I don't find abortion mentioned often in HBD writing, except occasionally in the context of sex-selection or speculations about selecting for other traits at some future date. If I had to guess, I would say that few of that crowd are strongly pro-life, simply because 1) it's never mentioned and 2) there is a slightly lesser percentage of religious people, and Catholics and Evangelicals make up most of the strong pro-lifers.
It is interesting then, that they are coming to a very Catholic position in one small part of the discussion: who you are is very much more determined at conception than the rest of the culture believes. I don't know what comes of it. Perhaps nothing. But it's interesting.
A dumb question: what is HBD writing?
ReplyDeleteBut your post set me to wondering, if people get all set on certain things being predetermined and NOT choices, then it's worth wondering if people MIGHT drift towards a more pro-life position eventually. Because one can imagine that as genetic testing becomes ever more precise, parents might begin selectively aborting not merely hapless children with Down's Syndrome or other disabilities deemed to make their lives worthless or their parents' lives too difficult, but also children who MIGHT develop mental illnesses, or who MIGHT NOT be geniuses or who might have sexual orientations different from those their parents would like them to have or other essential traits that parents find noxious and therefore worthy of murder in the womb....
Yes, I happen to be pro-life (most militantly so since having an "accidental" baby (our third) die in mid pregnancy for reasons we never discovered. Seeing that apparently perfect baby, so still, so still on that infernal ultrasound....While the cheesy hospital played Christmas muzak "unto us, a child us born, unto us, a son is given...."....
And yes, I love and sometimes grumble about the stresses of raising a disabled kid who is both God's gift and (at times) makes life difficult.
Because of my own circumstances, and having seen college peers use abortion as a method of birth control, I have little patience with abortion, except possibly in cases of rape and incest, where I feel so sorry for the woman having been victimised, that I wonder about them seeing the hateful male in the resulting child, and wonder if they won't be tempted to be cruel to that child (tho some women are better people than one can imagine).
On balance, I think the Catholics are right. Babies aren't the property of the woman. Her body is her own, but every mom knows that, once pregnant , we have to set aside our own selfish wishes and welfare at least temporarily. No bloody whinging about my body, my choice. There's a person there in that body of "yours."
You are entitled to feel ambivalent about it at times (the movie Alien captures the dark side of how most pregnant women have at least occasionally felt about carrying this devouring beastie inside them at times, and their fears that it will burst out, destroying them in the process). But you murder a child of God at your soul's peril...Perhaps I'm such a jerk about it because I still mourn our poor lost baby...
Human Biological Diversity.
ReplyDeleteThey measure lots of stuff, like levels of violence in various populations, digesting lactose, muscle fibers for athletic performance, and tendencies to clannishness. But the big controversy is around measuring intelligence, and noticing that the races are apparently different in average scores. Think Charles Murray vs. Stephen Jay Gould. HBDchick looks into cousin marriage and clannishness, for example.
As to the rest, yes, it's a curiosity. The HBD extremists, mostly long deceased, were eugenicists and not likely to be pro-life allies. But they may change the conversation in unpredicatble ways.