Human Dignity and Bioethics

220 | Richard John Neuhaus
theory” rely heavily on moral reasoning attuned to “those things that
we cannot not know.” And of course other theories are advanced,
both because they are held to be true and because they are thought to
be useful for purposes of political persuasion.
In general, however, our political life is not heavily burdened
by theory, or at least not by the explication of theory. That is because
knowing and judging the good things of human life is not so
burdened. In the realm of bioethics, however, and specifically with
respect to the dignity of the human person, such explication is sometimes
required. An obvious example is abortion, and the many issues
inseparably tied to abortion. The most consequential political event
of the past half century in the United States was the Supreme Court’s
Roe and Doe decisions of January 1973. Numerous political analysts
have described how those decisions have dramatically reconfigured
the nation’s cultural and political life. And of course those decisions
are intimately tied to many other “hot button” issues in bioethics. As
an act of “raw judicial power” (Justice Byron White in dissent), Roe v.
Wade removed a preeminently political, which is to say moral, question
from public deliberation. The abortion decisions were a profoundly
anti-political act and are accurately described as instances of
the judicial usurpation of politics. And, of course, by attempting to
remove the question, the Court turned it into something very much
like the vortex of American politics.
The moral question is not, as the court majority supposed, about
when a human life begins. That is a biological and medical question
on which there is no serious dispute. The moral question can be put
this way: At what point in its existence ought we, and for what reasons
ought we, to recognize that a human life should be protected
in law?
On this issue, if no other, Peter Singer has it right. As the noted
Princeton advocate of infanticide said in a letter to the New York
Times rebuking Mario Cuomo for his confused thinking about abortion,
“The crucial moral question is not when human life begins, but
when human life reaches the point at which it merits protection . . .
Unless we separate these two questions—when does life begin, and
when does it merit protection?—we are unlikely to achieve any clarity
about the moral status of embryos.” 2
That moral question is also and unavoidably a political question.