pro life philosophy essay

The second step is concerned with providing the psychological freedom to embrace and act upon the objective definition of "person." It is one thing to understand an objective definition of "person," but quite another to want to make it the pinnacle of our cultural practice. Life Principles provides the reasons of the heart by examining four levels of happiness and purpose in life.

These four levels of happiness (purpose in life) are four levels of the heart's operation. They control the way one looks at oneself, quality of life, even one's view of love, suffering, ethics and freedom. Step three of the Life Principles Program endeavors to show how one's dominant view of happiness influences these categories of cultural discourse.

Step four of the Life Principles Program shows how our interpretation of these categories of cultural discourse influence our view of rights and the common good. This will reveal the foundations of our legal and political principles which we would contend are in need of significant re-assessment.

Step five shows how the previous four steps impact the abortion and euthanasia issues. After examining the individual and cultural harms arising out of these issues, Life Principles shows ways in which we can begin to heal the culture.

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I. Defining the Human Person

An incomplete definition of "person" can adversely affect individual persons and the culture. Such an incomplete notion of "person" can lead to bias or prejudice, or even worse, to the negation of "person" in particular individuals or even whole groups. The cultural consequences of this range from confusion and depression, to inequality, and even violence. It is therefore imperative that we move beyond merely nominal definitions of "person."

Definitions begin with a subjective component, a labeling, so that we might know the datum (the given) which is signified by a particular word. In this case, we look to the data signified by the word "person," and we see that it refers, evidently, to a being of human origin. Of course, this is an abstract generalization from a wide range of experiences. This generalization begins at childhood with associations made between the word "person" and the child's experience of particular phenomena. If we are speaking to children and we want to teach them what the word "person" means, we try to impart this range of appearances to them in the hopes that they can abstract a general category into which these different appearances can fit. "Look, Johnny, there's a person, a man. There's another person, a baby. And another person, a woman." After a while, Johnny gets the point and begins to see that "person" signifies a wide range of appearances that have a human origin. The gender, the race, the stage of development is not of particular consequence to "person," but having a human mother and father is. At this point, the child has formed a nominal definition. He knows what the human community generally means by "person." It is, at this point, still a subjective definition. This is suitable for the child, but rather insubstantial for courts, legislatures, and those having the power to create prejudice or even proscribe rights.

Before we begin the three-fold process of achieving an objective definition, the reader would be well reminded that what we are accomplishing here is a process of discovery, not decision. We are trying to get to the nature of something, a nature which exists in its own right without help of any other human being's intellect or defining power. A real definition is oriented towards discovering what it is, how it is, and what it was meant to be. It is not deciding these things.

We begin with inquiring into a thing's activities and powers for this moves us from the realm of appearances to the realm of nature. Appearances do not get at the nature of things; activities and powers do. We would not want to say that Joe is not a person because, as an adult, he has only achieved a height of four feet. Unusual as this might be, Joe may well display human activities or the information necessary to produce these activities. He may, therefore, have distinctive powers or activities, but an irregular appearance. Again, one would not want to ground Joe's personhood in how much he weighs, or the color of his skin, his eyes or his hair.

What are the distinctive powers of a human person? Here it will suffice to elucidate some of the powers that belong to beings of human origin. We can, of course, see powers which human beings have in common with other animals. We have various biological desires. We engage in metabolic activity, we grow, procreate, and avoid painful stimuli. We are conscious of things outside of us. We are capable of feeling pain. We experience pleasure when certain desires are fulfilled, and we have a capacity for self-movement which is grounded in desire. For example, our desire for sustenance (indicated by hunger) can cause self-motion when we spot a delectable fruit on the tree.

Human beings also have powers going beyond those of even the most highly developed, sentient, conscious beings. We do not want to engage here in a debate about whether higher vertebrates truly experience love or merely a high form of affection. We also wish to avoid the question of whether higher vertebrates are self-conscious or merely conscious. This would go far beyond the scope of this paper and accomplish little with respect to the definitional problem at hand. Hence, we restrict ourselves to what most philosophers would consider to be a reasonable belief: that humans alone seem to be preoccupied with the infinite, the unconditional, and the perfect.

Of course, we cannot say for certain that an eagle is not thinking about the infinite or about unconditional truth, love or beauty. If the eagle is, it certainly does not display frustrations about not having achieved the perfect, despair about not comprehending unconditional love, anger about not creating a perfect utopia, or frustration with the mathematical paradoxes of infinity. They do not seem to cut off their ears when their aesthetic senses cannot be perfectly produced on canvases. Their awareness of the sublime beauty of music seems rather to be an oblivion. They simply do not display behaviors indicating a concern for God or the Infinite itself, for ultimate explanation, or indeed, for the complete set of correct answers to the complete set of questions. It is therefore reasonable to believe that human beings are the unique possessors of these powers among the vertebrate species on this earth.

One is reminded of Bernard Lonergan's cryptic remark that when non-human animals run out of biological opportunities and dangers (food, shelter, reproduction, avoidance of pain and predators, and even affection) they fall asleep. When humans run out of biological opportunities and dangers, they ask questions, questions about their identity, their destiny, their ideals, about optimal love, unconditional truth, perfect social orders, optimal goodness, perfect beauty, and even the Infinite itself, the Sublime itself, the Mystical, the Creator, that is, about God. It is not simply the ability to ask questions, it is the ability to ask questions about what is ultimate, unconditional, perfect, infinite, absolute and eternal with respect to love, goodness, truth, beauty and being. This is what humans seem to uniquely do by comparison with the other members of the animal kingdom. It is reasonable to believe that these powers are unique to beings of human origin. They therefore constitute part of the objective definition of "person."

It should also be noted that the above activities are linked to the goals, ideals, and perfection of the human species. They represent the full perfection of human power. Aristotle called this the " to ti en einai" (the "what it was meant to be"). He called this the best definition of a species. For Aristotle, if one wanted to discover the nature of a thing, one had to uncover not only unique powers or activities but also those unique powers which represented the being in its most perfected state. This constitutes the second step in discovering the objective definition of a thing (i.e. the perfection of its power).

Philosophers and scientists have for years noticed that things come to their perfection by a sort of intrinsic guiding force. Today we would attribute this to genetics for living beings. Acorns seem to possess an intrinsic guiding force towards becoming an oak tree just as human beings seem to possess an intrinsic guiding force to becoming a pursuer of unconditional, perfect, and even infinite love, truth, goodness, beauty and being.

It is one thing to attribute to genetics an acorn's propensity to become an oak tree. It is quite another to attribute to genetics a human being's propensity toward the unconditional, perfect and infinite. Can the desire for the unconditional be attributed to a genetic mechanism which is essentially conditioned by quite precise qualitative and quantitative parameters? Can a human being's desire for the eternal and the infinite be explained by a mechanism which seems to have little "room" in it for the infinite and eternal? We will not attempt to answer these questions here. Suffice it to say that many thinkers believe that these uniquely human powers and desires arise out of more than a merely genetic guiding force. They seem to arise out of a guiding force that is free of strict qualitative and quantitative parameters, akin to what Aristotle would have termed a "soul." Whatever the case may be, human beings seem to have within them an intrinsic guiding force towards the unconditional, perfect, and even infinite which brings their powers to perfection. If this be a "soul" then human beings have a soul. If it is merely genetics, then it would be most interesting to probe and understand the genes for perfection, unconditionality, infinity and eternity.

Whether the guiding force be merely genetic, a soul, or both, the recognition of such an intrinsic guiding force constitutes the third step in discovering an objective definition. This third step then tries to describe real design, that is, real information within a thing about its perfection, its goal, its full actualization. It describes real information and a real power intrinsic to this information to guide a real being from a state of potentiality to a state of full actualization.

