At least one eye opened
After six months of sleep.
I saw the string of life’s options,
But Caesar had scissors.
Now I sleep one eye open
Till you answer this question –
My spark went dark,
And was there a reason?
You shrill politicians
Who render to Caesar,
You ghosts with gavels,
Who cling to obtusions,
You wave with your Oscars
And weave up our fantasies –
My eye stares through the stories
That you spin for the world.
12 April 2022
With thanks to @PAAUNOW for the graphic, and everything.
Human Defense Initiative has published an article of mine.
Consistent Life Network has published a poem of mine.
Here’s a note for the poem:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/02/dallas-police-officers-video-bodycam-tony-timpa
Timpa’s death was classified by an autopsy as a homicide, his death caused by sudden cardiac death due to “the toxic effects of cocaine and the stress associated with physical restraint”.
On April 26 we learned this – Minnesota AG tells “60 Minutes”: We didn’t have evidence George Floyd’s killing was a hate crime. The article relates that the CBS “60 Minutes” anchor observed to the Minnesota Attorney General that “the whole world sees this as a white officer killing a Black man because he is Black,” and asked him why that officer, Derek Chauvin, wasn’t charged with a hate crime. The AG’s answer: because though the whole world does indeed see it as a white officer killing a black man because he is black, and people rioted all summer on that basis (and are still rioting for that reason in Portland), and Black Lives Matter’s whole reason for existence and basis for accumulating the influence that they have is that kind of belief, and Democratic politicians are still reaping the political benefits of that belief and happily affirming that belief – a belief that undebatably causes hatred, hatred of police – there is practically zero evidence that it is true. (I think that BLM has done a lot of good conscious-raising about police along with a lot of defamation, by the way. There is much nuance.)
Here I will not say anything in defense of Derek Chauvin, except that, as mentioned, there is no concrete evidence that he is a racist. When most people watch the video, he impresses them as a monster, and he may be. He may also be a racist. But there is no concrete evidence that he is a racist, so anyone who flatly calls him a racist must have some manipulative agenda. Establishing him as a monster confers few political benefits compared to establishing him as a racist.
Anyway, there is a false (or at least unsubstantiated) belief that white officers kill black men because they are black. What may have been the most serious attempt so far to study the subject dispassionately has been that of Roland Fryer, a Harvard economist who is himself black. He concluded, On the most extreme use of force – officer-involved shootings – we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account.
A lot of data is available about police shootings, but I have been unable to find any academic attempt at all to examine possible race-related differences between rates of police killings by shooting and by other means, and it is not obvious why any racial bias should cause outcomes for the other means that are different than for the shootings. So if we are not to assume that Fryer’s data about shootings (which must account for the big majority of killings) more or less represent data about all police killings as best they can presently be represented, it seems to me that the burden is on those who contest that idea to show why.
But naturally those who hold the unfounded belief will think that those who share that unfounded belief with them have better judgment than those who dispute that unfounded belief; and moreover will think that those who share it are supporting blacks over a valid issue. So there are two corollary unfounded beliefs: one, that Democrats, in that one dimension at least, have better judgment than do Republicans, and two, that Democrats are supporting blacks on a valid existential issue.
Democrats are getting elected due to these two unfounded beliefs, particularly the unfounded belief that Democrats are supporting blacks over a valid issue. That unfounded belief may be providing them the margin of victory in the national power sweepstakes. Let’s suppose that’s true and park that thought temporarily in our minds.
Meanwhile over at the abortion clinic, the black population is being decimated. In New York City, more black babies are aborted than are born alive, which is not nearly true for other races. Nationwide, the outlook for black babies is not so grim, but still the abortion rate greatly outpaces the rates for the unborn of other races. It nears triple the rate for white babies.
So over at the abortion clinic, the decimation of the black population proceeds apace. The above figures are in terms of the average number of abortions in a year for a woman of a given race (stated in practice as the total number for 1000 such women), but we can also look at figures that calculate the likelihood of abortion for any one pregnancy. “Decimation” originally meant the killing of one in every ten of a group of people. The statistics say that about one in every three black babies conceived is aborted, so the incoming generation of blacks is being super-decimated. For white babies, it is about one in four that is are aborted, and for Hispanic babies, less than one in five. (The statistics that I am citing relate to both intended pregnancies and unintended pregnancies, but I found the abortion rates provided only for unintended pregnancies; I am assuming that within each race, the abortion rate for intended pregnancies is low enough not to change the general picture.)
