There is an interesting discord between two protest groups that have been in the news in the past few months.

Many of the most vocal supporters of the annual March for Life—now in its 38^th year—are among the most vocal opponents of the Occupy movement. They claim the Occupiers are just ‘whiny protesters’ taking the ‘lazy’ way to stand against ‘perceived injustices’. They complain that the Occupy movement gets disproportionate press coverage, and that the March for Life doesn’t get the coverage it deserves. Similarly, the Occupy folks complain about poor media coverage. Both groups perceptions of media coverage are partially an example of the hostile media effect, but the animosity raises a clear problem:

The philosophies that give rise to the problems that the Occupy movement is protesting are the same philosophies behind the existence of legal abortion in the United States.

The problems combated by both groups are rooted in philosophies that celebrate avarice to the extent that the complete devaluation of others is encouraged.¹ Whether the majority of those in either protest group recognize this underlying commonality is another story; it appears that many don’t, but a little mutual philosophical examination could improve the progress of both groups.

Why the antagonism instead of cooperation? The main anti-abortion² advocates concentrate exclusively on one narrow effect of the root problem: abortion. This single-minded effort has worsened other consequences of the celebration of avarice. This is because the concentration has historically led to strange political alliances: instead of working with groups that fight other problems with the same root, they typically endorse the most vocal champions of avarice, with a claimed disapproval of abortion as the only condition for endorsement. Since this philosophical compromise has continued for decades, it appears that the most vocal anti-abortion advocates are actually unaware that many of the positions held by supposedly anti-abortion politicians are actually at odds with philosophies that necessitates the pro-life stance. This dissonance is likely partially responsible for the rise of those in the anti-abortion movement who are no longer concerned with social issues. It is also a consequence of a philosophical background that often appears to only be acquired in order to have rational arguments to back their initial, and correct, emotional revulsion at abortion. This disconnect has unfortunately led to the complete dismissal of the significance—and even the existence—of the injustices the Occupy movement protests, and to the ridicule of potential allies.

The Occupy movement is protesting a wide range of problems with the same root, but their goal is explicitly to raise awareness, not to propose specific solutions. This has the benefit of creating a wide base, but this also means that many are likely to miss the other implications of their implicit recognition of the problem of avarice. Many may only recognize the effects without connecting them to their root cause. This is one reason the movement is partially only in protest against obvious problems such increasing income inequality partially due to regressive taxes, unfair representation due to unlimited corporate spending in elections and the doctrine of corporate personhood, and so on. A more examined and coherent philosophy would add to this an effort to educate the public on the root causes of the problems, which are also the root causes of legal abortion. To be fair, while many in the movement appear to be just reacting against the bad economy caused by the celebration of unrestrained avarice, a significant portion of the Occupy supporters have certainly done more philosophical introspection than those who are causing the problems.

The Occupy movement has successfully raised public awareness of problems that even in the first years Great Recession didn’t receive enough attention. The March for Life plays a role in bringing attention to the problem of legal abortion, though it seems to be mostly a motivational exercise for those involved to do something at other times of the year. Neither movement is perfect, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t both beneficial. The common philosophical necessity should make the groups allies. Unfortunately, the most popular interactions I have seen are antagonistic. Real change to solve the problems caused by the celebration of avarice—protested by both the March for Life and Occupy—can’t come without correcting the mistaken philosophy that necessitates both groups, but some progress can be made.

But the silliness of SOPA/PIPA isn’t my point today. The outcry against SOPA/PIPA is good, and hopefully gets the attention of our “representatives.” But where is the outrage about even more important issues? A healthy planet is necessary to sustaining life, but other than some minor stories about the Keystone XL pipeline protests and fracking, climate change and other environmental problems aren’t getting much attention. Much of the coverage these problems get is uncritical repetition of various politician’s claims that the problems don’t exist. Or what about abortion? There are about 2200 abortions per day in the United States, even though the right to life is one of the most fundamental rights.

