Francis Beckwith on Abortion and Human Beings as Moral Subjects — Transcript

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1. 0:11the second concern I would like to
2. 0:12briefly address is the relationship
3. 0:14between religious arguments and secular
4. 0:16arguments offered by citizens in the
5. 0:18formation of public policy although
6. 0:21there is an important and influential
7. 0:23stream of political thought often
8. 0:25associated with RS and his many
9. 0:27followers that maintains that only
10. 0:29secular arguments are permissible in the
11. 0:32creation of Law and a liberal Pol po I'm
12. 0:35not sure the distinction between
13. 0:37religious and secular arguments is as
14. 0:39easy to make as this tradition holds
15. 0:42especially on the issues that so deeply
16. 0:44divide us today take for example the
17. 0:47debate over abortion the most
18. 0:49sophisticated Advocates on both sides
19. 0:51typically zero in on one question is the
20. 0:54prenatal human being a moral subject
21. 0:56those who defend the right to abortion
22. 0:58pro-choice advocates will answer this
23. 1:00question in in in in the negative but
24. 1:03the specificity of their answer will
25. 1:06depend on what they believe is the point
26. 1:08in a human being's development at which
27. 1:10it becomes a moral subject the most
28. 1:12dominant view in the literature is that
29. 1:13human beings do not become moral
30. 1:15subjects or persons until sometime later
31. 1:18in their gestation when they possess a
32. 1:20level of organized cortical brain
33. 1:22activity that should that suggests some
34. 1:24primitive
35. 1:26self-consciousness this is why
36. 1:27pro-choice Advocates will refer to
37. 1:29fetuses prior to this moment as human
38. 1:32beings that are potential persons but
39. 1:33not actual ones opponents of abortion or
40. 1:36pro-life Advocates with few exceptions
41. 1:39argue that the human being is a moral
42. 1:41subject from the moment it comes into
43. 1:43being a conception this is because all
44. 1:45human beings of a personal nature even
45. 1:47when they are not presently exercising
46. 1:49the powers that flow from that Nature's
47. 1:51essential capacities or properties these
48. 1:54essential properties include capacities
49. 1:56for personal expression rational thought
50. 1:58and moral agency the maturation of these
51. 2:00capacities or Perfections of a human
52. 2:02being's nature and thus the human fetus
53. 2:05can be wronged even before it can know
54. 2:07it has been wronged no doubt this view
55. 2:10is tightly Tethered to a particular
56. 2:12reading of the Hebrew Christian
57. 2:14scriptures that has been shaped by the
58. 2:16development of a moral theology that
59. 2:18employs the category of certain realist
60. 2:20traditions in its theological
61. 2:22anthropology so there is a sense in
62. 2:24which the pro-life argument is religious
63. 2:27but not in a way that seems relevant to
64. 2:29the question of whether religious
65. 2:31argument should be excluded from the
66. 2:32Public Square why is that it is because
67. 2:36the adjective religious contributes
68. 2:38nothing to our assessment of the quality
69. 2:40of the pro-life arguments arguments
70. 2:42after all are either sound or unsound
71. 2:44valid or invalid strong or weak cogent
72. 2:46or non- cogent their premises are true
73. 2:49or false more or less plausible
74. 2:51reasonable or not it is not clear how
75. 2:53labeling the prolifer case religious
76. 2:55despite its theological Roots reveals
77. 2:58anything about its quality even or even
78. 3:00if the argument is or is not an example
79. 3:02of what is often called public
80. 3:04reason moreover when a citizen's
81. 3:07argument is labeled religious it seems
82. 3:09to serve the purpose of indicating to
83. 3:11our compatriots that the argument is
84. 3:13subrational Andor without any real
85. 3:16intellectual
86. 3:17content this was made plain to me eight
87. 3:19years ago after a lecture I gave at
88. 3:21Texas Tech University's law school
89. 3:24during the question and answer session
90. 3:25an audience member a professor at the
91. 3:27University issued this judgment of my
92. 3:29talk
93. 3:30you've presented nothing but religious
94. 3:32arguments I responded I'm relieved I
95. 3:35thought you were going to say they were
96. 3:36bad
97. 3:38arguments even though it even though it
98. 3:41is not always the case it seems that it
99. 3:43is generally true that when an argument
100. 3:45is labeled religious it is often
101. 3:47perceived rightly or wrongly as
102. 3:49equivalent to announcing that the
103. 3:50position in question is not a
104. 3:52Deliverance of rational deliberation
105. 3:54Andor can never serve as a defeater to
106. 3:56so-called secular
107. 3:57arguments it seems then that if one were
108. 4:00to suggest that the pro-life position or
109. 4:02or because it is so tightly Tethered to
110. 4:05a theological tradition should be
111. 4:07sequestered from the Public Square
112. 4:09because it rests on a religious argument
113. 4:11while the pro-choice case is perfectly
114. 4:13acceptable because it seems to rest on a
115. 4:15secular argument what one would in fact
116. 4:17be doing is creating a metaphysical
117. 4:19exclusionary rule that seems
118. 4:21suspiciously capricious for what we're
119. 4:24in fact discussing are two rival
120. 4:26accounts on how best to answer the same
121. 4:28question who who and what are we and can
122. 4:31we know it is not about two different
123. 4:33subjects religious belief and secular
124. 4:35knowledge the latter of which deals with
125. 4:38reality while the former is just a
126. 4:39matter of opinion arising from
127. 4:41non-rational sources abortion however is
128. 4:44not the only contested issue about which
129. 4:46this sort of analysis may be applied
130. 4:49these other issues included critiques of
131. 4:51same-sex marriage physician assisted
132. 4:53suicide as well as defenses of morals
133. 4:56legislation and full political
134. 4:58participation of citizens informed by
135. 5:00their religious beliefs given this
136. 5:02reality one should I believe be
137. 5:05skeptical that attempts to distinguish
138. 5:07between religious and secular Arguments
139. 5:09for the sake of placing limits on the
140. 5:11former can advance in any meaningful way
141. 5:13our political conversations on these
142. 5:16contested issues thank you