Inconceivable!
Is fertility a health issue or a lifestyle choice?
This month a health care refom advisory panel will meet to consider whether contraception should be offered free of charge as a form of preventative medicine, the AP reports. Healthcare reform of course poses many questions concerning how medical services are paid for and delivered. But, as the AP notes, social mores are at the heart of this latest question.
Contraception is a controversial tool for preventing pregnancy, with many religious movements banning it outright. At the heart of the argument against free contraception is that the use of contraception is a lifestyle choice, not a health issue. As the president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center notes, “there are other ways to avoid having children than by ingesting chemicals.”
All other things equal, should the use of contraception be thought of as a health issue or a lifestyle choice? And should it matter for whether it is provided free as a form of preventative care? Read more
Not sure I sanction this, either
BBC News reports that some Western companies continue to work in Burma despite pressure from governments and activists. The European Union bans and penalizes commercial activity that clearly supports the Burmese military regime and its repression. The United States and a few other countries impose sanctions that make business in the country nearly impossible.
On the one hand, according to the BBC report, “the firms that invest say their capital helps to improve the lives of ordinary Burmese, ties the military into international systems of oversight, and consequently promotes openness and a respect for human rights.” On the other hand, in an authoritarian country like Burma, it is not unreasonable to think that the “money goes straight to the generals, who use it to buy weapons and widen their repression.”
The argument in favor of investing in Burma resembles one of the moral arguments in favor of free trade, sweatshops and all. But even if this claim carries water, the second argument is true as well. Legitimate business done in almost any part of the world will see its cut taken in the form of taxes by the government and so, in effect, “supports” that government. We normally don’t complain (too much), but the Burmese junta happens to be an exceptionally vile regime.
In the past I have written about the great harm that sanctions can inflict on the public. Does the good of punishing the military government with sanctions outweigh the good of providing jobs and income to ordinary Burmese through trade? Unless we think that sanctions will weaken the Burmese junta to the point at which democratic revolution is possible, it’s a tough moral case to make.
-Charles
Photo by Flickr user informatique used under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
Would you like a melting pot or a salad bowl?
German Chancellor Angela Merkel says that multiculturalism has “utterly failed” amidst growing anti-immigrant sentiment in Germany. In the Netherlands, anti-immigrant politician Geert Wilders was recently acquitted of discrimination and hate speech. Both of these mark serious departures from what was formerly the European consensus on multiculturalism. Given that immigration is both necessary and inevitable in the modern world, how should a country deal with immigrants from radically different cultures?
There are two widely regarded approaches to cultural pluralism. The prevailing European approach consists of treating immigrant populations as distinct subcultures, with few efforts made to integrate them into the broader society. Originally, this idea was in part tied to an expectation that most of these migrants were to be temporary migrant workers only. The idea that cultural integration need not accompany immigration has persisted even though it has become clear that millions of (mostly Muslim) immigrants are in Europe to stay. Although dressed in the benign language of “multiculturalism,” it is effectively a policy of exclusion.
The other approach is the “melting pot” that is usually attributed to the United States. In a melting pot, disparate ingredients blend together, creating something new that is (hopefully) greater than the sum of its parts. Of course, immigration in the United States has been anything but smooth. Successive waves of immigrants faced tremendous hostility. But by and large immigrant populations assimilated within the space of a few generations, gradually assuming full participation in society and escaping the confines of ethnic ghettos. The same has not happened in Europe, with tragic consequences.
There are certainly merits to cultural diversity. To paraphrase John Stuart Mill, a diversity of viewpoints in the marketplace of ideas is necessary to inform human flourishing. But diversity is a means and not an end in its own right. This is a crucial point that, until recently, the European approach to immigration has overlooked.
-Charles
Image by Flickr user SpreePix – Berlin used under a Creative Commons Attribution License
Guest Post: The dignity of the prostitute
“Human dignity” demands that we must (never) legalize prostitution
Last week, a judge in Canada’s largest province struck down the country’s federal laws criminalizing prostitution. Judge Susan Himel of the Ontario Superior Court ruled that prohibitions on prostitution infringed Canadians’ constitutional rights to freedom of expression and to security of the person. If the decision is upheld at the federal level, Canada will join countries such as Germany and the Netherlands and states such as Nevada where prostitution is, to varying degrees, legal.
