Rape doesn’t lead to pregnancy, in the mind of someone seeking “Moral Coherence”
In my earliest research I discovered that people sometimes invented the facts they needed to back up the moral judgments they had just made. When I asked people about whether it was wrong for a family to eat it’s dog, after the dog was killed by a car, people often said “yes, it’s wrong, because…. um… if you eat dog meat you’ll get sick.” This finding became the First Principle of Moral Psychology in The Righteous Mind: “Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.” Our gut tells us what’s true on moral questions, and our reasoning then kicks into high gear to justify that intuition.
So when Todd Akin said that “legitimate rape” rarely leads to pregnancy because, um… “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down…” I was both horrified and delighted. Delighted only because it offered such a vivid demonstration of the First Principle in action.
By coincidence, my colleagues at Yourmorals.org, Brittany Liu and Pete Ditto, have just published an article showing how exactly the process works when people invent or inflate facts. Ditto and Liu talk about the need for “moral coherence,” which they describe as “the tendency for people to fit their factual beliefs to their moral world-view, so that what is right morally becomes what is right practically as well.” The apply this perspective to the Akin case in a blog post at the YourMorals blog. Here’s an excerpt:
We suggest that people’s desire for moral coherences initiates a motivated cost-benefit analysis in which the act that feels the best morally becomes that act that also leads to the best consequences. So, if a particular act feels morally wrong, moral coherence processes lead people to try to maximize the costs and minimize the benefits associated with that act. Likewise, if an act feels morally acceptable, people will minimize the costs and maximize the benefits associated with that act. By changing their factual beliefs about the costs and benefits of various actions, people emerge with a coherent moral picture in which their factual beliefs fit perfectly with their moral evaluations.
Applying this logic to the Akin case, strong opponents of abortion, like Akin, argue that abortion is fundamentally immoral and should be prohibited. But what if the pregnancy results from a rape? This creates a problem for a principled moral position on abortion. Isn’t abortion always wrong? But is it right to make a woman live with a baby conceived in from a violent, traumatic act she did not consent to? One way to resolve the conflict is to convince oneself that pregnancies from “legitimate” rapes are exceedingly rare. If this is true, then prohibiting abortion even in the case of rape really has relatively few costs because it occurs so infrequently. Thus, it is easy to see Rep. Akin’s views about rape and pregnancy (views that are held by many other anti-abortion activists as well) as emerging from his struggle to construct a coherent moral position on abortion that refuses to make exceptions for rape and incest.
Pat Moynihan is reported to have once said that we are each entitled to our own opinions, but not to our own facts. Unfortunately, partisans tend to create their own facts, most of which are not so outrageously and obviously wrong as Akin’s. Left and right in America today live in different moral “matrices,” and the search for moral coherence, satisfied by cable news networks, gossip, and the internet, allows us all to live in gated moral communities, each one grounded in its own set of facts.
Jonathon, nice job. That’s why my initial reaction to Akin was “he’s a moron.” I’m not willing to judge him, for we all have our ‘brain fart’ moments where the words we utter out of our mouths need to be recalled before anyone hears them. Does he really believe this, or was it a moment in an interview at the end of a long day when the brain just wasn’t fully functional? I’m willing to cut these guys some slack, even if the political hacks are not.
Without knowing his whole body of work, it’s hard for anyone to judge him, and by watching 99% of the people (yes..that 99%) outfront with torches and pitchforks, I dare say they should sit down, shut up, and ask him open ended questions to clarify what he meant…if he meant it at all. Context is the mother of all necessity when speaking something that seems so morally repugnant.
While people on the left are quick to condemn the immorality of Barack Obama for daring to say ‘you didn’t build it’…..without proper context….it’s equally insane for people on the left to condemn a man for one sentence without knowing the larger context of what he said, or what he really believes in.
Great book, btw…..I’ve recommended it to dozens of colleagues and friends who feel the same. A fair and reasoned discussion of why we’re different.
http://agvnotes.tumblr.com/post/29904483410/the-top-5-quotes-about-rape-from-republican-men
These aren’t brain farts, specially when there’s actual bills which would legislate this and partly legalize rape: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/republican-plan-redefine-rape-abortion
You can’t simply excuse this as out of context considering they took to the time to write a bill last year on this (well it’s usually hard to, but to the mind which wants to give both conservative parties credence maybe this is just the beauty of diverse opinions or another way to human happiness!)
