I came across this article recently. This sort of strategy for widening the 'pro-life' label has a bit of a history.

I find this way of carving up the terms unhelpful. It's usually accompanied by complaints that 'pro-life' usually just means 'anti-abortion'; I agree, but I say, What's wrong with that? 'Pro-life' and 'pro-choice' are at their best political labels (at their worst, rhetorical cudgels). Peter Singer likes to point out that pro-lifers are not pro-all-life, they are pro-human-life. The same is true of pro-choicers; there are lots of choices they would regard as repugnant. In this best case, calling someone 'pro-life' or 'pro-choice' just tells you something helpful about the beliefs and commitments he or she shares with other people falling under that label. That's it.

I want to put the problem this way: 'Pro-life' and 'pro-choice' are not middle terms in demonstrations. I'll make this point with an analogy. I've noticed that a couple GOP candidates (Rubio and Cruz, mainly) give something like the following argument in their stump speeches: "Conservative policy is good; my policies are conservative; thus my policies are good." This is to use "conservative" as a middle term; in this capacity it isn't a helpful term, and mainly plays off of people's loyalties to the first premise. It also makes reappropriation of the term very easy, so that Donald Trump can brand himself as a "common sense conservative" to defend a very different slate of policies. (It also appeals and has rhetorical force mainly with "the base"; it's a worse argument in a general election where people doubt that "conservative policy is good".)

Some of this has a certain place in politics where rhetoric and persuasion (which I don't necessarily intend pejoratively) are deployed. But its use is limited.

It is better to argue directly that policies are good, and perhaps then note that, since lots of good policies are conservative (if that's in fact the case) that conservative policies tend to be good. (Maybe the original inference becomes legitimate if you've adequately justified this induction. This has not likely been accomplished.) In the order of knowing, the judgment that conservative policies are good would have to be posterior to showing that individual conservative policies are good. To try to argue from a policy's being conservative to its being good is, usually, to get things backwards.

I think 'pro-life' faces similar problems. The original reason for having a term 'pro-life' was to flag a commitment to respecting the moral absolute against intentionally killing the innocent. That requirement never changes depending on time, place, or resources. People aim to justify all sorts of things with it by proposing policies that are broadly related to 'life'. Then those who are anti-abortion but don't support a $15 minimum wage are critiqued as hypocrites, probably inconsistent because motivated by misogyny.

Of course, maybe a $15 minimum wage is, in the end, a good policy for those aiming to reduce the number of abortions. The trouble for arguing that it's a good policy because it's pro-life is that the force of that designation used to rely on the soundness of the no-intentional-killings-of-the-innocent principle. The justification of a $15 minimum wage, even if it is indeed justified, would be totally different; one has to argue for the efficacy of a particular economic policy in these circumstances, etc., that there would not be other adverse consequences, etc.

The same issues crop up with the death penalty. I sometimes get the impression that some Catholic prelates, for instance, want to use the idea of a consistent life ethic to try to accuse liberals of hypocrisy in opposing the death penalty but supporting abortion. I think it's a totally hopeless endeavor; the fact that conservatives and liberals hold opposite positions on the death penalty and abortion should be some evidence that they are reasoning from very different principles, and you can't win anyone over just by pinning some commitment to avoiding damage to "life" on them.

Last edited by Greg (3/29/2016 11:15 pm)