By combining the above three steps, we have the essentials of an objective definition of "person," namely, "a being possessing an intrinsic guiding force (whether this be merely genetic, a soul, or both) toward fulfillment through unconditional, perfect and even infinite truth, goodness, love, beauty and being."

This objective definition gives rise to a critical social principle about the interpretation of human "person." Inasmuch as any being should be treated with a dignity commensurate with its nature, persons should be treated with an unconditional dignity commensurate with their nature towards unconditional Truth, Love, Goodness, Beauty and Being. Such a dignity acknowledges the intrinsic worth of a human being. This unconditional dignity is the ground of inalienable rights, which acknowledges a universal duty to protect and promote this unconditional dignity.

In view of the intrinsic, unconditional dignity of the human person, we cannot in any way risk taking it away, for this dignity does not belong to us. It is intrinsic to the person. Furthermore, the harm done would be unconditional and absolute. Hence, we cannot risk violating the Silver Rule (Do no harm), for a harm here would constitute the destruction of unconditional dignity. Perhaps the greatest harm done to persons in human history has been to assume that a being of human origin was not a person (not possessing an unconditional dignity). We can see this with respect to slavery in ancient and recent times, genocide, and totalitarian political persecutions of every kind.

The only way of preventing these kinds of egregious harms is to make a critical cultural assumption: that every being of human origin be considered a person. Doubt about personhood should never be considered a warrant for denying personhood. An error in this regard could lead to every form of genocide, slavery and political disenfranchisement based not on certain evidence, but on doubt. If we as a culture do not together make this critical assumption, we risk the possibility of compromising unconditional dignity, causing irreparable individual harm, and seriously undermining our culture.

The Silver Rule (the absolute ethical minimum for any culture) could be irreparably violated, and the notion of inalienable rights rendered impotent. Given the above consequences, we must restate the critical assumption in even bolder terms: when in doubt, err on the side of assuming and according personhood to every being of human origin, whether or not the activities of that being manifest the above transcendental qualities of personhood. Failure to do this will simply cause us to repeat the errors of history.

II. The Way of the Heart, the Four Levels of Happiness

We now proceed to the second step in the Life Principles Program: the way of the heart. It is not sufficient to make the above critical assumption from a purely mental point of view. We must care about it enough to defend it and promote it. We need not only the heart's understanding, but also the heart's conviction (the disposition of our wills).

The forthcoming discussion of happiness/desire goes by many names. Many philosophers link the four levels of happiness to four distinctive human powers or to four levels of purpose in life. Some psychologists have called them fulcrums of identity, dimensions of self-actualization or markers of growth. Some theologians have identified them with phases in the journey of the soul, or levels of spiritual life. Sociologists, anthropologists, historians and writers have likewise classified them under still different names. The different names simply reflect different perspectives on the same reality.

One can see these four levels of happiness in the works of such diverse thinkers as Plato and Kierkegaard, Aristotle and Jaspers, Augustine and Buber, Viktor Frankl and Abraham Maslow, and Thomas Aquinas and Lawrence Kohlberg. One may also see them in the scriptures of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. Throughout the last 3,500 years, one can see them recur again and again in the cultures of North and South, East and West.

Common sense tells us that no sane person seeks unhappiness. Aside from masochism or significant depression, each of us chooses actions we hope will make us happy. Unfortunately, we are often disappointed. Finding happiness is not so easy. The world is full of options which promise happiness; some actually deliver, many do not. Some deliver fairly well for a while, but decay ultimately into boredom, emptiness or pain.

Ancient philosophers observed that types of happiness could be ranked. What they called "lower" forms of happiness had the advantages of being immediate, intense and apparent, but suffered from being short-lived and relatively narrow in focus. "Higher" forms of happiness had the advantages of being pervasive, enduring and deeply satisfying, but the disadvantages of being more abstract and less rapidly attained than lower forms, and frequently took more effort. Lower forms of happiness were generally more material or physical; higher forms were generally more emotional, intellectual, or spiritual. The lower levels of happiness tended to break down into one form of crisis or another. The very highest levels managed to avoid crises altogether.

Philosophers throughout the ages sought to draw their students away from the lower levels of happiness to the higher levels of happiness, appreciation of which generally requires some developmental maturity. They sought to train hearts and minds to prefer those forms of happiness which are deeper and more lasting over those which are superficial and intense, but short-lived.

The first and most basic level of happiness (in Latin, laetus ) comes from an external stimulus. It interacts with one or more of the five senses, gives immediate gratification, but does not last very long. A sensorial pleasure like an ice cream cone or a possession like a new car can impart immediate gratification from these stimuli. We will call this Happiness 1.

The second level of happiness, (in Latin, felix ), comes from ego-gratification. "Ego" in Latin means "I." This kind of happiness comes whenever one can shift the locus of control to oneself. Hence, winning, gaining power or control, or gaining admiration or popularity causes happiness. One feels as if one's inner world is expanding. Control relative to the outer world is enhanced. We call this level Happiness 2.

The second level of happiness does not exhaust the scope of human desire. As was noted above, we also desire love, truth, goodness, beauty and being. These desires initially manifest themselves as a desire to contribute. The second kind of happiness tried to shift the locus of control to the self. In this third level of happiness, we try to invest in the world beyond ourselves. We want to make a difference with our lives, our time, our energy and our talent. We call this level Happiness 3 (in Latin, beatitudo ).

Strange as it may seem, the third level of happiness still does not exhaust the scope of human desire, for as was noted above, humans not only desire some love, goodness, truth, beauty and being, they can also desire unconditional, perfect, ultimate and even unrestricted Love, Goodness, Truth, Beauty and Being. In the context of faith, one might call this the desire for God. But even if one does not have faith, one can treat it as an awareness of a seemingly unconditional horizon surrounding human curiosity, creativity, spirit and achievement. As noted, this particular desire differentiates humans from all other animals. We call this level Happiness 4 (in Latin, gaude) .

This Life Principles Program spends considerable time on these four levels of happiness because it is essential that one embrace Levels 3/4 in order to believe in and act on the definition of "person" mentioned in Section II. If someone is operating essentially out of Level 2 desires (ego driven and comparative) uncomplemented by Level 3/4 desires, a merely intellectual affirmation of the definition of "person" will probably be treated with little significance.

A person operating exclusively out of Level 2 desires will find it extraordinarily difficult to care about the intrinsic goodness and transcendental mystery of a person. They form their identify through comparisons which emphasize tangible characteristics while de-emphasizing intangible characteristics such as intrinsic goodness, lovability, and transcendent mystery. Hence, an essentially Level 2 perspective compels one to view "persons" in terms of exterior characteristics, talents, I.Q., potential for competitiveness, etc. People who possess less of these characteristics seem to be lesser persons . They seem to be less than fully human and fully alive.

In contrast a Level 3/4 perspective (oriented toward contribution, love and the common good) de-emphasizes the tangibility of comparisons by placing emphasis on the intrinsic goodness, lovability and transcendent mystery of a "person." Hence, when one affirms the definition of "person" (given in Section II) one is moved to protect, help, care for and enhance this good, lovable and mysterious being.

There are two other reasons for spending considerable time on the four levels of happiness. First, they can transform the entire direction of our lives. By intentionally developing Levels 3/4 one can move beyond a mode of crisis and problems in relationships (fear of failure, suspicion, jealousy, depression, emptiness, inferiority feelings, contempt, self-punishment, etc.). One can give a more purposeful direction to one's life and even become involved in the pursuit of the common good. The Life Principles Program develops these themes quite extensively.

