An Unsolicited Plug for Jacob Spinney

Jacob Spinney is a magician who makes videos on youtube about libertarianism and animal rights. He's an anarcho-capitalist, a bit of an animal rights activist, a vegetarian (though not a vegan...yet), and almost as "pro-life" as me. He might be called a "right-wing" anarchist, because he opposes most abortion and because he calls himself a capitalist; though like every good market anarchist he opposes IP - he even opposes contractual copyright, which is further left than where I stand. I'd say he fits into that very tight niche of pro-life animal rights market anarchist, which as far as I know includes 2 people - him and me. Indulge yourself at his blog.

Mother Earth can still be a God Concept

Church this past Sunday was a tiny bit dreadful. The week before it was amazing. The theme then was on humanist spirituality. This week the theme was earth-centered spirituality. To be fair, it was still refreshing in the sense that these folks openly admitted that their environmentalism is a religion. But some aspects about it showed that their version of it (or at least, the version presented by the lady who conducted the service) is a religion more on the level of traditional Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, than on the level of, say, Taoism or Jainism.

The lady conducting the service read a creation story that was written by a Unitarian Universalist. It was about the Goddess who decided to take care of her loneliness by curling up into a ball and spinning around really fast, forming mountains with the ridges of her spine and lakes with her breasts, and giving birth to all manner of plants and creeping things from her womb, and making 8 humans, 4 male and 4 female, a white male and female, a yellow male and female, a brown male and female, and a black male and female created she them, and she called them good, and they called her Mother.

I've always been perfectly comfortable accepting the common theory that white people are a genetic accident. I've known since I was a very small kid that the paintings of a white Adam and Eve were a bit fanciful. A brown Adam and Eve made much more sense to me. I know that the writer of this Mother Earth creation story wanted to be inclusive - to show that every phenotype is within the Divine plan - but it really looks like it's suggesting that racial categories are Divine constructs and not social constructs. (There's a very thin line between saying that everyone should be allowed a place and saying that everyone has their place.)

But the predestination of race isn't my main beef. My main beef against this creation story is that it has the very same problem that almost every theistic religion has. It ascribes onto humans a raison d'etre that they did not choose. According to this story, we are essentially bi-pedal pets that are supposed to keep someone else company.

I think a lot of theistic creation stories have the same problem - they point at some relationship in some purported origin and say that that relationship is the rightful one. Connected to this is the Divine Command problem. In these stories, the rightful relationship is the one that was determined by whoever the Divine entity is.

Theism can be used to prop up all sorts of hegemonic pyramids. Most of us know that associating the Divine with monarchy (calling God a King, painting Him sitting on a thrown, etc.) is a justification for all sorts of domination that occurs within monarchical political structures. I think the same thing happens when the Divine is associated with Nature. I'm speaking, of course, about religious justifications for the hegemonic system of animal predation.

The lady leading the service did some readings from a book that came out just recently. One of the scenes in this book was the author's observations of a leatherback turtle swimming along with jellyfish tentacles dangling from its mouth like noodles. She kept referring to its prey as "its lunch", as if killing another sentient being to eat it is just another one of those simple pleasures we're all entitled to.

Animals killing and eating other animals is something you have to smile on if you worship Nature. I think this is a problem for people who believe that the inherent worth and dignity of every being implies that the sentient ones are entitled to be left to enjoy their own lives.

People who worship Nature and oppose unjust domination seem to ignore that there is such a thing as Sin Nature. They seem oblivious to the fact that cruel domination is written into the very mechanisms that the ecosystem runs on.

Those who do recognize that cruelty is programmed into the natural order say that they themselves wouldn't engage in the predation of animals. But the predation of animals by other animals? Well that's the will of Our Mother.

Animals and Libertarian Property Theory

Reading this post linked at LRC reminded me of the dire need to address this shortcoming of contemporary libertarianism. Libertarians, and especially "right-libertarians", typically defend the subjugation of animals. Animals are our property, they say, and since we have the right to do whatever we want with our property, we have the right to do whatever we want to our animals. If we follow the implications of this "animals are property" view, we would find some things that should abhore us (assuming we have half a conscience).

