thinking about the fetus without analogy

Here’s a question prompted by a seminar discussion today. (The speaker

was my colleague Robert Sprinkle.) Would it be possible to consider the

moral status of a human fetus without analogizing it to something

else? The standard way to think about the morality of abortion is to ask

what fetuses are most like—babies, organisms (fairly simple

ones at first), or tumors. We know that babies cannot be killed, that

simple organisms can be killed for important reasons, and that tumors

can be removed and destroyed without regret. So an analogy can help us

to answer the fundamantal moral question about abortion. (It’s not necessarily

the end of the matter. Judith Jarvis Thomson, and many others, have argued

that you may kill a fetus even if it is like a person, because

it is inside another person.) But a fetus isn’t something else; it’s a

fetus. So could you simply consider it and reach moral conclusions?

One might reply: "There is no way of reasoning about this entity;

there is nothing to say to oneself about its moral status—unless

one compares it to another object whose moral status one already knows."

But how do we know the moral status of (for example) human beings? Presumably,

experience and reason have rightly driven us to the conclusion that human

beings have a right to life. Similarly, most of us have decided that insects

do not have rights. Couldn’t we reach conclusions about the moral status

of fetuses without analogizing them to anything else?

(Some religious readers may say: "Experience and reason are not

the basis of our belief in human rights—we get this belief from

divine revelation." But there is no explicit divine revelation about

fetuses, so the question arises even for religious people: Could we think

morally—and perhaps prayerfully—about fetuses, without analogizing

them to other things?)

at the White House

Today was the White

House Forum on American History, Civics, and Service, a big event

in my field. Our Civic

Mission of Schools report was distributed to all 250 of the White

House’s guests and received a lot of attention.

The Forum exemplified official Washington. The President delivered

an especially prepared greeting from a gigantic video screen. Much was

made of his new initiative to support history teaching. The First Lady

and Lynne Cheney, guarded visibly by the Secret Service, made speeches;

and everyone stood each time one of these women took the podium. (Some

of the sanctity of high executive office transfers to spouses, apparently.)

Patriotic video montages of American history were displayed on the screen.

A huge reproduction of a manuscript copy of the Constitution was the backdrop

all day. Teenagers were paraded (silently) on stage and bedecked with

medals—quite literally. Speakers were introduced with long recitals

of their achievements; there was also much thanks to funders and assembled

dignataries. Almost all the speakers quoted at least one framer of the

Constitution (often deploying little-known and highly relevant quotes—to

their credit). Martin Luther King Jr. was also cited widely; and many

sentimental stories were told about disadvantaged children. No one mentioned

the name of a political party or a major ideology, lest the spirit of

nonpartisanship be disturbed. There was general air of congratulation,

directed at the people and organizations in the room and at America itself—with

one exception: at least half the speakers wagged their fingers at young

Americans today for their shocking ignorance of history.

My academic training makes me want to rebel against this kind of show.

I want to ask: What do we know about the trends in historical knowledge

over time? What do we know about the factors that make historical education

successful? What is the impact of a historical education, or of historical

knowledge, on people over their lifetimes? What will the impact of the

new presidential initiative be? (At $100 million over three years, it

represents a vanishingly small commitment in the context of the federal

budget.) Since there are competing grand narratives of American history,

how do we know which one is more correct? Is Howard Zinn’s story of greed

and violence (which was explicitly criticized during the session) false?

Is it less valid than the "moderate triumphalist" narrative

that one speaker recommended as an alternative? What are the effects of

such stories on youth development?

Notwithstanding all these questions and doubts, I recognize that public

institutions are not academic seminars. Mutual praise is oil that probably

has to be poured periodically over civil society. Vague statements of

commitment from the President of the United States are not empty; they

are useful ammunition in struggles at the local level. And leaders are

entitled to make a big deal about $100 million programs that they have

proposed. You would have to be a kind of political puritan to expect them

not to capitalize on the symbolism of such initiatives. It doesn’t only

take truth and critical debate to make large institutions run; they also

need symbolism, ritual, and even etiquette. Washington does these things

well.

medical information on federal websites

My blog is listed as "exemplary" on the blog

of Dr. John Gøtze, a Danish guy. At the risk of appearing to

logroll, I would heartily endorse "Gotzeblogged" (as he calls

his blog) for providing relatively technical (yet accessible) information

relevant to e-democracy and e-government.

There has been a lot of controversy about specific cases in which medical

information was changed on government websites, allegedly because

of the political or moral biases of the incumbent administration. I have

some thoughts about what to do about this problem—if it is a problem.

