously abort anyway. It
is probably best seen as a kind of natural 'quality control'.

A
certain kind of religious mind cannot see the moral difference between
killing a microscopic cluster of cells on the one hand, and killing a
full-grown doctor on the other. I have already quoted Randall Terry and
'Operation Rescue'. Mark Juergensmeyer, in his chilling book
Terror
in the Mind of God,
prints a photograph of the Reverend
Michael Bray with his friend the Reverend Paul Hill, holding a banner
reading: 'Is it wrong to stop the murder of innocent
babies?' Both look like nice, rather preppy young men, smiling
engagingly, casually well-dressed, the very opposite of staring-eyed
loonies. Yet they and their friends of the Army of God (AOG) made it
their business to set fire to abortion clinics, and they have made no
secret of their desire to kill doctors. On 29 July 199'4, Paul Hill
took a shotgun and murdered Dr John Britton and his bodyguard James
Barrett outside Britton's clinic in Pensacola, Florida. He then gave
himself up to the police, saying he had killed the doctor to prevent
the future deaths of 'innocent babies'.

Michael
Bray defends such actions articulately and with every appearance of
high moral purpose, as I discovered when I interviewed him, in a public
park in Colorado Springs, for my television documentary on religion.*
Before coming on to the abortion question, I got the measure of Bray's
Bible-based morality by asking him some preliminary questions. I
pointed out that biblical law condemns adulterers to death by stoning.
I expected him to disavow this particular example as obviously beyond
the pale, but he surprised me. He was happy to agree that, after due
process of law, adulterers should be executed. I then pointed out that
Paul Hill, with Bray's full support, had not followed due process but
had taken the law into his own hands and killed a doctor. Bray defended
his fellow clergyman's action in the same terms as he had when
Juergensmeyer interviewed him, making a distinction between retributive
killing, say of a retired doctor, and killing a practising doctor as a
means of preventing him from 'regularly killing babies'. I then put it
to him that, sincere though Paul Hill's beliefs no doubt were, society
would descend into a terrible anarchy if everybody invoked personal
conviction in order to take the law into their own hands, rather than
abiding by the law of the land. Wasn't the right course to try to get
the law changed, democratically? Bray replied: 'Well, this is the
problem when we don't have law that's really authentic law; when we
have laws that are made up by people on the spot, capriciously, as we
have seen in the case of the so-called law of abortion rights, that was
imposed upon the people by judges . . .' We then got into an argument
about the American constitution and where laws come from. Bray's
attitude to such matters turned out to be very reminiscent of those
militant Muslims living
in Britain who openly announce themselves as bound only by Islamic law,
not by the democratically enacted laws of their adopted country.

*
The animal liberationists who threaten violence against scientists
using animals for medical research would claim an equally high moral
purpose.

In
2003 Paul Hill was executed for the murder of Dr Britton and his
bodyguard, saying he would do it again to save the unborn. Candidly
looking forward to dying for his cause, he told a news conference, 'I
believe the state, by executing me, will be making me a martyr.'
Right-wing anti-abortionists protesting at his execution were joined in
unholy alliance by left-wing opponents of the death penalty who urged
the Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, to 'stop the martyrdom of Paul
Hill'. They plausibly argued that the judicial killing of Hill would
actually encourage more murders, the precise opposite of the deterrent
effect that the death penalty is supposed to have. Hill himself smiled
all the way to the execution chamber, saying, 'I expect a great reward
in heaven ... I am looking forward to glory.'
¹²⁸

And he suggested that others should take up his violent cause.
Anticipating revenge attacks for the 'martyrdom' of Paul Hill, the
police went on heightened alert as he was executed, and several
individuals connected with the case received threatening letters
accompanied by bullets.

This
whole terrible business stems from a simple difference of perception.
There are people who, because of their religious convictions, think
abortion is murder and are prepared to kill in defence of embryos,
which they choose to call 'babies'. On the other side are equally
sincere supporters of abortion, who either have different religious
convictions, or no religion, coupled with well-thought-out
consequentialist morals. They too see themselves as idealists,
providing a medical service for patients in need, who would otherwise
go to dangerously incompetent back-street quacks. Both sides see the
other side as murderers or advocates of murder. Both sides, by their
own lights, are equally sincere.