The legalization of prostitution is not currently a live issue in the United States, but a major policy change from our neighbour and largest trading partner could prompt a re-examination of the issue. Such a debate would likely pit progressive against progressive and conservative against conservative. In the prostitution debate, the camps are separated less by the traditional right versus left dividing lines, and more by a disagreement regarding the meaning of “human dignity.”
Although prevalent in Enlightenment thinking, the idea that states must respect human dignity entered the political and philosophical vernacular following the adaptation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Since then, liberal and constitutional theorists have struggled to define what, exactly, respect for human dignity by the state entails.
Liberal theory encompasses two different conceptions of what constitutes respect for human dignity, which point to two radically different conclusions in the debate over prostitution.
I don’t sanction that
The BBC reports that the United States has imposed sanctions on key Iranian officials for human rights abuses dating from the crackdown on anti-government protesters in the summer of 2009. The sanctions consist of travel bans and asset freezes. As far as diplomatic tools go, sanctions like these –small, targeted ones- are mostly symbolic in nature and morally uncontroversial. They will at least inconvenience the miscreants in question a little, and likely will not hurt any innocents.
But the same cannot be said of sanctions in general as diplomatic tools. Without so much as a shot fired, economic sanctions can be just as destructive as wars and just as capable of harming the innocent. More than that, they rarely accomplish policy goals in their own right, although they might make some goals easier to attain in at least the short run.
When we discuss sanctions of the kind that target whole nations, we are really weighing the morality of collective punishment against the desirability of certain policy goals. Maybe the price will be worth it. Maybe not.
-Charles
Image by Flickr user ajagendorf25 used under a Creative Commons Attribution License
The death penalty may be constitutional, but is it justified?
The United States Supreme Court has refused to overturn the execution of a Virginia woman who conspired with two accomplices to murder her husband and stepson. The legal debate that has emerged around the case concentrates mostly on whether the woman, who is borderline mentally disabled, deserves a harsher sentence than her accomplices, who each received life sentences.
But there is a broader issue at stake here. Recall the justifications for punishment – incapacitation, retribution, rehabilitation, and deterrence. The death penalty does incapacitate criminals – terminally – but so does a secure prison. It is certainly an expression of society’s disgust and vengeance (retribution).
But does it deter? Deterrence depends in part on the probability and severity of punishment. The death penalty is so seldom exercised in the United States that the case for its deterrence effect is a questionable one.
Perhaps the deterrence effect would be more meaningful if people were executed more often. But there is a very dark undertone to this suggestion: the justice system is by no means infallible, and entrusting matters of life or death to it does carry real risks.
And even if we sincerely believe that there are monsters among us that don’t belong among the living, we must seriously consider whether the danger of wrongfully executing the innocent is outweighed by the benefit of ensuring the guilty get their just deserts. The cost of retribution and deterrence may not be worth the benefit.
-Charles
Image by Flickr user johnmuk used under a Creative Commons Attribution License
Worlds apart –why an open society may be better after all
On Monday, Han wrote about Thomas Friedman’s Op-Ed in the New York Times on the
“green economy,” contrasting the technocratic approach of China’s authoritarian rulers with the haphazard and undirected approach of the American political system. Han suggested that technocratic and authoritarian governments may have an advantage for costly but necessary endeavors.
There is certainly an allure of decisiveness and efficiency under technocratic rule. Thomas Friedman quotes the chairwoman of the Joint U.S.-China Collaboration on Clean Energy as saying that “There really is no debate about climate change in China.” But climate change is not the only issue on which public debate in China is absent.
In China, internet search terms such as “freedom,” “democracy,” and “demonstration” are blocked, as are some sites on health, education, news, entertainment, religion, pornography, Taiwan, and Tibet. Sometimes the bans extend to academic sites. In January of 2009, the Chinese government even censored Obama’s inauguration.
If technocrats are to monopolize decision-making, then they cannot be questioned or challenged meaningfully. This is worrisome, not only because the technocrats won’t get it right every time. John Stuart Mill once pointed out that the absence of debate leads to orthodoxy, rigidness, and most importantly stunted intellectual growth. Inertia and resistance to necessary change can plague authoritarian societies as much or more than democratic ones. Not only do liberty and political equality suffer, but so does the very development of societies and individuals.