Another reason for giving extensive coverage to these four levels of happiness arises out of the way they influence the ten major categories of cultural discourse. As will be shown, the way one views happiness will directly affect the way one views "love," "freedom," and "quality of life." Indeed, the culture's dominant view of happiness will also influence the way it interprets these major categories of self-interpretation. The culture's dominant interpretation of these terms becomes the pedagogy of the future, influencing not only children, but adolescents and adults.

III. Ten Categories of Cultural Discourse

The following diagram shows the natural progression of the heart's conviction about purpose in life to the culture's conviction about happiness and purpose in life.

The first notion to be affected by one's choice about happiness/purpose is "success." If I choose Happiness 3 to be my fundamental purpose in life, then I will very likely shape my view of success in life around it. This view of success will, in turn, influence my view of quality of life. I make judgments about my life every day. Are things going well? Am I progressing? Am I using my time well or am I just wasting my time? Are my talents being utilized, or are they underutilized? Notice how this view is linked also to my sense of self-worth. If I believe that I am underutilizing my talents and time, I will believe that I am underliving my life, which will cause me to underestimate my worth or value. Conversely, when I believe that I have a good quality of life, that I am using my time and talents to the full, that I am hyper-living my life, I will judge my worth and value in a way which gives spirit, creativity and energy.

This view of my self-worth will, in turn, affect my view of "love." We all know the cliche, "The person who does not love himself will be unable to love anyone else." Love may be defined as "gift of self." Therefore, the kind of love I manifest will be determined by the kind of self I want to give away. And the kind of self I want to give away will be determined by the kind of self I have appropriated through my view of purpose and success in life.

My view of purpose, success, self-worth and love will combine to influence my view of suffering. Everyone needs to see purpose in suffering (i.e., to see some good for self, others or the culture in that suffering). If we did not, we would become incurably depressed. A purposeless experience of pain and negation generally leads to a sense of bewilderment, depression and sometimes even despair. But if we see purpose in that pain and negation, if we see a positive horizon for self or others, we not only develop resilience, we can actually move beyond the suffering to new heights of freedom, commitment, love and self-transcendence. Suffering then, is frequently our most poignant moment of decision. The choice we make about it could steep us in bitterness or raise us to new meaning. It could close us to others and to the human community or it could open us to new horizons of the common good and common purpose. It could blind us to everyone else's needs, or it could lead us to a new vision of others, and to a new level of compassion. Suffering can change the whole course of our lives. It can shut us down or liberate us.

One's view of purpose, success, self-worth, love and suffering, in turn, influences one's view of ethics. If I, for example, have a Level 3 purpose in life (desiring to use my time and talents to contribute to as many facets of the world in as many ways as I can) I will likely have a corresponding Level 3 view of self-worth, love and suffering. This, in turn, will motivate me to acquire habits which will help me to achieve this contributory objective (and to avoid pitfalls to achieving it). The ancients called these good habits "virtues." The pitfalls they called "vices" or "deadly sins."

The more one loves contribution, and the people to whom one contributes, the more one will love the virtues (habits) that help to promote this. That same love will, in turn, make me more wary of the vices which threaten it. As will be explained, a Level 2 perspective of happiness, self-worth, love, and suffering will give rise to a more restricted view of virtue and vice than a Level 3 perspective. Similarly, a Level 4 perspective will give rise to an even more enhanced view of virtue and vice.

The combined viewpoint of purpose, self-worth, love, suffering and ethics now influences the notion of freedom. Freedom could be divided into "freedom from" and "freedom for." "Freedom from" tends to resist commitment. If, for example, I believe that my purpose and happiness in life will come almost exclusively from admiration, control and comparative advantage (without regard for the net positive effect I am having or the contribution I am making), I am likely to view freedom as something which will promote ego-gratification. Anything which will enhance my control, autonomy and admiration will be viewed as liberating. I will also view hindrances to control as disempowering. Hence, I will see freedom as escape from constraint and the promotion of independence. This promotion of independence can make me view others as problems. It can, therefore, make commitments seem like a form of servitude. Long-term commitments will seem particularly disempowering and disenfranchising.

Alternatively, "freedom for" views commitment as empowering. If, for example, I have a Level 3 purpose in life, I will be living essentially for the net positive effect I can make to others and the world. I will have certain objectives in mind to promote these good effects. These objectives form the basis of my commitments. Commitment, therefore, does not feel disempowering (as it does in the Level 2 perspective). It feels liberating. I do not wish to escape constraint, but rather to engage in whatever discipline is required to actualize my dreams.

"Freedom from" is, therefore, illusory. I may feel free, but that feeling comes at the cost of undermining my capacity to commit, which, in its turn, undermines my capacity to actualize my long-term goals. Again, my view of happiness/purpose affects my capacity for self-actualization.

Thus far, we have been looking at how the various levels of happiness/purpose influence an ' vision, desire, and conviction. Now, we turn to the effects of happiness/purpose on the ' . The culture (which transmits our societal values, virtues, and goals) is perhaps most influenced by the concepts of "person," "rights," and the "common good." The concept of "person" is the most important because the notion of "rights" and "common good" are directly dependent on it. The way the culture views "person" is the way it interprets "rights" and the "common good." Narrow notions of "person" lead to equally narrow notions of "rights" and the "common good."

As one moves through the four levels of happiness, one achieves greater appropriation of the objective definition of "person." Recall the definition from Section II: A "person" is "a being possessing an intrinsic guiding force (whether this be merely genetic, a soul, or both) toward fulfillment through unconditional, perfect and even unrestricted truth, goodness, love, beauty and being." This defining characteristic reveals both the fulfillment of a person and what differentiates humans from other animals. It therefore marks the point of transition between the genus of animals and the human species.

As one moves up the various levels of happiness, one becomes more and more disposed to seeing and acting on this objective definition. If, for example, I believe that my purpose in life is to optimize the contribution I can make to others (Level 3) and to involve myself in ultimate Truth, Love, Goodness, Beauty and Being (Level 4), then I would not only readily agree with the above objective definition of human person, I would be free to act upon it.

Conversely, if I view the purpose of life almost exclusively from a Level 1 perspective (pursuit of pleasures and external possessions) and/or a Level 2 perspective (pursuit of ego and comparative advantage), the above objective definition of "person" might seem to be quite bewildering. Even if one did acknowledge the truth of this definition, one would not be particularly inclined to act upon it, for the pursuit of ultimate Love, Truth and Fairness would be antithetical in many respects to ego-gratification, pleasure seeking, and comparative advantage.

Let us now return to the chart. The notion of "person" determines the way in which "rights" and "common good" are interpreted. If we reduce "persons" to merely material entities such as clumps of chemicals (Level 1), we are likely to bias our view of rights in favor of those who have or can enhance their material pleasures and possessions. Even though we may think of ourselves as far more high-minded than that, it might be interesting to check our feelings. If, for example, I believe that the goal of human life is to achieve sensual pleasure and possession, it will be difficult for me to resist the corollary opinion that the poor do not have as good a life as I. This could lead to the consequent opinion that the poor have less worth than I, which, in turn, could lead to the further implicit opinion that they are intrinsically inferior. Even if I cannot bring myself to hold these opinions consciously and explicitly, they could nevertheless be subconsciously present, resisting or working against my conscious opinions every moment of every day. One can never be sure where or how they will manifest themselves.