Even with their high number of abortions, the fertility rate (live births per woman) for blacks, including black Hispanics, is presently higher than for whites, including white Hispanics, though only slightly, not enough to increase the black percentage of the population any time soon. But obviously, if there were no abortions, such an increase would indeed occur. So pro-life policies (halting abortions) would result in a significant proportional increase in the black population, and of black voters, in the US. US demographics, and their political impact, would change. (Assuming also that in relation to present proportions of different races in the US, immigration from black countries will not be lower than, or will be higher than, immigration from white countries, which I think is certainly the case.)
Now, in the US there is one party whose platform says We will repeal the Hyde Amendment (among other things), and one party whose platform says we . . . affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution . . . There are long and sordid tales to be told about the half-heartedness, fickleness, spinelessness, hypocrisy, and treacherousness of Republican politicians on abortion, but at the end of the day, the Democrats are clamoring for more and more abortions, while state-level pro-life laws, passed through support that has been overwhelmingly Republican, are saving unborn lives.
So here is the irony of it all, once the tributary stream of an unfounded belief feeds into the longstanding wider stream of the decimation of the black population through abortion: the Democrats get elected by virtue of the unfounded belief that Democrats are supporting blacks on a valid existential issue; then the Democrats take office and accelerate the decimation of the black population.
Now, it may also be true that Democrats in elected office in turn appoint more blacks to powerful appointed positions, and that Democrat voters vote more blacks into powerful elected offices in the first place, than Republican politicians and Republican voters do. But when these things happen, what blacks is it who end up in the powerful positions? It is the blacks handpicked by whites, whereas if there were more actual black voters (achieved by halting abortion), we would have blacks handpicked more by blacks. So even this seeming empowerment of blacks by the Democrats is not a true empowerment.
Just as I have not said anything here in defense of Derek Chauvin, except that there is no concrete evidence that he is a racist, I will not say anything here in defense of Republicans, except that they have been mainly responsible for state-level pro-life laws, and there is plenty of concrete evidence, mentioned above, that those laws have saved some lives. I am not a Republican. If I had to describe my political and economic views with just one word, the word would be “socialist.” On climate, immigration, healthcare (real healthcare), taxation (apart from taxpayer funding of abortion), and most issues, I am more closely aligned with the Democrats. So it is not due to any political bias that my analysis turns out as it does. Analyzing as objectively as I can, it is simply a fact: the Democrats, the party that appears to be standing up for blacks, is standing up for legal abortion (with the exception of a few such as John Bel Edwards and Katrina Jackson of Louisiana) and thereby is actually perpetuating the disempowerment of blacks (not to mention countenancing and financially promoting the direct black death toll of the abortions themselves). By financially promoting abortion they are pro-abortion, not just pro-life, and by forcing people whose consciences cry out against abortion to financially participate in abortion, they are rabidly pro-abortion. But my main point here is their political knee-capping of blacks through legal abortion and, if they have their way, subsidized abortion as well. It is they who perpetuate what is probably the worst systemic racism in the US, and it is the Republicans who oppose that one kind of systemic racism. But the real moral of the story would be to grow a new pro-life party that is better than either of our two political dinosaurs.
© 2021
A pro-choice argument that first used an analogy with a violinist, and has since seen a number of variations, goes like this: If a born person is dying of some disease, another born person should not be legally obliged to donate blood or bone marrow or a body part, even if that would save the life of the dying person. Most pro-lifers will agree with this. Therefore, since pregnancy involves the use by an unborn child, who would otherwise die, of a woman’s blood and body parts – the argument goes – pro-lifers should also agree that the woman should not be legally obliged to remain pregnant, even though that would save the life of the unborn. Thus pro-lifers should abandon the legal demands that are usually part of their position.
This is known as the bodily-rights argument, or more precisely the “right to refuse” version of the bodily-rights argument.
Especially in the last couple of years, pro-lifers have attacked this analogy by pointing out that when it is proposed that one’s body be used by a fellow born person, there are three possible responses (by the person whose body is proposed to be used), whereas in the case of pregnancy, where one’s body is being used by an unborn person, there are only two possible responses.
If one’s body is to be used by a born person:
If one’s body is to be used by an unborn person (pregnancy):
The born-person scenario elicits the moral intuition of pro-lifers and pro-choicers alike that it should not be legally permissible to actively kill that needy person. Utilizing that moral intuition, this pro-life response to the right-to-refuse argument concludes by saying that it should not be legally permissible for a woman to actively kill her unborn child either – which is what abortion consists of.
