Why I Oppose Abortion Rights

Here’s a lighthearted topic to get you started on your weekend.

First of all, let me just be clear that I'm writing this to explain how I've come to believe what I do.  I'm having trouble seeing the validity in opposing views but I want to keep trying.  I think it's a grave mistake for citizens to keep really important social and economic opinions (provided they're thoughtful) gagged behind a veneer of politeness.  In my book, truth beats the pants off of politeness.  That's my quest.   

I should also disclose that I’m a follower of Jesus Christ.  That on-going choice carries with it certain ethical requirements.  As a follower of Christ—or rather as someone who is striving (and often failing) to follow Christ well—I work hard to let that commitment inform my political, economic, and social philosophies and actions.  For Christ followers, the Bible is our rule, and for most of us it is also a book we believe was inspired by God.

I’m not a Catholic Christian who believes that the Bible and the Papacy share authority.  I have human spiritual authorities, certainly, but I don’t believe any of them speak infallibly for God nor do I believe they speak for anyone who is outside the Christian faith.  Jesus Christ is my ultimate authority and I understand his heart and commandments through the Bible.

With that as background, I think it’s important to emphasize that neither the term nor the practice of abortion show up in the Bible.  There are many, many verses in the Bible that prohibit actions which harm others and in which God demands justice.  But to connect those verses to the practice of abortion—pro or con, and however useful that effort might sometimes be—involves extending Biblical principles to extra-Biblical practices.  It is simply not a matter of following Biblical laws.

I think it’ll be fairly uncontroversial to say that I believe God is a big fan of justice and life, and so I won’t list a bunch of verses to prove my point.  If you follow Christ too, you’ll probably know about them already.  If you aren't a Christ-follower, my bet is that you don't really care to read my footnotes anyway.  If you really want to get into that, I’ll happily go there with you. I’m just not going into it here.

There are two main aspects to the ethical question of abortion, as I see it: when does life begin? and how does human life derive value?

When Does Life Begin?

Human life is a continuum, a process of continual change.  We’re a lot clearer, collectively, on when it ends than when it begins, but if we reach back, moment by moment, from the point of death we see that there really aren’t any actual break points.  In reality, life is one long gradual transition: cells are continually dying and being replaced.  Even the big changes (e.g., entering sexual maturity) aren’t precise points along the continuum, they’re condensed periods of easily observable physical change.  The age of majority is a best guess at an average point when children become cognizant of the implications of their own choices, but opinions vary, and the age when that occurs differs for every individual.  Kids learn to walk around the same time, usually, but not always.

Despite the obvious impossibility of cleanly distinguishing between points along the continuum of life, societies have established certain precise points where they mark transitions.  In our society, you can drive a car when you turn 16 years old.  You can buy cigarettes, vote, and enter into contracts when you turn 18.  You get to drink alcohol at 21.  You can run for President when you’re 35.  You may not withdraw money from a qualified retirement account before you are 59 ½, without paying a penalty, but you have to start withdrawing it when you turn 70½.

Some of these ages are based on good reasoning, others are not (59 ½?).  Living peaceably in mass society dictates that we make certain generalizations.  As it applies to abortion, the question I start with is: at what point along the continuum of life is it reasonable to allow a mother to terminate the life of her offspring, and why?  Or, from a constitutional vantage: at what point does one being's right to liberty trump another's right to life?

You have to admit, no matter your stance on this topic, reproduction is unique with respect to questions of individual rights: one's liberty is directly infringed upon by the other's life and vice versa. 

There are certainly circumstances when an abortion might be the best of a really horrible list of options for a woman.  When the life of the mother is at stake is by far the clearest, in my mind—trading one life for another: what a terrible choice to have to make. But the common examples of rape and incest also seem like reasonable exceptions, mainly because we have to assume that carrying an infant to term would only compound an already horrific trauma.

So, I'm not opposed to abortion in every case.  What I’m getting at is the right of the mother to choose to terminate the pregnancy simply as a means of post-conception birth control.  