I do not mean to be accusatory here. Indeed, I do not even want to suggest that Level 1 individuals would not have the best intentions toward their fellow human beings. I only suggest that if a Level 1 individual begins to act merely out of subconscious convictions, he may be inclined to confuse poverty (or even middle class status) with inferiority. This could lead to inadvertently denying personhood to a whole group of people whom he implicitly considers to be inferior. This would clearly affect his interpretation of "rights."

If, for example, a Level 1 individual interpreted a fall in Joe's productivity to be a decline in his intrinsic worth, he might believe that an investment in Joe's health insurance would not be a good use of the world's limited resources. If Joe were to subsequently find himself in the hospital, this Level 1 individual might finally (reluctantly) resign himself to the fact that even though Joe had some worth earlier in his life, his ratio of production to consumption now manifests little of that former state. He might convince himself that it is best to take the most practical way out (i.e. a denial of fundamental health care to Joe). Though it is a hard decision to make, it is socially responsible for it avoids wasting our limited natural resources.

A Level 2 view of personhood can lead to similar proscriptions of rights. Rights would now be conditioned by status, respectability, achievement or power. Again, I am not suggesting that Level 2 individuals would explicitly proscribe the rights of people with lower levels of status, respectability or achievement. However, such individuals might implicitly believe that people of lesser status have a significantly lower quality of life. This bias could affect one's judgment about the worth or worthiness of individuals who are in ambiguous or vulnerable states of life (e.g., the preborn or the elderly). When this occurs, many citizens could easily err on the side of denying rather than according rights.

The ambiguities surrounding the abortion issue also play into this implicit bias. Here we see that the unborn child's right to life comes into conflict with a woman's right to privacy and custody over her own person. The right to life must be considered more fundamental than the right to privacy. For the former is the condition necessary for the possibility of the latter. If one is dead, one's right to privacy is a moot question. Why is it then, that many today have subordinated the less fundamental right to privacy to the more fundamental right to life? It arises out of the so called ambiguity surrounding the personhood of the unborn child. The unborn child does not " look like an adult." She has not actualized much of her full potential. The concrete manifestation of status, power and achievement is so much lower than her mother's, she seems to be "less of a person." Furthermore, she is dependent on her mother, which from a Level 2 point of view, could be construed to be a lack of status and therefore a lack of personhood. This dependency could also be viewed as an imposition on her mother which she has no right to do. An individual with ambiguous personhood should not be allowed to impose on an individual with clear personhood. A Level 2 perspective makes all of these judgments to proscribe the right to life seem tenable.

A Level 3 prospective, however, would be oriented towards the intrinsic goodness, dignity, and lovability of the other . The contributory nature of this perspective moves one to take careful account of the dignity and mystery enshrouded in this being which does not yet have an impressive physical appearance, achievements or status. This Level 3 perspective is free to attend to the presence of a unique guiding force towards fulfillment in unconditional and perfect Truth, Fairness, Love, Beauty and Being. At the very moment one attends to this mystery, one cannot deny its existence, for it seems to characterize beings of human origin.

Thus if one holds to a Level 3 view of happiness, one will probably be inclined to hold to a Level 3 view of "person" and "rights." If one sees the intrinsic dignity, lovability and transcendent mystery in individuals, one will not be inclined to judge their worth on the basis of high achievement, high popularity, high status, etc. One would then be inclined to accord rights to individuals on the basis of this intrinsic dignity . Therefore, this perspective would assess the unborn child's personhood (and therefore her right to life) as more fundamental than the mother's right to privacy.

It should again be emphasized that those who have subordinated the right to life to the right to privacy have frequently done so with good intentions. A Level 2 cultural bias has allowed limited autonomy, physical appearance and actualization to be interpreted as a limit to personhood. This, in turn, has hidden the presence of the guiding force toward unconditional fulfillment which characterizes beings of human origin. As a result, a human person's inalienable right to life has been unwittingly denied. This critical error of omission must be corrected to preserve not only the dignity and rights of countless human mysteries but also the culture itself (see Section IV).

Finally, if I hold to a Level 4 view of happiness, I am likely to hold to a Level 4 view of personhood, in which case I would be likely to see the presence of the intrinsic guiding force toward unconditional, unrestricted, and perfect Truth, Love, Fairness, Beauty and Being in every being of human origin. Level 4 goes beyond Level 3 by attending to both creation and the spiritual in human beings. Most Level 4 individuals would hold that the guiding force toward fulfillment in unconditional and perfect Truth, Love, Fairness, Beauty and Being is a transcendent soul. Many religious traditions would hold that this soul is made in the very image of God and that all of us, therefore, are linked to each other and to God in our spiritual origins. We are co-responsible for each other as if we were "spiritual kin." The Level 4 perspective, then, acknowledges more than the intrinsic goodness and dignity of beings of human origin. It acknowledges our inextricable interrelationship and interdependence. This interrelationship should not be viewed so much as an obligation to be co-responsible, but rather as an invitation to allow this co-responsibility to motivate a love that will eventually give rise to eternal joy in our interrelationship with one another. Thus, Level 4 goes beyond the acknowledgment of dignity to the eternal interrelatedness and lovability of all beings of human origin. Such dignity, interrelatedness (kinship) and lovability illicit a transparent and spontaneous judgment of eternally significant personhood which flows into a conception of not only inalienable but eternal rights grounded in an eternal dignity and destiny.

What does this do to my view of rights? Everything. I no longer assume that human essence and dignity are present in a being of human origin; I can actually connect with it through the very transcendental qualities I recognize in myself. I desire to attribute transcendental dignity to this transcendental being of human origin. Such transcendental dignity grounds and guarantees, with remarkable force, the words of Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all (beings of human origin) are created equal and are endowed with inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...." To the degree that we recognize Level 4 within ourselves (our fulfillment and happiness coming from the five transcendentals), we will recognize our own spirit. And to the degree that we recognize our own spirit, we will connect with and recognize the spirit of others. At this point human rights truly are, in Jefferson's words, "self-evident," and so is the equality upon which they are premised.

There is another area of rights affected by the levels of happiness: the reciprocity between rights and responsibility. In Levels 1/2 the emphasis tends to be either on possession or ego-gratification, both of which are oriented towards oneself. If Levels 1/2 are the only grounds of my identity, it will tend to bias my understanding of rights towards what is owed to me rather than what I owe to others. As a result, I might tend to forget the responsibility entailed by every claim to rights. If this view of rights becomes culturally normative, it could undermine the common good, for the common good requires at least some Level 3 commitment. We cannot seek the good for all of us unless we are committed to seeking a good beyond ourselves (Level 3).

Levels 3/4 help us to be free for the common good. Therefore, any view of rights which embraces a Level 3/4 perspective will see rights as protecting and promoting this common good. Rights are not merely a vehicle to protect me , they are a vehicle to protect all individuals in the culture.

Rights viewed from a Level 3/4 perspective hold to the intrinsic value of each individual, while holding to the necessity of the common good. In this way, the good of the whole is neither exaggerated to the detriment of the individual nor the good of the individual exaggerated to the detriment of the whole.

Hopefully, this brief look at the interrelationship among the ten major categories controlling both individual and cultural self-conception and self- actualization has shown how the four levels of happiness and personhood affect rights, the common good and the culture. If we truly want to protect inalienable rights of all citizens, if we truly want the common good to supplant mere egocentric interests, if we really want our quality of life to be enhanced by generative and transcendental concerns; indeed, if we really want our beliefs about ethics and freedom to influence the way we live, then we will have to come to the best possible understanding of "person," and then, using true freedom of the heart, live out of that understanding so that our common welfare may flourish.

