I have uploaded a paper to Academia taking apart the 1971 pro-abortion Violinist Thought Experiment:

An exploration of Judith Jarvis Thomson’s Violinist thought-experi- ment presented in her 1971 “A Defense of Abortion”. This thought- experiment has been brought up repeatedly in pro-abortion debate over the intervening 50 years, despite the fact that it has a poor fit to questions she attempts to answer and that, in the places where it really does fit the questions related to aborting a baby, it actually tends to support the pro-life position in significant ways. Nevertheless, like many thought experiments, it remains interesting and useful despite, or perhaps because of its flaws.

In the post-Roe v Wade environment where public policy is shifting rapidly, it can be important to go back to some of the foundational arguments which are still thrown around but which few people in the modern pro-abortion debate seem to have read-- which may not have been very good in the first place. Engaged in some of these debates in the last few years, I noticed that an older essay I wrote has long disappeared, but that I still had notes. I therefore rewrote it, partly so that I can now find and refer to it again and partly because the rewriting has allowed me to get some of my own thoughts in better order.

Looking Down From the Hill: Roe v Wade revisited before the Supreme Court

The purpose of courts is to resolve disputes in order to allow the Public Peace to remain. Those resolutions do not need to be to the liking of both parties-- or necessarily of either-- but they must be such that society can live with them. In a fallen world with imperfect and perennially messy human beings, that is often the best we can do. It is the sworn duty of justices to carry out this task, not for their own sake or their ambitions or political preferences, but for the maintenance of the Public Peace under Public Law within the limits of the federal ("of equals") Constitution on top of the framework provided by our great Declaration which itself bows to the laws of "nature and nature's God".

Roe v Wade transparently, empirically, objectively, undeniably accomplished none of this. Rather than resolving a dispute under the Constitutuon, the majority simply made its own law in the guise of a compromise over "viability" that the court never kept and seemingly never intended to keep. Rather than resolve or dampen conflict, it has become the incessant flash point for strife and violence for decades.

<<Even pro-abortion advocates do not defend Roe on its merits. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg publicly criticized the decision for its invented doctrine and judicial overreach. Pro-abortion advocates have drafted an entire book of faux-Roe opinions that aim to replace Roe’s reasoning with something more defensible (it’s called “What Roe v. Wade Should Have Said”). Indeed, the only justice ever to defend Roe’s original reasoning in writing is Justice Harry Blackmun —  Roe’s author.  >> ( https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/12/01/courts_legitimacy_depends_on_overturning_roe_v_wade_146809.html )

The initial-- "victorious"-- plaintiff, Norma McCorvey neé Jane Roe, has expressed intense regret over the outcome and had begged the court to reopen the case by filing a (failed) "motion for relief from judgement" in 2003. ( https://www.nysun.com/editorials/roes-regrets/77677/ )

Roe was a bad decision. It needs to go. It threatens the legitimacy of the court and the survival of our nation like a cancerous ulcer, open and fetid.

What we replace it with is a much bigger and tougher question. As a society, we need to come to grips-- well, that bare phrase, "come to grips" would cover such a multitude of societal ills right now, but specifically-- with both the horror of abortion and the rights of bodily autonomy in some way. Of course, it is plain that we have done neither under the framework of the abortion that was the Roe decision. We today honor neither "life" nor "choice", neither unborn children nor medical autonomy (to say nothing of children who survive to be born). Ironically, it is often the same political elites who advocate the denial of both of these things.

Like many of these questions, it comes down to fundamentals. "All human activity is aimed at +some+ good..." But which good, how "good" a good? Do we have the foggiest idea, the most tenuous consensus, of what law is for? Of what it is supposed to accomplish? That is where we ought start, ought begin every public act and deliberation.

People are concerned that overturning Roe v Wade will lead to civil strife; they shouldn't be. We do not have peace now, we won't and we cannot as long as that opinion stands in the way. Overturning it is not a guarantee of success, but letting it stand does guarantee failure. If this experiment in self government is indeed destined  to "perish from the earth", then, on-demand abortion, like chattel slavery, is a fit instrument for its demise.

I would rather we come through this crisis as a people, bruised and chastened but better for it. If we cannot, if we do not have the will and fortitude-- not to magically fix this persistent evil but-- to even start on the long and difficult road to a better, higher good, then perhaps we deserve to fail here, on this hill. At some point, one hill may be as good as another...

