Buttigieg’s “Who, Not Where” Argument Doesn’t Hold Up
[Today’s post is by Acyutananda. Read more of his thoughts on his blog: No Termination Without Representation]
At a town hall during the 2020 primaries, the president of Democrats for Life asked Pete Buttigieg whether he would support making the abortion language in the Democratic Party platform more moderate, in order to win the votes of pro-life Democrats. Buttigieg ignored the question except for the word “abortion,” and after a few sweet words – including “I’m not going to try to earn your vote by tricking you” (a red flag) – he voiced what was obviously a talking point he had used before:
If we can’t agree on where to draw the line [the line between one gestational age and the next, if there is to be any line at all, at which abortion should be permissible or impermissible], the next best thing we can do is agree on who should draw the line. And in my view, it’s the woman who’s faced with that decision in her own life.
1. The Hidden Premise
The first sentence seems to mean that if Americans are divided on where to draw the line, we should not legislate the where, but that we should legislate the who (who should draw the line). (Buttigieg says that we “can’t agree” on where, but we “can . . . agree” on who.)
Between that sentence and the next, there are a number of problems. One question about the first sentence is: aren’t Americans presently divided also on who should draw the line, and if so, how is that a good issue – even a next-best issue – to resolve through legislation?
In terms of legislative history, pro-choice states have been moving more and more toward letting a pregnant woman choose, period. Choose without gestational-stage limit, without parental notification, without waiting period, without information about all the alternatives, without seeing a physician in person if at all. So his argument might be that national agreement on who is more feasible than agreement on where. But many states have been moving in the opposite direction, and even in pro-choice states which have almost no gestational limit at all, that extreme permissive is not popular.
“Good” and “best” are very ambiguous words – “best” can mean “morally best” or “most feasible to achieve” (we have just talked about feasibility), or “most workable if achieved” or “least unacceptable to a large number of people,” or other options. But in light of Buttigieg’s second sentence, which elicits concern in us about the potential suffering of a woman, I think he wants the audience to understand “morally best.” And his view of what is morally best is that “the woman who’s faced with that decision in her own life” should make the decision. There are a few things to notice here:
The idea that the second clause of the sentence does indeed follow logically from the first clause seems to harbor a hidden premise, something like “Whenever society cannot reach consensus about the morally correct rule, the decision should be left to the individual most immediately affected.” But if he brought that premise into the open, what would his audience think of it?
First, “the woman” is singular, so consciously or unconsciously he smuggles in an assumption that the pregnant woman is the only person for whom some decision might bring serious adverse consequences or who should be responsible for decisions affecting the well-being of the unborn. Second, if we are to think that she’s the only such person, we must also assume that the unborn is not a full-fledged person until some certain stage of development or until birth (see also, regarding responsibility, under The Circular Argument below). And finally, if we think the unborn is not a person until a certain stage, then there will be no reason to declare it illegal to kill it before that stage, so we do agree on where to draw the line. We agree on what Buttigieg posited that we can’t agree on.
Or if by “faced with,” he means that she is faced with the decision because that is the system under present law, then he’s begging the question, because the possibility of changing the present law is the very topic we’re debating.
Moreover, isn’t there a subtle equivocation on “we can’t” and “we can”? Because it seems that by “we can,” he means both “can” and “should”: he hasn’t set up an exact parallelism. But since he uses “we can’t” and “we can,” his audience will feel that they are hearing a parallel framing and will be led toward believing that the second clause is necessarily a logical consequence of the first. (It is not; see The Missing Logic below.)
And actually also, if we simply agree for any reason mentioned above or any other reason, that the woman should draw the line, then we are agreeing on where to draw the line. We’re not agreeing on a blanket law for all Americans, no, but we’re delegating the authority over where to draw the line. For instance in the case of a woman who wants to abort in the eighth month, we’re agreeing that the line should not come before the ninth month.
2. The Missing Logic
In terms of logical structure, his first sentence has an antecedent, “If we can’t agree on where to draw the line,” and a consequent, “the next best thing . . . is agree on who should draw the line.” But we find that his antecedent underdetermines his consequent. That is, “If we can’t agree on where to draw the line” doesn’t really make “the next best thing . . . is agree on who should draw the line” true any more than would the same antecedent make the consequent true in a sentence “If we can’t agree on where to draw the line, the uncertainty should lead us to play it safe and take care of the party who has most to lose (the prenatal baby).” Or for that matter, “If we can’t agree on where to draw the line, the next best thing is to have cheese sandwiches for lunch.” It’s arbitrary, a non sequitur.
To be charitable towards Buttigieg, possibly he only means to say “My personal opinion about the next best thing is ‘who’ should draw the line.” But I think his audience will get the impression that who should draw the line is not only his opinion, but the inescapable next question logically.
3. The Circular Argument
Now let’s look again, this time structurally, at his “in my view, it’s the woman who is faced with that decision in her own life.”
First of all, does he intend this as an additional argument, or as support for the conclusion of his “at least we can agree on who should draw the line”? Since the woman will be the person most affected by the decision (most affected, that is, for those who don’t perceive the unborn as a person), “the woman who is faced with that decision” does provide some support for his “If we can’t agree on where to draw the line . . .” But since it provides the only support, why not simply start his whole response with “The woman will be the person most affected by the decision,” and dispense with “If we can’t agree on where to draw the line”? “Where” and “who” are what make the talking point catchy (which we will get to in The Persuasive Poetry below), and Buttigieg may have consciously chosen his wording for that reason.
Secondly, that sentence begs the question (in the original sense of “beg the question,” not the “raise the question” sense). Because one way to look at the debate going on about where to draw or who should draw the line would be as a question, “Who has responsibility for decisions affecting the well-being of the prenatal child?” and his preferred answer to that question is that only the mother has that responsibility. But aren’t “we,” as the brothers and sisters of both the prenatal child and its mother, also responsible for decisions affecting the well-being of the child and therefore also faced with the decision? If among all born people only the woman is faced with / affected by the decision, that is certainly an argument in support of the idea that only the woman should make the decision. So when Buttigieg says “the woman who is faced with that decision,” he presupposes that only the woman is faced with the decision. He uses his preferred answer as an argument to come to his preferred answer – begging the question.
And see again about The Hidden Premise.
Or if he means that she is faced with the decision because that is the system under present law, then again he’s begging the question, because the possibility of changing the present law is the very topic we’re debating. His preferred legal tenet is that the woman should face the decision, and he can’t use his preferred tenet as a valid argument to come to his preferred tenet.
4. The Persuasive Poetry
Oratory has long had the power to stir, and often to override reason. Poetic phrasing is particularly powerful, and not least poetic parallel phrasing. “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” “You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists.” “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.”
I mentioned under The Circular Argument that although Buttigieg’s wording implies that the consequent “the next best thing . . . is agree on who should draw the line” follows logically from the antecedent “If we can’t agree on where to draw the line,” it does not actually follow. But the claim becomes a little bit plausible due to its rhetorical presentation. The poetic parallelism makes Buttigieg’s non-sequitur reasoning sound pleasant. It is catchy.
* * *
I am writing this analysis over six years after the town hall. It is very doubtful that the Dems for Life president, or the moderator, or anyone present came to such an analysis in real time. Perhaps someone did just an hour later, but by that time the town hall was over, the effect had sunk in, and Buttigieg was gone. That is the beauty of resonant though specious arguments in the limited-time formats of public political discourse.
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