Valuing Short-Term
Pleasure over Life:
The Culture of Abortion, Euthanasia, and Self-Inflicted Harm
GrassTopsUSA Exclusive Commentary
By Gennady Stolyarov II
04-11-07
This article is not about those who theoretically support the
a woman’s “right” to have an abortion or a person’s “right” to be
killed by a physician—but rather about those who actually engage
in these activities. The former may be misguided and wrong in
their views, but many of them are perfectly respectable in their
personal lives. With the latter, however, the first striking
question that comes to mind is: what went so dramatically wrong?
Why does it even occur to many pregnant women to consider the
termination of the little life growing inside them—a being that is
clearly conscious, as demonstrated by numerous ultrasound images,
and a creature that, absent the unlikely miscarriage or bodily
malfunction, will with certainty become a healthy infant?
Some will say, “But it’s not a human person until it’s born!”—but
this, in the face of the empirical evidence to the contrary, becomes
a mere post-rationalization of the act, not a logical way of
arriving at its justice. Those who wished to justify slavery and
the Holocaust also sought to construe the people being enslaved and
killed as something less than fully human—but this was not their
reason for owning slaves or exterminating millions of Jews.
Why, for that matter, would a person choose to favor his own
death—not to save another’s life, not to advance a worthy cause, but
merely stop what he considers great pain? Why do many treat
the “right to die” as an essential human prerogative, displacing the
right to life in priority? What is this seldom explicitly
expressed phantom idea that leads so many people today to flout the
sacred and inalienable value of their own lives and the lives of
others? What leads such persons to sacrifice their own continued
existence and be willing to toss aside the lives of others so
lightly? This is not a question of whether they have a right
to do so (though I firmly believe they do not), but why they would
even want to do so.
The culprit, I contend, is the valuation of short-term sensory
pleasure above everything else. Most women who have abortions do
not do so because they were raped or because they fear being
financially unable to support the child. Only about 1 percent of
women who have abortions do so as a response to rape. Many more cite
economic reasons, but they are not legitimately in a position to do
so.
A couple of upper-middle-class
teenagers who engaged in casual intercourse without considering the
consequences can support a child with the resources at their
disposal. This issue is not one of ability, but of will.
Both the boy and the girl were seeking pure sensory pleasure
when they engaged in casual intercourse; neither of them were
seeking a child—but they neglected the laws of biology that led the
girl to conceive one. The girl’s male partner could have considered
the possibility of his actions leading to a pregnancy, controlled
his urges, and abstained from intercourse—but he let his momentary
impulses get the better of him. His actions led to the girl’s
conception, but now he is powerless to do anything to even save the
life they resulted in. By law, he is not allowed to insist that the
girl carry her pregnancy to its logical, natural conclusion.
Now the girl wants an abortion; she
seeks to flout biological and moral laws, irrespective of
whose burgeoning life must be tossed aside to do so. It is true that
children are expensive, and that raising them properly is a hefty
responsibility that might impede career plans and other desires. But
did the risk of this happening ever enter into the minds of the
couple as they were making their initial choice of pleasures? If
they truly wanted to become dedicated to their careers or to wait a
few more years before starting a family, would not the most prudent
choice have been to abstain from intercourse until then? Simple
reflection can yield these insights; the fact that neither of them
engaged in that reflection means that they were not truly serious
about pursuing long-term happiness.
What they were really seeking was
short-term gratification of carnal desires—and the possible
consequences did not even enter their consideration. After the fact
of the pregnancy, the girl now wants the consequences annulled,
irrespective of how much damage this causes and to whom. Were
abortion illegal and not readily accessible, the couple would have
had to think twice before engaging in intercourse in the first
place; they would have known the kinds of commitments they would
have needed to undertake in the event of pregnancy. But with things
as they stand, the girl can go on irresponsibly seeking sensory
pleasure at tremendous cost—and no one can oppose her. This is why
“abortion rights” advocates insist that no one—not the girl’s
parents, not her partner, not her closest friends—ought to be
allowed to have a say in her abortion decision. “Abortion rights”
are about her freedom to appease her urges—in spite of
all moral conscience and the welfare of those around her.
It is not just the lives of others
that some people are willing to toss aside to gratify short-term
sensory desires; many are similarly willing to discard their own.
The person who chooses to die rather than live with pain,
inconvenience, or even “indignity” or “depression”—however broadly
defined—is a prime instance of this mentality. For him, the essence
of life is mere sensory pleasure, and, when he is denied—physically
or psychologically—the opportunity to experience this pleasure, life
for him ceases to be worth living. He does not consider that there
might be other reasons to live: out of commitment to a purpose, the
wish to accomplish important things, the desire to enrich others’
lives, or a more sophisticated, intellectual joy that can detach
itself from physical sensation. He does not think that there might
be cases where enduring pain—great pain, even—is a mark of
tremendous strength of character and resolve. He does not believe
that some of the greatest things in life often require a person to
undergo stress, inconvenience, frustration, and more—all of them
more than compensated for afterward.
Sensory pleasure—properly gotten—is no
vice and can enrich life, but it is not all there is, and it is not
primarily why a person would choose to live. Life is often
painful, disturbing, and inconvenient; nobody and nothing guarantees
us a perfect world and a happy, unclouded existence. But this is no
reason to reject anybody’s life; in fact, it is a reason to keep
struggling for innocent human lives, in whatever forms and at
whatever stages they occur. Only with such struggle—the struggle to
raise a good human being, even in tough circumstances—the struggle
against death, disease, and emotional turmoil—the struggle to
nurture and cultivate one’s surroundings—can a person truly be
fulfilled in the highest sense. Embracing short-term pleasure over
everything else is only an abdication of this intensely human quest.
Gennady Stolyarov II is
Editor-in-Chief of
The Rational Argumentator, a magazine championing the principles
or Reason, Rights, and Progress. His works have been published by
Le Quebecois Libre,
Enter Stage Right Magazine, the
Ludwig von Mises Institute,
Rebirth of Reason, and other organizations. Mr. Stolyarov can be
contacted at
gennadystolyarovii@yahoo.com.
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GrasstopsUSA.com 2007
