Tomi Lahren shocked the political right with her abortion comments. When she went on The View she said, “I can’t sit here and be a hypocrite and say I’m for limited government but I think the government should decide what women do with their bodies.” The right blasted back and said everything that came to mind, but skipped over anything that could be considered a substantive discussion.
Glenn Beck tweeted out how he believes in ‘LIFE’ while mocking that she misspoke. This isn’t constructive argument.
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I’m sure that Tomi would agree with the Beck’s statement, she believes in life too. That isn’t the question at hand. The relevant question is also the more interesting one: What defines a human life?
We have laws against killing people, but animals are different. There is something essentially different, something essentially human. That is the question to be answered.
Tomi and Glenn agree on the principle of ‘LIFE’ but they disagree on what constitutes it. I think both would agree with John Stuart Mill’s principle from On Liberty, “that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self protection… to deter him must be calculated to produce some evil to some one else.”
Their disagreement comes over there is an evil produced in someone else. The way that they decide to define life will define how this principle is exercised. They agree in principle, but disagree in opinion.
It’s not okay to attack those with differing opinions. I used the quote from John Stuart Mill because he wrote that, in part, to avoid the Tyranny of the Majority, stating that “there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose… it’s own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent.”
The right has long mocked the left over their willingness to eat their own. Anyone who steps out of the group think mentality is eaten alive. Yet, that is the exact thing that the right it doing right now. There was no constructive conversation. No one tried to convince Tomi that a fetus is a human life.
Why not? Why is it so hard to have a constructive conversation about what constitutes life?
The same discussion that the right is skipping over is the one that the entire political spectrum is refusing to have. So, what defines humanity? What defines human life? It’s a hard question and for different people there are different essential features.
A large portion claims that ‘life begins at conception.’ Others believe that the start of brain development is a better line. This would mean that there are 3-4 weeks from conception to the point where the brain begins to develop and this life has become distinctly human. Consciousness and reaction to stimuli are present in the womb, does that count? Once you identify the criteria for humanity, it is easy enough to pinpoint at what point life begins.
However we decide to define an essentially human life, we are now bound by it. Whatever state this life may be in, it is endowed with the full protection of the law. Taking away this essentially human life is nothing less than murder.
It’s a simple argument, but it gets to the heart of the issue. The legality of abortion is only a question in how we define life. If the right wants to win the conversation about abortion, they should start with having a substantive discussion on what defines human life.
