Roe v. Wade Was a Profound Disservice to the Country.

Abstract

The adamant and uniform pro-choice viewpoints expressed in each of the target articles demonstrates how mainstream bioethics has become a homogeneous and insular advocacy movement that seeks to institutionalize progressive ideology as the reigning paradigm of healthcare public policy. That’s fine. In a democratic society people certainly have a right to organize and advocate for their opinions. But bioethics holds itself out as something more. The field presumes to serve the entire society, liberal and conservative, pro-choice and pro-life, rich and poor, people of all races and ethnicities. Yet, none of the target articles authors even make a bow toward those with whom they disagree on abortion rights, or indeed, attempt to grapple substantively with the beliefs of those who oppose the existing abortion regime. Space does not permit a full delineation but let me focus on two examples. In “Beyond Abortion: The Consequences of Overturning Roe,” Paltrow, Harris, and Marshall (2022) accuse pro-lifers of racism because African American women have a large percentage of abortions and would be disproportionately impacted by access restrictions. To say the least, it seems an odd form of racism when a movement wants more babies of color to be born, not fewer. Prolife advocacy may be many things, but racist isn’t one of them. The authors also describe fetuses as “potential life.” This assertion is both unscientific and a deflection. In the biological sense of the term, fetuses and embryos are fully “human life.” They are living organisms—i.e., human beings—as embryology textbooks make clear (Moore et al. 2013). Indeed, when the authors of the featured articles were zygotes, they were the same organisms that they are today. Even the Supreme Court ruled in the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v Casey that, “the State ... may express profound respect for the life of the unborn” (my emphasis). The scientific fact that unborn humans are living members of our species is the moral cornerstone of the pro-life movement. One can disagree with that formulation, but it is ethically consistent and morally cogent. Merely assuming the pro-choice perspective is a self-evident truth, as the feature articles authors do, does not make it so.