Justice_ What's the Right Thing to Do_ - Michael Sandel [120]
Unlike other Democrats, Barack Obama understood this yearning and gave it political voice. This set his politics apart from the liberalism of his day. The key to his eloquence was not simply that he was adept with words. It was also that his political language was infused with a moral and spiritual dimension that pointed beyond liberal neutrality.
Each day, it seems, thousands of Americans are going about their daily rounds—dropping off the kids at school, driving to the office, flying to a business meeting, shopping at the mall, trying to stay on their diets—and they’re coming to realize that something is missing. They are deciding that their work, their possessions, their diversions, their sheer busyness, is not enough. They want a sense of purpose, a narrative arc to their lives. … If we truly hope to speak to people where they’re at—to communicate our hopes and values in a way that’s relevant to their own—then as progressives, we cannot abandon the field of religious discourse.21
Obama’s claim that progressives should embrace a more capacious, faith-friendly form of public reason reflects a sound political instinct. It is also good political philosophy. The attempt to detach arguments about justice and rights from arguments about the good life is mistaken for two reasons: First, it is not always possible to decide questions of justice and rights without resolving substantive moral questions; and second, even where it’s possible, it may not be desirable.
The Abortion and Stem Cell Debates
Consider two familiar political questions that can’t be resolved without taking a stand on an underlying moral and religious controversy—abortion and embryonic stem cell research. Some people believe that abortion should be banned because it involves the taking of innocent human life. Others disagree, arguing that the law should not take sides in the moral and theological controversy over when human life begins; since the moral status of the developing fetus is a highly charged moral and religious question, they argue, government should be neutral on that question, and allow women to decide for themselves whether to have an abortion.
The second position reflects the familiar liberal argument for abortion rights. It claims to resolve the abortion question on the basis of neutrality and freedom of choice, without entering into the moral and religious controversy. But this argument does not succeed. For, if it’s true that the developing fetus is morally equivalent to a child, then abortion is morally equivalent to infanticide. And few would maintain that government should let parents decide for themselves whether to kill their children. So the “pro-choice” position in the abortion debate is not really neutral on the underlying moral and theological question; it implicitly rests on the assumption that the Catholic Church’s teaching on the moral status of the fetus—that it is a person from the moment of conception—is false.
To acknowledge this assumption is not to argue for banning abortion. It is simply to acknowledge that neutrality and freedom of choice are not sufficient grounds for affirming a right to abortion. Those who would defend the right of women to decide for themselves whether to terminate a pregnancy should engage with the argument that the developing fetus is equivalent to a person, and try to show why it is wrong. It is not enough to say that the law should be neutral on moral and religious questions. The case for permitting abortion is no more neutral than the case for banning it. Both positions presuppose some answer to the underlying moral and religious controversy.
The same is true of the debate over stem cell research. Those who would