But O'Brien is trying to reason with people who are being unreasonable, as though reason alone should suffice to get them to stop being unreasonable. But if the Catholic bishops stopped being unreasonable about abortion, wouldn't they lose face with all the conservative Catholics they've whipped up with their antiabortion anguish?
To stir up antiabortion anguish, the Catholic bishops have used the slogan, "Life begins at the moment of conception." I think this claim is itself problematic. Nevertheless, let's consider this claim briefly. If the Catholic bishops were to retreat from their antiabortion anguish, they would in effect call this slogan's claim into question. Moreover, if this slogan's claim were called into question, then the teaching prohibiting artificial contraception should be called into question as well. Thus a retreat on antiabortion anguish should have a domino effect and call into question the ban against artificial contraception set forth in Pope Pius VI's encyclical HUMANAE VITAE (1968). This prospect should strike fear into the conservative Catholic bishops because their whole moral thought-world could tumble down just as Humpty-Dumpty tumbled down.
As I see the abortion debate today in the United States, the forces of centuries-old patriarchy and male chauvinism represented by the Catholic bishops are fueling antiabortion anguish. For understandable reasons, the Catholic bishops fear that their old moral thought-world is threatened by legalized abortion in the first trimester. Therefore they use the ethos of their supposed moral authority to help advance antiabortion anguish. But the ethical teachings advanced by the Catholic bishops have no intrinsic superiority over the ethical insights advanced by deontological ethical theory.
The Catholic bishops also appeal to pathos by claiming that their want to defend supposed human life. Just as white slave holders in the nineteenth century defended the old moral thought-world of slavery, so too today's antiabortion zealots defend the old moral thought-world of patriarchy and male chauvinism.
The other side of the abortion debate today represents the counterpart of nineteenth-century abolitionists, because the other side of the abortion debate wants to overthrow the old moral thought-world of patriarchy and male chauvinism in favor of emancipating women.
As I've indicated, I support legalized abortion in the first trimester. However, once the fetus reaches the point of viability (i.e., becomes capable of living outside the mother's womb), then I think the federal and state laws should require protection of the fetus, except in extraordinary circumstances where saving the viable fetus would endanger the life of the mother. But for federal and state laws to mandate the protection of the viable fetus, federal and state laws should provide funding for late-term abortions.
In summary, nineteenth-century Americans emancipated slaves from slavery. Are we in the United States going to emancipate women from centuries-old patriarchy represented by the Catholic bishops not only by legalizing abortion in the first trimester but also by providing taxpayer funding for late-term abortions that protect viable fetuses where possible?
O'Brien should be commended for not giving the Catholic bishops a pass and for debating their questionable teachings regarding abortion to a certain extent. I wish that Fetzer and other non-Catholic philosophers would also debate the questionable ethical teachings of the Catholic bishops regarding abortion, as I myself have in my above-mentioned article.
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