When it comes to the rights of young humans, I find myself unable to draw satisfactory lines post conception. I’ve tried to get my mind around the concept of “viability”, but as prenatal medical technology advances, the point of viability continues to recede toward conception, making that point practically useless. Trimesters are arbitrary.  I’m not moved by the suggestion that we draw the line at the point when the fetus is able to feel pain—we can put death row inmates to sleep before we stop their hearts.  In ancient times, the point when someone passed through the birth canal might have marked the beginning of life, though now, as amazing and monumental as that moment is, we really don't understand that event as having any bearing on the nature of the child.
 
From the perspective of the continuum of life, I really don't see significant differences between the zygote and the toddler, or the old man and the toddler, for that matter.  Of course, the zygote doesn't feel like a toddler to any of us, but a toddler doesn't feel like an old man, either.  Is how we feel about something a good basis for determining its essence?  So, I tend to fall back to the point of conception.  Every point after that seems arbitrary to me, although I certainly don't have a thorough understanding of the physiology and am open to other interpretations. 

How Does a Human Life Derive Value?

I have a friend who is a raging extrovert—she draws energy from investing in the lives of others, which she has done consistently for many, many years.  I, on the other hand, am an introvert.  I can open the social throttle pretty wide, but I have to recharge afterwards, usually by hiking, reading, writing, or exercising--alone. You just don’t have as many friends when you’re an introvert as when you’re an extrovert.  As a result, I’d be surprised if at the end of the line my memorial service drew half the number of people that my friend’s does.

Is my life less valuable because there are a greater number of people who enjoyed my friend’s friendship than mine?  What if she lives longer than I do: could we say that her life had more value because she had more years to love others, more time to engender reciprocal feelings?  What if someone really important loved her, but not me—am I to be valued less in those circumstances?  

Let’s extend the example: what if we compare my life (the life of an introvert who loves and is loved by several if not many) to a smelly, mentally disabled, old homeless man who has no living relatives and no friends.  Is my life more valuable, more legitimate, than his?  Never in a million years could I believe that I am more entitled to a slice of this life than he is.    

Why should the life of a young human have less value—less legitimacy—than the life of the homeless man I described above? This may be the key problem I have with current law: the value of a human life simply cannot be reduced to its measure of aggregate social utility.  My life goes on in part because my mother chose to give birth to me, but my life has an intrinsic value quite apart from how much she may have wanted me.  

Don’t misunderstand me: I’m all about liberty—if this didn’t have to do with another’s life, I’d surely want women to have maximum personal freedom with minimal external interference. But this matter does involve another human’s life—and it’s literally a life and death matter.  

Feel free to argue me out of any of these points. My mind’s really pretty open.

Now, there are some things about the politicization of abortion that I really hate.  Here’s a partial list of those things. I think of it as "Abortion Politics B.S.":

1.      The only thing killing abortion providers accomplishes is securing one's guilt as a murderer.  You may not like that abortion is a legal option, but it is.  Take your fight to public opinion, the courts, legislatures, but don't go killing law-abiding citizens.

2.     Bracketing abortion regulation as a “women’s health issue” in order to exclude men from the conversation (e.g., keeping legislators “out of the womb”) is a non-starter.  About half of those aborted in the U.S. are male; from that line of thinking, it’s just as clearly a“male children’s life issue”, on which men had better take a stand.  Pap smears and mammograms are women’s health issues.  Abortion is different—totally different.  

3.     Requiring parental consent for minors seeking abortions is no different than requiring parental approval for any number of other choices before age 18.  In this regard, abortion laws are not unique.

4.     Forcing women to observe the gruesomeness of someone else's D&C procedure before they have their own is simply cruel.

5.     Referring exclusively to unborn humans as zygotes, blastocysts, embryos, and fetuses in order to diminish the reality of their humanity is cleaver rhetorical judo, but it's logically absurd.  They're human zygotes, human blastocysts, human embryos, and human fetuses.  It's in the DNA, folks.

6.     It simply does not follow that because I oppose very liberal abortion rights, I therefore want to repress women.

7.     The practice of executing incorrigibly violent criminals may raise some similar ethical questions as the practice of abortion, but equalizing them is impossible.  One can’t live in society without hurting others, the other's only crime is to have been conceived.

That's how I see it.  I've thought a lot about this over the years but as I mature, I grow more aware of my tendency to have blind spots.  So, I welcome your questions, encouragement, criticisms, etc.   This is as emotionally-charged an issue as any.  If you do comment, please remember to be respectful and thoughtful. 