IV. Application of the Above Principles to the Life Issues

Up to this point I have discussed how abortion and euthanasia cut short the full manifestation of the individual human mystery in our midst. Inasmuch as each of us contributes positively to the emergence of the history of our families, friends, community and even the world, these actions have negative "world changing" consequences. The negative consequences of these actions also extend to the culture (the medium through which societal values are transmitted). As long as we continue to engage in and entertain the possibility of these negative actions, we will continue to maladjust our culture's views of "person," "ethics," "freedom," "quality of life," "rights," and "the common good." This maladjustment could eventually cause the culture to move towards Levels 1/2 with such intensity that Levels 3/4 could be altogether forgotten. The net result would be that our culture would call us to our lower selves and to forget our higher selves, making it the undoing of the human mystery.

A. Application to the Abortion Issue

Let us first examine the cultural consequences of the abortion issue. The following diagram indicates the cycle of individual and cultural harms resulting from abortion.

Such a cycle of individual and cultural harms could occur from any one of a number of negative issues (e.g., racism, avoidable poverty, accepted political oppression, etc.). Hopefully the elucidation of the deleterious consequences of the life issues will alert readers to the same cycles occurring in these other issues.

As noted above, abortion cuts short the full manifestation of the individual human mystery in our midst. Any culture which attempts to legalize a harm to an individual must provide some rationale for why we (as members of the culture) should act contrary to our intuitive recognition of the Silver Rule (Do no harm).

People who operate at Level 3/4 (i.e., contribution towards others and the common good) will not knowingly legislate a harm. If abortion is a harm to individual human persons, to the dignity of the individual, and to the culture, one must ask why so many Level 3/4 people seem to be indifferent to or even in support of it. In my view the answer is linked to four contemporary opinions about human personhood and rights. These opinions cannot be justified from any objective, systematic point of view. Perhaps worse, they lead to a myriad of new individual and cultural harms which go far beyond the abortion and euthanasia issues. Each of these opinions redefines "person," and "inalienable rights" in a more subjective, Level 1/2, and potentially destructive way. It does not matter whether these opinions (redefinitions) have been forwarded intentionally or unintentionally, the fact is that they are currently doing harm and will inevitably do more harm in the future. Therefore, they must be immediately corrected and re-grounded in a systematic and objective base. They may be summarized as follows:

1. "Person" is divorced from human life

2. "Person" is linked to a specific quality of life or development

3. The redefinition of "inalienable rights"

4. The subjectivization of the intrinsic ordering of rights

As explained in the previous section, these re-definitions will influence the other cultural categories which will, in turn, focus the culture on Level 1/2 concerns (possessions, power, and ego-gratification) to the exclusion of Level 3/4 concerns (contribution, the common good, love, intrinsic human dignity, and the Ultimate). This refocusing of cultural concern opens the way for other harms arising out of exaggerated Level 1/2 desire which, in its turn, opens the way to additional cultural harms, etc.

The first three of the above four opinions may be examined together. The first opinion (divorcing "person" from human life) emerged shortly after the Court's ruling in Roe v. Wade. The proponents of abortion had to divorce personhood from human life because they could not deny that a human life existed at conception. It was clear that the conceptus is a life (for it is metabolizing, growing, sub-dividing, surviving, etc.). It is also clear that the conceptus is uniquely human, for it possesses the complete genetic structure of a unique human being and even the sequencing of cell divisions leading to that fully-developed human being ( See Jerome Lejeune, M.D., in Junior L. Davis and Mary Sue Davis v. Ray King, M.D., dba Fertility Center of East Tennessee, Third Party Defendant "Custody Dispute Over Seven Human Embryos" August 1989 ). Therefore a single-cell embryo is a unique human life. Prior to the Roe v. Wade decision a "person" was implicitly identified with a "unique human life." However, in order to justify abortion, human personhood was distinguished from "unique human life." It became almost commonplace to hear that "even though a unique human life was present, human personhood was not." Since it was further contended that rights belonged only to "persons," it fell to the courts to define when personhood occurred. This had two effects: 1) it undermined the objective ground of human personhood, and 2) it gave the courts the unprecedented power to decide when personhood (and inalienable rights) exist.

This separation of human personhood from human life opens a cultural Pandora's box. If rights do attach themselves to persons, and there is no objective ground of the definition of "person" (i.e., the occurrence of a unique human life), then personhood (and inalienable rights) could be defined in any arbitrary way that a legitimate or powerful authority wills it. By changing the definition of "person" one can define who should get rights and who should not. By losing the objective ground of personhood (i.e., the occurrence of a unique human life) one automatically undermines the inalienability of the right to life and all other subordinate rights.

We have given our most important social possession (the source of our freedom and protection within society) over to an external authority. Will it stop merely with the abortion issue? Could a court some day define person as a "being who has reached the age of reason," or a "being who has a reasonable degree of independence," or a "being with a minimum 98 I.Q.," or even a "being incapable of being depressed"? Why not? The Roe v. Wade decision and its aftermath has allowed any of the above subjective definitions of "person" to become a future reality. According to the Court, we are no longer intrinsic rights holders at the moment our unique human life occurs. We are extrinsic rights recipients at the moment the Court declares our personhood to exist.

The Constitution of the United States has always rested on an implicit definition of inalienable rights declared to be self-evident in The Declaration of Independence. This notion of inalienable rights seems to have been implicitly recognized by important members of the U.S. judiciary throughout our short history. But the occurrence of the Roe v. Wade decision combined with an ever increasingly positivistic jurisprudence seems to have obscured the intrinsic nature of our right to life and its objective ground. If the culture should become dominantly Level 1/2 it could lead to any arbitrary proscription of any inalienable right to any individual or group based on any subjective characteristic which the cultural authority deems to be indicative of personhood.

The fourth of the above opinions (the subjectivization of the ordering of rights) must be examined separately for it concerns a different aspect of the Court's reasoning in the Roe v. Wade decision. Abortion has been justified by placing the clear liberty rights of a mother over the "unclear" life rights of the unborn human being. Once the personhood of the unborn human being had been negated or thrown into question, it was simple for proponents to add that the mother's right to custody over her own body carried greater weight.

This reasoning runs contrary to good philosophy and common sense. It also contradicts the implicit ordering of rights used by the legal system throughout the last two hundred years. This implicit ordering of rights has not always been strictly adhered to (e.g., in the Dred Scott decision) but it has generally carried the day.

The right to life has, throughout history, been implicitly ranked above the right to liberty. This is certainly evidenced in John Locke's and Thomas Jefferson's lists which acknowledge the primacy of the right to life above the right to liberty. An objective criterion for this ranking can be taken from Kant's necessity criterion: "the condition necessary for the possibility of." If Right X is a condition of the very possibility of Right Y, then Right X should be considered to be objectively more fundamental than Right Y. With respect to the case under discussion, the right to life is clearly a condition necessary for the possibility of the right to liberty. If one is dead, one's right to liberty is irrelevant. Hence, the right to life should be considered objectively more fundamental than the right to liberty.

The Courts favoring of a liberty claim over a life claim seems prima facie to be a violation of the above objective criterion. Then why did the Court propose it? It seems that the ambiguous status of the unborn human being's personhood allowed the court to think that the clearer status of the mother's liberty claim outweighed the less clear status of the unborn human being's life claim. This reasoning is unsound because clarity is a matter of subjective apperception. If a person declares, "A 2 + B 2 = C 2 is not clear to me," does this mean it is not true? Should the truth of the Pythagorean Theorem be subject to a particular person's clear apperception of it? Clarity cannot replace necessity as a criterion for resolving rights conflicts. The former is subjective, the later, objective.

