Moral Gray Areas

The following is a slightly modified definition of morality:  "Honoring the equal rights of all sentient adults to life, liberty, property and self-defense, to be free from violation through force or fraud".  And as has already been said here, all else is subjective and can be labeled as virtue--which is fair game for social pressure, but morality is the ONLY thing that should be legislated.  This in no way changes the fact that subjective morality for adults does not exist.

However, there are a gray transition areas which, while limited, can be shown to need carefully considered legislation as well, all having to do with when rights are acquired.    Specifically, I'm referring to cases such as the differing degrees of humane treatment given to animals, when does an embryo acquire the right to life, and when do children/adolescents or the mentally handicapped come to possess their rights to liberty, property and self defense. All of these gray areas deal with the degree of consciousness, intelligence, self-awareness or potential sentience possessed by a given subject; and they're gray because there is rarely a specific time, or stage of evolution between point A when they don't have a particular right, to point B when they do.  For example, children acquire the right to liberty gradually, yet we use a specific age when they're suddenly no longer considered a minor and have full legal rights as adults.  The point is to recognize that picking a specific, arbitrary point for legal purposes can obviously have negative consequences.  How can we allow for extenuating circumstances yet maintain equal protection under the law?   Should, say, an arbitrary first trimester limit on abortion be lengthened if, for instance, the fetus has developmental problems?  When does the right to life of a fetus override the right to liberty of the mother?  For animals, is humane treatment for a dog the sames as for a chicken, or a lizard or cockroach?  It isn't immoral to put (lock up) a child in playpen, restrict an adolescent from selling his TV, drinking alcohol, or making them do chores, and you don't give a child a gun to handle bullies, etc., but when do they acquire those liberties?

When we look at the extremes, 1 day old vs. 9 mo. old fetus, dog vs. cockroach, we have little trouble making judgements.  This isn't an argument against arbitrary limits, but the transition can be very problematic for deciding what's moral, and how we should deal with these issues legally.  Sometimes we just don't have the information we need to make an informed judgement, and the first step is to recognize that.  Some fundamentalists believe that the right to life begins at conception, but that's strictly a matter of arbitrary faith.  Should a 13 year-old girl who is one day pregnant as the result of being raped by her father be forced to carry the  baby to term?  Others believe we can abort a healthy baby even when it's in the process of being born, but that's just as much a matter of blind faith, and that example should actually be considered murder.

These gray areas are gray because we don't have definitive answers for them, and the point is we need to recognize them for what they are and deal with them calmly as much as we can in our laws.  All we know for sure is if a crime can have no victims, it isn't a crime. All certain immorality stems from an adult sentient establishing a moral double standard for himself or his family, group, race, religion or country.

Abortion

No issue is more contentious or morally complex than abortion because it deals with the rights of two individuals and when we achieve our moral right to life, liberty and property. As with almost any issue, moral or otherwise, when trying to think through where we stand on it, the place to start is the extremes.

Aborting a healthy fetus in the process of being born can only be considered murder.  On the other hand, forcing a 13 year old girl who is 1 hour pregnant as a result of being raped by her father to carry the baby to  term, is nothing short of a moral travesty.  Yet we insist on reducing abortion down to Pro-Life and Pro-Choice labels.  The fact is we don't have the necessary information to make an informed moral choice in many cases.  We can draw an artificial limit, say the first trimester, but that won't cover all situations in determining by whose or what authority we make these decisions--God, the Law, or a family and their doctor.

Any claim to divine authority is specious given that there is nothing in the Bible about it, and all we have are those putting words in God's mouth that the human right to life starts at conception.  Some even claim that divine determination is violated by contraception.   On the face of it, for those appealing to revealed religion for their authority, abortion is being used as an instrument of power and control.

At the other end, the same could be said about statists who would use the law to give complete authority to the mother with no rights whatever for the baby until it is born, which is no less an artificial limit, or less "holy", than conception.

The fact is we already limit human rights according to age, and few would argue with it.  We limit a child's right to liberty and property until they reach some arbitrary age of majority at which point they legally acquire the rights they didn't have a few moments before.  Some would say the right to life is different, but tell that to the billions throughout history who lived under horrible oppression, and others who risked or lost their lives in an effort to achieve that liberty.  The question this raises is, why isn't there some theological, or secular, explanation for the arbitrary acquisition of our rights to liberty and property?  The Bible says that you must not commit murder and that you must not steal.  But then it also gives tacit approval to slavery and human sacrifice.

The Golden Rule is the only moral guidance we have, or need, except for the moral complexities of dealing with our children--born and unborn.

This complex issue pushes to the limit the principle that the only thing that should be legislated is morality.  It would seem, at this point, that all we can legislate would be in the realm of the previously mentioned extremes, and each of those come to a point where that legislation would be arbitrary and thus without moral authority.  We must acknowledge the complexity of this issue and come, somehow, to realize that this must be done on a case by case basis, with the mother making the decision in this area where the law cannot reach, with the advice of her family, her doctor, her society and her faith.

In this "no-man's land" or grey area (between the extremes which can be legislated), the woman must have the final authority, not because it's her body, but because it's her child.  And since it is still ultimately a moral issue, the freedom of religion is the final legal authority for her moral authority.  The current legal problem here in the US where a retail store chain (Hobby Lobby) is being forced at the cost of over a million dollars a day to provide health care funds for abortions against the religious beliefs of a private company and any number of its employees, is an egregious example of the violation of the necessary separation of church and state; not to mention the First Amendment to our Constitution.

Is Sex Unholy?

On what basis can sex be considered unholy while claiming that contraception is unholy as well. Who decides that birth control stops at conception? If not, then when does abortion become evil?

Look to the extremes. Is "aborting" a one cell zygote when the mother is pregnant as a result of being raped by her father, immoral?  Is partial-birth abortion of a healthy baby in the process of being born anything but murder?  Abortion is the most difficult moral issue we face because it involves the rights of the mother, and the question of when an embryo acquires its rights.  

Those who say human rights begin at conception based on divine revelation will be as intransigent in that belief as on all their other beliefs based purely on blind faith in the infallibility of scripture that is fraught with contradictions.  So too those who say an embryo gains it's rights somehow instantly once outside the womb, are just as tied to their blind faith of convenience as those to religious revelation.  "Pro-Life" and "Pro-Choice" are simplistic labels which are as evil in their simplicity as the immorality they claim to oppose.

There are no simple answers to the issue any more than sex can be reduced to being simple holiness or Original Sin.