On Legislating Morality...

I’ve heard it said, “You can’t legislate morality.”  Usually, the topic is one where a social conservative seeking a more decent society is being chided by a social liberal or libertarian.  “You can’t legislate morality?”  I beg to differ…

Society believes it is wrong to kill, so we have laws against murder.  Society believes it is wrong to steal, so we have laws against theft.  Society believes it is wrong to wear corduroy, so we have fashion police who will ridicule you.  (There’s no accounting for taste. lol)

In truth, I would suggest to you that all proper legislation should be an attempt to set forth society’s moral stance on the issue at hand.  If you show me a law that does not legislate morality, I’ll show you a law that is probably discretely designed to put money into somebody’s pocket.

The real issue is…who gets to decide what is moral?  There was a time when the morals of our citizens were fairly uniform and the stance of the majority was generally an ethical position.  Most Americans held to a fairly Judeo-Christian ethic, even if they were not religious.  That is hardly to say that our national values were always correct.  Just ask someone who only counted as 3/5^ths of a person, constitutionally…not that blacks or women were allowed to vote back then anyway.  But… Should we trade one flawed ethic for a dozen other flawed ethics?  I don’t think so.

It’s a little like the young person who looks at the flawed parenting of their own parents and thinks, “I’m not going to make the mistakes that my parents made raising me!”  No, you’re probably not.  You will discover a whole new set of mistakes to make, often worse mistakes than those of your parents.  And at times, we do make the same mistakes.  Why?  “…because I said so!  That's why!”

Unfortunately, that time of even moderate uniformity has pretty much faded, especially on issues like abortion, gay marriage, capital punishment, entitlements, etc.

There are those who would suggest that the government should just stay out of personal issues.  But…to what degree?  If you believe that theft or murder is not a big deal, should society let you just do your thing?  Of course not.  The argument is made, however, that some so-called crimes (like drug use or prostitution) are really just “victimless crimes” and should not be prosecuted or even outlawed.

But...these are not victimless crimes.  Children and innocent by-standers are, indeed, impacted by such activities.  Even smoking, for instance, victimizes those in the immediate vicinity who are forced to inhale the poison or vacate the area (which is not possible or practicable at times).  Even those claiming to be conservative (Rush Limbaugh, for instance) don’t seem to understand the basic conservative principle that “your personal liberties stop where mine begin.”

So, when there is a conflict between the liberties of one person versus another, whose liberties should prevail?  The “natural state” should prevail.  In the case of smokers, the “natural state” would be the right to breathe clean air.  It’s not that different from a next door neighbor playing loud music in the middle of the night.  Their right to play loud music stops where your right to a night’s sleep begins, because peace and quiet is the “natural state”.

Similarly, a child’s right to a safe environment (and sober, responsible parents) outweighs that parent’s freedom to get drunk (or high).  A driver’s right to get home safely outweighs another driver’s freedom to drive under the influence of alcohol or drugs.  A factory worker’s right to stay safe on the job outweighs their co-worker’s freedom to come to work impaired.  And so on…

Sorry to my Libertarian friends, but no matter how you try to justify it, you are simply wrong on the drug issue and other such issues of personal liberty without consideration for moral responsibility.  There are almost always unintended victims when we do immoral things.  Thus, the government does have a role to play…in legislating morality.

Our young nation is trying to “grow up”, and as we pass through this adolescence of national life, we are in the throws of a rebellious period in life.  Hopefully, we will realize that we are not more wise than our forefathers and we will return to some measure of ethical behavior and the ways of old…but without their mistakes.

On Abortion...

Perhaps, more than any other topic in the past 50 years, abortion has been a seminal issue on the stage of American politics.  Though it has been pushed aside to some extent by the horrendous economy, abortion raises the level of emotions in religious circles and in non-religious circles, alike.  It evokes strong, heart-felt responses on all sides, so much so that we start to forget the real issue.