There is yet another reason why clarity is not a decisive criterion for the resolution of rights conflicts; namely, moral necessity (the obligation to minimize harm in accordance with the Silver Rule). When one is unclear about what to do in a moral dilemma or a rights conflict, one ought to err in favor of the least possible harm. A court would not be convinced by a nuclear power plant's case resting on the following reasoning: "We were unclear about whether core meltdown would take place. So, in the absence of objective evidence to the contrary, we took a chance and killed 200,000 people." The abortion case is not much different: "We were not clear about whether an unborn human being is a "person;" therefore, in the absence of any clear mitigating criterion, we took a chance and killed eight million of them."

Whenever we have used the "clarity argument" to subordinate objectively more fundamental rights to less fundamental ones, we have caused great civil disorder. The Dred Scott decision subordinated Afro-Americans' liberty rights to others' property rights. Whenever this invalid subordination is done, it undermines the Silver Rule which leads to a perception of injustice which, in turn, leads to civil strife. This, in its turn, leads to greater violations of the Silver Rule until the fundamental error is rectified. How can it be rectified? Through a three-step program:

1. Refusing to subordinate an objective criterion (a necessity criterion) to a subjective criterion (the clarity criterion).

2. To resolve rights conflicts through use of the necessity criterion whenever possible.

3. In times of uncertainty, erring in favor of according rights and personhood. To do otherwise could deny the right to life not only to individuals but whole groups.

How did our legal system get to the point of forgetting these seemingly elementary objective criteria? I believe it has arisen out of a fundamental failure to study objective legal criteriology in the areas of personhood and inalienability. These issues seem so abstract and philosophical that they are frequently relegated to (and hidden in) the domain of the philosophers. Since more positivistic methods of legal argumentation cannot replace objective criteriology in the areas of "person," "inalienability" and "rights," law professors and the judiciary will have to resurrect the study of criteriology to prevent not only needless prejudice and death, but also civil strife and the decline of the culture.

Why will the culture experience further decline if the above error is not rectified? Two major reasons may be adduced. First, it was mentioned above that once the definition of "person" is detached from "occurrence of a unique human life," any subjective redefinition can occur (e.g., an I.Q. of 98 plus).

Secondly, legal definitions of "person" find their way back into the definitions of the other nine categories of cultural discourse (happiness, success, quality of life, love, suffering, ethics, freedom, rights, and the common good). Why? Because what becomes legal becomes normative, and what becomes normative becomes moral. For example, if the legal system should define personhood in terms of "degree of independence from others," then less independent people, by implication, would have to have a lesser quality of life. This lesser quality of life, in turn, would further imply less opportunity for happiness and success, which could be viewed as a life of intrinsic suffering. Should we allow these more dependent people to come into a world filled with such a burden? Would it not be the more "loving" and "virtuous" thing to head their inevitable misery off at the pass. Would it be "ethical" to use scarce resources to benefit them when there are other more independent people in the world? It seems that the "common good" would dictate that we ought to subordinate the life rights of the more dependent to the liberty and property rights of the more independent. At this juncture the life of the more independent has been deemed by the culture to be more worthy than the life of the more dependent. Any number of negative social consequences, including genocide, can follow from this reasoning.

This reasoning, with all of its negative consequences, abounds in our contemporary culture. It can be found in current journals of ethics, law, and medicine, and heard daily on the radio and television. If the culture as a whole is going to move out of this mindset, it must recover the above principles of personhood and make a concerted effort to bring itself back to Level 3/4 thinking. Perhaps the reverse is more appropriate. We must first recover Level 3/4 thinking so that our hearts will be disposed to looking for the objective truth about personhood. This is precisely the purpose of the Life Principles Program.

B. Application to the Euthanasia Issue

The euthanasia issue may be viewed in a similar way. As you may know, the Hemlock Society and other organizations have, in the last five years, proposed Initiatives and legislation for physician-assisted suicide and lethal injection for persons gripped by terminal illness. This is a significant departure from previous legislation which attempted to allow people freedom from unwanted life-prolonging measures. In the past the medical profession was faced only with the decision of giving a person extraordinary life prolonging treatments. Current initiatives and legislative efforts would now allow physicians to administer life ending drugs to people who would not die of natural causes. Physicians would now be able to administer death as well as healing. The following diagram indicates the cycle of individual and cultural harms which would follow upon these new political initiatives.

What are the individual harms which would follow upon these initiatives? First, the literature of pain and symptom management indicates that the vast majority of requests for physician assisted suicide are reversed when pain and depression are treated adequately. 1 Since pain and depression can be relieved in the vast majority of cases of terminal illnesses 2 to the satisfaction of patients, then most suicide requests would be reversed if medical professionals were simply able to carry out their functions with the benefit of modern technology. Therefore, these suicide requests, if honored, would have been terrible mistakes in the view of those making them. Even Derick Humphry (co-founder of the Hemlock Society and author of Final Exit , the controversial "self-help" suicide book) admits that "only a small percentage of terminal physical pain cannot be controlled today." 3 In the same vein, Dr. Pieter Admiraal (an anesthesiologist, clinical pharmacologist and leading Dutch advocate of legalized euthanasia) admitted to Dr. Carlos Gomez that pain control and alertness can be achieved in practically all cases given sufficient effort and sophistication on the part of all involved and that euthanasia for pain control is therefore both unnecessary and unethical. 4

The second harm to individuals arising out of euthanasia is the potential for abuse. The relatives and friends could convince a vulnerable dying person to "move on with the inevitable" in order to facilitate an inheritance. A physician could persuade a patient to avail herself of assisted suicide or lethal injection if he were angry or felt she was unjustifiably consuming medical resources. Marginalized or less wealthy people could be persuaded by health insurance costs to select assisted suicide more often than their wealthier counterparts. No matter how many protections we try to build into the law, they can all be accidentally or intentionally circumvented to the detriment of the dying person.

The third harm to individuals is concerned with the possibility of involuntary euthanasia as The Report of Dutch Physicians on Euthanasia 5 makes clear. In Holland, the Dutch government report cited thousands of cases of involuntary euthanasia in 1990, initiated and carried out by doctors, without patient knowledge or request, because the doctors thought it appropriate. This, despite carefully thought-out, written safeguards supposedly ensuring patient control and fully informed consent. Evidently, given the Dutch experience, euthanasia appears to be uncontrollable. Their situation should have been a best-case scenario: a small country without significant racial conflict or economic pressure on the heath care system, with carefully constructed safeguards (much tighter than those proposed thus far in the English-speaking world). And yet, perhaps 1 in 10 deaths there is involuntary, at the hands of doctors. 6

Dutch physicians expressed a wide range of motives for perpetrating involuntary euthanasia: anger towards the patient, a belief in the unworthiness of the patient, the low quality of life of the patient, the declining condition of the patient, etc. The moral belief of physicians outweighed those of the patient. Since involuntary euthanasia is easy to cover up, the high incidence of it was not discovered until physicians admitted it in the Dutch Report.

My intention here is to show how individual harms can lead to cultural harms which in turn open upon even greater individual harms. What are the cultural harms arising out of the above three individual harms? Three cultural harms are of particular significance:

1. View the last months of life as wasted or insignificant.

2. The imposition of the duty to die.

3. Negative effects on the ten categories of cultural discourse.

The first cultural harm is connected with the devaluation of the last months of life. According to advocates of euthanasia, the last months of life can frequently be degrading and debilitating. Loss of autonomy, mobility and self-sufficiency can make a person feel that they are nothing but an encumbrance. The result is a severe decline in their feeling of self worth. If one is living simply for possessions, power, and ego- gratification, then loss of the ability to compete, to seek new opportunity or to be independent or autonomous could be viewed as the loss of all purpose and meaning in life.