"So," he asks with knees slightly trembling, "what do you think?"

I Want a Divorce

As I hear people express disgust at the federal government, I also pick up a tone that's kind of like: “Why can’t you meat heads just get the job done like your political forebears did?” or “Why can’t we just get back to the way things were when Washington worked?”  How many times have I heard reference to President Reagan and Tip O’Neill (at one another’s throats during the day, sharing a beer after hours) lately? 

I’d like to advance a view of modern American political history that goes something like this: we haven’t truly had substantive collaboration in Washington for decades now.  What’s felt like cooperation to us hasn’t been true give and take.  Rather, it’s been a long series of negotiated settlements financed by the issuance of U.S. Treasury bonds.

'I want a new kitchen counter top.'
'Oh, yeah?  Well I want a new bass boat!'
'Hey, how about we get both and put them on the card?'
'Great idea!'    

That game is over.  Bond investors and rating agencies have begun to tell us that we need to stop, that we can’t continue satisfying all of our diverse wants by putting our purchases on 'the card', so to speak.

Republicans favor limited government and free enterprise and Democrats see government as a force for good and a crucial provider of social services.  Republicans don’t want to raise taxes because they see the oppressive tendencies of bloated federal bureaucracies.  Democrats don’t want to stop spending money on social programs because it would kill their very purpose for having a government.

On the face of it, is either of those a bad preference?  Think about it for a minute.  I’m sure you, like I, have a preference for how society SHOULD look or an opinion about how it operates BEST.  But is either of those desires inherently wrong?  I don’t think so.

What is wrong is pretending that we can eat our cake and have it, too.  We can’t prioritize both low taxes and government programs.  The price of equality is liberty, and vice versa.  France's national motto is idealistic, not realistic. 


Last November we were treated to bureaucratic sausage making at its finest: the “Supercommittee” negotiations.  This committee was the product of the settlement to raise the debt-ceiling last August and was comprised of six Democrat and six Republican senators & representatives.  They were tasked with finding a compromise to restore a modicum of health to the federal budget (or, rather, what would be a budget, if they'd passed one in the last three years).  Both tax increases and reforms to the real fiscal nightmares ahead (Medicare & Social Security) were to be on the negotiating table.  Shortly before Thanksgiving, however, the Supercommittee announced that it had failed to come to an agreement, thus triggering automatic spending cuts, mainly to defense and certain discretionary items.

The Supercommittee's failure was one of the most predictable outcomes of the last decade.  Did anyone really think the six Democrats on the Supercommittee would be able to look their constituents in the eyes after agreeing to any substantive entitlement cuts?   Could the six Republicans renege on their promises to not raise taxes?  Each of the 12 committee members had simply voted the way they’d been elected to vote.

Republican Supercommittee Co-chair Jeb Hensarling summarized the failure well in a Wall Street Journal Op Ed (November 22):  “…I believe my Co-chair, Sen. Patty Murray, and every Democrat acted with honor and integrity and negotiated in good faith to the end…Ultimately, the committee did not succeed because we could not bridge the gap between two dramatically competing visions of the role government should play in a free society, the proper purpose and design of the social safety net, and the fundamentals of job creation and economic growth.”

That strikes me as a pretty fair way of summarizing the problem. Things don’t get immediately easier with this realization.  In fact I think they’re almost certain to get a lot harder before we resolve anything.  But, I think acknowledging this gulf offers the possibility of a much more civilized negotiating process going forward, one which I think can lead to deep healing from some serious societal dysfunction.

The first step in this healing process is admitting that we have a problem.  Our problem is two competing societal views, which cannot both be satisfied.

I propose a divorce.

I don’t mean a name-calling, plate-throwing, dog-kicking divorce.  I'm just being real about our massive irreconcilable differences and I think splitting up is very sensible.  What I mean is it’s time to acknowledge that we’re never just going to “get along” again.  Let’s let our nostalgia for political cooperation, collaboration, and compromise just die—they’re anachronistic, given the magnitude of the current divide.