Protests and letter writing campaigns against bad laws such as SOPA/PIPA are good, but we must also take serious action against other important problems.

Now, for a funny thought….

If I was evil, I’d have created one of the anti-SOPA/PIPA JavaScript overlays. It would be a nice clean one that you can click to get around, and it would have a cookie for each site so you only see it once. But then, half way through the day, I’d insert an ad that must be clicked before viewing the site. Muhaha!

But I’m too ethical to do that, which is why I’ll never make any money.

Suggested reading:

• Google: More about SOPA and PIPA – End Piracy, Not Liberty
• Internet Archive: 12 Hours Dark: Internet Archive vs. Censorship
• Electronic Frontier Foundation: January 18: Internet-Wide Protests Against the Blacklist Legislation
• SOPA Blackout
• Slate: Why Should We Stop Online Piracy?
• John Peebles: Why Does This Have to Be So Hard?

I am pro-clean air. I am pro-clean water.
—Rand Paul

Libertarians invariably claim they want clean air and water, but then go out of the way to ensure that gratuitous damage to the earth continues. An example of this pattern is Senator Rand Paul’s recent attempt to prevent the EPA from regulating cross-state pollution from power plants. Paul opposes these environmental protections by using a typical libertarian objection:

I think we can have a clean environment and jobs, but not if we let this administration continue to pass job-killing regulations.

Senator Paul creates a false dichotomy between employment and limits on pollution, he then—following the universal libertarian environmental view—fails to propose a solution that is compatible with his libertarianism. This is a problem.

For any view to be part of a serious philosophy, it must be able to deal with reality. Science is clear on the causes and severity of environmental damage, and technology provides many options for practical solutions to many of our current environmental problems. Given the clear harm, any acceptable philosophy must be able to integrate an account of the cause of the problem and be able to suggest a self-consistent solution to the problem. If a philosophy is at odds with reality, it cannot be taken seriously, and should then be discarded.

If libertarianism is a serious political philosophy it must recognize the existence and severity of environmental damage, and it must be able to create a solution to stop the damage that is compatible with libertarian ideals. But libertarianism—at least in common practice—does not provide a path to solve our environmental problems. In fact, it typically ignores the uncontroversial science by denying the harm caused and its clear implications. This failure to agree with reality is what originally led me to conclude that libertarianism is not a valid position.¹

However, not that everyone who claims a political philosophy conforms completely to that philosophy or weighs each part equally. Rand Paul himself is a good example of this sort of inconsistency: he is one of the most prominent libertarians, but is pro-life. Many libertarians would consider the pro-life position to be an unjustified government intrusion on a woman’s liberty. But Senator Paul recognizes the sanctity of life, saying, “It is unconscionable that government would facilitate the taking of innocent life.” This position can be supported from a libertarian worldview by (correctly) saying that the pro-life position is protects the liberty of the unborn child. This is simply an case of attaching different weights to different liberties. However, to fulfil the requirement that a philosophy must be internally consistent, a person making this argument must recognize that the same line of reasoning is behind pollution regulations. That is, one person’s imagined liberty must be restricted in order to ensure the liberty of others.

The particular set of EPA rules that Senator Paul proposed rejecting—placing some limits on a narrow (but large) type of pollution—is a another clear example of a limit an one type of liberty outweighing another. Even if we oversimplify and use a merely economic analysis, these rules will create a healthcare benefit two orders of magnitude larger than their cost. The EPA estimates that these rules will save at least 13 000 people a year from premature death. As seen in previous posts, this sort of lopsided benefit is to be expected. Just as a child’s right to not be killed outweighs a mother’s liberty to change her mind about having a child, the right of millions of people not to be caused significant health damage outweighs the liberty of a few people to slightly increase their profit. Health issues are only one aspect of the many environmental problems, considering other impacts only widens the already 100 to 1 benefit to cost ratio.

