DERBYSHIRE SELLS OUT. John Derbyshire has some odd reflections on his Party of Death review in which he recants nothing, but nonetheless says he regrets letting spirited controversy get in the way of collegiality.
Let me just observe one nice thing about the line of argument Ramesh Ponnuru's been adhering to in this debate -- it's clear-cut and seemingly really does follow from its premises. Normally, one sees pro-lifers taking less hardline views and becoming a bit befuddled, often trying to point out that the premises that allegedly underwrite their conclusions serve equally well to underwrite a whole bunch of much-less-congenial conclusions. Ponnuru, though, is happy to bite all of these bullets and embrace a very extreme view, which tends to make further argument pointless. "One man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens," and it's hard to know what else one can say about that.
But while I'm quite sure this will convince nobody, I do think it's worth bringing the systemic perspective into play, which Derbyshire has so far not done. The RTL proposal with regard to abortion is essentially that we dedicate a non-trivial quantity of resources toward a program of actions whose consequences will be some mix of increasing the number of unwanted children being born, decreasing the amount of sex people have, and increasing the number of women who suffer the adverse consequences (including death) of childbearing. Not coincidentally, in the real world people's views on abortion seem more determined by their views on the broader issues of sex and gender implicated in these social choices than by narrow disputes about the nature of personhood (if, however, you're interested in my views on the nature of personhood -- crazy views, I warn you -- ask Derek Parfit).
--Matthew Yglesias