I should say, right off the bat, that I don't advocate any mandatory licensing program for animals. We shouldn't be required to get a license to keep animals just as we shouldn't be required to get a license to raise children. I don't even believe in government drivers' licenses. (Now, road owners have the right to demand that the driver prove his or her competence before allowing him or her to drive on their roads, and that may lead to some system that's functionally the same as licensing. But it would differ from conventional licensing in that individual road owners would have the freedom to experiment with different standards of proof, and would have the freedom to not demand proof in the first place.) Animal licensing implies that all animals are owned ultimately by government. Libertarians are right to oppose this. My problem with "animals are property"-ists isn't that they oppose government ownership of all animals; my problem with them is that they insist that animals can be property.

When an object is your property, it is yours to withhold, to give for free, to give on whatever condition you demand (so long as the condition doesn't violate individual sovereignty), and to destroy. If animals are property, then the owner of an animal has the right to do whatever he wants with it, including killing it for meat, rubbing shampoo into its eyes, sacrificing it to St. Michael, infecting it with a lethal virus, and other things that are commonly done. But these common abuses aren't all that are excused by "animals are property". If an animal is your property, it is yours to beat with a 2x4, yours to rape with a kitchen knife, yours to blind with a screw driver, yours to strangle with a bungee cord, etc. It's yours to inflict all sorts of elaborate violence onto, because it's just an object, and deserves no more consideration than a pencil sharpener.

Granted, there would be some limits to this property ownership. If the person you bought the animal from sold it to you on the condition that you not abuse it, then your animal is yours, but not yours to abuse. If the person who sold it to you finds out that you're beating your animal, then they have the right to make you buy them another animal like it, or to steal the animal back from you. But if there was no such condition, then you could treat your animal however cruelly you want to. Another limit could be in the condition on a lease. A landlord could demand that all tenants who keep animals on the property treat their animals well. If a landlady who has that condition in her lease finds that a tenant is abusing his animal, she can rightfully demand that he either give up the animal or move out. But if there is no such condition, the tenant can do whatever he likes to his animal without fear of eviction.

Neither of these limits are strong or broad enough to condemn gratuitous animal abuse in an "animals are property" framework. In this framework, so long as a man doesn't use his animal to hurt other humans or damage their property without their consent, he could do to it whatever he wants. But it doesn't stop there. If a man owns his animal as property, he can rightfully use force against people who forcefully try to stop him from abusing his animal. If you stand in front of and try to restrain a man who's beating his dog, then he has the right to beat you too, since you're forcefully violating his rights to person and property. That's what's implied by the whole idea of rights. If it's a man's right, then it's his right not just to do, but also to defend.

Consider this scenario: a married man is the sole owner of his dog, and there are no limits to his ownership of it like those mentioned above. His wife finds him beating his dog with a baseball bat, and she intervenes with an identical bat. The fight escalates, and ends when the wife dies of her wounds. Within the "animals are property" framework, the man is not guilty of murder or any domestic violence. He was just defending himself against a forceful invasion of his property rights.

If you think there's something wrong with this picture (and I hope you do), then you should start re-examining the whole idea of animal ownership. If you're disturbed by a man killing someone who violently tries to stop him from beating his dog, then either you doubt proportional and discriminate defense, or you doubt that animals can be property to be disposed of however the owner desires. If you sense that a man can rightfully defend a dog, then you view animals as beings more precious than objects, and you reject the idea that animals can be owned as property.

The logical consequences of "animals as property"-ism are frankly absurd. If an animal is property, then no one has the right to intervene for the animal's own sake. There is another absurd consequence -- a rend between individual sovereignty and individual will. If animals are property and nothing more, then having an individual will isn't good enough to be sovereign over oneself. What's one to do? Prove that one's will for oneself is worth respecting? Should the animals, the disabled, and the fetuses walk to Rothbard's desk and sign a contract just to win that dear right to not be meddled with? What's individual sovereignty, if it has to be earned? And if not by Rothbard, then by whom shall the conditions for the right to live be set? The standards to define the life worth living are to be set by oneself, and only by oneself. This is a central tenet of libertarianism. I cringe every time I read a self-proclaimed libertarian demand that the animals prove they have rights. I'm sorry the animals can't rise to your standard of rights-worthiness. I just hope that my friends enslaved to their baser instincts can.

