Face The Mob ｜ Abortion Is Worse Than Slavery
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Summary
In the wake of Roe v. Wade and the Supreme Court ruling allowing abortion, some argue that abortion is worse than slavery. Is there a moral equivalence between slavery and abortion? And if so, which is better?
Transcript
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Thank you to everyone for joining, especially to the people who disagree with me.
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Much as I love Flame Wars on Twitter, it is usually not possible to resolve complex moral
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So I figured it would be better to put the memes and the insults and the one-liners aside
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and face the people in the replies, mano a mano.
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The other day, I said inventing a constitutional right to abortion is the single worst thing
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Someone angrily replied, asking if I didn't think that perhaps slavery was worse.
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I said that abortion is much worse than slavery.
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Our nation is predicated on the idea that our creator endows us with certain natural
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rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
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We cannot pursue happiness unless we have liberty.
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If life and liberty come into conflict, it is incoherent to choose liberty or a pale perversion
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of liberty, as we see in the case of abortion, over life, since liberty cannot exist without
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So it seems pretty clear to me that abortion is much worse than slavery, which I tweeted,
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So thousands of responses later, memes, insults, even death threats.
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I figured I would invite anyone who was interested on to show me the lie.
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One would be a child in the womb that we should protect, but the other one is the inferiority
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So I'm not suggesting that slavery is good or that, you know, we can only pick one of
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these things to protect babies in the womb or to not enslave people.
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But I am making the claim that abortion is the worst thing that we've ever done.
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And we can compare things, even things that are a little bit different.
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And that's what we're doing here when it comes to abortion and when it comes to slavery.
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So I can compare vandalism and rape, both bad things.
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And rape is treated more seriously by the law than vandalism is.
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And rape should be more seriously policed and discouraged than vandalism or even some
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And in the case of abortion, abortion is much worse than slavery.
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Are you saying that the intrinsic value of this unborn baby should be more protected or
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is worse than slavery because that enslaved person can get out of it?
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I think that human beings have the same intrinsic value.
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I'm not saying that the unborn baby is more valuable than someone who is enslaved, but I'm saying
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So I think forced labor, which is what slavery is, is very different from murdering somebody.
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And I think that any of us here today, if we were told you can either work for someone
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against your will for some unknown period of time or you can be killed right now, I think
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I think we would all try to preserve our lives because death is worse than servitude.
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Is the argument that abortion is more of a moral stain on the individual or society?
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I think it is immoral at the level of the individual, but also immoral at the level of
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And my specific claim that led to this whole hullabaloo is that abortion is the worst thing
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So I was speaking specifically about the country and the Supreme Court in Roe versus Wade.
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But of course, that which is wrong at the national level is wrong at the individual level too.
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One moral quandary I sort of wrestle with would be, would it be better for an individual to
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engage in abortion and say, have a measure of repentance later on rather than a person
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engage in the act of slavery and have no moral repentance?
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That, I think, breaks the comparison because then you're comparing things with an extra variable
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in here that therefore can't really be compared.
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Uh, it would not be better for the baby, for someone to have an abortion and then repent
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of it, uh, than to enslave somebody and not repent of it.
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I guess it might be better for the person who would potentially have been, uh, enslaved,
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but, and it certainly would be better for the person who repented because then they can
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But you see how introducing that, that variable into it makes these things really impossible,
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So if we're just comparing the two crimes specifically of abortion and enslaving somebody there, I think
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we would agree that there is, there's, uh, no question.
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So why, why ought I value the principle of life as you were defining it?
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Well, you, you clearly do, I guess is what I would say.
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You ought, I would assign value of life at the point of a conscious experience, a sentient
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Should I, should we be able to kill people in a comatose state?
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No, because they would have stated the, um, given their given preferences before the comatose
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And then we ought preserve those from when they wake up from the comatose state.
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What if we don't know that they're going to wake up from their comatose state?
