The Liberal View of Morality
The dissent by Justices Ginsburg, Stevens, Souter, and Breyer in the Carhart partial-birth abortion case is revealing in how it separates morality from human rights and interest in human life.
Ultimately, the Court admits that “moral concerns” are at work, concerns that could yield prohibitions on any abortion. See ante, at 28 (”Congress could … conclude that the type of abortion proscribed by the Act requires specific regulation because it implicates additional ethical and moral concerns that justify a special prohibition.”). Notably, the concerns expressed are untethered to any ground genuinely serving the Government’s interest in preserving life. By allowing such concerns to carry the day and case, overriding fundamental rights, the Court dishonors our precedent. See, e.g., Casey, 505 U. S., at 850 (”Some of us as individuals find abortion offensive to our most basic principles of morality, but that cannot control our decision. Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code.”); Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U. S. 558, 571 (2003) (Though “[f]or many persons [objections to homosexual conduct] are not trivial concerns but profound and deep convictions accepted as ethical and moral principles,” the power of the State may not be used “to enforce these views on the whole society through operation of the criminal law.” (citing Casey, 505 U. S., at 850)).
“Ethical and moral concerns” are seen as trivial and completely different from “interest in preserving life” or “fundamental rights”. But what justifies calling preserving life a fundamental right? That is perhaps the liberal’s first principle— dishonor before death, bondage before death, anything before death— but how is this different from a moral concern? The liberal’s priority in moral concerns is simply different from humanity’s usual ones.
But I’m on shaky ground here. Of course, we know from the abortion cases that the life of a viable fetus is trivial in the eyes of liberal judges, not worth a few days’ inconvenience to the mother. This is in sharp contrast with how the life of a sick old drug addict would be more highly valued than the the tens of thousands of dollars an insurance company would have to spend to preserve it. But I don’t have time to delve deeper into what could resolve this difference. I don’t think it’s mere inconsistency– I think there may be something deeper as a principle, something involving a person’s right to do things to reduce the risk of death.