The pro-choice argument has been flawed in that it relies primarily on emotional hyperbole.  Unfortunately, the pro-life argument has been equally as flawed, often relying on religious justifications.  In a land where we acknowledge genuine freedom of religion, an argument based upon one’s religious beliefs simply cannot stand.  Likewise, emotional clichés are hardly a rationale for legislation either.  So, I thought we might be well served to examine the issue from a more scientific perspective.

There is only one major ethical/moral reason why abortion could be considered “wrong”.  If abortion is the taking of a human life, then it has to be considered wrong.  If abortion is not the taking of a human life, then it is nobody’s business but the mother and the doctor.

So, is abortion tantamount to murder? …or is that emotional hyperbole from the pro-life side?  To investigate this from a scientific viewpoint, we should agree upon some semblance of a definition… Murder is to kill (or end the life of) an innocent living human being.  If any of those four elements (innocent, living, human, being) is not applicable to the unborn child, then we cannot rightly consider abortion to be murder.

Is the unborn child living?  Well, the unborn child, in its earliest stages may not have a heartbeat; it may not be breathing or thinking, but there is certainly biological function, of a sort.  There is growth.  There is cell division taking place.  If we found those properties in some something on Mars, we would certainly contend that we had found “life” on Mars.  So, I think the “scientific” answer would have to be that it is at least “living tissue”, but…living tissue of what nature?

Is the unborn child human?  Well, again…from a purely scientific angle, the cells have genes that would clearly distinguish it as homo sapiens.  That argument is pretty straightforward, but…

Is the unborn child a “being”?  Is it an organism separate and distinct unto itself, or is it a part of the mother’s body?  Again, going back to the genetics, the unborn child has a genetic make-up entirely different from that of its mother.  Certainly, at this stage in its development, the unborn child is “parasitic” in form, but that does not make it “a part of the mother’s body”.  If that same mother had another parasite, say, a tapeworm, would we not recognize that the tapeworm was a separate living organism, though parasitic in form?

Likewise, the fact that the unborn child is not yet in its final form does not disqualify it as an “organism”.  Would we say that a caterpillar is not an organism because it is not yet a butterfly?  Ridiculous…

Finally…  Is the unborn child innocent?  Certainly, there is an absence of any guilt for the child who has not yet been born.  Even if the pregnancy was the result of a rape or incest, the child, itself, is innocent, and no civilized people can justly execute the innocent for the crimes of the father.  If we want to execute the father, then we can talk.

It is evidence of the upside-down world in which we live and the twisted minds of the pro-choice movement that they would see the death penalty as some kind of moral equivalent to abortion and call pro-life supporters hypocrites for supporting the death penalty.  The pro-choice crowd ignores the critical factor of “guilt” in proclaiming the capital punishment to be “murder” by the state.  They would have us kill the innocent and let the guilty live.  Plainly, it is “evil”…pure evil.

Still, the unfortunate fact is that even many pro-life proponents are not really pro-life.  If one thinks of (or treats) the unborn child any differently than they would, say, a 4-year old child, then they are hypocrites.  The unborn child is either a living human being or it is not.

So, if a mother discovered that her 4-year old child was actually the spawn of a rapist, would she be justified in killing the 4-year old?  What if it were the result of incest?  Could we, in good conscience, kill that 4-year old?  Oh, but…now it is the so-called pro-lifers that resort to the emotional arguments.  Sorry, but no…  Abortion is either wrong because it is the taking of an innocent human life or there is nothing wrong with it in any case.  Period.

Even in a situation where the life of the mother is involved, we have to consider the fact that we have two patients.  Might we have to harm one in order to save the life of the other?  Possibly.  Doctors run into similar ethical questions in dealing with Siamese twins, occasionally.  This situation is no different.  If both lives can be saved, then every effort must be made to spare both lives.  If they cannot both be saved, then they can’t.  Still, it is a matter of mind-set…  Do we even consider that we have two patients?

At the very least, those who hold a legitimate moral stance against abortion should not be compelled through their tax dollars to pay for abortion.  This, in and of itself, is morally and ethically wrong.  Our government should not ask this of tax payers any more than they should compel drafted soldiers to kill or be killed when they have a conscientious objection to killing.  No federal funding should go to any organization which performs or promotes abortion.