(ockraz, you had some questions in comments to this post, and hopefully in this long format I’ll be able to explain my views in more detail.)

The Center for Reproductive Rights is beginning a campaign to end the Hyde Amendment and bring back Federal funding of abortion. One of their tactics is a series of videos in which supporters question why tax dollars can’t be spent on abortion but can be spent on things they disagree with, such as war.

This would be a great chance for Consistent Life to counter with a video pointing out all the different ways in which the destruction of life is promoted by our tax dollars, and emphasizing that we can and should oppose all of them.

To contribute, record a video of no more than 30 seconds in which you discuss what life-destroying programs you don’t want your tax dollars spent on, and/or what life-affirming programs you would like them spent on instead. Preferred format is .mov, although .avi is also acceptable. Then, contact video@consistent-life.org for uploading instructions.

You said,

“The following hour of programming contains language of a scientific nature, which may be offensive to some people.

If you believe that evolution is an attempt to undermine your creation;
if you are sure that the moon landing was a government hoax;
if you are certain of the age of the earth and that it is less than 10,000 years;
if you know global warming is fake because of an email you haven’t ever read;
if you think developing cures to human disease from ten-celled blastocysts shatters human dignity;
then you are listening to the right show.”

One of these things is not like the others. Evolution, the moon landing, the age of the earth, and global warming are matters of verifiable — if, in some cases, interpretable — fact. The question of whether it is ethical to destroy human embryos is not. It’s a philosophical matter, and it’s one on which scientifically literate people differ.

The construction and tone of the intro suggest that you consider your perspective on the status of human embryos to be the scientific one. There’s no such thing. Science can inform our views on philosophical questions, but it can’t resolve them. Calling those who disagree with you “sheeple” doesn’t do much to resolve them either.

In case you’re wondering, my perspective is that throughout human history, attempts to divide the human species into those who count and those who may be exploited or killed have always been destructive of human dignity.

Tiller’s death is a “massive setback” in the search for common ground, said Cristina Page, a New York City author and abortion rights advocate. “It’s sort of like having a family member murdered and then being asked to make nice with the assassin’s family. It’s unnatural.”

I understand that this is an emotional time. Nobody’s doing their best thinking when someone on “their side” has just been murdered. But does Cristina Page honestly believe that the kind of person who feels any kinship with murderers of abortion providers would sit down with pro-choice advocates in Barack Obama’s White House? Really?

I hate to break this to her, but the kind of person who feels any kinship with murderers of abortion providers wouldn’t even sit down with the kind of person who would meet with pro-choice advocates in Barack Obama’s White House.

Miller asserts, regarding atheists who are pro-life, “Few of them are.” This may or may not be true, but just try determining it from the evidence she offers:

Abortion has been a wedge for more than 30 years because its moral volatility has forced Americans to choose sides: religious vs. secular, right vs. left, traditional vs. progressive. Atheists have generally aligned with the left.

Which, I feel compelled to point out, does not necessarily translate into support for abortion.

In a three-year-old Gallup poll, nearly 40 percent of Christians who attended church weekly said they believed that abortion should always be illegal.

What does this tell us about what atheists believe?

Meanwhile, nearly 40 percent of people with no religion (not atheists necessarily) said that abortion should be legal in all circumstances.

OK. How do the other 60% break down? Miller doesn’t say, because she doesn’t know.
The poll she’s citing only analyzes those respondents who said that abortion should be legal “in all circumstances” or “in no circumstances”; many self-identified pro-choicers don’t fit in the former category, and many self-identified pro-lifers don’t fit in the latter.

Wallace is likely one of the very few atheists who voted against Barack Obama, largely because of his abortion views.

I don’t know how to parse this. Is she saying it’s likely that Matt Wallace voted against Barack Obama, or likely that very few atheists did? Either way, she could have found out instead of just making an assumption.

It doesn’t get better. Miller holds up Christopher Hitchens as an exemplar of pro-life atheistic thought. Hitchens, who thinks RU-486 is a solution because “that will make abortion more like a contraceptive procedure than a surgical one.” I can only hope that’s a misquote. Worst of all, Miller apparently considers Hitchens’s incoherence a feature, not a bug:

One of the most sympathetic and intriguing aspects of the Hitchens plank, as he outlines it, is how little the atheist talks about fetal science (terms like “viability” and “neural development” rarely come up) and how much he cedes to his squeamishness on the matter [...]

It’s inconsistent and imperfect, for how is a pharmaceutical abortion any different from a surgical one? But as he says, “I’m happy to say some problems don’t have solutions.” In the abortion wars, such honest reflection is progress indeed.

Yes, it’s helpful to recognize that sometimes our most fiercely defended views are based less on carefully considered arguments than on emotion and pre-logical gut feelings. On the other hand, one reason it’s helpful to recognize that is so that we can use reason to check our emotions and gut feelings lest they lead us to positions that harm ourselves or others. Not only does Miller not demand that Hitchens take that second step, she applauds him for not doing so.