A philosophy must be internally consistent, and must be able to explain and solve any problem. So, libertarian politicians want to be taken seriously by thinking people, they must acknowledge the problems and propose realistic solutions. If one’s philosophy causes one to ignore reality or be unable to propose solutions, one is obligated to reexamine it.

Sources:

• McClatchy DC: Senate defeats Rand Paul’s resolution to kill EPA cross-state rules
• EPA: Cross-State Air Pollution Rule
• Rand Paul: Issues: Sanctity of Life

This is much higher than I expected, so I decided to check the numbers myself. I found the data on the CDC website and plotted it along with moving averages to define ‘generation’:

Huh. That’s much higher than I expected. I’d figured it would be around a tenth that rate, and at most up to half that rate. These higher than expected numbers mean that one-quarter is a reasonable estimate. Depending on how ‘my generation’ is defined, the one-quarter figure may be a little high, but it is at minimum one-fifth. Under any reasonable definition, there is no way I’d consider 1/5 to be ‘rare.’ It’s a stretch to call one-tenth rare. I’d hesitate to call 1/36—the probability of rolling snake eyes—rare. I’d consider a general definition of rare to start around 1/500, approximately the probability of drawing a flush in poker. For diseases, the NIH uses a definition somewhere around 1/1500. Even if the abortion rate in the USA is lowered to one sixth the current level, it still wouldn’t fit in the loosest of these definitions of rare. This means that, even for a generous definition, we have a long way to go before abortion could be considered ‘rare.’ It’s worth noting that the pro-abortion politicians mostly stopped using the ‘rare’ statement a couple years ago, showing that they were probably never serious about it.

Note: Data are from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC MMWR abortion reports are released at the end of November with a three year lag. ‘Fetal loss’ other than induced abortion is excluded from the data I used in the plots. The numbers include both surgical and medical (non-surgical) abortions. Data is abortion rate per 1000 live births, I converted it to a fraction to clarify the plots. The full report is worth a look. Since it is split between two tables in the report, here is a plot of when during a pregnancy abortions are performed:

Sources:

• CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Surveillance Summaries, Abortion Surveillance — United States, 2006, November 28, 2008 / Vol. 57 / No. SS-13
• CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Surveillance Summaries, Abortion Surveillance — United States, 2006, November 27, 2009 / Vol. 58 / No. SS-8
• The 2004 Democratic National Platform for America. Includes ‘Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.’
• The 2004 Democratic National Platform. Uses ‘safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay.’

The story is based on press release from the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion advocacy group, originally a division of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. I have no reason to doubt the published numbers, but the press release makes the mistake of over-interpreting the data to agree with predetermined conclusions. The annual change in the numbers from 2005 to 2006 isn’t large enough to draw a conclusion, yet the press release attributes the change to policies they oppose. This is what Darrell Huff would call playing up numbers, and the wording could be considered cherry-picking. This is exactly the same kind of mistake I see every slightly cool day during the summer when someone (often in the news) claims that it disproves anthropogenic global warming. While it is possible that the Guttmacher Institute’s conclusion is correct, the evidence is not yet strong enough to make a conclusion. The Guttmacher Institute’s press release presents an explanation for 1995 through 2006, leaving out an explanation of the data from 1986 to 1995. This is a problem because there is a larger unexplained peak in 1988 and the decline begins in 1989, not 1995. At the present time, without presenting stronger evidence, an equally plausible explanation is that the 2005 to 2006 change merely represents the expected annual fluctuations around a steady state, and that the slow in the decline is simply due to approaching the steady state. To make their conclusions will require a longer trend, and to explain the prior changes, not just assume the change is due to policies they oppose. It is important to remember to actually look at data and to know that the world is more complex than advocacy groups pretend.

Update 2010-02-02: A new study published in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine provides evidence that the Guttmacher Institute’s attribution of the changes in the abortion rate is likely incorrect. Unlike the Guttmacher Institute’s conclusion, this is published in a peer-reviewed journal. (Found through a story in the Washington Post.)