People having a predominately Level 3/4 perspective frequently view the last months of life as the most poignant. From this perspective, loss of one's Level 2 potential can frequently lead to a heightened capacity for Level 3/4 activities (reconciliation, forgiveness, intimacy, generativity, reflection on the Ultimate, faith, sharing of personal wisdom, etc.) The patient is not the sole beneficiary of these activities. Children, friends, colleagues, churches, and community organizations can sometimes benefit more from these activities than the dying person. An over-zealous policy of honoring suicide requests could not only deprive Level 3/4 people of the most poignant time of their lives, it could also hinder Level 2 individuals from freely and naturally moving to Level 3/4. The dying and those surviving them could be adversely affected for generations.

The devaluation of the last six months of life can also undermine the ability to deal with suffering. If one feels that life is fundamentally possession, power, ego-gratification and autonomy, the loss of these things in terminal illness will be interpreted as meaningless suffering. Deprivation of the powers necessary for one's whole purpose in life will seem to be an irreversible decline in dignity. If one equates suffering with nothing more than self-deprecation, one will be severely tempted to end it quickly.

A Level 3/4 perspective, however, is open to higher meaning and good in suffering. For example, suffering can be viewed as a means of purifying one's attitudes to reach a deeper, more humble, and more comprehensive capacity for love, wisdom, faith, and the pursuit of the common good. This is manifest in many of the sayings of our popular wisdom: "There is no cheap wisdom." "Wisdom comes from assessing both success and hardship." "There is no love without humility." "One's ego must be tempered in order to give oneself away." "Idealists can become ruthless without humility and love."

From a Level 3/4 point of view, then, suffering initiates the process of humility, depth, and new perspectives which opens upon a greater capacity for wisdom, love and faith. This enables us to optimize the positive contribution we can make with our lives.

When one is terminally ill, one is virtually compelled to accept help from one's friends. At first this can feel disempowering and humiliating. However, this difficult task can have profound benefits. If one aims to purify one's love through this seeming disempowerment, it shatters the pretense of the ego and allows one to grow in the humility so necessary for love. This, in turn, helps one to enter into a community of interdependence. By fostering humble interdependence, suffering orients both individuals and groups toward common cause, common ideals, and a community of mutual respect and care.

The predominant obstacle to these Level 3/4 ideals is our inability to accept help . Yet when one allows others to help, one finds oneself growing in freedom and contributing more to unity, community and the common good. If we do not stem the tide of euthanasia, we may lose this all-important benefit of suffering. What will the next generation think of love then?

The second cultural harm arising out of recent euthanasia initiatives may be termed "the duty to die." Proponents of assisted suicide and lethal injection frequently claim that it is their right to have this option . Those who do not want this option, it is contended, do not have to avail themselves of it. Why take it away from those who want it? Is this not another instance of pro-lifers unjustly interfering in the lives of others?

The answer to these questions lies in what by now is an old socio-political and legal clichè: "One person's option is another person's duty ." This clichè correctly acknowledges that every new option carries with it an implicit or explicit duty. Once society legalizes the option of euthanasia, certain groups within the society might feel that it is not simply an option but a duty. Vulnerable people could be pressured to avail themselves of an option that they would not have otherwise wanted. What could be the source of this pressure? Feelings of being a burden to their family, a burden to society, a burden to the doctor, an illegitimate consumer of resources, etc. In short, people can feel obligated by an option if others or the society suggest that it is the moral or appropriate thing to do. The new option opens the way for a new duty imposed on those who would formerly not have been inclined to even think about suicide.

The people who would be most vulnerable to this new unwanted duty would be those who have judged themselves to be less worthy to live. These would include the clinically depressed, the marginalized or economically deprived, those with low self- esteem, those who feel themselves a burden to their families, and those with a heightened sense of anxiety from their illness. Indeed, even those suffering from reversible depression 7 could also find themselves vulnerable. Hence a significant portion of the population could find itself pressured to commit suicide when they are not suffering, depressed, or desirous of the option.

The third cultural harm concerns the ten categories of cultural discourse. By now it must be evident that the legalization of euthanasia will inevitably affect our view of quality of life, suffering, and love. If we as a culture accept more incomplete and even superficial interpretations of these central concepts, we will collectively think less of ourselves. We will undervalue our intrinsic goodness, dignity and mystery which is grounded in our view of suffering, freedom and love. This undervaluation of our worth will lead to an undervaluation of the goals of our lives. This, in turn, will lead to an underestimation of the value of commitment (freedom) which will, in turn, lead to an undervaluation of the virtues necessary to achieve the deepest aspects of wisdom, love and faith. This will lead to an undervaluation and superficial understanding of ethics which, in the end, will lead to a superficial understanding of rights. The culture is perilously close to embracing a philosophy which does not understand the need for ethics and which views rights as "what is owed to me" instead of "what I owe to others." If this cultural philosophy becomes pervasive, it will open the way to a myriad of new individual and cultural harms, and the cycle will continue.

The goal of the Life Principles Program is to help the culture move out of this self-destructive momentum. If this is to be done, we must get our bearings. As a culture we must choose the meaning and level of discourse which we believe to be most indicative of our human potential (Level 3/4). Once this is done we must acknowledge the objective definition of "person" which is most consistent with this choice. When this is accomplished, it must be conveyed to our judiciary and our legislatures so that these two servants of the culture will not act counter to what we believe and hold about ourselves and our destiny. In communicating to our judiciary and legislature, we must indicate clearly what we mean by "person," "inalienability," "rights," and "the objective ranking of rights." We must further ask that all antithetical laws and court decisions be reversed. When this is accomplished, a healing cycle will ensue.

The future of the pro-life movement lies in a comprehensive education grounded in a profound grasp of life's purpose. The more deeply we grasp the meaning of life, the more profoundly we will grasp its value, dignity, and mystery.

• See, for example, Kathleen M. Foley, MD, "The Relationship of Pain and Symptom Management to Patient Requests for Physician-Assisted Suicide", Journal of Pain and Symptom Management , vol.6 (1991) p.290. "We frequently see patients referred to our Pain Clinic who have considered suicide as an option, or who request physician-assisted suicide because of uncontrolled pain. We commonly see such ideation and requests dissolve with adequate control of pain and other symptoms, using combinations of pharmacological, neurosurgical, anesthetic, or psychological approaches."
• Cancer and Palliative Care , bulletin of the World Health Organization, Geneva, 1990.
• Derek Humphry. Let Me Die Before I Wake: Hemlock's Book of Self-Deliverance For the Dying (1984) p. 76
• Carlos Gomez, MD, personal communication from Pieter Admiraal.
• Richard Fenigsen, MD, "The Report of the Dutch Governmental Committee on Euthanasia," Issues in Law and Medicine 7:339-344, 1991. I. Van der Sluis, MD, "The practice of euthanasia in the Netherlands," Issues in Law and Medicine 4:460-471, 1989. B.A. Bostrom, JD, "Euthanasia in the Netherlands: A model for the United States?" Issues in Law and Medicine 4:471-486, 1989. Medische Beslilssingen Rond Het Levenscinde (Medical Decisions About the End of Life), ISBN 90399011244, 2 volumes, The Hague, 1991.
• Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, M.D. On Death and Dying, New York: MacMillan, 1969. The whole of the chapters devoted to anger and depression are quite elucidating with respect to this issue.

Additional Info

• Author: Robert Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D.

Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D. "The Life Principles: A Model for Teaching the Philosophy of the Pro-Life Movement." University Faculty for Life (1999).

