Understanding life as merchandise
On the question of bills to legalize abortion, some supporters of legalization need to argue, to break down resistance. A task they take seriously because many of them know that abortion is, in itself, abnormal, and also repugnant. If abortion were generally regarded as a more or less delicate operation, but with no further consequences —something like pulling a tooth— the supporters of abortion would have no need to overcome resistance. That resistance exists not only in a part of the population, but in a part of the resolute defenders of the legalization of abortion.
Freedom, or the usefulness of others
The argument in favor of legalizing abortion that makes the greatest impression on those who are clearly against it sounds, more or less, like this: “Personally, I am opposed to abortion. But it does not seem right to me to impose my opinion on those who do not think as I do. That is why I defend, as a lesser evil, the legalization of abortion; in this way, women who do not want to abort will not abort; those who want to will be able to, and they will bear the consequences. Above all, it is necessary to defend the freedom of others”.
In the reality of today’s society, what lies behind that noble expression of “defending the freedom of others” when it is applied to these matters? There is a conception of social life with a utilitarian flavor: to reshape society according to the level of the successive compromises of interests. If social pressure forces things in favor of abortion (and the pressure may be the work of an influential minority), the law will have to legalize what customs have already admitted.
freedom and the context
It is not straying from this subject to recall that when a society accepts abortion into its customs, to the point of granting it the benefit of the law, many other things have ceased to function. For example, the constant increase in crime should come as no surprise. If the human person —the human life on its way to being born— is regarded as a piece that can be played on the gaming table of interests, all the more will the individual of that society feel excused when he abducts another for profit. In reality, he does not kill: he simply exchanges a life for a few million pesetas. With even greater reason, theft will be regarded as a trifling matter. What seriousness can there be in helping myself to a little money from the State or from a poor old woman if the destiny of something as important as the life of an unborn conceived child is decided so easily?
The low level of morality denoted by the social acceptance of abortion and, even more, its legal sanction, does not stop there, in that grave but limited sphere. The moral mis-education of an unjust law is transmitted to the whole legal order. If abortion is justified because “a woman is mistress of her own body” and “her freedom must be defended”, why should drug use be a crime? I, master of my body, use it to experience in it the narcotic effects of marijuana.
In other words: when laws degrade themselves by admitting the immoral as legal, the whole juridical edifice begins to crack. If some kinds of conduct continue to be regarded as crimes and are duly prosecuted and repressed —theft, abduction, etc.— it is because they closely touch the most monetary interests, ardently defended also by those who have no difficulty in being in favor of abortion. The underlying utilitarianism ends up keeping only the minimum for survival. But the step from civilization to the jungle is not the task of centuries; it can happen in a few years.
The well-founded sense of insecurity already noticeable in some large cities—one cannot leave home after sundown; no one will testify against a criminal who commits a crime with impunity, in broad daylight—is proof that the jungle is closer than it may seem at first sight.
In this context —which is not a forecast, but a verification—, the assertion that by declaring oneself in favor of the legalization of abortion one defends the freedom of others appears in its intrinsic deformity. What freedom is defended when a climate is fostered in which crime is almost unpunished? Freedom is defended in its immediate sense of being able to act; but the scope of that ability to act grows ever smaller, because the freedom of the criminal, his impunity, is fostered as well. With the same impunity with which a wealthy lady has an abortion, an anonymous company of criminals abducts her and demands 50 million pesetas in ransom. Abortion will be legal; abduction, illegal. But in the social climate thus created, the two acts are equally unpunished.
Leveling down
This is, among others, one of the drawbacks of that demagogy of freedom and equality which seeks to level, but downward. Human civilization is a long road toward the optimum of the relationship between what one can physically do and what one cannot—that is, must not, should not do—. It is no discovery to state that some such prohibitions have proved irrational and even anti-human. But to regard as a criterion of civilization the suppression of the boundary between what one can physically do and what one must not morally do is, at once, utopia and utilitarianism. Utopia, because that condition is a dream with nightmares; and the nightmares are the consequences of utilitarianism. There will always be things that must not be done, but, in the utilitarian context, they will not be the most important ones for safeguarding human dignity, but rather the most urgent ones, here and now, to preserve a precarious peace amid a mosaic of selfishnesses.
