![The problem with Peter Singer’s account is not only that a lot of people would consider it to be monstrous but also that it’s based on what I take to be an unsupportable distinction.
At what point, one might justifiably wonder, does a fetus gain a right to life: conception, viability, birth, or some other time? Famously, Peter Singer has argued “that since no fetus is a person no fetus has the same claim to life as a person” (Writings on an Ethical Life, 160). On this point, he and I are in agreement: fetuses are not self-conscious, cannot engage in self-creation, and are not bearers of dignity.
But Singer goes much farther: “Now it must be admitted that these arguments apply to the newborn baby as much as to the fetus. A week-old baby is not a rational and self-conscious being, and there are many nonhuman animals whose rationality, self-consciousness, awareness, capacity to feel, and so on, exceed that of a human baby a week or a month old. If the fetus does not have the same claim to life as a person, it appears that the newborn baby does not either” (Ibid.). The reason, on my reading, that Singer goes too far with his suggestion about the permissibility of infanticide is that he puts too much weight on the psychological aspect of the human mind and not enough on the biological.
It might well be the case that we who are persons do not have strong psychological connections to the infants we were, but – as yet – we aren’t certain. We know, however, that healthy infants’ brains display organized cortical brain activity (OCBA) and, David Boonin argues, we can measure both the beginning and ending of this “electrical activity in the cerebral cortex of the sort that produces recognizable EEG readings” (A Defense of Abortion, 115).Given that, Boonin’s argument for using OCBA as the standard by which to judge whether a fetus is a person makes a good deal of sense. If OCBA is not present, we would be hard pressed to make a case for the self-creative feature of the human mind about which I’ve already said so much. For the cerebral cortex must be working in a organized manner before anyone can claim that the brain has created the sense of self that is the key feature of personhood.
If we are drawing lines – and with questions of birth and death it often appears that we must – then the line should be drawn at the earliest stage possible. With regard to self-consciousness and dignity, it seems to me that Boonin’s line allows much less room for error than Singer’s. Although it might very well be the case that selfhood (as we understand it) begins in infancy – and with it, dignity and personhood – Boonin suggests that we draw the line at the 25th week of pregnancy; the reason is that there is “ample evidence to suggest that [OCBA begins] to occur sometime between the 25th and 32nd week” (Ibid.).
We might push the line back a bit, however, and adopt an even more conservative estimate about OCBA by drawing the line at 20 weeks; as Boonin concedes, “Burgess and Tawia identify 20 weeks of gestation as ‘the most conservative location we could plausibly advocate’ as the beginning of what they call ‘cortical birth,’ because it is at this point that ‘the first “puddle” of cortical electrical activity’ of an ‘extremely rudimentary nature’ begins to appear in brief spurts” (128). Adopting this position – rather than Singer’s – would be to argue for a fetal right to life at the 20th week of pregnancy (the earliest time at which it is possible for OCBA to occur) and, of course, to prohibit things like infanticide.
This is, of course, a somewhat radical position, as it suggests that the ruling in Roe v. Wade – already controversial enough – needs to be reconsidered in favor of limiting some abortions. While many would argue that redrawing this line is wildly problematic, those who would most feel the effect of doing so are those who suggest that fetuses are persons with rights from the moment of conception, for Boonin notes that “even if we push back the gray area from 25 weeks to 20 weeks, it will still turn out that 99 percent of abortions take place before the fetus acquires a right to life” (Ibid.).[1] In the end, tying the permissibility of abortion to the absence of organized cortical brain activity seems to have a limited effect on public policy and squares a difficult issue with the nonreligious understanding of personhood I advance in my book.
[1] This does, however, affect that notion – drawn from the ruling in Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania v. Casey – that viability is an important moment to consider in the life of a fetus. As William Cooney suggests – in “The Fallacy of All Person-Denying Arguments for Abortion,” 8 Journal of Applied Philosophy 2 (1991) – it is not: “Does a 5-month-old fetus then become a person when that stage of technology exists? Can personhood be a condition relative to and dependent on technology?” (161). If technology were to allow for earlier viability, this would not change the facts about personhood because a viable pre-OCBA fetus lacks a sense of self and, consequently, dignity and rights.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/33b7359f79f1179d0f9fa678e8d3030c/tumblr_mjwuk17nM61qzy2emo1_500.png)
![Rabbi David Hartman, the American-born director of the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, passed away on Sunday. He was 81.
Hartman was one of the world’s leading Jewish philosophers and a promoter of diversity among Jewish theological trends.
[…]
Menachem Lorberbaum, a professor at Tel Aviv University who worked closely with Hartman at the institute, said he “inspired a whole new generation of teachers in Jewish philosophy and theology.”
Lorberbaum said Hartman will be known for his accomplishments on religious ethics, and as “a pioneer of interfaith dialogue.”