One way to move forward is through a more clearly federalist form of government: transfer most power, money, and responsibility back to the states and let the genuine differences flourish.  If Wisconsin wants to pay public school teachers minimum wage, let them.  If Massachusetts wants to allow its citizens to add their livestock to their health insurance policies, let them.  If we get 50 smaller laboratories experimenting with social and economic issues, we’ll be much more likely to distill the most effective public policies.

Plus, we’ll all be happier. You know, that freedom of association thing.
 
I’m not suggesting that we do away with the Federal government.  Keep the constitution, the military, the Supreme Court, and the Fed (Ron Paul’s off his rocker on this one), so long as we really limit the last one.  Keep Congress and the Presidency.  Heck, the Commerce Department might actually become relevant in that scenario, ironically enough, so keep it for the time being, too.  But most everything else could be done more effectively—and harmoniously—in the 50 state “laboratories”.  California learns from Tennessee's experiments, which learns from Ohio's, and so forth.

I don’t suppose that the split would be easy: if one state starts to migrate to the right, there’s no reason to think the progressives there will enjoy it and stay put.  Likewise, for example, if Indiana shifted dramatically to the left, I don’t know for sure that I’d move, but I would certainly encourage my kids to be deliberate about where they choose to settle because their residency choices would bear significantly on their social satisfactions.

Does this sound ridiculous and extreme? Maybe, but it really shouldn’t.   The reality is that the divorce has already happened in our hearts: all that's changed is we've lost our ability to remain in denial.  How we proceed with the split is key.

If not federalism, then what?  Moderates take over?  Hardly.  The recent political volatility is the result of the perennially wishy-washy—neither the left nor right would tolerate that.  The Socratic "golden mean" was a nice idea, but often times is as realistic and useful as a painting of a unicorn.  Don't get me wrong: moderates are often both peacemakers and pragmatists, and I respect those qualities.  It's just that the time of giving a little something to everybody is over.  We really have arrived at the big fork in the road.

The Left takes over?  Maybe, but you might as well start filling container ships with American capital and sending it to foreign markets (Think I'm using hyperbole?  Read this).  Our standard of living will get absolutely creamed if we follow President Obama's impulses. Plus, there are those pesky Second Amendment & military asymmetries to be reckoned with.  The Right takes over?  Only if you’re prepared for even bigger and more violent OWS-style wealth disparity protests, general strikes, etc.  And, many on the left would sooner die than be governed by someone they perceive to be a theocratic nut-job who champions social liberties, but only as he defines them. 

Coercion is coercion, whether from the left flank or the right.   If we shrink the number of instances where we have to coerce one another, we'll necessarily have fewer opportunities for division, bitterness, and hatred.  

As I see it, the way to avoid a second American civil war down the road is to figure out how to live peaceably in the same house right now and quit pretending that we’re going to get along again someday. Let’s just get a divorce--a federalist divorce.  We’ll all be happier.

Fixing Our Schools – Part 3

Now here’s something very, very constructive. 

Accountability for educational results is critical, but so is equipping teachers to educate. 

There is so much to love about this opportunity through Donors Choose.  I love that my contribution isn't first run through some bureau in Washington, but comes directly and efficiently from me.  I love that my gift goes to specific, tangible needs.  I love that I can connect my awareness of local needs and my ability to pitch in to meet those needs.  I love helping teachers who are so passionate about their students' success that they take time to tell the rest of us what they dream about having in their classrooms.  I really, really love the idea of helping kids get what they need for a better education.  

Can you find your school on here?  How about a school you know well and support?  Check it out and see if there's something you'd really love to get behind.

Would you like to double the value of your gift?

For the first person who emails me, I’ll match your gift, dollar for dollar up to $100, for a school project of your choice.  Whether you want to give $100 worth of pencils or $10 toward room dividers, I’ll stand with you.  

Please be specific about which project you want to fund and how much you’re giving.         

The Fed, Our Fiscal Health, and the Road Out – Part 2

There are three problems with our current situation, one of which is relatively straight forward to address.  Of the remaining two problems, one is much bigger, and the other much longer-term.  