Consent of the Governed

When my brother called me this morning and said "Happy Secession Day, I'm expecting a blog post from you," I had no choice but to accept my writing assignment with joy. And it wasn't as if I could pretend that I didn't know what he wanted me to write about. Today is that day when we all celebrate a secession without calling it a secession. Believe it or not, the signing of the Declaration of Independence was an act by which some people seceded from a Union.

Yes, it was a secession in every respect. A bunch of radical liberals decided that the taxes imposed on them were so burdensome and that the government over them was so despotic, that neither the taxes nor the government that inflicted them were binding. "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," they reasoned, and since the Crown's intrusions lacked their consent, the Crown and its intrusions had no right over them. But had our forbears more principle, and had they drunk a few more pints of that American spirit, they would have demanded a little more (or, shall we say, a lot less) than "Free and Independent States".

Now is that all-American holiday when we celebrate the "birth of a nation," and in the spirit of this season we're supposed to observe everything American, including the beers and burgers which we selected from among a variety of beers and burgers for best fulfilling our needs and desires, and which we bought from a store that we selected from among a variety of stores for best fulfilling our needs and desires. We all know that to be free is to be free to choose. And deep down inside we all know that this includes the freedom to shop at Whole Foods if you don't like Safeway, and to shop at Kohl's if you can't afford or simply don't like the selections at Gap, and also to not shop at all when you simply don't want to shop.

Freedom, as it's best understood, is being allowed to choose one and not another, or none at all. This kind of freedom is the highest expression of Western values, and the extent to which we honor it is the degree of America's beauty. This freedom to choose something else protects us from the stagnant and mundane.

In my freshman year of college I became concerned about the treatment of animals, and about the environmental effects of factory farming, and I started to reduce the amount of meat that I eat. Today I am a vegan -- I don't eat any food derived from an animal, not even milk, cheese, or eggs. Thanks to the freedom to choose one and not another, I am able to choose meat substitutes instead of meat. Thanks to freedom of conscience, I can mold my life according to my own chosen values, so long as I allow others the same freedom. Thanks to supply and demand, suppliers have recognized the convictions I choose to live by, and now produce and distribute goods that accord with the values I embrace. Aren't freedom of conscience and capitalism such lovely things?

But I'm not free to live entirely by my own values. Money is taken by force from people who share my convictions, and given to factory farmers, animal experimenters, abortionists, and war profiteers. If I were truly free, I would be free to not fund any of those things. Not only that -- if I were truly free, I would be free to choose which government, if any, to pay taxes to and obey. If we believe in a free market in clothing and food -- if we believe we should be free to shop in one store and not another, without having to move -- then why don't we also believe in a free market in government? If I were free in the truest sense of the word, as I should be, then I would be free to buy protection from one goverment and not another, without being forced out of my home. If consent of the governed is such a big deal, then why do the California and U.S. governments lay claim to my body and my pocketbook without my consent?

All right then, a few words on Abortion

Though my own convictions about abortion have been the driving force in my ideological development, I've avoided writing a word about it. My pro-life stance might be too visceral for me to write anything fair. But now is a good time to start practicing. The Saturday before last, Wendy McElroy posted a list of supposedly problematic implications of the pro-life position. These implications might already have been addressed by pro-lifers, but I thought I should throw in my 2 cents, since I have a somewhat unique moral groundwork, and what someone else says in favor of the pro-life position might not represent my own convictions. (Before going into this I should say that everything McElroy has written about particular American anarchists or about the anarchist movement in general makes an enchanted read and is warmly recommended by me.) Now, on the A-question.

Implication #1: If the fetus is accorded individual rights, then the aborting woman and anyone who assists her are murderers and must be subject to whatever penalty society metes out for that crime, up to and including capital punishment. The punishment should be applied to past abortions as there is no statute of limitations on murder. If anti-abortionists shy away from this conclusion, then they do not really consider abortion to be murder.

