The Veritas Conflict (52 page)

Claire’s mind was racing.
Wrong wrong wrong
. There was something
wrong
about the people seeds example, but she couldn’t pinpoint what it was.

The professor called on another raised hand.

“And another thing,” the next student argued, “is that you even took steps to prevent the people seeds from coming in. You put up screens!”

Wrong, wrong, the example is wrong
.

Professor Kwong walked the front of the classroom. “So that says something about consequences and responsibility to you? Something about the determinist philosophy as well, perhaps?”

“Absolutely. You have even less responsibility for the unwanted people seeds that were flying through the air if you tried to keep them from coming in.”

No, no, no
. Claire closed her eyes, trying to create a tiny reprieve from the turmoil in her spirit.
God, what is wrong about that case?
Her racing thoughts suddenly focused … 
question assumptions…
and the answer settled in her mind.

Slowly, she raised her hand. Professor Kwong’s eyebrows lifted at the unusual source, and he immediately called on her. “Claire?”

A few of the eyes in the classroom flitted to the board, noting her status in the prolife camp.

“Actually, I understand where you are coming from. But I think you’re leaving out one very important ingredient.” Claire’s spirit quailed slightly as she saw the look on Jo’s face. “You are saying that because the people seeds flying through the air were unwanted and even protected against, that you shouldn’t have responsibility for the people growing in your house.”

Claire took a deep breath. “But as a metaphor for unplanned pregnancies, it is wrong in a very subtle but important way: The people seeds don’t just come flying through the air. Instead, the case should say that you took a bucket of people seeds and dumped them over your house.”

She saw several expressions register surprise, and a surge went through her. “That would entirely change the equation and tip the scale of whether or not you felt responsibility, wouldn’t it? You may have put up screens, you may not want the people growing in your carpet—but doesn’t it make a difference when you made the choice to pour the people seeds over your house to begin with, knowing there was a possibility this would happen? You could have chosen abstinence—you didn’t
have
to put yourself in that situation.”

Her voice stopped. She didn’t trust herself to continue speaking.

Keesha’s face was red. “That’s ridiculous! How can you—”

“A moment, please.” Professor Kwong interrupted. “As I said at the beginning, with an issue that begets opinions as intense as this one, you must adhere to the class rules. No interruptions. Raise your hand, and you will be called on to speak.” He nodded in her direction. “Go ahead, Keesha.”

“I was just trying to point out that for those women who are raped, they have no choice in the matter. They didn’t pour a bucket of people seeds’!”

Claire raised her hand and got the go-ahead. “That’s very true, but let’s be realistic here. The vast majority of women seeking abortions are not rape cases. If you want to bring up the utilitarian lingo, I’m trying to get at the issues affecting the majority.” Even as she said it, a seed of an idea was forming in her head.

Keesha looked affronted and received the professor’s nod. “Well, as someone said a few weeks ago, the utilitarian perspective doesn’t account for the oppressed
minority
—such as the enslavement of people of color—who are oppressed by those holding the power! What about those women who
aren’t
the majority cases, who are raped or who are oppressed by a boss who’ll fire them if their pregnancy becomes known? What about the single mothers who will be destitute if they have another child? What about
them? Where is the compassion for them?”

Professor Kwong looked at Claire and said, “Let’s see this line of reasoning through, between you two. This is a good discussion; keep going.”

The tiny thought had flowered.
Help me do this right, Lord
.

“So what you’re saying, Keesha, is that, just as in the slavery situation, we need to look out for those who are the most oppressed by those holding the power—”

“Exactly. We—”

“We must look out for the rights of those who are the most marginalized, most vulnerable in their situation? Those who feel scared and alone and ignored and powerless?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Claire leaned forward, staring steadily into the other students eyes, her voice soft. “Keesha, I know of no one who is more marginalized, more deprived of her rights, more vulnerable and powerless, than a tiny baby with no ability to defend herself from those who hold the power over her life.”

The room broke up, sounds of disgust and annoyance coming from many seats before she had even finished speaking. Keesha’s face was red. Several people looked away, or down at their desks. Others rolled their eyes and whispered to each other. But several people were looking at her with changed expressions, indrawn, their eyes thoughtful.

Claire saw the professor open his mouth. She spoke quickly, trying to catch as many eyes as she could. “Roughly one hundred and fifty years ago, we came to the realization that slavery—although it was widely accepted, integrated into our culture, and legalized by the Supreme Court—was a terrible injustice and must be abolished.” Hisses and low catcalls began to sound around the room. “The nation affirmed that blacks were people with rights just like everyone else and stated that one human being should not have the power to completely own and control the life of another. We need to—”

Professor Kwong held his hand up. “Okay, lets bring this discussion back on—”

Claire’s voice was hurried—“realize that unborn babies are people, too, with every bit of the right to expect compassion and advocacy from us as black slaves did back in the 1800s.”

Keesha shouted at Claire, drowning the professor’s attempts to regain order. “What a bunch of garbage! How dare you compare the oppression of my people to this issue? its the other way around! You are again trying to have the power over my body by telling me that I can’t do with it as I want. You want to force me to be enslaved to an archaic system of thought that we thankfully abolished back in 1973, when we finally managed to liberate women from enslavement to the biologic product in their uterus.”

It was Claire’s turn to grow red, her voice choked. “A baby is not a ‘biologic product’—it’s a little person with a heartbeat and a brain and the ability to feel terrible pain.”
Murmurs began spreading, and Claire again raised her voice in a pleading question. “Why do we fight so hard to save premature babies if they aren’t precious human beings that were desperately trying to keep
alive? its
a
child!”

Keesha slammed a book closed on her desk, her face set.