For now, here are the relevant facts, as far as I can tell:

In 2002, various agencies of the United States Government removed information

about condom use and abortion from their Websites, allegedly because

elected politicians favored sexual abstinence before marriage and opposed

abortion on moral or religious grounds. The National Cancer Institute

(NCI) had posted information denying a link between abortion and breast

cancer, but Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) objected, calling this denial "scientifically

inaccurate and misleading to the public." The NCI Website was then

changed to say (for a time) that the evidence was "inconclusive,"

until a scientific review panel required the Website to reinstate its

original language. Likewise, the Website of the Center

for Disease Control and Prevention removed its positive assessment

of condoms’ role in preventing the transmission of disease and removed

citations of evidence showing that education about condoms did not lead

to earlier or more sexual activity. After the removal of these statements

was criticized, some similar material reappeared online with the following

text added in bold: "The surest way to avoid transmission of sexually

transmitted diseases is to abstain from sexual intercourse, or to be

in a long-term mutually monogamous relationship with a partner who has

been tested and you know is uninfected."

This last sentence is literally true. However, critics disagree with

the strategy and motives that they see lying behind such statements.

Participants in this controversy divide into two camps. Some believe

that it is the responsibility of public health professionals to reduce

the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases, especially HIV/AIDS. Private,

voluntary behavior that does not transmit such diseases—or otherwise

increase morbidity and mortality—is not the business of medicine.

For this group, it seems best to advocate condom-use aggressively. Universal

condom-use is a more realistic goal than universal abstinence, and condoms

generally prevent the spread of disease. Caveats about the effectiveness

of condoms, like the one in bold on the revised website, may have the

effect of discouraging condom use. As Representative Waxman wrote in

an official complaint, the website was "carefully edited to deny

the public important information about the role condoms play in reducing

sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancies."

Another group, however, believes that there are two evils to

be minimized: (1) the transmission of dangerous disease, and (2) pre-

or extra-marital sex, which is bad in itself. Ed Vitagliano, who represents

the conservative American Family Association, said, "Science shows

that condoms are not 100 percent effective, and offer no protection

for certain sexually transmitted diseases like the human papilloma virus

and to a lesser extent chlamydia and herpes …. We fall on the side

of safety, encouraging children to wait until marriage, not only

for moral reasons, but also for scientific reasons" (emphasis

added). For this group, it makes sense to advocate abstinence, since

this is a good in itself as well as a means to avoid spreading various

diseases. Wholehearted, public advocacy of condom-use may strike such

people as tacit support for non-marital sex. They disliked the website

that was written under the Clinton Administration, seeing it as morally

biased in favor of promiscuity. The other side in the debate, however,

saw the revised text as morally biased in the opposite direction, and

the conflict led to the current text, which still offends some observers.

Sources: Robert B. Bluey "HHS Defends Its Advice

About Condoms, Abortion," www.cnsnews.com, December 27, 2002; Adam

Clymer, "Critics Say Government Deleted Sexual Material From Web

Sites to Push Abstinence," The New York Times, November 26, 2002,

p. A18; Lawrence M. Krauss, "The Citizen-Scientist’s Obligation

to Stand Up for Standards," The New York Times, April 22, 2003,

p. D3; Adam Clymer, "U.S. Revises Sex Information, and Fight Goes

On," The New York Times, December 27, 2002, p. A15.

Cesar Chavez school

I spoke today at the Cesar

Chavez Public Charter School for Public Policy, which is a wonderful

school that I have visited before. It’s a crowded warren of rooms on an

upstairs floor of a former industrial building, where kids are intensely

involved in regular classes, public-service internships, and the study

of public policy. If we are going to have broad-based, creative, informed

leadership in the District of Columbia (and other troubled cities), then

experiments like Chavez must work. It seems quite clear that the school

is successful at present—one hundred percent of its graduates

attend college, and all seem inspired to work on social problems. There

are, however, the usual questions about whether the Chavez model is replicable,

or whether it depends on remarkably charismatic and dedicated leadership.

Today, I was sent this

article on the Internet commons by its author, a former president

of the American Library Association. It seems to be an important contribution.

the point of civics

I was interviewed over the weekend by a group called Civic Honors.

The interview is posted here.

It was an opportunity to say why I personally believe in civic engagement.

I said:

My philosophical position would be something like this: (1) Volunteerism

is an inadequate form of civic engagement, because it replaces political

action with service, which does not address the root cause of problems

or tap the political capacities of the volunteers. (2) Civic engagement

should be cultivated for two reasons. First, if we don’t deliberately

teach it, the least advantaged among us will be the first to disengage,

leading to political inequality later on. Second, civic participation

is a good human activity. It is not the only or highest good activity:

theoretical reflection, spiritual contemplation, appreciation of nature,

creation of art, and care for family members are some of the other activities

that are inherently good. All of these ends or projects are preferable

to the forms of life that are more frequently advertised to young people:

consumerism, athletics, and sexual gratification. Moreover, in public

schools, we cannot teach activities connected to spirituality or care

for family. Therefore, we ought to teach civic engagement (along with

art and science) so that it is an option available to young people.