But these pro-life arguments often overlook another disanalogy (besides active versus passive) between pregnancy and the born-person scenario, and it is a disanalogy that goes in the direction of justifying active killing: in the born-person scenario above, the person whose body is proposed to be used is in fact NOT being used (the person does not really have any problem), so there is no justification, even arguably, for active killing, whereas in the unborn-person scenario, the pregnant woman’s body is in fact already being used, so if that use is without permission, then there is a justification for killing that is at least arguable and that many pro-choicers do argue for.
Relevant to the possible justification are the additional facts that the pregnancy is a kind of burden and involves a degree of risk, but the core of the bodily-rights argument is simply a principle of consistency and fairness: if Shimp in the McFall v. Shimp case, for instance, should not have to give his bone marrow to save McFall’s life, why should a woman have to give her blood and lend her uterus to save the unborn’s life? While pointing out disanalogies between the two scenarios such as that of passively letting die versus actively killing, pro-lifers should not overlook the fact that a woman with an unwanted pregnancy arguably has a justification for active killing that Shimp has not at all. Pro-lifers cannot avoid a confrontation with that arguable justification by pointing out that someone like Shimp, who is in quite a different position, would have no justification.
When a person is asked to donate bone marrow, for instance, and refuses, perhaps the person whose body is proposed to be used found it emotionally stressful to be asked for that bone marrow, but other than that, that person has no arguable justification or even explicable motivation whatsoever to kill. The use of a pregnant woman’s body, on the other hand, goes beyond a request; as mentioned; her body is already being used. She may additionally feel that use to entail a burden or a risk, but in any case, if there is a principle that no one’s body should be used without permission (which is a principle that pro-lifers generally agree with), and she has not given permission, then that principle is being violated.
During a recent one-and-a-half-year period, pro-lifers used that passively-letting-die-versus-actively-killing argument and, it seems to me, overlooked that “arguable justification” disanalogy, here (search for “he didn’t actively kill his cousin”), here (at 10:11), here (at 6:20), and here. Those are all wonderful presentations overall that I highly recommend, by the way. But to take an example that will illustrate the problem, one author says:
there are three separate courses of action people can take with blood donation. First, they could donate blood and help save the person’s life. Second, they could choose to not donate their blood or organs. Third, they could directly kill them. . . . It seems obvious the third option should not be available. It is wrong to directly and intentionally kill an innocent human being.
Of course that is wrong, as the author says. She expects everyone’s moral intuitions to say it is wrong, and indeed they will say that. But it is wrong not merely because it is direct/active killing, though that is what she wishes to show. It is wrong because in the scenario she has outlined, there is no arguable justification or explicable motivation whatsoever to kill. It is wrong because in that situation, only a psychopath would kill. So when she hopes that the reader’s moral intuitions about such a situation will carry over to the situation of pregnancy (such carrying over of moral intuitions being what a moral-philosophy analogy necessarily aims for), she appears to have overlooked the disanalogy that we have mentioned. At all the above links, the scenarios set out are supposed to be analogous to pregnancy, but they are not sufficiently so, because in pregnancy the woman’s body is being used.
The violinist analogy that the pro-choice side likes is a much closer analogy in that way, at least, because the “donor’s” body is indeed already being used without permission. But suppose we adapt the violinist analogy such that the “donor” cannot disconnect from the violinist without first actively killing. So now we have an analogy that is like pregnancy in that the “donor’s” body is being used without permission (as in the original “violinist”), and moreover now the “donor” has only the two options of 1) helping the person (like a woman who carries a pregnancy to term), or 2) actively killing the person. Now we have corrected the analogical problem that we found at the four links above (as well as correcting the absence of direct killing that we find in the original violinist scenario). In this new situation, should it nevertheless be illegal to actively kill? It is not as obvious that it should be as it is in the above blood-donation scenario (or in the McFall scenario), because in that blood-donation scenario there is no use of the proposed donor’s body without permisson, whereas in this modified violinist scenario, there is, as mentioned, a use without permission. The pro-life author at the first link above has to admit (in a video, at 15:55) that a prohibition on active killing in such an adapted violinist scenario would be “ethically murky.” David Boonin, usually considered the most persuasive pro-choice philosopher, flatly bites the bullet (at 1:13:51 in this video) and says that actively killing the violinist (with an ice pick, no less, since he is asked the question in that way!) would be justified providing the violinist is unconscious (which some unborn babies are at the stage when they are killed).