A
spokeswoman for another abortion clinic described Paul Hill as a
dangerous psychopath. But people like him don't think of themselves as
dangerous psychopaths; they think of themselves as good, moral people,
guided by God. Indeed, I don't think Paul Hill was a psychopath. Just
very religious. Dangerous, yes, but not a psychopath. Dangerously
religious. By the lights of his religious faith, Hill was entirely
right and moral to shoot Dr Britton. What was
wrong with Hill was his religious faith itself. Michael Bray, too, when
I met him, didn't strike me as a psychopath. I actually quite liked
him. I thought he was an honest and sincere man, quietly spoken and
thoughtful, but his mind had unfortunately been captured by poisonous
religious nonsense.

Strong
opponents of abortion are almost all deeply religious. The sincere
supporters of abortion, whether personally religious or not, are likely
to follow a non-religious, consequentialist moral philosophy, perhaps
invoking Jeremy Bentham's question, 'Can they
suffer}'
Paul
Hill and Michael Bray saw no moral difference between killing an embryo
and killing a doctor except that the embryo was, to them, a blamelessly
innocent 'baby'. The consequentialist sees all the difference in the
world. An early embryo has the sentience, as well as the semblance, of
a tadpole. A doctor is a grown-up conscious being with hopes, loves,
aspirations, fears, a massive store of humane knowledge, the capacity
for deep emotion, very probably a devastated widow and orphaned
children, perhaps elderly parents who dote on him.

Paul
Hill caused real, deep, lasting suffering, to beings with nervous
systems capable of suffering. His doctor victim did no such thing.
Early embryos that have no nervous system most certainly do not suffer.
And if late-aborted embryos with nervous systems suffer - though all
suffering is deplorable - it is not because they are
human
that
they suffer. There is no general reason to suppose that human embryos
at any age suffer more than cow or sheep embryos at the same
developmental stage. And there is every reason to suppose that all
embryos, whether human or not, suffer far less than adult cows or sheep
in a slaughterhouse, especially a ritual slaughterhouse where, for
religious reasons, they must be fully conscious when their throats are
ceremonially cut.

Suffering
is hard to measure,
¹²⁹
and the details might be
disputed. But that doesn't affect my main point, which concerns the
difference between secular consequentialist and religiously absolute
moral philosophies.* One school of thought cares about whether embryos
can suffer. The other cares about whether they are human. Religious
moralists can be heard debating questions like, 'When does the
developing embryo become a person - a human being?'

*
This doesn't, of course, exhaust the possibilities. A substantial
majority of American Christians do not take an absolutist attitude to
abortion, and are pro-choice. See e.g. the Religious Coalition for
Reproductive Choice, at www.rcrc.org/.

Secular
moralists are more likely to ask, 'Never mind whether it is
human
(what does that even
mean
for a little
cluster of cells?); at what age does any developing embryo, of any
species, become capable of
suffering}'

THE
GREAT BEETHOVEN FALLACY

The
anti-abortionist's next move in the verbal chess game usually goes
something like this. The point is not whether a human embryo can or
cannot suffer at present. The point lies in its
potential.
Abortion
has deprived it of the opportunity for a full human life in the future.
This notion is epitomized by a rhetorical argument whose extreme
stupidity is its only defence against a charge of serious dishonesty. I
am speaking of the Great Beethoven Fallacy, which exists in several
forms. Peter and Jean Medawar,* in
The Life Science,
attribute
the following version to Norman St John Stevas (now Lord St John), a
British Member of Parliament and prominent Roman Catholic layman. He,
in turn, got it from Maurice Baring (1874-1945), a noted Roman Catholic
convert and close associate of those Catholic stalwarts G. K.
Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. He cast it in the form of a hypothetical
dialogue between two doctors.