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Well, it's kind of hard to say that we just don't know.
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There are plenty of people where we don't know if they're going to recover from their comas.
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I'm sure there are people who we don't know we're going to recover from their comas.
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I think that we ought to err on the side of life in that situation, but that's because
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So if, before they go into the coma, they say, you know, I'm, let's say they had a bad
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day at work and they come home and say, gosh, I don't know if I want to be on this world
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Then you think we should honor, honor their preference and kill them.
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Actually, we have things within the United States of America to allow people to die.
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And that it states that they don't want to be brought back to life.
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So you, so what, what you're saying is rather than merely debating the issue of, of abortion being
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bad at all, or certainly being worse than slavery, you're, you're advocating for the goodness
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I think that these two things definitely do play into each other, right?
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So the idea that we ought to preserve something that has yet to come into existence, right?
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The conscious experience and the conscious preferences of a baby.
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But I, but I'm not, I'm not suggesting, I want to, I want to correct your premise.
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I just want to correct your premise before you get too far down the rabbit hole.
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Then we'll get right back to what I was saying.
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So what, what you're saying is if you want to preserve consciousness, but I'm not saying
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that I'm concerned primarily with preserving consciousness.
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I'm saying I'm interested with preserving life and not ending a life, whether the life
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is conscious, whether the life is an adult or a, who has expressed preferences or a teenager
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who expresses preferences perhaps with less credibility or a child who has not reached
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the age of reason and cannot actually consent to do anything at all, or a toddler or a baby
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So I'm suggesting something more fundamental than consciousness.
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So what I'm trying to get at then is that we don't seem to value things that will never
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have consciousness ever again in the same way that we do value things that will have
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a conscious experience or have asserted conscious preferences that will have them again.
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I agree that we, yeah, we tend to regard conscious beings more than we regard unconscious beings.
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I think, frankly, I think that's a little bit part of the problem.
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Do you think that we should value things that have not, do not have consciousness, that
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Do you think we should value them the same that we do a human being?
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I'd have to know what you, do you mean someone who is brain dead?
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We should value them, but I think it's, I think we should value them, but it's perfectly
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fine to remove their extraordinary medical care because they're, they're not alive by,
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But wouldn't you be terminating their existence?
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No, they're already dead is what you're saying.
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If you're talking about brain death, you're talking about someone who's already dead.
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So I think we kind of circled back on this, but, but I guess before, before I let you
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go, I just, I guess, is there any way that this relates to an unborn baby or to the question
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The question that we're having right now is, do you value the potentiality of conscious
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I value, I value the potential of all life, including conscious experience.
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This is a much more interesting branch of conversation because I can't see.
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Like, I think these conversations are very interesting.
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They're my favorite thing in the world, actually.
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It seems like you do too, which is actually really great.
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But what a point that I'm getting at is that if you think we could, do you think we can
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assign a moral value to something that is potential that has not existed yet?
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I'm sorry that we didn't touch on the topic at hand, but I enjoyed our interaction.
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Actually, I'm not sure exactly where I stand on this just because I'm not from the US.
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And in Canada, basically, there's like no limit on abortion.
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You can perform an abortion at any moment during gestation, which I don't agree with.
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But I was just wondering, since we had like a similar debate in law school.
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And basically, the teacher explained that being pro-life would be just as bad as slavery since
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they subjugate women in the same way that, for example, black people or indigenous people
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are subjugated under white men or white people in general.
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And then the whole pro-abortion argument was, like the basis of it was that the fetus is
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And because of that, like nothing else matters.
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Well, it's helpful to know that the word fetus means offspring.
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And so when people try to create a distinction between a fetus and the baby, they're talking
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And you mentioned that your teacher said that the fetus, the baby, is part of the mother.
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So the baby is, while the baby is within the mother's body, the baby is not just part of
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the mother in the way that like my fingernail would be part of me or the cells of my fingernail
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The baby is unique at the genetic level, at the spiritual level.