--Written on this First Day of Advent, in the Year of Our Lord, Two Thousand Twenty-Two.

Is It Valid For a Christian To Continue Cranking the Screws On Abortion Access?

A recent subject of debate in Missouri is the veto-session override of Governor Nixon's veto of a 72-hour waiting period for abortions at the one clinic still operating in the state. People who know me recognize that I am by no means a fan of Nixon and I believe that abortion is immoral. In this case, however, Nixon was right and Missouri Republicans were wrong. I have said this in pieces elsewhere, but I think it is worth putting my reasons in one place.

As a Christian, I believe that abortion is immoral. Finding clear justification in Scripture for this is not easy, but I strongly believe that it represents a disrespect for life which does not belong to us and that, as it does state in Scripture, "there shall be an accounting for blood". Abortion is an obscenity. I do not believe there is Scriptural support for abortion-as-murder and challenge anyone to cite a direct link between abortion and murder in the Bible. But is not necessary for abortion to be murder in order to be wrong.

I also believe that abortion is damaging to secular morality. Pro-choice advocates, even if contending that a fetus is in no way human, would probably support animal-cruelty laws on (at least) the argument that cruelty or indifference to life begets cruelty and indifference even though a cat or a horse is clearly not human.

Be that as it may, explicitly outlawing abortion or practically restricting it via 'public health' legislation is also wrong. The pro-choice activists argument is correct that a woman does have a right to decide what to do with her body, and as long as the fetus is part of her, that operates. Whether her choice is wrong or not is between her and God, not my business and not the business of human law. Sometimes a woman in facing the choice of abortion must balance wrongs, such as the wrongs of rape or incest, of youthful indiscretion, of abandonment by the father, of drug addiction, of an inability to raise a child, of danger to her health; it is not my place to make that decision for her, any more than it is someone else's choice whether I use force in defense of my self or another, committing one wrong to prevent another. But more than simply not being my business, preventing abortion would require me to take action (or condone action by law in my name) which I consider actively evil.

What are the alternatives? If we outlaw abortion, is imprisoning a mother for attempting to rid herself of an unwanted child going to help that child? A birth in prison, introduction to the tender mercies of our intensely messed-up foster care system? To force an irresponsible pregnant youth to irresponsibly raise a child after being abandoned by an irresponsible father? Knowledge that his or her mother tried to kill him or her? Is it better for the mother? Is it better for society to insert ourselves into that matter and become the problem? What is the hypocrisy of doing so when we refuse to put in the effort to care for abandoned children, to correct our foster care system, or for enough good families to step up and adopt as it is? Who is worthy to throw the first stone?

If we instead kill abortion with a thousand bureaucratic pricks, is that really any different? We pass public health laws which reduce the options to a single licensed facility, and increase the waiting period from 24 to 72 hours, so that someone who has already traveled across the state now has to either stay over or travel again, someone who in all likelihood is already in bad straits--- or they would not be considering the choice. We then shift our focus to further restrictions. Does anyone think that unlicensed abortions will not increase? Or abandoned children? Or more children in foster care families too often plagued by drugs, abuse, or neglect? How is that protecting public health? Are the people who now ask for pressure to close even that last facility willing to individually step up to care for women and children which now become our responsibility? How many of us, honestly, are willing or capable of adopting and caring for a child with fetal alcohol syndrome? How many of us when faced with a pregnant teenager respond first by condemning and only later--- if ever--- with "I'll take responsibility for that child"? I'm disabled myself and have more trouble than I can handle raising our own daughter. If we hesitate to shoulder that responsibility, can we blame the mother?

As a Christian believing that abortion is wrong, it is my responsibility to try to correct that evil where I can. Social pressure and activism is fair game. Education is fair game. Attempting to understand, to assist, to counsel without judgement, to rebuild families, extended families, godparents, churches, and functional marriages, working to improve foster care, to correct the corruption, to protect the children in the system, to make more families available, to adopt a relative's child--- or a stranger's if necessary---, promoting chastity and contraception, are all fair game. Keep the government out of it. Prayer and activism is called for; punishment is not my place.

Do unto others as you would have them do to unto you. Where have we lost track of that?