Thank you Eric!
You are certainly right about the tendency to judge people for everything they say, even when taken out of context. I do wish people gave others the benefit of the doubt, and looked for more information, as you suggest. But i think that in both of the cases you describe, seeing the remarks in context indicates that the remarks really do reflect each man’s larger moral/intellectual mission.
Thank you Jonathan,
I’m fortunate to know about your work, and I appreciate your blog! I wish there were more venues for discussion with people who, inspite of their upbringing and societal imprinting, are both willing to review the facts and remain open to decisive action perhaps contrary to their intuitive base.
I remember once being assigned a project to support an unpopular point of view during my graduate work–I don’t remember the topic off hand. I do remember feeling upset by having to provide a body of evidence in support of something against my own beliefs. I was shocked to find some validity, both qualitative and quantative, to justify an unpopular issue.
I wonder if there is a way to induce more people, especially our politicians and policy makers, to undertake a “mandatory assignment” and then fight for outcome mandated by the research? Idealistic and wishful, though it may be, there is room for a little more openness in leadership circles.
Years ago, the news of Akin’s comments wouldn’t have been so widely known in such a short period of time. The velocity of news now nearly equals the velocity of light. Public figures must live through their indiscressions. While I applaud Akin for having the courage of his convictions, I am more appreciative of having the velocity of data to help support an opposing point of view.
And I applaud the westboro baptist church for the courage of their convictions! What contrarians! How beautiful.
Thank you, Bob!
I think this would be a great exercise in a high school civics class. I’d really like civics classes to teach ideology, and help students come to respect both sides as sincere. But i don’t think this exercise would to anything to help active politicians. They are in the trenches, too much hangs on victory.
Interesting, however why do you only insist on their being intuition? How about analytical morality?
How about people (like me) who were convinced say of one thing taking economics in high school, but reading about europe and other countries through wikipedia articles like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare's_effect_on_poverty#Table_of_poverty_levels_pre_and_post_welfare
And changing my mind once I see the evidence? I think being american centric (like you) produces many many fallacies.
Or how about libertarians who morally feel a way on certain issue (still having conservative morality), but feel that it’s impractical to actually legislate that intuition,etc?
Also a statement like that (and like these: http://agvnotes.tumblr.com/post/29904483410/the-top-5-quotes-about-rape-from-republican-men )
Just shows how horrible that world view is…
I certainly do believe many of our political orthodoxies should be challenged, but this isn\\\’t some brave position he\\\’s taking… (and working within the 2 party box certainly doesn\\\’t allow those to be effectively challenged)
Akin was only “inventing” facts when he said “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down…” if he came up with the idea on his own. But that’s what I had been taught for years at pro-life churches, and I never even considered the possibility that I had been misinformed until this thing with Akin came up. Somebody, somewhere, invented or inflated it, as I realized once I started reading more about the subject, but I don’t think it was Akin. If you’ve been taught something and never had reason to question it, then from your own point of view you *are* using facts.
I never heard of Jonathan Haidt either until a few weeks ago I came across his book (The Righteous Mind) in the library, and I have been eagerly reading it since then (just finished last night). While I’m not so sure that Akin’s comments provide a good illustration of what Haidt talks about in his book, the reactions of people on both sides to Akin’s remarks certainly do.
Pauline, you’re right, he didn’t invent the fact. The case is best thought of as an example of confirmation bias — he reached out for whatever he had heard that would support the conclusion he wanted to reach. Liu’s study shows that if he had just made an anti-abortion statement, he’d believe the claim even more strongly; he’d estimate the odds of post-rape pregnancy even lower, than had he simply been asked the odds of such a pregnancy.
I just ran into the mirror image of this example from the left. Paul Ryan recently said that “the method of conception doesn’t change the definition of life.” Which, predictably, led to high dudgeon.
Quite quickly, I was treated to some pretzel logic about why rape wasn’t really a method of conception. The rich irony? That the Akin incident had led to folks angrily pointing out that rape often leads to pregnancy.
