A friend of mine from my days at Milligan College 20 years ago (or so) and I recently got back in touch via Facebook. While we shared a passion for music, working on a number of small projects together, we disagreed (sometimes vehemently) on the subject of politics, with me swinging to the (hard) right and him to the center-left.
Over the years, I think we’ve both moderated a bit (which age does tend to do), and I’ve come to respect a number of points he used to make (regarding social justice). Recently, he recommended a link to an article from the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, NJ, called (link fixed) When is it Acceptable for a ”Pro-Life” Voter to Vote for a ”Pro-Choice” Candidate?, subtitled “The Golden Rule should serve as a guide to those weighing a vote for “pro-choice” politicians.”
As he said in recommending the article, it contained a good deal of food for thought. The author, Gerard V. Bradley, first academically dissects many of the terms used in the debate of abortion, choice and life. He then does a careful job of providing ethical parallels, to help guide those who are struggling with their decisions on whom to vote for (if you choose to do so):
This question about the fairness of lethal side-effects is in the news almost every day now. Not because of abortion, but because of U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Almost every day there is news of an American air attack or ground operation which results in a substantial number of non-combatants’ deaths, or there is news about a post-mortem analysis of an earlier deadly attack. (Some days there are both.) The basic scenario and the recurring moral question are always along these lines: suppose that there is a wedding feast in Northwest Pakistan. Among the 100 guests are two high level Al-Qaeda operatives. The military reality is that any attack intended to kill those two puts everyone present at grave risk of being killed. Would it be morally right to launch the airstrike, thus endangering 98 innocents to get two who are not?
I do not know for sure whether, all things considered, the strike should be ordered. I do know, however, that any right answer to the question must go through the Golden Rule, precisely so that we do not unfairly off-load fatal effects upon people who are not like us. Precisely to avoid that form of unjust partiality towards ourselves and those like us, we must ask: would we order the airstrike if the feast were in Zurich? Or in Dublin? Or if the feast were taking place in South Bend, Indiana (or your home town)? If the answer to any of these questions is “no” then it is pretty clear that, if we nonetheless order the strike in Pakistan, we would not be acting in accordance with the truth that every innocent has an equal right not be killed. We would not be acting in accord with the Golden Rule.
We need to apply the Golden Rule in a very similar way to the question: when is it morally right to vote for a “pro-choice” candidate. I propose to do so by testing the three best arguments that “pro-life” voters voting for “pro-choice” candidates have made to justify their decision.
He then goes through the three key arguments in weighing this decision – Attacking the Root Cause of Abortion, Weighing the Balance of a Candidate’s Issues, and Women’s Equality – many things we’ve discussed here in the past.
All in all, this article is a very good read, which avoids the overuse of religious jargon and emotional appeal, rather dissecting the issue from an ethical, logical manner.
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