“Keesha,” Claire blurted the words out, “do you know how the main abortion-facilitation group got started? Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood back in the thirties and forties in order to contain the population of the unfit and the feebleminded’ in the slums!” She saw several horrified angry looks around her and plowed ahead. “It wasn’t about helping women! Sanger said we had to protect ‘racial health’ by preventing the reckless spawning of human waste’! I know that’s hard to believe, but I can show you—”

The class was buzzing again, several people hissing in her direction, and the professor finally went to the podium and rapped on it. “Class!
Ladies and gentlemen!”

The classroom quieted abruptly.

Professor Kwong stood for a moment, leaning on the podium and staring around the classroom. Claire looked down, trying desperately to keep her emotions under control.

“I think,” the professor said in a level voice, “that we had better bring this class discussion back to the matter at hand.”

He stood at the lectern for a moment, flipping through the day’s reading materials, before he began speaking again. The tension in the room gradually lessened as the professor lectured on various philosophers’ and writers’ viewpoints on abortion.

Claire half-listened, still trembling slightly, as he began again taking questions.

“But what I don’t understand,” Jo Markowitz was saying, “is why people make such a big deal of the right to choose what you do with your own body. By giving women the right to choose, its neutral. We’re not
forcing
anyone to have an abortion, and we’re not
forcing
anyone to go through nine months of pregnancy. If its not right for you, just don’t participate. What’s the big deal?”

Professor Kwong turned from the whiteboard, where he was jotting various notes, and raised his eyebrows. He pondered a moment, then called on Niles, across the room. Niles was again sitting alone at the very end of the row.

“That’s the thing that really bugs me about the antichoice fundamentalists, actually. They’re trying to impose their values on us. I don’t care if they find it wrong for them—that’s fine; they don’t have to make that choice. But that’s the point—its their
choice
. And I might encourage my girlfriend to make a different one. As Jo said, allowing choice is therefore neutral.”

The professor shook his head. “Actually, that is an incorrect statement. One cannot say that allowing the choice is necessarily neutral, since the so-called prolife position is
that the product of conception is in fact a living human being. Obviously if the fetus is a living human being, then allowing the woman the choice of an abortion is no more neutral than allowing a person the choice of killing someone they prefer not to be burdened with.” A few gasps and annoyed exclamations sounded from various corners of the room, but Professor Kwong’s lecturing tone continued apace. “So then the philosophic discussion becomes a different one—whether or not it is appropriate or inappropriate to allow the choice of such a killing.”

He clasped his hands behind his back and bounced on the balls of his feet. “A pro-choice author and professor at Princeton University—Peter Singer—argues that assigning intrinsic moral significance to birth is arbitrary and illogical, that a child grows into personhood as it becomes self-aware, and that both abortion and infanticide are defensible before that point.”

Claire raised her hand. “So this professor argues that killing a living, breathing infant is okay?”

“That’s correct, depending on the circumstances. He candidly says that a fetus is a living human being just like an infant, but argues that the termination of both is morally negligible if it would make the parents happier—such as if the infant was disabled in some way—since both the fetus and the infant are incapable of regarding themselves as distinct people with lives of their own to live.”

The class had gotten very quiet. After a moment, Brad slowly raised his hand. “That position makes me want to vomit, but it
is
more intellectually consistent. Its much more honest to argue that if you can terminate a fetus before its born, you can terminate a baby after its born. What difference does a few days or weeks make, after all?”

Keesha jabbed her hand into the air. “This whole discussion is ludicrous. Its still my body. How dare you—a man, no less—say that I should not have the choice of what to do with my body? Whether the fetus is alive or not is irrelevant. Its still
my body.”

Several of the eight amigas squirmed slightly in their seats, looking down or away.

“And furthermore,” Keesha was saying in a hard voice, looking at Brad, “you fundamentalist chauvinists are trying to rip away a basic right of women. You won’t even admit that allowing choice is the most neutral and fair option. You’d rather force your paternalistic views on us! You want us to return to the back alleys, the days of shame, the days when women were likely to
die
from some quack performing the procedure with a rusty coat hanger. Like we said earlier, we’re not forcing anyone to have an abortion—if its not right for you, just don’t do it!” Her voice rose to nearly a shout. “How
dare
you be so oppressive, so intolerant!”

Brad, along with several other students, raised his hand. The professor was about
to call on someone else, when Brad said, “Professor, may I respond to that accusation?”

He turned to Keesha, addressing her directly for the first time. “You say that allowing choice is neutral, you say that I’m a chauvinist, you say that I’m intolerant. But in fact you, Keesha, are the intolerant one!”

Several people who had been looking down at their books or whispering to each other broke off and turned to stare at Brad, whose normally reasoned voice was quavering with indignation.

“You
, Keesha, aren’t even being intellectually honest—with yourself or anyone else. As the professor pointed out earlier, allowing the choice to have an abortion is not neutral. Even by
thinking
that its neutral, you’re saying that my view—that the fetus is a living baby and no one should be allowed to have an abortion—is totally irrelevant and doesn’t need to even be acknowledged. You’re saying that my Christian fundamentalist beliefs are worthy of scorn and ridicule. You’re saying that the worldview of ‘if its not right for you, just don’t do it’ is better than a “worldview proclaiming that there are absolutes and that some things are truly right or truly wrong. You’re stating the incredibly sexist belief that a man should have absolutely no input into the fate of a baby that he is, after all, half responsible for. You called me paternalistic and chauvinistic just because I believe—and say—that abortion is the taking of a human life and is morally, absolutely
wrong
. How dare
you
be so intolerant, Keesha!”

Brad settled back into his seat and wrenched his gaze back to the professor. “I’m sorry, Professor. I guess I just got tired of being attacked and having my viewpoint derided and oppressed.” His voice dropped to a clearly audible mutter. “Us paternalistic, chauvinistic, fundamentalists have feelings too, you know.”