REPLY TO JULIA DRIVER,TIMM TRIPLETT,AND KATHLEEN WALLACE

Abstract: Julia Driver, Timm Triplett, and Kathleen Wallace challenge my account of moral arrogance, and Triplett and Wallace challenge its application to the problem of abortion. I try to show here that Driver's attempt to defend consequentialism from my charge that it promotes moral arrogance is successful only if consequentialism explicitly gives up what has been considered one of its major virtues. I acknowledge that Triplett has uncovered some unclarity in my claim that the moral acceptability of abortion is an unresolvable moral issue. I also acknowledge that Wallace has uncovered some unclarity in my account of moral arrogance. After clarifying that account, I try to meet her challenge to defend my claim that it is not morally arrogant for a state to place some restrictions on abortions.     

The Role of Christian Belief in Public Policy

It seems intuitive to the believer that God intended throughinstruction in the Law to define morality, intended to leadhumankind to "the right and the good." Further, God's love forhumankind, exemplified by the incarnation, atonement and teachingsof Jesus, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, should lead to abetter world. Indeed, the Christian worldview is a coherentand valid way to look at bioethical issues in public policyand at the bedside. Yet, as this paper explores, in a pluralisticsociety such as the United States, it is neither possible nordesirable for Christians to try to force their views on others.Still, it is obligatory for Christians to stand up and articulatetheir views in the public square. We should try to persuadeothers using either prudential or moral arguments. While wemust be willing to live with "the will of the people," at thesame time, we must not be intimidated into accepting the positionthat our voice is not valid because it has a religious basis.     

Can Infants Have Interests in Continued Life?

The philosophers Peter Singer and Jeff McMahan hold variations of the view that infant interests in continued life are suspect because infants lack the cognitive complexity to anticipate the future. Since infants cannot see themselves as having a future, Singer argues that the future cannot have value for them, and McMahan argues that the future can only have minimal value for an infant. This paper critically analyzes these arguments and defends the view that infants can have interests in continuing to live. Even though infants themselves lack a strong psychological connection to the future, others who are involved in an infant’s life can anticipate, on an infant’s behalf, the kind of future that awaits the infant, and on the basis of this insight judge that continuing to live would be in the infant’s interests. After defending this position, I argue that this position on the interests of infants in continued life does not commit one to opposing abortion, and it does not commit one to the view that our ethical obligations to protect the lives of sentient animals are the same as our ethical obligations to protect infant lives.     

Sin and bioethics.

The essay starts out with defining the biblical concept of sin in the Old and the New Testaments. The literal knowledge of divine truth is distinguished from its truthful and spiritual interpretation. A further distinction should be made between the Creator of life (God) and the medium or "intermediary creator" (man) of life. I argue for the "single wholeness" of the human race and for the unity of human responsibility in bioethics. In delineating the teaching of the Church on abortion and family planning, I show that the healing of all human diseases, from traditional interventions to genetic ones, is a Christian duty and is in accordance with Christ's mission on earth as long as one has not been directly or indirectly involved in "reproducing" or "designing" one's descendants or destroying or damaging human life even at its very beginnings.     

Gender,Employment Status,and Abortion: A Longitudinal Analysis

Building upon extant literature, we examine the influence gender and employment status exert on abortion attitudes among the mass public. Specifically, we assess if men, employed women, and homemaker women view the abortion issue differently and if the same factors account for variation in each group's attitudes toward abortion. Analysis of General Social Survey data from 1973 to 2000 indicates that although homemaker women tend to be more pro-life than do men or working women, the attitudes of all 3 groups exhibit similar changes over time. In addition, our results suggest that the same variables account for variation in abortion attitudes for all 3 groups. Our results suggest that the causes and effects of abortion attitudes do not appear to be gender-specific, but rather are relatively uniform across genders and employment statuses.     

Moral knowledge: some reflections on moral controversies, incompatible moral epistemologies, and the culture wars.

An authentic Christian bioethical account of abortion must take into consideration the conflicting epistemologies that separate Christian moral theology from secular moral philosophy. Moral epistemologies directed to the issue of abortion that fail to appreciate the orientation of morality to God will also fail adequately to appreciate the moral issues at stake. Christian accounts of the bioethics of abortion that reduce moral-theological considerations to moral-philosophical considerations will not only fail to appreciate fully the offense of abortion, but morally mislead. This article locates the bioethics of abortion within the theology of the Church of the first millennium, emphasizing that abortion was prohibited, whether or not one considered the embryo or fetus to be ensouled.     

Asynchrony in Attitudes Toward Abortion and Gay Rights: The Challenge to Values Alignment

Political commentators tend to assume that Americans who share a particular religious affiliation think similarly about values issues and that values questions are aligned. Although religious affiliation is a strong predictor of attitudes toward abortion and gay rights, there is differentiation within denominational subgroups with respect to both; for example, while majorities of mainline Protestants and Catholics favor gay marriage, many of their respective co‐religionists do not. Further, aggregate survey data shows asynchrony in within‐group attitudes on abortion and gay rights; for example, whereas Hispanic Catholics are more likely to support gay marriage than legal abortion, black Protestants are more likely to support legal abortion than gay marriage. Abortion and gay equality are discrete issues and give rise to divergent attitudes based on the lived reality of different ethnoreligious groups. These findings challenge the utility of the construct of the “values voter,” and underscore that abortion and gay rights should be recognized as separate public policy domains.     

MUST ETHICS BE THEOLOGICAL? A CRITIQUE OF THE NEW PRAGMATISTS

In the last decade there has been a pragmatic turn in the work of those doing Christian ethics, especially as represented by the work of Jeffrey Stout and Franklin Gamwell. The pragmatic turn represents a critique of the highly influential work of Stanley Hauerwas and Alasdair MacIntyre, which argues for a strongly intra-church ethics. The pragmatists are correct in arguing that Christian ethics must engage the public sphere. However, I argue that they are deeply mistaken in their claim that this engagement must rest on a weak or non-existent theology. I show that the claim that robust theology adds nothing to ethics, and that we can get along without it, is unsustainable.