Who’s Right?

Who’s Right? The Supreme Court decision in Lawrence and Garner v. Texas earlier this year seemed to offer hope to Americans and liberals around the world that Bush’s doctrine of “compassionate conservatism” still had a long way to go, at least legally speaking. Still, the idea that citizens still need to periodically come to the defense of basic liberties embedded in liberal democracy is more than a little bit absurd.

Yesterday, the compassionate conservatives and their more visible allies on the Christian right struck back, in a move predictably spearheaded by Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA). According to the New York Times, the Senate voted 64-to-34 in favor of a federal ban on intact dilation and extraction, a procedure otherwise known as partial-birth abortion. Should the bill become law, as it surely will when President Bush returns from his current tour of Asia, women undergoing the procedure, which typically occurs in the second or third trimesters, would be subject to a fine and incarceration for up to two years. In other words, a recognized medical procedure would gain the added status of a criminal act.

Santorum has said, “If your concern is women’s health, then you would be for banning this procedure.” On the other hand, if we are concerned with individual liberty, and have good faith in the autonomous capacity of citizens to decide what to do with their own bodies, then we should be adamantly against it. Abortion, like euthanasia and a host of other medical practices, is one in which the level of controversy is deeply tied to a certain conception of the person. For many theists, the moment of conception marks the beginning of autonomy, and hence the attribution of rights, while other groups regard the human status of fetuses and embryos incrementally. The point, of course, is not which view is correct, but whether any one view can be accepted by the public at large. And the bigger question, lest we forget, is to determine what value we place in our society on respecting the diverse and healthy pluralism that marks the Western conception of democracy. In my view, the bill as it stands does not, and can never do this.