here is no shortage of simple-mindedness in the world; and perhaps nowhere is this more evident than with regard to the topic of abortion.  Both sides, I believe, are guilty of considerable simplemindedness. 

On the face of it, but only on the face of it, the conservative view appears to be the most consistent: It holds that we have a full-fledge person from the moment of conception.  But very few conservatives truly believe this; and the evidence is the following: Not even the staunchest conservative really places the miscarriage of a 2-month old fetus on a par with the loss of a newborn infant who dies of, for example, SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) while sleeping.  Many a very decent woman has miscarried at two months and simply threw the fetus in the garbage without giving the matter any further thought.  Indeed, many a decent woman has done this would never think to have an abortion. 

By contrast, it is inconceivable that a decent woman would lose her child via SIDS and not grieve the loss of that child.  Naturally, there would be funeral.

Conservatives are so busy thinking that they have the upper hand through sheer consistency of argument that they miss a very deep, deep inconsistency in their own thinking.  A woman who took pictures of a miscarried fetus of two months, had a funeral, and hung a picture up of the fetus because after all it is a full-fledge person would strike anyone, including any pro-life person, as mad.

Liberals are so busy being utterly dismissive of conservatives that they miss the opportunity to draw attention to this inconsistency on the part of conservatives.  Conservatives, on the other hand, have gotten so self-righteous about their view that they do not see the glaring inconsistency, to which I have drawn attention, in their own thought.

A great many liberals hold the view that fetus has little or no moral value; hence, a woman can abort whenever she chooses without committing anything remotely resembling an egregious moral wrong.  Yet, as I indicated in lecture today, if a person could manage to kill a three-month old fetus without causing any harm to the woman carrying the child, there are very few women, if any, who would react to the loss of the killed fetus as woman reaction to the miscarriage of a two month-old fetus.  And in a great many states, a person who committed the act of killing a two-month old fetus can be tried for murder. 

A consistent pro-choice person ought to react to the killing of a two-month rather like I might react to someone’s destroying my copy of an original 1946 printing of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Réflexions sur la question juive.  I have been wronged, obviously; and it is equally obvious that the loss cannot be replaced.  Still, nothing remotely resembling a murder has taken place. 

There is rather straightforward sense in which I am perfectly free to destroy my copy of Réflexion sur la question juive.  After all, it is my damn book; and I am free to destroy it or protect as I please.  But needless to say: the argument cannot be that whether the fetus that has been killed, by a third party, in a woman’s womb is a person or not is merely a function of whether or not she wants to keep the fetus.  That is, whether we have a murder or not in this instance cannot be merely a function of a person’s desires. 

By the way, the story of Scott Peterson is a real-life case of just this point.  The fetus he killed, the woman who was carrying it had a right, by California law, to abort it.  NOW initially opposed charging Peterson with murder but backed off.  Scott Peterson was in fact convicted of murder.

Now, as I have maintained in class, I am not about to take a position regarding the matter.  Absolutely not.  What interest me is the simple truth that both the conservative and the liberal view regarding abortion can both be shown to be problematic merely on grounds of logical consistency.  Whether I am pro-life or not, the problem with the pro-life position to which I have drawn attention is still there.  Likewise, whether I am pro-life or not, the problem with the pro-life position to which I have drawn attention is still there. 

Without taking a stand on the abortion issue, I may nonetheless have done something useful.  I may have shed some light on why the issue remains such a controversial one.  The answer, in a nutshell, is that in truth neither side has an internally consistent position.  Moreover, the cost of rendering each view consistent seems to be too great.  Pro-life folks, on the one hand, could insist upon funerals for the miscarried fetus and pictures of the fetus on the mantle-piece.  This, obviously, borders on the macabre.  Pro-choice folks, on the other, could insist that killing a fetus in the womb constitutes no more of a murder, or even a wrongdoing, than killing a person’s pet rat.  This, of course, is radically incongruous with the very idea of wanting to be pregnant. 

The proof, if you will, that the above remarks carry no ideological bias against abortion or for abortion is precisely the fact that nothing that I have said in these remarks alone gives one a clue as to where I stand on the issue.  That is, there is not, on the basis of what I have written in these remarks, even a scintilla of a hint with regard to my own views on abortion.