Pro-Choice?
I often wonder at the appellation “pro-choice.” What does it mean? Does it mean that a person thinks abortion is a morally acceptable option in some or all circumstances? Does it mean that a person thinks the question of whether an action is moral does not pertain at all to abortion? Does it mean that a person is simply in favor of the human faculty of free choice?
Really, there weren’t a lot of options for names for the pro-choice position. For example, the Pro-life movement takes its name from the human good (life) which it seeks to protect. The title “pro-life” indicates the good to be protected. Does the title “pro-choice” indicate a good to be protected?
One could argue that the good to be protected is “choice.” However, in the context of the “pro-choice” position, there is a fundamental misunderstanding about what freedom is. In fact, freedom is seen as separate from any point of reference and treated as something indifferent, independent, and ultimately arbitrary.
The pro-life position is that life is a fundamental human good. Nothing we do can change that; it’s part of human nature. Freedom in the proper sense is also a human good, but the important point is this: Freedom is not able to determine what is good for man. Freedom comes from human nature; it does not precede it.
Let’s look at the history of man’s understanding of freedom (broadly and briefly).
Classically, freedom is understood as being for the good. In other words, man is free from things that hinder his attainment of the good. He can cooperate with attaining his good (or “end,” “goal,” or “purpose”) in a way that is more excellent than non-rational creatures. An acorn is inclined to its end of being a tree and moves toward the attainment of that end by necessity but without free cooperation. Man, on the other hand, may freely choose to cooperate in the attainment of his end. He is not “free” to decide what his end is! But, he is free to choose the means of pursuing that end, and, thus, he does have the possibility of rejecting his end. This is an abuse of freedom, though. In fact, a man who is farther from his end is less free since his freedom is for the purpose of attaining his end.
In this classical notion, freedom does not come first. Man’s nature comes first and freedom is a faculty which man necessarily has because he has reason and will. Freedom is also recognized as something that can be perfected: a man can be more or less free.1
The Nominalist conception of freedom, however, is that freedom is indifferent. Freedom precedes reason and will, and, therefore, is neither for nor against the good. Of course, in the Nominalist understanding, “good” is only what one calls good and is not a stable concept. In this understanding, man’s freedom is static: it cannot be disposed or attracted to anything. In fact, the Nominalists would see an attraction to the good as making a man less free.
This is where “pro-choice” is left. In accepting a Nominalist understanding of freedom (freedom precedes reason) the position is left unable to assert anything about what is good for man and can only repeatedly affirm what it considers to be man’s primary ability to choose. While “pro-life” clearly indicates a good that comes from human nature, “pro-choice” cannot say anything about what is good or what is evil: it can only say that man must have no “constraints” on his free choice whatsoever. Even an attraction to the good would be considered a constraint. Only completely indifferent and independent “choosing” is “free.”
If the “pro-choice” position had any kind of reasonable understanding of human nature, it would not focus only on the act of “choosing” in itself but would be trying to answer the question, “What should be chosen?”
Sadly, the answer is often, “Killing an innocent person.”
1 If you’ve ever wondered why there’s no sin in Heaven, this helps explain it. In Heaven, we’ll be perfectly free such that it will be impossible for us to sin. Trying to understand this really shows how much we’ve inherited the Nominalist conception of freedom.