Someone could call something murder without demanding or excusing the death penalty for it. I do. If I were a retributivist, or a "let's make an example of her"-ist, I would say that the offending woman alienated her right to live by killing her child. But I am neither of those. Retribution is arbitrary violence, and the very idea of non-defensive punishment is questionable. Now, it would be just for a defense agency to force a murderer to make some kind of ammends. But that can't involve execution. If we wish to justify retaliation on the grounds of proportional defense, then killing a killer is just only when the killer is in the act, or very obviously about to commit it (and when the act would obviously be lethal). If the murderer isn't in the act of killing anyone, and if she isn't obviously about to kill anyone, then lethal force against her is unnecessary to save anyone's life, and is disproportionate (aka, unjust). So no, according individual rights to the fetus does not imply condemning aborters to death.

Implication #2: if a woman cannot 'kill' her fetus because it is a separate human being, then she also cannot injure it. If she does, she should be prosecuted in the same manner as if she assaulted an innocent bystander. If she ingests harmful substances, then the law should view the act as though she had strapped down a child and force-fed a toxin to it. Thus, the pregnant woman is vulnerable to criminal prosecution based on her diet, her lifestyle choices, etc.

Yes, and I agree. A pregnant woman is liable for anything she maliciously or negligently does that injures the fetus, just as a woman who recently gave birth should be liable for anything she maliciously or negligently does that injures the newborn. I don't see anything radical about this. I should say, though, that pregnant mothers shouldn't be prosecuted for smoking weed. Weed only makes babies lazy and stupid, and God forbid that any parent be prosecuted for raising their child in an unaccredited Baptist school.

Implication #3: if a woman wishes to abort, or to take actions that will harm the fetus -- eg. smoking crack -- then she should be imprisoned or otherwise forcibly restrained from inflicting death and/or injury on the innocent "child". Constant monitoring would be required -- presumably by the state; the woman would be a slave to her fetus. Anti-abortionists must explain how -- short of totalitarianism -- they intend to protect fetuses in peril.

Every good libertarian rejects the idea of "victimless crimes" and opposes all "protective" and "defensive" measures that violate individual sovereignty. A woman should not be punished for a crime that she hasn't yet committed, and any preemptive action against her on behalf of the fetus can only be just if her intent to abort is blatant and explicit. It would be very difficult to get a blatant and explicit sign of her intent to abort -- if she tells anyone, she would only tell her closest friends, and if one of her friends rats on her, she could brush it off as being part of her bad pregnant temper (and everyone else she told might dutifully agree). In a free society, the official policy would be to give all evidence the interpretation that is most charitable to the suspect or the potential offender. And so, "she looked unfortunate enough to want an abortion" just isn't going to cut it. McElroy's target here might not be pro-life libertarianism, but pro-life neo-conservatism. A pro-life libertarian, if he or she truly is libertarian, would oppose all actions that violate individual sovereignty, including wire-tapping, thumbing through other peoples' medical records, and false imprisonment.

Implication #3 can almost as easily be used to say adult humans shouldn't be given rights. McElroy supposes here that since the right would only be enforced in our present system through the unjust use of force, then the right shouldn't be accorded. Taking the implication further, someone can argue that we shouldn't accord human adults the right to live, since doing that would justify imprisoning anyone who intended to kill an innocent adult, and that would involve the intrusive machinery of the present police state, as well as traditional violations of individual sovereignty like compulsory jury duty (which is slavery), mandatory testimony (which also is slavery), and criminal action on behalf of "The People" (which is fraud). Should we go on to say that human adults can't have the right to live, since that "supposed" right is only enforced through acts that violate individual sovereignty?

McElroy's implications presuppose a system of criminal justice like the one we are presently subjected to. But in a free society there would be ways to protect the innocent without resorting to criminal "justice". Rather than spend so much time, effort, and money on finding out and hunting down killers, putting on an exquisite show that we call a "trial", then sustaining the convict for years on end behind bars, and doing all sorts of other things meant to get back at a criminal, we would find it much more costworthy to merely minimize the incentives to initiate force. The incentive to kill a pre-born baby is obvious. But would that incentive still be there, or be as powerful, if instead of being condemned to a life of motherhood a woman were offered free pre- and post-natal care and more than enough money to stay in school in return for the custody of her child? A free market in the stewardship of children might do wonders to reduce the number of abortions.

