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From the “library”: Practical Ethics, by Peter Singer

From the “library”: Practical Ethics, by Peter Singer

Last updated on: January 22, 2016 at 8:11 am by Jane the Actuary

From the “library”: Practical Ethics, by Peter Singer 2016-01-22T08:11:52-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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according to which, the words and deeds of Planned Parenthood and its defenders are rational, ethical, and entirely appropriate.

Disclaimer #1: I haven’t read the whole book, just skimmed through for the provocative pieces.

Disclaimer #2: This isn’t actually a book checked out from the library, but rather a book that was on the “items on this cart are free” cart that the library places in the parking garage entrance, comprised of books and magazines they judge to be unsellable at the quarterly used book sales. The cart typically contains old National Geographics and magazines of interest only to specialists/hobbyists; occasionally there are severely outdated guidebooks. In any event, I don’t recommend purchasing this book or taking any action which would put more royalties in the author’s pockets.

Anyway:

it occurs to me that I haven’t weighted in on the Planned Parenthood controversy, in which a PP executive spoke nonchalantly about, among other things, taking special care to preserve hearts, livers, and heads during the course of abortions, to sell (“donate with costs reimbursed”) to medical researchers and other buyers. (If you’re behind in you’re news, here are the most recent pieces written by writers/sites I follow: “The Butchers of Planned Parenthood” by Kevin D. Williamson, and “Planned Parenthood Suddenly Claims It Pays Women For Organ Harvesting” by Mollie Hemingway.)

But fundamentally the mindset of these people is that unborn children — or even newborns, or the severely disabled — are not “persons” in their definition of the term. And bearing that in mind, there is nothing shocking about the fact that they’d consider the organs of these “human non-persons” fair game for any use.

Which brings us to Peter Singer, a name that Wesley J. Smith, through his writing at the National Review and elsewhere previously, has made me aware of. The book is an updated 1993 edition, 2006 printing, originally published in 1979.

His fundamental approach is this: to be a member of the species Homo sapiens is not enough to have a “right to life”; one must also be a “person.” He cites Joseph Fletcher’s list of “indicators of humanhood”:

self-awareness, self-control, a sense of the future, a sense of the past, the capacity to relate to others, concern for others, communication, and curiosity. (p. 86)

and says that any human being who is not a “person” according to this definition does not have a “right to life”, or, rather, that with respect to such beings, there’s nothing wrong with killing, and it may even be the ethically right thing to do.

(Note that it’s not as easy as you’d think to find quotes, as he tends to quote other philosophers, where it becomes clear that he agrees with them, and says things like “it could be viewed like this. . . ” rather than “I believe that. . . “)

Hence, with respect to abortion, there’s not really any question of its acceptability, except that perhaps at that point when a fetus is capable of feeling pain, this should be avoided, in the same way as you shouldn’t cause an animal pain unnecessarily. What’s more, there isn’t any cut-off prior to birth, and even at birth, Singer says:

It would, of course, be difficult to say at what age children begin to see themselves as distinct entities existing over time. Even when we talk with two and three year old children it is usually very difficult to elicit any coherent conception of death, or of the possibility that someone — let alone the child herself — might cease to exist. no doubt children vary greatly in the age at which they begin to understand these matters, as they do in most things. But a difficulty in drawing the line is not a reason for drawing it in a place that is obviously wrong. . . . [Singer then discusses the option of setting this line at birth, but then suggests that] there should be at least some circumstances in which a full legal right to life comes into force not at birth, but only a short time after birth — perhaps a month [as a ] safety margin. (p. 172)

And even here, it’s clear that his definition — “must have a sufficient understanding of the world in order for one’s killing to be unethical” — encompasses a great deal more than just newborns, but, of course, he can’t quite pursue the consequence that a two-year-old is of insufficient moral worth.

He later says this:

In Chapter 4 we saw that the fact that a being is a human being, in the sense of a member of the species Homo sapiens, is not relevant to the wrongness of killing it; it is, rather, characteristics like rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness that make a difference. Infants lack these characteristics. Killing them, therefore, cannot be equated with killing normal human beings, or any other self-conscious beings. This conclusion is not limited to infants who, because of irreversible intellectual disabilities, will never be rational, self-conscious beings. (p. 182)

In later chapters he discusses the ethical rightness of euthanasia as it pertains to disabled infants, and, ultimately, the severely disabled due to disease or accident, in their prime or aging-related, and rejects “slippery slope” arguments, saying that the fundamental problem with Nazism was that they killed because of their pursuit of racial purity, rather than elimination of “pointless suffering,” so that as long as we’re properly motivated, all will be well. He further cites the ancient Greeks, of whom he says,

Ancient Greeks regularly killed or exposed infants, but appear to have been at least as scrupulous about taking the lives of their fellow-citizens as medieval Christians or modern Americans. . . . I mention these practices . . . to indicate that lines can be drawn at places different from where we now draw them. (p. 217).

Bottom-line: from a Singerian ethos, Planned Parenthood is doing nothing wrong.

What’s more, the difficulty is this: how does one argue with Singer? He’s not even in the same universe, when it comes to his perception of the world. And Planned Parenthood’s defenders live in his universe, or at least much closer to it, or, if they read his writings, would probably find themselves in agreement, if perhaps squeamish about saying that infanticide’s fine, so long as mom and dad agree.

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