in 2000 at 長谷寺 Hasedera Temple in Kamakura, one of the mizukokuyô sites Lafleur discusses: each of the little 地蔵菩薩 Jizô figures commemorates, as Hasedera puts it, a child which unfortunately was not able to be born in this world (不幸にしてこの世に生まれることができなかった子供達) - a category which extends from miscarriages through abortions - and is given ritual care. Even if we accept that there are times when abortion is the best option, Lafleur argues, wouldn't we be better off acknowledging it as an occasion for regret in some ritual way, so as to hold on to a sense of our own humanity?Lafleur's argument has many problems - not least that mizukokuyô isn't as old or as Buddhist as he claims, as we read in a chapter from Helen Hardacre's Marketing the Menacing Fetus in Japan. But I didn't expect anyone to say that there's nothing morally troubling or even interesting about abortion. You can disagree with Lafleur's claim that it is "natural" to feel "guilt" about abortion and still think that it is an occasion for sadness and best avoided where possible. (Acknowledging the sadness one can argue for better sex ed or, in the Japanese case, wonder why the Pill remains inaccessible without a prescription.) What's slippery about Lafleur's argument is that the kind of family planning he argues Japanese have been doing since the Edo period - called 間引き mabiki, after the practice of thinning out rice seedlings to get a better crop - used to involve infanticide as well as abortion, often but not exclusively for reasons of economic hardship. Since he also makes the very interesting argument that in Japan coming into and leaving human life are seen as multi-year processes mediated by social rituals rather than events that happen in an instant (see below), Liquid Life
provides a broader context for reflecting on who becomes a member of our moral community, when, and how.I decided to bring us back to our time and place with words familiar from the presidential race: "At what point does a baby get human rights in your view?" - the question the regrettable Rick Warren posed to Obama and McCain at Saddleback last August to which Obama (in)famously replied that it was "above my pay grade." I thought someone would notice that the question begs the question by using the word "baby," but instead one student answered as if it was the most obvious thing in the world: "when a woman decides to carry it to term." Before I could ask what it means to confer rights, or if the woman could change her mind after that, or if anyone else was involved, another student asserted that nobody has moral obligations to anyone unless s/he chooses to - in general, not just in this case. But the question was about human rights, I interjected; surely rights are - by definition - not dependent on the good pleasure of others? But then someone said - I kid you not - if you enslave someone they're a slave. Whoah. Whoooooaaaaah. Pro-choice people aren't supposed to make the abortion-slavery analogy.
I don't want to give the impression that there was any consensus in the room - only a few students represented the views I've just described, and I look forward to hearing the thoughts of the others. We'll see what happens when we read about the Catholic critique of a "culture of death" on Wednesday - but I'm already more persuaded that I live in one.