Implication #4: anti-abortionists are effectively defining pro-choice libertarians out of the movement. If anti-abortionists are correct, then pro-choice libertarians are morally sanctioning and/or legally encouraging the deliberate mass murder of defenseless children. If there is any line that cannot be crossed without losing all claim to the word "libertarian", then surely the advocacy of mass murder is that line.

Well, I would have used more clinical words to say it, but yes and no. The word "libertarian" has already been defiled by people on the left who advocate government mandated healthcare and compulsory "education" and by people on the right who advocate preemptive wars and mass deportations. I like to use the word to describe all those who hold the sovereignty of every individual as a universal moral principle to which all laws should adhere. If they rigorously examine all policies and uses of violence that cross their mind, and condemn all those that they consider violations of someone's sovereignty, then they're libertarian in my book. That can include minarchists and even communists, so long as they believe in the right to secede. It definitely includes pro-choice thinkers like Murray Rothbard and Wendy McElroy. These two have contributed so much to the way I think about freedom and morality, that it would be ideological identity theft for me to take from them a word they and their followers have used for the past half century to describe the way they think about force. True, I think they can be more consistent, but if I were to reserve the word "libertarian" for only those who are consistent in the way I want them to be, then I would be the only libertarian I know. The vast majority of libertarians eat meat, and I consider that an initiation of force against non-aggressors. It would be much better for me to use an entirely different word to describe my purified individualism -- how about "Puritarianism"?

Implication #5: anti-abortionists are destroying the concept of natural rights itself which claims that every human being properly has jurisdiction over his or her own body. It is only because each human being is a self-owner that it is improper to initiate force against another. But if the fetus has the right to live off the pregnant woman's body functions -- to share the food she eats, the blood her heart pumps -- then this is tantamount to saying that one human being can properly own the body functions of another. It is tantamount to saying that one human being can properly enslave another.

If we wish to talk about individual rights, then we have to think of these rights as not depending on one's race, color, creed, social or economic status, mental or physical capacities, state of development, or on the sentiments or convenience of others. And if we want to think of rights that way, then we have to consider them inhered at the moment of conception. According rights at any moment later than conception is to let violent ageism, ableism and other kinds of anti-individualism creep in through the back door.

I concede, though, that all our inherent rights are negative, not positive. You have a right to live; but you don't have the right to force other people to house, feed, and protect you. By being present in a woman's body without her permission, an unwanted fetus is a trespasser in another's body, making it an enslaver, a leech, and a rapist. But enslavers, leeches, and rapists don't necessarily forfeit their right to live by enslaving, leeching, and raping. Their right to live is suspended when they are in the act of enslaving, leeching, or raping with the use of or a blatant and explicit threat of lethal force. If the invasion of individual sovereignty is not accompanied by lethal force or by a blatant and express threat of it, then there is no right to use lethal force to address it.

Let's consider the shopkeeper and the shoplifter. Most of us would say that a shopkeeper can rightfully use some force to stop a kid who is infringing on the shopkeeper's individual sovereignty by stealing candy from the store. But most of us would gawk if the shopkeeper pulled out his gun and shot the kid dead in the doorway. There's an issue of proportionality. The kid was only stealing -- he didn't have a knife or a gun, and he wasn't posing any threat to the shopkeeper's or any one else's life. If the kid did have a gun, then the story changes. If he aims it at the shopkeeper's head and threatens to shoot him if he doesn't hand over all the money in the cash drawer, then lethal force here is legitimate. The necessary criterion for using lethal force has been met -- the kid threatened the shopkeeper's life. Killing the kid would therefore be legitimate. But without this criterion being met -- without the criminal using or blatantly and expressly threatening to use lethal force, retaliating with lethal force is disproportionate and thus unjust.

It's a similar case with abortion. Even though an unwanted fetus is an enslaver, a leech, and a rapist, killing it is a disproportionate form of defense and thus unjust, unless carrying it to term would most likely kill the mother. This doesn't mean we have a right to enslave women. It just means that women shouldn't use lethal force against children who don't threaten or use it.

