In The Abstract

John Culhane has a few questions about a post where I declared I cannot support late-term abortions but that I nonetheless offer couples faced with such difficult, heartrending situations respect and empathy:

I’m not clear as to whether [Sullivan] believes that such abortions should in all cases be illegal, or that he can’t support them morally. In either case, though: Why? Why doesn’t that empathy, so eloquently expressed, translate into a change in the “abstract”?

Let’s take the most extreme case, as the statement in opposition isn’t qualified in any way: A woman is to give birth to an anencephalic, a (human?) being without a functioning brain, or perhaps with nothing but a brain stem. What justifies the abstract position against abortion in this case? We’re talking about an entity that will live for only a few hours, often, and which isn’t human in the sense that matters to me from the point of view of moral philosophy: as a rights holder. Without any capacity for functioning beyond the most primitive, the anencephalic can’t be distinguished from other species to which we afford far less sympathetic (sentimental?) treatment.  I do think the cases are different, somehow, but it’s hard to say why. Is this tragic being one of us? Are we so clear about that to oppose a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy that will have this result, with the visual image of this unfortunate being likely to be seared into her brain forever?

To his credit, Sullivan acknowledged that in some of these cases the women’s lives will also be placed at risk. Yet his position was stated without an exception to cover such cases, thereby placing him beyond even those who favor legislation prohibiting late-term abortions, where such exceptions are routine. (I’d welcome a contrary clarification, of course.)

I've always supported abortion if the life of the mother is at risk. I am just aware that another human life is at stake here and I find describing such infants as "entities", as Culhane does, misses an essential fact about them: their soul and their humanity. Our view of what is human "in the sense that matters to me" is where we differ. From reading the emails, it seems the mothers are actually closer to my conflicts than Culhane's certainties.