The person in question was too morally bound to immediately acknowledge that the horrific nature of rape is not causally related to whether or not it leads to pregnancy.
Usually debates about abortion focus on politics and the law: should abortion be outlawed and treated like the murder of a human person, or remain a legal choice available to all women? Behind the debates are more fundamental ethical questions which aren’t always given the specific attention they deserve. Some believe that the law shouldn’t legislate morality, but all good law is based upon moral values. A failure to openly discuss those values can obscure important discussions.
Obviously enough, the cost of holding to and acting upon an anti-abortion moral position will vary from person to person. In some cases, the cost could be very high indeed. For example, imagine a young girl living in poverty who has been impregnated by rape and is also morally against abortion. For her, the cost of acting upon her position could be very high indeed. In other cases, the cost could be fairly low. For example, a wealthy man who has no children could almost certainly hold and act on the anti-abortion position with far less cost than the girl in the previous example. It is also worth noting that the cost of a moral position can also be a cost inflicted on others. For example, while the man in the second example might pay little personal cost for his position, if he were an influential politician and acted on his position to create laws, then the cost of his position might be high for others. For example, if he saw to it that abortion was outlawed in all cases, then the girls and women affected could pay very high prices indeed for his moral position.
What really angered me in this exchange was the faultiness of his logic and his insistence that I was in error because I was allowing my faith to dictate my political opinion on the matter. First, the logic he employed in his defense was that I could never understand the circumstances of a woman impregnated due to rape. I reject this flat out because it assumes that I am incapable of being empathetic to the situation unless I allow for the premeditated murder of an innocent. His counter to my claim the child was innocent was to claim the child is, by nature of the act in which it was conceived, a “bad seed”, a claim I find highly ironic coming from someone who rejects the moral arguments against abortion.
Usually debates about abortion focus on politics and the law: should abortion be outlawed and treated like the murder of a human person, or remain a legal choice available to all women? Behind the debates are more fundamental ethical questions which aren’t always given the specific attention they deserve. Some believe that the law shouldn’t legislate morality, but all good law is based upon moral values. A failure to openly discuss those values can obscure important discussions.
by the state, if it can be shown that the abortion benefits the society more than permitting the birth would. Regardless of whether such a thing could actually be shown, even to allow the principle–to legitimize an inquiry into whether such a thing can be shown–is inconsistent with a pro-choice position grounded in women’s rights (which seems to be the mainstream pro-choice position). In summary, using utilitarianism to defend against the charge that abortion is murder is probably a mistake and certainly problematic. It seems to require that a life be valued less than personal convenience, or that abortion be no different morally from infanticide. It also seems to entail a complex and subjective weighting of outcomes. Utilitarianism itself is controversial and rejected by many (it has a “commie” flavor), although it seems necessary in some form to justify war (also pollution).
This is perhaps the ultimate proof that pro-choice arguments aren’t coming from a serious effort to determine abortion’s permissibility from coherent moral principles; rather, they come from after-the-fact rationalizations for what liberals have decided they want.
The medical director at a Dallas abortion clinic told this story: A white woman from an affluent north Dallas neighborhood brought her black maid in for an abortion and paid for it. While the maid was in a counseling session, a commotion was heard in the waiting room outside. The maid’s employer was handing out anti-abortion leaflets to other women waiting for abortions.
There is a difference between the first order reasons and the second order reasons. We already saw that the first order reasons are able to justify an abortion while the second order reasons are less able to do so. That is because people think that the second order reasons are weaker than the reasons of the first group. It seems that the human ability to show compassion for the fetus is responsible for our willingness to limit the woman’s basic right of autonomy where her reasons are too elusive. However, one may state that there are no strong compulsive reasons which could morally condemn the whole practice of abortion. Some people may not unconvincingly argue that moral agreements and legal rights are due to human beings so that reasons for or against abortion are always subjective and relative. According to this view, one is only able to contend the “trueness” or “wrongness” of a particular action in a limited way. Of course, there are other people who argue for the opposite (for example, Kantians, Catholic Church). One reason why people have strong feelings about the conflict of abortion is that human beings do have strong intuitive feelings, for example, to feel compassion for fetuses as helpless and most vulnerable human entities. But moral intuitionism falls short by being a valid and objective basis for moral rights.