Implication #6: anti-abortionists are destroying the idea of a "natural harmony of rights" between human beings. If rights are based on being human, then everyone has the same ones to the same degree. The self-ownership of one person in no way violates the self-ownership of another; my freedom of religion in no way violates yours. Consider if human nature were different, however. If I had a biological need to eat human flesh in order to live, then the structure of universal rights would make no sense. One man's life would require another man's death. This would be Hobbes' "war of all against all" and to demand the non-initiation of force would be to condemn mankind to extinction. Similarly the anti-abortionists posit a fetus whose right to self-ownership is in direct opposition to the self-ownership of the pregnant woman. They posit a biological disharmony of interests. Although such disharmonies can occur in nature -- e.g., Siamese twins -- these occurences are extremely rare and are not commonplace, like pregnancy. If they were not rare, then the idea of natural rights or "harmony of interest" would have no application to human nature.

First I must say very quickly that rights are not based on being human; they are based on having the present or potential capacity to enjoy life. To arbitrarily pick one particular species as the only body of rights-possessing beings, to the exclusion of all other species, does not capture the norms we wish to express when we say "individual sovereignty" or "self-ownership".

Now, to address the biological disharmony of interests. We already understand that there is a social disharmony of interests. The interests of parasites conflict with the interests of producers. The members of one class live off the labor of the others, without their consent. Members of the exploited class have the right to use some force to extract repayment from the parasites (but good luck figuring out who's a parasite and who's not), or at least to stop the parasitism. But, as I said a few paragraphs ago, they only have the right to kill those parasites who are killing or are blatantly and expressly threatening to kill someone. We don't describe this as a conflict of rights or a conflict of self-ownership; we only describe it as a violation of rights which justifies a particular degree of violence.

Maybe I'm oversimplifying things, but I don't see how the biological disharmony of interests should be treated any differently. The unwanted fetus is violating a particular degree of the mother's sovereignty over herself. She may justly retaliate. She may "evict" the "trespasser", if she could remove the fetus without killing it. But unless her life is blatantly threatened by the pregnancy, she has no right to use lethal force against the child. An unwanted pregnancy isn't a conflict of rights or a conflict of self-ownership; it's just another one of those cases where someone's sovereignty is violated, and where the severity of their retaliation cannot justly exceed the severity of the violation.

Implication #7: anti-abortionists are claiming, "The fetus is an individual with rights" and, so, the onus of proof logically rests on the one who asserts a claim rather than upon those who see no evidence for the assertion.

Talking about moral proof is a funny thing to do, because no one can prove that anyone has rights, just as no one can prove that God exists. We can, however, make assertions about what traits render an adult human being rights-possessive, and can show that those traits are shared by children, pre-born children, and non-human animals. As I said a few paragraphs up, this trait is the present or potential capacity to enjoy life. To demand anything more sophisticated than that is to be violently snobbish. It's to say "you're not smart enough, strong enough, old enough, sociable enough, or well-enough connected to be left to enjoy your life." And that drips with Manifest Destiny.

Implication #8: if a pregnancy threatens a woman's life, anti-abortionists must legally require the woman to remain pregnant even if it means her death. Otherwise they do not take their own argument seriously. If the fetus is a separate individual with full rights, then the ill woman has no more right to kill it to save her life than a woman who needs a liver has the right to kill another person to secure a 'donor' organ. You cannot kill an innocent bystander just because your health requires it.

I can be fully "pro-life" and still insist that a woman has the right to abort when the pregnancy blatantly and imminently threatens her life. In the case of an ectopic pregnancy, the fetus affects the mother's situation in such a way that she would most likely die if she does not remove the fetus. Since a threat of lethal violence is made, a lethal retaliation is legitimate. (Now, if the mother is able to have the fetus removed without killing it, then she would have the obligation to remove it that way, if she chooses to remove it at all. This raises a lot of points that need to be addressed, but if I go into them here I'd be writing a book rather than "a few words".) The fetus is in the same position as an armed robber pointing a gun, and so can be treated in the same way. The difference between the fetus and the innocent bystander is that here the fetus is in a position to kill, while the innocent bystander isn't.