Technocratic societies in the past have sometimes been able to make remarkable achievements in a brief time span. The Soviet Union not only launched Sputnik and led the world in rocketry but also aggressively promoted literacy and women’s rights. But these achievements did not last. Russia today is hardly a bastion of progressivism, prosperity, and innovation. Without intellectual diversity and debate, the promise of progress cannot be realized in the long run.
-Charles
Image by Flickr user sofafort used under a Creative Commons Attribution License
Sex sometimes involves money
Is it still just sex?
Last Friday, Craigslist censored the Adult Services section of its website after attorneys general in 17 states accused the site of aiding human trafficking and prostitution. By all accounts, the move is almost entirely symbolic. There are still plenty of thinly-veiled references on the site to erotic services. And Melissa Grant at Alternet condemns the singling out of Craigslist as hypocritical and counterproductive.
The crimes that Craigslist is accused of abetting – human trafficking and prostitution – are separate but related. One is the unlawful movement of people for exploitive purposes, namely forced sex or labor. The other is the unlawful involvement of people in sex acts for money. Read more
State Department throws Arizona under the bus
Why the State Department’s criticism of Arizona’s law is a strike for states’ rights
The AP reports that the US State Department listed its objection to Arizona’s immigration law as a step the State Department is taking to protect human rights. Understandably, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer disagrees, writing:
“The idea of our own American government submitting the duly enacted laws of a state of the United States to ‘review’ by the United Nations is internationalism run amok and unconstitutional.”
Let’s take these claims one at a time.
If the role of the High Commissioner on Human Rights is indeed to protect human rights, a state’s ability to criticize its own past decisions seems to be critical. Given the UN’s lack of hard power and unwillingness to intercede in state-level politics except when absolutely necessary (and often not even then), for there to be any kind of international human rights regime states must police themselves. The State Department’s actions seem to be internationalism of the best kind.
Further, the State Department’s decision is in fact a strike in defense of state sovereignty. By criticizing Arizona’s law, the State Department concedes Arizona’s ability to make laws that displease federal bodies. While the State Department is working through legal channels to overturn the law, in the meanwhile the immigration law remains on the books and seems to be a legitimate and likely target for human rights discussions.
It’s certainly not clear why Brewer thinks the state department’s decision is unconstitutional, other than the fact that things one disagrees with tend to be unconstitutional. In fact, the federal judge who ruled against Arizona’s law seems to believe that it’s the law itself that’s in the wrong.
-John
Image credit: Wiki Commons
Statelessness sucks
George Soros writes at Project Syndicate that the recent expulsion of the Roma from France is tantamount to collective punishment. His outrage is echoed by a French priest who prays for Sarkozy to have a heart attack.
Although every state obviously has a right to protect public order, critics of the expulsion wonder “what harm can a few hundred people do?”
They wonder too how it’s acceptable for an EU country to forcibly relocate EU citizens without due process, especially when all EU citizens are entitled to freedom of movement.
The Roma are the continent’s largest ethnic minority group. They are not native to Europe and are in fact descended from Indians. Their distinct ethnic identity combined with misperceptions has historically made them outcasts everywhere. The Roma presently being deported from France tried to escape dire poverty and discrimination in Romania.
Despite being EU citizens, the French government’s recent treatment of them signals that no state may reliably look out for them.
How should we respond to the problem of stateless people? For Theodor Herzl and the Zionists, the answer was obvious – to reclaim an ancestral homeland and establish a new nation. But the present Arab-Israeli conflict highlights the extraordinary difficulty and moral complexity of such a solution. And no reasonable person could suggest that the Roma try to re-conquer Punjab in northern India.
The solution will have to be the least impossible of impossible alternatives. The European countries should probably make a concerted effort to integrate the Roma and make them full members of their societies.
Not only does the “plight of so many millions of Roma… [make] a mockery of European values” as Soros writes, but the alternative is to allow a moral and social problem of enormous proportions to fester and ultimately truly undermine public order.
-Charles
Image by Flickr user Rivard used under a Creative Commons Attributions License
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