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Now, to the question of the woman being oppressed by having to take care of this baby and how
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this is similar to a black slave in Louisiana in the 19th century, I think there's a big
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I think the obligations, the natural obligations that a mother has for her own child are different
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than the obligations of a black slave to pick enough cotton for his white master.
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I think what the teacher meant when they were talking about the whole slavery argument was
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that basically by not having the decision to choose whether you have the kid or not,
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it's the same thing as taking off, like taking out the rights of black people.
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So just as a practical matter, the mother does have the choice in greater than 99% of cases.
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So these issues of rape or incest in abortion account for less than 1% of all abortions.
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And when you have sex with somebody, you are consenting to the consequences of sex.
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Whether you want to admit it or not, you are consenting to that act, which is begetting the child.
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Then beyond that, you get to this issue of even the 1% or fewer than 1% of cases that are not consensual.
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And it raises the question, do you have moral obligations that you don't consent to?
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If some homeless, filthy, dirty, rotten beggar showed up on my door dying of thirst, I would have an obligation.
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Even though I don't know this beggar from Adam, I would have an obligation to give that beggar water
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and to care for that beggar and then maybe care for the beggar for a little period of time.
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And then if I were unwilling to have him become my new roommate, then I would get him some help
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So I think that's a pretty good analogy when it comes to the baby.
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We all know that we have natural obligations to our parents, to our grandparents, to our communities,
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And so if you, yes, if you look at the issue only through the lens of rights and what you're entitled to
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and your own desires, then you might come to these crazy conclusions.
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But our life is not defined entirely or even primarily by our rights.
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It's defined, I think, more importantly, by our obligations.
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I would want to bring you this scenario in which the left would try to rationalize abortion.
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Would you want to have that abortion where a child would be in that civilization,
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would grow up and be a slave their entire life?
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Without having, like, due to all the misery and trauma that he's going to suffer throughout his entire life?
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And I'd like the answer to be trying to have, like, a non-Catholic answer to it because being Catholic, it's easy to debunk that.
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But I'm just wondering if you could do it from, like, a purely, like, rational standpoint on that.
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Let's bring up that filthy, dirty, dirty, rotten beggar that I mentioned in an earlier answer.
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He's got all sorts of pockmarks from all the drugs that he's used.
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People walk past him with contempt and disdain.
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Even though this dirty, filthy, rotten beggar is probably never going to improve his circumstances.
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He's been living like this for 40 years, and he's going to live like it for the rest of his life.
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Even still, I don't think it's justified to shiv this guy in the middle of the night.
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And a less extreme version of this, of course, would be to ask just about anybody.
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Perhaps slaves suffer more or suffered more than we do, but that's not true for everybody in the world.
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You have to ask them if it is better to be killed than it is to suffer.
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Is it better not to be living or to live but suffer?
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And even the people who answer that it's better not to be living are full of it
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because they're not killing themselves, because they're here asking the question.
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I don't think it would be good if they killed themselves.
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But their own behavior is showing that they're being a little dishonest with themselves.
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It's a kind of cognitive dissonance between their behavior and the thoughts that they're expressing.
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And I think they ought to resolve that cognitive dissonance by observing that their thoughts have gone a little bit awry,
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and there's some wisdom in their behavior and their natural instinct for self-preservation.
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And, you know, the other thing that's really funny is I guess some people disagreed with me,
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but the vast majority agreed with the statement.
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And yet the statement went viral for being so outrageous and offensive,
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and I got all these mean tweets and all these death threats and all this kind of stuff.
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And then none of those people had the guts to come on and actually discuss the issue.
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Because it's very easy to get hot and angry and insult people and yell and scream and cry.
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But if you want to make a coherent argument, that's a little bit more difficult.
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And it would seem that basically none of the people who did that and who made that tweet go viral
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were willing to do that or really probably able to do that.
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