Now, some pro-lifers say that because the child never consciously chose to kill the mother, it is innocent even when the mother's life is threatened by the pregnancy. But conscious choice isn't what matters. Imagine a Manchurian Candidate with his gun pointed at an official and his finger on the trigger. Who would say that the absence of the assassin's conscious choice precludes the guards' right to shoot him? The conditions affecting the victims are the same as if the assassin aims his gun out of his own free will. Now what about a drunk? Should people be legally forbidden from killing him if he aims his gun at them when he's stupefied? Of course not. The fact that he wasn't in his right mind when he threatened someone else's life doesn't mean the victim has no right to lethal defense. When it comes to imminent threats, it's immaterial whether the offender consciously chose to kill, or just happened to be in a position of killing.

More than a few times I've heard a remark like this: "But all pregnancies pose some threat to a woman, so how could you say that only some women in some situations have a right to choose? If you allow a woman the discretion to choose an abortion when her life is threatened, then you're allowing her the discretion to decide when the threat against her life is serious enough to merit a lethal reaction, and you're basically conceding women's absolute right to choose." True, there is a good bit of subjectivity that should be admitted. But allowing a woman to choose in the case that her life is threatened isn't the same as leaving the term "life-threatening" completely up to the woman to define. There are cases where an offender can objectively be shown to pose no immanent threat to the victim's life. The kid running out the door with stolen candy is one such case. I'm no obstetrician, but I'm sure there can be innumerable cases where the tolls on a woman's body are nowhere near serious enough to constitute a threat against her life.

Implication #9: pregnancies that result from rape must also be brought to term. Anti-abortionists who make exceptions for e.g. a 12-year-old who becomes pregnant after being raped are saying that it is alright to kill an innocent baby under the 'proper' circumstances... which denies their entire argument, of course.

Yes, and I fully agree. Individual rights don't depend on age, ability, the convenience of others, or on how auspiciously one was conceived. Again, I don't know what's so radical about this.

Jonah and the Animals

This past Saturday I was standing with some friends on a sidewalk in front of a McDonald's, doing our part in the latest pro-chicken campaign, and chatting with one of the ladies in our group. She noted that so many people use the Bible as an excuse for the violence they condone and commit, and lamented that since she isn't a Christian she doesn't know how to use the Bible to respond to them. "Well there are some parts of the Bible that show animals as deserving consideration," I said. I then told her the story of Jonah, and highlighted the ending, where God says something like "Shouldn't I spare Ninevah, where there are more than 120,000 who can't tell between their right hand and their left, and also much cattle?" My point was that in this story God refused to burn up a city out of consideration for the many young children and the animals, and that this shows that God values animals as rights-possessing beings.

Of course, Jonah doesn't exactly work. God didn't spare Ninevah for the sake of the children and animals, he spared it because the whole city bowed down and repented. And if God actually valued children and animals as rights-possessing beings, he wouldn't have threatened to burn the city in the first place.

Just about the whole Old Testament, really, is a compilation of nationalist diatribes defending the Noachide Hegemony -- the hierarchy of God over mankind, of some men over others, and of mankind over animals. The thing is festered with twisted ownership notions. God repeatedly asserts his supposed right to dispose of human beings as if they were broken pots to be thrown away. God's chosen race is given license, and even duty, to exterminate several nations. And though the injunction to not eat any limbs torn from a live animal can imply a prohibition against abusing animals, the very fact that the Bible forbids eating live meat means that it sanctions eating some kinds of dead meat. You don't have to be an expert on Biblical Judaism to know that the Bible sacralizes animal slaughter and describes ritual killing as the payment of a debt. According to the Bible a calf is to be treated well. But the calf doesn't belong to himself; he belongs ultimately to God, to whom his owner owes a steep debt which can only be paid by sawing through the calf's neck while some bearded guy in a white robe and miter chants some things in a gluttural tongue.

The New Testament, too, is replete with twisted ownership notions, and should be read in the same way any man of conscience would read the Old Testament. Grace and love aren't the dominant themes of the New Testament. The dominant theme is Vicarious Atonement, which is an extension of the tribalist idea that one being can be seized and killed to pay for someone else's misdeeds.

If we are to embrace the most purified individualism (and we have the inherent duty to), then we must recognize that individual sovereignty does not depend on one's mental or physical capacities or stage of development, or on the convenience of others. The Bible doesn't mention this standard, and it doesn't come anywhere close to mentioning it. So give up hope trying to use "God's Word" as a tool of persuasion. You can't use it to defend the rights of animals, or children, or even human adults.