Returning to the subject of the legalization of abortion, one may ask: would non-legalization solve the problem? And then one argues in the usual way: if abortion is not legalized, the clandestine practice proliferates, endangering the woman’s life. In reality, the facts —in the present situation— lead one to verify that, by legalizing abortion, the clandestine practice does not diminish.
People simply abort under both systems: the legal and the illegal. Each form has its public. Moreover, the law that legalizes abortion is the very one that would have to penalize clandestine abortion, but obviously it lacks the moral force to do so: because it penalizes the same act that, dressed up with a few simple administrative requirements, it permits and sanctions.
The thesis that non-legalization of abortion would not solve the problem is reasonable insofar as it means this assertion: laws alone do not preserve and raise the moral level of society. Leges sine moribus vanae sunt, it has long been said. Laws are worth little if they are not socially sustained by customs. That is why the law that legalizes abortion is a true evil: because it constitutes an obstacle to the taking root of customs—of mores—that would be the support of the law that prohibits abortion.
Laws and “mores”
Much irony has been directed at the impotence of the mores {the positivists have sung that refrain to the point of tedium); but it is forgotten that the relative peace still enjoyed in society is due to the existence of a margin of morality, that is, to the fact that some people do not do what could be done, but must not be done. When, in a society, social tranquility depends solely on the circumstantial fact that not everyone behaves immorally at the same time, one is returning to the territory of the jungle.
The true foundation of our security is the honesty of others. When the majority is not honest, few are safe.
Only in a case of extreme necessity would we enter a street inhabited by alcoholics who have not had a drink for a week, if we were carrying a case of wine. In that situation the probability of our going safely —of our being able to exercise our freedom to move through a public place— is almost zero. The example is grotesque and even surreal. But there are many others, more everyday and plausible: Who dares to leave his car unlocked, even in the condominium garage? Society begins to be that ill-famed, unsafe street, in which one has to relearn the ancient cunning of nomadic and hunting peoples, where the first thing to be suspicious of is the appearance of honesty.
There is, no doubt, the relative consolation of thinking that the same thing has happened at other times, or even worse things. But it had been agreed that civilization is an effort toward the better, a common attempt to make the earth more human and more habitable.
Moral revolution
When utilitarianism and narrow-gauge pragmatism make moral effort go out of fashion and cause the cynical assertion to pass for realism, the mores withdraw into their shell, as the snail hides its horns in the face of danger.
If someone says that the most important thing is to open the way to a true moral revolution—that is, to the rule of mores, to the growing spread of honesty—, he is branded a totalitarian moralist, unless he uses the expression “cultural revolution”, which a certain left has inherited from Mao’s China, with the charisma of infallibility. It is forgotten that this cultural revolution is nothing but a moral revolution, but in the materialistic and opportunistic sense in which Mao-Tse-tung understands it.
There is no society that can sustain itself without the cohesion of the mores, which operate like capillary roots. This is a formal, structural verification. What matters is that those mores be good, the best, centered on the attentive and vigilant respect for the dignity of each person.
The radical error of a law that legalizes abortion lies in that it not only impedes, but positively works against good mores: because very few will feel moved to respect the dignity of a life that anyone may suppress when it does not even have the means to defend itself.
It is often said that, behind abortion, comes the legalization of euthanasia, that of the suppression of the subnormal, that of the “unproductive” elderly. This is not rhetorical alarmism. The hidden power of the mores—it is not tangible, yet upon it the laws are sustained— continues even when they become corrupted. The laws will have to hurry to follow in its steps. The moral effort is sustained at only one point; but one can fall on any side.
Author: Rafael Gómez Pérez
Source: Encuentra.com
