There are a number of moving parts here, so it's important to be clear about the relevant contrast class. I think 'willful taking of human life' is suitable.
But 'espousing an economic policy' obscures what's at stake.
The salient point is that we know certain policies will result in avoidable human death.
So the relevant contrast class is:
willful taking of human life v. knowingly allowing avoidable human death
It's actually really controversial whether the willful taking of human life is all that different, morally speaking, from knowingly allowing avoidable human death.
I characterize the pro-life position in the way that its proponents typically do. I then underscore the difference between that pro-life ideal and mere opposition to abortion.
I leave it to the reader to decide whether the disparity between the pro-life ideal and mere opposition to abortion is significant.
So note well: the distinction between the pro-life position (i.e., anti-[killing or letting die]) and the merely anti-abortion position (i.e., anti-[killing]) is morally significant *only if* there's a morally significant difference between killing and letting die.
In other words, my reasoning culminates in a conclusion that's significant *only if* we assume that there's a difference between killing and letting die--i.e., the opposite of the assumption you suggest.
Thus, as I note, there are differences between the case of Baby Roe and Baby Smith. But those differences are only morally salient if you're merely anti-abortion. If you're pro-life, the differences aren't salient, so you should reject healthcare libertarianism.
At no point do I suggest that there isn't a difference. On the contrary, I go out of my way to highlight the differences so that I can show why they shouldn't matter to someone who's genuinely pro-life.
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I saw some folks on this website today having big feelings about Christians who note the hypocrisy of the sort of “pro-life” position that favors legal protection for the unborn while opposing measures that would, e.g., expand access to healthcare for children.
The complaint is roughly that Christians (like me) who worry about this kind of hypocrisy have drawn a false moral equivalence between permitting the active termination of unborn life and, e.g., permitting a child to perish in the natural course of some untreated infirmity.
But as far as my own views are concerned, moral equivalence is totally beside the point.
In my view, the salient point is *integrity*. Before elaborating, I think it will be helpful to clarify exactly what integrity means and why it's important.
Nowhere is the moral fragmentation of American evangelicalism more apparent than in many white evangelicals’ frail embrace of the right to life.
According to the pro-life position, all persons—including both born and unborn persons—have a “right to life,” and that right should be protected by the force of law.
But many evangelical Christians who self-identify as “pro-life” are also healthcare libertarians.
According to healthcare libertarians, we shouldn’t have laws that ensure widespread access to healthcare—or the taxes and administrative burdens that would follow upon such laws.
According to Scripture, false teachers dwell in the political or religious establishment. They misrepresent God to the people of God in order to fortify their own position of power or influence, often at the expense of vulnerable people.
So the notion that those who expose oppression are false teachers isn’t just wrong.
It lacks a basic grasp of the currency in which it trades, not unlike the sentence: “The quarterback of the Yankees scored a hat trick in the Final Four.”
Since men are equally capable of performing ≥99% of the tasks that “biblical patriarchy” reserves for women, the term ‘redundancy’ is undoubtedly a more accurate euphemism for the view than ‘complementarity’.
The ideology revolves around the notion that life is about marriage, and marriage is about a man doubling the labor capacity he commands—at which point he’s free to apply his labor as he pleases and instruct his wife to carry out basic adult tasks he’d rather not bother with.
Men and women are equally capable of doing laundry, cooking, parenting and earning a living.
So the capacities that patriarchists ascribe to men and women, respectively, are not in fact complementary—they’re redundant.
But justice requires more than a certain kind of legal procedure.
Consider, for instance, wrongful convictions: it’s possible to follow all the appropriate procedures in arresting, investigating and convicting a defendant who is in fact innocent.
So it’s possible to satisfy the demands of procedural justice while at the same time achieving a result that is substantively unjust—namely, the conviction of an innocent person.
There are men of influence in evangelical circles who’ve made a whole career of improving upon God’s Word with their own opinions, and then excommunicating anyone who questions their pet tertiary doctrines.
Such men are accustomed to silencing dissent within their spheres of influence by threatening the employment, professional standing or institutional status of anyone who interrogates the status quo.
But a growing number of professionals from outside the institutional settings in which these men exercise control—journalists, academics, clergy and so on—have taken an interest in critiquing the ideological commitments behind conservative evangelical theology and politics.