Richard John Neuhaus throws down in the December edition of FIRST THINGS (sub req):
"In this unconvincing book . . ." With those sniffingly dismissive opening words, Publishers Weekly reviews the forthcoming "Embryo: A Defense of Human Life" by Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen (Doubleday).
We are informed that the authors "argue that the embryo has the capacity to develop into a rational being." These questions, says the reviewer, "continue to provoke controversy in relation to abortion as well as embryo research." I doubt there is much controversy about whether the reviewer was once an embryo and is now a rational, albeit misguided, being.
Body blow.
The resistance to clear thinking about these questions no longer astonishes. The historian of American religion, Martin E. Marty, is impressed by Garry Wills' discussion in his new book "Head and Heart: American Christianities." (At the risk of spoiling the suspense, Mr. Wills' Christianity, in contrast to that of his conservative opponents, is one in which the heart is informed by the head.)
Body blow.
Wills triumphantly points out that the Bible does not mention abortion and Thomas Aquinas "denied that personhood arose at fertilization by the semen." Thomas hadn't mastered modern biology and obstetrics? This is deeply disillusioning.
Left hook.
People who claim to be pro-life are inconsistent, says Wills. "My hair is human life," he notes, yet nobody wants to protect it from the barber. Now why didn't I think of that?
Another left.
From such fatuities one turns with appreciation to "Embryo" by George and Tollefsen. The persuasiveness of their carefully, even scrupulously, reasoned case is enhanced by the generosity with which they engage counterarguments.
And a right.
Alan Dershowitz of Harvard has said that, after long thought, he has arrived at the conclusion that "everybody's position on abortion is the right position." Presumably, Mr. Dershowitz, who is known as a very smart lawyer, does not believe in the law of noncontradiction. The great difficulty is in getting people to really think about abortion. There is, for instance, this dreadful muddle about "consciousness."
If only people would think through the fact, and the unavoidable implications of the fact, that the I that thinks and says I is the same I that once could not think and say I.
He lands a big right.
George and Tollefsen are models of rational exactitude in debunking every form of mind-body, soul-body dualism. They write: "So animalism—the view that we are, essentially, human beings, members of the species Homo sapiens—is not only true, but not really in tension with the view that we are also persons. The persons that we are, are not entities separated from our animal bodies; we are neither independent minds, spirits, nor brains. Rather these particular individuals . . . are themselves persons, have always been persons, and will cease being persons only when we cease to be, by dying."
The authors assiduously avoid invoking explicitly theological or religious arguments. While their brief is informed by the history of philosophical reflection, their argument rests on the rational capacity of human beings to think clearly. "Embryo: A Defense of Human Life" is a luminous achievement. Not that it will persuade Garry Wills, Alan Dershowitz, and others whose certitudes are protected by an insouciant relativism that excuses them from engaging in rational argument.
And another right. They're calling it. It's over.
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