AN
EDIPUS COMPLEX TOWARD LIFE*
By W. B. Allen
Professor of Government
Harvey Mudd College
Claremont, California
Abortion
deprives us of the deepest instincts of humanity. This is the conclusion which
lies at the bottom of the heated debate, which still rages within the United
States and ought to stir the world itself. From the racist eugenics-oriented
movements, which introduced the idea of systematic abortion early in this
century, to the current righteous defense of indifferent abortion, the results
are the same: they rest on the premise that we can become dull, insensitive to
the claim of humanity which is at stake.
The preferred
philosophical base of pro-abortionists resembles the Oedipus prophecy—there are
exceptional cases in which humanity itself recoils from demanding that a
pregnancy be carried full term. Rape, incest, and deformity usually head the
list. This kind of reasoning has a glaring default. It will be understood best
if one rehearses the college philosophy example of the life-raft scenario. Two
persons adrift at sea on a life-raft are starving. Their chances are minimal at
best and absolutely nil if nourishment is not found. In that situation, is it
just that one of the two might resort to cannibalism (eating the other) in
order to have any chance at all of surviving? Generally, everyone answers yes,
just as most people are inclined to say, “yes, in the case of incest I can
conceive of abortion as at least a justifiable homicide.” Ought we to conclude
from this exception, however, that the general moral rule must therefore admit
the propriety of cannibalism or abortion in any case? Clearly that is not so,
and we require above all today to make clear why it is not so.
When a decade
ago I asked the “right to life” movement to speak of the “unborn child” instead
of the “foetus,” the motivating idea was that language plays an important role
in focusing our moral antennae and such a tactic was needed to fend off the
insensitivity with which we were surrounded. I continue to believe that this is
necessary, but we now require more than words, we need to resurrect an entire
humanitarian tradition in order to prevail in this struggle.
Nothing
demonstrates the necessity of this conclusion so strongly as the recent report
from South Korea, that selective abortion is there being practiced to indulge
social prejudice about the preferred gender of offspring. Unborn girls are
being aborted to make room for boys in South Korea. One needs to pause and
think over the implications of this. The progress of modern science has made
possible a pre-term identification of gender in the unborn child. What has followed
is this systematic abortion—a eugenics. But don’t stop there. Note that the
very idea of identifying a child’s gender entails a necessary moral distinction.
A girl
is a human being! No one who has
ordered the death of his unborn girl can claim to have any doubts about her
humanity. What he is saying to us is that he prefers boy humans to girl humans.
As occurs so often in human affairs, we discover in the practical arts of human
beings a much surer guide to answering difficult moral questions than in
mountains of abstruse scientific disputation. While the scientists continue to
debate about just when the onset
of humanity occurs, the people of South Korea demonstrate that they know full
well: namely, from the moment one can determine the unborn child’s gender!
One would imagine that this discovery merited headlines and huzzahs: The
long sought answer found! Unborn child determined to be human
boy or girl! Supreme Court now has guide to follow! But no. The news is
rather different. “S. Korean Parents Tip Birth Ratio.” “In the
first ten months of the year, there were 117 male births for every 100
females.” Normally, male births outnumber female
births, only slightly, and the
numbers are evened up later by a higher
mortality rate among males. One
of the Korean doctors, who sounded
the alarm, Dr. Roh Gyung Byung, declared it “a terrible situation,” and rightly
so.
Do we understand, however, just how terrible it is? This story is in fact
confirmation of just how low we have descended in the scale of humanity. Abortions are not new to mankind. Mankind,
however, has not always been so insensitive to them. The classic story of
abortion—exposure of the unwanted infant—was written by Sophocles and inspired
Sigmund Freud with the lynchpin of his psychological theories, the Edipus
complex. Sophocles’ Oedipus was to be exposed just after his birth, but the
nurse entrusted with the chore could not look upon the “bundle of joy” with the
required callousness. Rather than leave the child to the tender mercies of wild
beasts, she left it in the care of a peasant who raised him
to a mature humanity. The
tragedy that resulted for Oedipus’ family has often been misinterpreted as
resulting from the nurses’ tenderness. A more understanding reading would show that it derived rather from the
decision to abort—an attempt to avoid a prophecy of tragedy, which misread the prophecy as referring to events
yet to come and not to the character of the very persons who attempted the
abortion.
The children who are exposed today are less fortunate. They
never meet with such nurses, as Oedipus’ even when they might have a chance of being raised to mature humanity by strangers. Despite the
feeble efforts of government to mandate care for aborted children who, with the
assistance of science, might yet survive, the prevailing moral climate produces
virtually no examples of such heroics. Is it not clear that the child who is
exposed by being ripped from the womb is at a great disadvantage
compared to Oedipus? Those whose souls would have to resonate
with the instincts of humanity are already dulled into insensitivity by the
very operation through which they eliminate the child.
The modern world cannot depend on second thoughts to preserve the
instincts of humanity. Modern science leaves no room for second thoughts. Lest
we are to part forever from the tradition of humane caring, we have no
alternative but to place abortion itself under a severe proscription.
The Edipus Complex—a son’s rivalry with his father and love for his mother and
its converse, the Electra Complex—acquires a perverse meaning in a world
in which fathers and mothers make the choices which South Korean parents are
now making. The new Oedipus must die, unless we collectively, as a generation, make a commitment to him before he is exposed to the
danger. This is the possibility we now await, assuming that he is not already
among the lost.