The Joy of the Truth

The rhythm of argumentation that St. Thomas Aquinas used in his Summa Theologica was

1. to explain the opposition to his position completely and accurately (oftentimes even better than the people holding the opposite position could explain it themselves)
2. offer arguments in favor of his position
3. to offer arguments against the opposition’s positions

The end result was both an honest quest for the truth and a solidly defended argument that convinces people without trickery, confusion or obfuscation. Our modernist age desperately needs St Thomas Aquinas. While on one hand pure modernists don’t trust or accept logic or any other claim to objective truth, most people are not pure modernists. They are rather naively influenced by modernism. For these people, playing modernist games of propaganda, emotional incitement and ridiculing the opposition makes the truth seem like just another negotiable position. If we can argue properly, with openness and humility but with assurance that we are seeking the truth, we can show them the emptiness of the modernist position. Yes, we desperately need St. Thomas Aquinas today.

The abortion debate has been filled with modernist games on both sides of the “issue” (even calling it an issue is a modernist turn, indicating that it is all a matter of opinion). While some methods used by the pro-life movement are necessary strategies to win over people’s hearts (some highly emotional appeals, strategic use of terms, etc) and are also necessary to beat the modernists at their own game, other strategies use modernist games to the detriment of our claim to the truth.Misrepresenting or misunderstanding the arguments of our opposition is a prime example of a weak use of modernist games. Recently I have been hearing critiques of the Democratic Party’s claim that they will do more than the Republicans to reduce the number of abortions. These critiques say things like, “Barak Obama has promised to sign FOCA, removing all current restrictions on abortion. This will certainly not reduce the number of abortions. It will most certainly increase them.”

While this statement is true, it misrepresents or misunderstands the argument made by Obama and other Democrats.The liberal argument treats abortion in the same way we might treat a powerful anti-cancer drug that has severe side effects. While we would want to make sure that a drug with terrible side effects was used only as a last result, we also would want to make sure that it was freely and widely available for those who need it. In this view, there is no contradiction between the Democrat claim that they will work to reduce the number of abortions and Obama’s support of FOCA. The claim of the Democrats is that by working to eliminate poverty and other social conditions that make parenting difficult they can reduce the need for abortions. However, they still want abortion freely accessible to those who “need” it.

Now that we properly understand their argument, we can begin to attack it honestly. I offer two counter-arguments to get us started.

• First, the assumption made by social liberals is that most abortions occur because of social conditions such as poverty. The facts do not play this out. Abortion has become a means of “sexual freedom” for the middle class and is most often used as a form of back-up contraception. Poor women are much more likely to keep their children than to get an abortion. In fact, the sex without consequences mentality promoted by contraception and abortion free men to have sex without caring about possible pregnancy, resulting in an increasing number of poor women becoming single mothers when the man leaves the scene.
• The second argument against the social liberal view of abortion is, of course, the core argument of the pro-life movement. The social liberal view assumes that abortion is a valid solution to social problems. To use the same analogy, abortion is like using a powerful anti-cancer drug that not only has severe side effects, but that also requires the drug manufacturers to kill one human being in order to create a single dose. Obviously such a drug would not be morally acceptable. As always, the abortion argument hinges on the death of a child.

Only by properly understanding and representing the pro-choice argument can we properly attack it. When pro-life advocates miss the mark on the opposing arguments, we make ourselves sound like the ignorant, naive ideologues that they paint us to be. We also miss the opportunity to attack their errors at their very root.

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