I don’t want to be completely negative. It really is good to see a departure, any departure, from the standard narrative that all opposition to abortion is motivated by religion. Still, this was disappointing.

(While we’re on the subject, allow me to take this opportunity to promote the Pro-life Nonbelievers group on Atheist Nexus.)

An online questionnaire was prepared asking 60 questions about IVF ethics; it was anonymous and in a multiple-choice format. For this study, two of the sixty questions were examined: 1) “I believe it is morally WRONG to use embryonic stem cells for research”; and 2) “I believe it is morally WRONG to use embryonic stem cells for medical treatment”. The respondent answered the questions based on their current knowledge. The questionnaire was available online at http://www.ivf.net as well as the patient support sites http://fertilitycommunity.com and http://www.ivfconnections.com .

Let me get this straight:

* The questions don’t specify human embryonic stem cells (though I’ll grant that was probably assumed by most respondents);
* The questions don’t mention that embryos are typically destroyed to obtain stem cells;
* The survey was conducted on three IVF support/advocacy sites. IVF doesn’t have to be done in a way that deliberately destroys embryos, but in many countries it is, so this selects for a group of people who are not opposed to the destruction of human embryos;
* It’s an online survey, and there’s no indication that data were weighted to account for the difference between this self-selected sample and a random sample.

That pounding noise you hear is George Gallup headdesking from beyond the grave.

Overall, we can conclude that people who responded to the survey expressed an overwhelming support for the use of embryonic stem cells for both medical and research purposes, independent of their background.

Sure. What they can’t conclude is that this has any relevance to anyone except the population who took their survey.

This finding is not reflected accurately in public communications or in the socioeconomic environment.

I’m not quite sure what it would mean for a survey finding to be reflected accurately “in the socioeconomic environment” — I think they’re bothered because “It is widely perceived that the public is equally divided in their views toward this controversial subject.” Mostly, it sounds to me like the authors would like to generate media reports claiming that “78% of people worldwide support human embryonic stem cell research!”

And look, they’ve already gotten some.

But how can people participate in the abortion debate without a more-than-passing acquaintance with the basics? Indeed, if people know next to nothing about abortion–what it is, its impact on the wider culture, what led us to where we are today, to name just three– how can they meaningfully participate in the public square?

My question to you is this: what precisely are those basics? Put another way, if you were able, what fundamentals would you weave into the intellectual warp and woof of our culture in order to raise the public’s literacy on abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia?

I figured that his readers would cover the more usual topics such as the facts about fetal development, so here’s what I sent in:

* I’ve run into people who believe that Roe v. Wade ruled that the right to privacy is so broad as to include the killing of a person in the case of abortion. That is not what the Supreme Court ruled. They specifically stated that if the unborn child were considered a legal person, that the right to privacy would not apply. They then decided that the unborn child is not considered a legal person with human rights.

* Most prominent “right-to-life” politicians aren’t actually running on a “right to life” platform. They’re instead running on a “pass laws against abortion” platform. On the national level, they propose to overturn Roe vs. Wade by appointing “originalist” or “strict constructionist” justices who will rule that since the right to abortion (and/or the right to privacy) is not specifically spelled out in the Constitution, that it’s up to states to decide. This would then allow states to pass laws against abortion even without declaring the unborn child a legal person with human rights. Of course, it would also allow states to keep unrestricted abortion.

No major presidential candidate in either party ran on a platform of getting the unborn child declared a legal person with human rights. [I later amended this to note that Mike Huckabee did.]

* The abortion issue is not a battle of the sexes. There is no statistically significant difference between the views of men and women on abortion.

* Most people oppose the legality of most abortions. The cases in which a majority of people believe abortion should be legal account for fewer than 10% of abortions. When they claim to have a “pro-choice majority”, abortion advocates are counting people who believe that abortion should be legal in some circumstance as “pro-choice”. When people with the same beliefs run for office, they are “anti-choice extremists”.

* About 80% of self-identified pro-lifers are pro-contraception.

* Countries in Western Europe where children receive comprehensive sex education, and where responsible use of contraception is encouraged and expected, have achieved much lower rates of abortion and teenage pregnancy than the United States.

* Pro-life is not strictly a conservative, Republican, Christian, or religious position.

He hasn’t written the follow-up column yet, so he might still be taking submissions. You can reach him at daveandrusko@hotmail.com if you have any suggestions.

Their next projects are an 8 hour TV mini-series on this same topic and another theatrical release on the subject of “sanctity of life.”

Presumably this means they’re going to bring their powers of deception, noxious propaganda, and disregard for “complicating” facts to bear on the pro-life movement.

Thanks, guys, but no thanks. Really.

(ht: Anna)

Maybe I’m a pessimist, but I really can’t imagine seeing that on Sesame Street today, can you?