The easy one would be to roll back the lion’s share of Dodd-Frank: a knee-jerk reaction by a bunch of goofballs who neither understand money, nor have ever met a regulatory opportunity they didn’t like.  The financial chaos they have unleashed in their 2,300 page bill is abhorrent.  As of the end of 2011—18 months after the bill’s passage—75% of the deadlines related to 400 rule-making requirements had not been met.   To listen to CEOs of major money-center banks say in the year 2012 that they’re not sure how to plan for Dodd-Frank because they don’t know what the rules will be is simply stunning.  The degree to which this one law has amplified strategic uncertainty for financial institutions almost cannot be overstated.

The big problem is that even after the Fed nearly tripled the size of its balance sheet, and despite Congress’ massive stimulus bill, we’ve learned that our government's power to impact our macroeconomic situation is asymmetrical.  In other words, between the Fed, the White House, and Capitol Hill, our leaders have been able to temporarily avert disaster, but they have very little ability to actually engender economic growth.  

It might help to picture John Maynard Keynes with only one leg: sure, he can stand up, but he can't really move anywhere.     

    

To tackle this problem, we're going to have to drop this childish fantasy that government bureaucrats actually grow anything in the economy.  Our government exists and runs only because the private sector (individuals and businesses) funds it through taxes.  There are no ultra-smart Wizard of Oz guys in Washington, making the whole thing work magically.  There are a bunch of little old men behind the curtain who think the levers they're pulling are doing important things, but again, their contribution is at best asymmetrical.

A pro-growth policy asks "How can we incentivize the private sector to grow the economy, so that the government can collect just enough money to meet its obligations?"  You can read more about the relationship between taxes and economic growth here.
 
The long-term problem looks like this: in a fractional reserve system, what happens if banks should quickly turn most of the $1.5 trillion of reserves into loans?  The money supply would explode, and as Friedman reminds us, that means inflation.  Like, you know, a LOT of inflation.  The fear of inflation is a main reason why gold is in such a massive bubble right now.  

By the way, if you’re invested in gold, what’s fair value for 1 ounce?  You can get back to me on that one.     

The Fed’s only surefire tool to hold all that potential liquidity behind the dam and avert runaway inflation is to permanently increase the level of required reserves.  That may sound easy enough, however reducing the percent of each dollar that can be lent will have a huge impact on the speed of future economic recoveries.  Unwinding this situation could take decades. 

   

All is not hopeless.  If we pursue pro-growth policies, we can mitigate these threats, and we can do so more rapidly than you’re probably picturing.  What this looks like is reducing massive, choking regulation (e.g., Dodd-Frank) in favor of higher bank capital requirements (a la Basel III).

It means that the Fed should quit paying interest on excess reserves immediately (and maybe even charge interest on them), which would encourage banks to lend more right now.  Although, if banks don't lend, it's not necessarily just because they don't want too.  It may be hard to believe, but there is mounting evidence that many businesses simply don't want to borrow in an environment of such regulatory uncertainty.  But that is, as they say, 'a whole nother' topic, one I'll illustrate in a future blog post.  

In tandem with ceasing to pay interest on excess reserves, the Fed should announce a temporarily higher reserve requirement, accompanied by a schedule to reduce the required reserve ratio to normalized levels over a few years.  John Taylor's recent article summarizes well the argument for a rules-based monetary policy.

I have two framed displays on the wall of my office, one right above the other.  The top one holds a gold-backed Chinese government bond from 1913 on which the republican government defaulted when the Japanese invaded Manchuria.  When the communists took over, they repudiated this issue and several other bonds as "the debt of an illegal regime."  So far, the Chinese are the only G-10 country to repudiate portions of their own debt.  The other frame holds four original German banknotes showing the runaway inflation of the 1920s: 100, 1,000, 1 million, and 1 billion mark notes.  In August of 1922, it was still worthwhile for Germany to print 100 mark notes.  By September of 1923, they were printing 1 billion mark notes.

As a global investor, I keep those displays there to remind me of the two options governments have when they get into deep trouble: inflate the value of their debt away, or simply default on it.  Greece just chose option B.  The looming Medicare crisis on top of our $15 trillion worth of federal debt (growing at the rate of over $1 trillion per year) potentially lead to our very own Chinese bond situation.  $1.6 trillion of accessible excess reserves potentially leads to our very own German mark situation.  I wish I were making this stuff up, but I'm not.

We can still avoid both default and runaway inflation, but we have to act quickly, and smartly.  Do we have the will to do so?