“He was committed to the notion that morality precedes Jewish law,” he said.
I teach David Shipler’s book Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land every year in my class on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and quotes from Rabbi Hartman are featured throughout that book; they are most often presented as a counterpoint to some of the virulent statements in opposition to pluralism that Shipler unearths in conversations with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, citizens, and students.
It’s fortunate that Hartman inspired a new generation of Jewish teachers because his position on interfaith dialogue is a necessary corrective to the potential polarization that comes from a deep immersion in one’s own religious faith … especially in the midst of a conflict that is often cast as occurring between religions.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/0599116794573cae4fdc0d3cfb9f06d3/tumblr_mi0gplwykT1qjt3cwo1_400.jpg)
Whiteness, Non-Whiteness, and Criminal Justice
In response to the shoot-out, manhunt, and arrest of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, some people are proclaiming that America’s rampant racism and/or Islamophobia is on display when comparing the reactions to the Boston bombing and other recent instances of mass violence:
Young white men and white people in general were never profiled, harassed, assaulted or collectively blamed for the actions of Lanza, Holmes or the countless other white males who’ve gone on a shooting rampage in the recent past.
Even now, investigators are unsure about what provoked Lanza and Holmes aside from a potentially undiagnosed mental illness.
More recently, the media has speculated that Adam Lanza was motivated by bullying he experienced during his time as a student at Sandy Hook Elementary. Conversely, not a single person has inquired about the mental wellbeing of the Boston Bombing suspects. Experts in psychology, violence and mass murder haven’t appeared on cable news or written op-eds for the New York Times and Washington Post with insight into what causes people to snap. No one has speculated about bullying that Tamerlan and Dzhokhar’s may have experienced, particularly Tamerlan, who was in middle school when he immigrated to the United States, an age when bullying is at its peak.
Of course, all of these questions are rhetorical since we already know the answer: Adam Lanza and James Holmes are Christian white males whose names have the appropriate number of consonants. Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev are Muslim (which cancels out white) males who immigrated to the US from a region of the world where names are difficult to pronounce (for us).
Other people are proclaiming that the only reason anyone cares about the rights of the Tsarnaev brothers in the wake of the bombing is because they are white:
You know, the detached academic in me is sort of having fits of laughter/sympathetic embarrassment/epic schadenfreude over how massively the WHITENESS machine is showing its gears.
This is 900000% “Ignore the man behind the curtain.”
Everyone’s sinking their claws in to figure out a way to either delegitimize or enshrine the whiteness of the Tzarnaevs in this massively transparent Big Top show.
Now, there are OBVIOUSLY complicating factors such as the religious background of the Tzarnaevs, not to mention their immigration status (I know one brother was fully naturalized, but I’m not sure if both were, either way, they were/had gone through the immigration system). But, that does not deny that they had the capability of passing and capitalizing on their white appearances.
In other words, it seems that there’s no good way to talk about civil rights in the wake of terrorism and mass violence … if you’re talking to people who regularly proclaim their social justice bona fides.
In the first instance, a blogger asserts that the bombers are being treated as non-white because they’re Muslim immigrants. In the second instance, a blogger asserts that the bombers are afforded all the privileges that redound to white people because they look white.
The presumption of the second blogger is that anyone who thinks civil rights matter only thinks they matter for white people (even if they are ethnically diverse because they still appear to be white). This makes the person who speaks up for civil rights a racist or at least someone who epitomizes white privilege.
And if one doesn’t speak up for the civil rights of these white people (who are ethnically diverse and yet appear to be white), then one is a racist or Islamophone for denying the civil rights of those who aren’t members of the privileged race or religion (even if they appear to be white).
My position is straightforward: The desire to toss around the “enemy combatant” label whenever someone does something terrible allows us to walk all over the civil rights of American citizens (as in the cases of Anwar and Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, and in Lindsey Graham’s wishful thinking about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev) and the human rights of people around the world. When someone commits a terrible crime, there are always calls to suspend their rights, whether or not they appear to be white; we all ought to work dilligently to ensure that — regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, or nationaliy — our laws are being applied consistently. The fact that our government has meted out justice unfairly for much of the nation’s history doesn’t mean that we ought to continue to mete it out unfairly or that we should swing the pendulum in the other direction for a little while to balance things out a bit. It means, instead, that we ought to agitate for equal treatment in every case.
In other words, when a person is suspected of committing a crime, he should be apprehended and subject to both the privileges and penalites of our criminal justice system. We shouldn’t be asking if he’s white, black, Christian, or Muslim before we decide how or if the law applies to him. This means standing up for the rights of the accused in all cases, which is difficult in and of itself in the aftermath of horrific crimes; it’s even more difficult when people who normally care about civil rights are squabbling about race and privilege rather than standing together to demand equal treatment under law.