Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - Posts
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What do Ross Douthat, Steve Waldman, and I have in common? Answer No. 1: None of us has a uterus. Answer No. 2: We're all noodling prospects for an abortion compromise. What better way to salute Slate's new website, Double X, than to add a male point of view. Or two. Or three ...
Steve and I have been discussing the merits of reducing the number of abortions (the approach favored by the Clintons, Third Way, and Barack Obama) versus reducing late abortions and facilitating earlier ones. Steve prefers the latter approach. In his latest post, he argues that
focusing on timing—as the Europeans do—ultimately is a better approach for the simple reason that it actually comports with the way most people make the moral calculation. Insisting on "rare" as a goal accepts the purist pro-life argument that any abortion is equally tragic. But most people do not believe that expelling a zygote in the first week is horrendous. So remind me: politically speaking, why must those types of abortions be rare? Most voters would trade a myriad zygote expulsions for a meaningful reduction in second or third trimester abortions.
Conversely, given the revulsion most people feel about "partial birth abortion" in most circumstances, having them be "rare"—instead of non-existent or virtually eliminated— is morally unsatisfying, too.
Morally, my feelings differ from Steve's. I'm more uncomfortable with early abortions than he is. At the same time, I'm more uncomfortable with government interference in late abortions than he is. Steve is right that earlier is better. But pointing out that truth, or even preaching it, is very different from criminalizing, investigating, and prosecuting abortions. My wager is that such laws would create a nightmare of moral crudity, hypocrisy, deceit, interrogations, and amateur surgery. Women make these decisions better than cops, judges, and lawmakers do.
So I'm against this trade-off on moral and policy grounds. But is Steve right about the politics? Would slamming the door on late-term abortions satisfy more Americans than an overall reduction in abortions would?
That's where Douthat comes in. Unlike Steve and me, Ross is a real pro-lifer. He's been a very fair listener to my arguments for shifting the anti-abortion cause from prohibition to reduction. But ultimately, I've hit a wall with him because I won't ban pre-viability late-term abortions. In his latest column, he writes:
Nothing that emerges from this White House is going to look like a genuine legal compromise—which would require the rollback of Roe's near-absolute guarantee of abortion rights, and a move, at the very least, toward the restrictions on second-trimester abortions that roughly two-thirds of American support.
Here's what I'd like to know: Would Ross go for Steve's idea? Would Steve offer him a good enough deal on restricting late abortions to win a truce, and possibly a stable consensus, on the legality of early ones? How far into the second trimester would that deal extend? And is this just three guys talking, or would our countrymen and countrywomen go along?
How about you, XXers? Katha? Emily? Christine?
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It's hard to keep your mind on work when your favorite sports team is playing out of its mind. My team, the Houston Rockets, lost its star guard, Tracy McGrady, midway through the season. Then it lost its backup center, Dikembe Mutombo. Then, three days ago, it lost its center, Yao Ming. Yao and McGrady are done for the season; Mutombo is done for good. You might as well ask a country to fight a war without its army, navy, and air force. But on Sunday afternoon, the Yaoless, McGradyless, Mutomboless Rockets—a bunch of role players who'd been shrugged off by general managers around the NBA—stomped the Los Angeles Lakers, this year's front-runners for the league title. Their playoff series stands tied at 2-2.
Why am I bringing this up in a science blog? Because we've been talking lately about stereotypes, and the subject came up in a New York Times account of a confrontation between the Rockets' Ron Artest and the Lakers' Kobe Bryant during the series. Artest was angry that Bryant
had elbowed him near his neck. He jawed angrily at Bryant, at close range. Then, having made his point—and having been ejected by the referees—Artest calmly walked off the Staples Center court. ... Artest's turbulent past—a blur of technical fouls, scuffles, a smashed television camera and a domestic violence arrest—is fading but not forgotten. The consensus among the Rockets was that the Game 2 ejection stemmed not from Artest's actions but his résumé. Artest joked that it was akin to racial profiling—"past history profiling," he said with a chuckle.
"The thing about Ron is, he will never get the benefit of the doubt again," [Rockets forward Shane] Battier said. "Any questionable situation, people will automatically stereotype and refuse to give him the benefit of the doubt."
I love these guys. But there's no such thing as stereotyping a man based on his own past. Stereo means more than one person. Being judged by your own behavior is the opposite of stereotyping. And "racial profiling," as defined by the ACLU, means "targeting individuals for suspicion of crime based on the individual's race, ethnicity, religion or national origin." If Artest were being targeted based on race, Battier would be getting the same treatment. But Battier gets the opposite treatment: If your grandmother bumped into Battier while asking for his autograph, she'd be whistled for a charge.
It seems a bit unfair that Battier gets the benefit of the doubt and that Artest doesn't. Referees, like the rest of us, are influenced, often unconsciously, by opinions they've formed about each player. Battier has earned a reputation for lawyerly adherence to the league's rules. Artest has earned a reputation for hotheadedness. For this reason, Artest is far more likely than Battier to be deemed guilty of a foul, even in identical circumstances.
Is this kind of discrimination wrong? If so, you'd better take it up with Martin Luther King Jr. His dream was that people would "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Character isn't whatever you did just now. It's the pattern of your life: your personality, your reputation, your profile. Judging a man by his character means taking account of that pattern. "Past-history profiling," the neologism Artest coined in jest, is actually a pretty good translation of what King envisioned.
So don't fret about the profiling, Ron. The civil rights generation fought for your right to be judged on your own history. The rest is up to you.
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