I am not saying that we should fail to make the distinction between passively letting die, and active killing. It is a point worth making. But if we make it in the context of an analogy, we should make it in the context of an analogy that does not overlook the fact that a pregnant woman’s body is being used, and we should make it remembering that in that context, that distinction alone won’t reliably do adequate work of convincing people that abortion should be illegal. Fortunately, there are other disanalogies as well between the prevention of proposed abortions on the one hand, and compelled organ donations on the other. I don’t think any single one of the disanalogies can defeat the right-to-refuse argument at least in the case of rape, but I think a cocktail of disanalogies/arguments, taken together, can defeat it even in that case. (See also this resource, also linked to previously.)
© 2020
Secular Pro-Life has published an article of mine on their blog.
Some further thoughts on the topic:
I wrote in the article, “Ending Roe would be a Godsend, or whatever the atheistic equivalent of a Godsend is, for the psychological health and happiness, and structural cohesion, of the US of A. . . . So I am hopeful that the ‘let Roe go’ time may now have come.”
But in spite of the quick improvement that would then result in psychological health and happiness, there will still, naturally, be a moral rot at the core of the societies in the pro-choice states. If Roe is let go, I predict that that moral rot in the pro-choice states will result in growing decadence and flaccidity, while the fundamental health at the core of the societies in the pro-life states will result in greater and greater flourishing, and that eventually this will become obvious and the pro-life worldview will win. (I say this even though as a starting point, I personally find the pro-life states, more than the pro-choice states, to harbor some views, on issues other than abortion, that I would consider narrow-minded.)
Someone may say that this particular prediction of mine is a little subjective. But let’s see. At the very least, as the article mentions, letting Roe go would save quite a number of small Americans from a quite unnecessary deprivation of the long lives and unknowable possibilities on which they were just about to set out.
You may leave a reply, if you wish, without giving your name or email address. If you do give your email address, it will not be published. Back up your work as you type, in case of accidents.
Some future posts:
Life Panels
A Trade-Off of a Sensitive Nature
Unborn Child-Protection Legislation, the Moral Health of Society, and the Role of the American Democratic Party
The Motivations of Aborting Parents
Why Remorse Comes Too Late
The Kitchen-Ingredients Week-After Pill
Unwanted Babies and Overpopulation
The Woman as Slave?
Abortion and the Map of the World
This poem later won an honorable mention in a Rehumanize International poetry contest and was published by them here. And my video recitation of the poem is here.
Galileo’s telescope
Caused him conflict with the pope,
While his science-based position
Antagonized the Inquisition.
“My friend,” they said, “We fail to see!
Why ask for trouble? Just agree.”
The earth beneath their feet seemed stable.
Other options were off the table.
“Don’t start this fight. You’re bound to lose.
That’s an offer that you can’t refuse.”
Since then we note this constant theme:
Some truths are deeper than they seem,
Yet some folks there will always be
Who view things superficially.
So if you want to know what’s certain
You have to go behind the curtain.
If you won’t take that bitter pill
You’ll claim the earth is standing still.
So undergo a little pain,
And open up your angry brain.
A single cell, you like to say,
Despite its load of DNA
Is not a glorious thing like you –
Learned in how to tie your shoe,
Full of grievance-study expertise,
And a repertoire of fallacies.
You were a one-celled thingamabob,
But now an overweening snob.
“A speck that I can barely see,
Lacking any advanced degree,
Is not aware. It’s just a sham.
I fail to see why I should give a damn.”
You forgot your days with an umbilical cord
Once you won that Golden Globes award.
But whatever you may call that cell,
It knows some tricks that all your swell
Circle of friends can never do,
Such as how to be one-celled, then be two.
How to be two-celled, then be four,
And soon to pop right through the door.
If the life is ended it was starting to live,
Something is taken that you would never give.
Your future is all that matters to you,
But those victims had a future too.
Yet you clutch your pearls, you drink your tea.
You get offended. You fail to see.
6 April 2020
Secular Pro-Life has published an article of mine on their blog.
You may leave a reply, if you wish, without giving your name or email address. If you do give your email address, it will not be published. Back up your work as you type, in case of accidents.
Some future posts:
Life Panels
A Trade-Off of a Sensitive Nature
Unborn Child-Protection Legislation, the Moral Health of Society, and the Role of the American Democratic Party
The Motivations of Aborting Parents
Why Remorse Comes Too Late
The Kitchen-Ingredients Week-After Pill
Unwanted Babies and Overpopulation
The Woman as Slave?
Abortion and the Map of the World