This article was originally published in LIFE AND LEARNING VIII: Proceedings of the 1998 University Faculty for Life Conference. Ed. Joseph W. Koterski, S.J., Washington, D.C.: UFL, 1999. The Center for Life Principles reprinted this article with permission. Users have permission to print and use this article for personal or educational purposes (1) as long as no information whatsoever is altered in any way; (2) as long as proper credit is given to the copyright holder (University Faculty for Life - see above), the author (Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D) and the Center for Life Principles; and (3) as long as the reprint is not sold for profit. Booklets of this article are available from the Center for Life Principles for $5.00 each. Please call toll free 1-877-345-LIFE or email [email protected] with requests. Visit the Life Principles website

• Publisher: University Faculty for Life
• Alternate: http://catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0503.html

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The Pro-Life vs Pro-Choice Debate

What does each side believe?

ThoughtCo/ThoughtCo

• Reproductive Rights
• The U. S. Government
• U.S. Foreign Policy
• U.S. Liberal Politics
• U.S. Conservative Politics
• Civil Liberties
• The Middle East
• Race Relations
• Immigration
• Crime & Punishment
• Canadian Government
• Understanding Types of Government
• Ph.D., Religion and Society, Edith Cowan University
• M.A., Humanities, California State University - Dominguez Hills
• B.A., Liberal Arts, Excelsior College

The terms "pro-life" and "pro-choice" refer to the dominant ideologies concerning abortion rights. Those who are pro-life, a term that some argue is biased because it suggests that the opposition does not value human life, believe that abortion should be banned. Those who are pro-choice support keeping abortion legal and accessible.

In reality, the controversies related to reproductive rights are much more complex. Some people back abortions in certain circumstances and not in others or believe such procedures should be " safe, rare, and lega l." Complicating matters is that there's no consensus on when exactly life begins . The shades of gray in the abortion debate are why the reproductive rights discussion is far from simple.

The Pro-Life Perspective

Someone who is "pro-life" believes that the government has an obligation to preserve all human life, regardless of intent, viability, or quality-of-life concerns. A comprehensive pro-life ethic, such as that proposed by the Roman Catholic Church, prohibits:

• Euthanasia and assisted suicide 
• The death penalty
• War, with very few exceptions

In cases where the pro-life ethic conflicts with personal autonomy, as in abortion and assisted suicide, it's considered conservative. In cases where the pro-life ethic conflicts with government policy, as in the death penalty and war, it's said to be liberal.

Pro-Choice Perspective

People who are " pro-choice " believe that individuals have unlimited autonomy with respect to their own reproductive systems, as long as they don't breach the autonomy of others. A comprehensive pro-choice position asserts that the following must remain legal:

• Celibacy and abstinence
• Contraception use
• Emergency contraception use

Under the Partial Birth Abortion Ban passed by Congress and signed into law in 2003, abortion became illegal under most circumstances in the second trimester of pregnancy, even if the mother's health is in danger. Individual states have their own laws, some banning abortion after 20 weeks and most restricting late-term abortions . 

The pro-choice position is perceived as "pro-abortion" to some in the U.S., but this is inaccurate. The purpose of the pro-choice movement is to ensure that all choices remain legal.

Point of Conflict

The pro-life and pro-choice movements primarily come into conflict on the issue of abortion . The pro-life movement argues that even a nonviable, undeveloped human life is sacred and must be protected by the government. Abortion should be prohibited, according to this model, and not practiced on an illegal basis either.

The pro-choice movement argues that the government should not prevent an individual from terminating a pregnancy before the point of viability (when the fetus can't live outside the womb). The pro-life and pro-choice movements overlap to an extent in that they share the goal of reducing the number of abortions. However, they differ with respect to degree and methodology.

Religion and the Sanctity of Life

Politicians on both sides of the abortion debate only sometimes reference the religious nature of the conflict. If one believes that an immortal soul is created at the moment of conception and that "personhood" is determined by the presence of that soul, then there is effectively no difference between terminating a week-old pregnancy or killing a living, breathing person. Some members of the anti-abortion movement have acknowledged (while maintaining that all life is sacred) that a difference exists between a fetus and a fully-formed human being.

Religious Pluralism and the Obligation of Government

The U.S. government can't acknowledge the existence of an immortal soul that begins at conception without taking on a specific, theological definition of human life . Some theological traditions teach that the soul is implanted at quickening (when the fetus begins to move) rather than at conception. Other theological traditions teach that the soul is born at birth, while some assert that the soul doesn't exist until well after birth. Still, other theological traditions teach that there is no immortal soul whatsoever.

Can Science Tell Us Anything?

Although there is no scientific basis for the existence of a soul, there is no such basis for the existence of subjectivity, either. This can make it difficult to ascertain concepts such as "sanctity." Science alone can't tell us whether a human life is worth more or less than a rock. We value each other for social and emotional reasons. Science doesn't tell us to do it.

To the extent that we have anything approaching a scientific definition of personhood, it would most likely rest in our understanding of the brain . Scientists believe that neocortical development makes emotion and cognition possible and that it doesn't begin until the late second or early third trimester of pregnancy.

Alternative Standards for Personhood

Some pro-life advocates argue that the presence of life alone, or of unique DNA, defines personhood. Many things that we don't consider to be living persons might meet this criterion. Our tonsils and appendices are certainly both human and alive, but we don't consider their removal as anything close to the killing of a person.

The unique DNA argument is more compelling. Sperm and egg cells contain genetic material that will later form the zygote. The question of whether certain forms of gene therapy also create new persons could be raised by this definition of personhood.

Not a Choice

The pro-life vs. pro-choice debate tends to overlook the fact that the vast majority of women who have abortions don't do so by choice, at least not entirely. Circumstances put them in a position where abortion is the least self-destructive option available. According to a study conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, 73 percent of women who had abortions in the  United States  in 2004 said that they couldn't afford to have children.

The Future of Abortion

The most effective forms of birth control —even if used correctly—were only 90 percent effective in the late 20th century. Today, contraceptive options have improved and even should they fail for some reason, individuals may take emergency contraception to prevent pregnancy.

Advancements in birth control may help to further reduce the risk of unplanned pregnancies. Someday abortion may grow increasingly rare in the United States. But for this to happen, individuals from all socioeconomic backgrounds and regions would need to have access to cost-effective and reliable forms of contraception.

• DeSanctis, Alexandra. "How Democrats Purged 'Safe, Legal, Rare' From the Party", November, 15, 2019.
•  Finer, Lawrence B. "Reasons U.S. Women Have Abortions: Quantitative and Qualitative Perspectives." Lori F. Frohwirth, Lindsay A. Dauphinee, Susheela Singh, Ann M. Moore, Volume 37, Issue 3, Guttmacher Institute, September 1, 2005.
• Santorum, Sen. Rick. "S.3 - Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003." 108th Congress, H. Rept. 108-288 (Conference Report), Congress, February 14, 2003.
• "State Bans on Abortion Throughout Pregnancy." State Laws and Policies, Guttmacher Institute, April 1, 2019. 
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Abortion is one of the most divisive issues in modern society, with strong opinions on both sides. At Americans United for Life (AUL), we believe in the sanctity of human life, and that every human being has inherent dignity and worth. That’s why we advocate for pro-life policies that protect both women and their unborn children . We’re working hard towards the day when all humans are welcomed in life and protected by law.

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At the heart of the pro-life view is the belief in the sanctity of human life. In opposing abortion, we acknowledge the humanity of the child in the womb which fuels our effort to protect the pre-born child’s life. From conception, the preborn human being has a unique and complete genetic composition derived from both the mother and the father. As early as five (5) weeks’ gestation, the preborn human being’s heart begins beating. The preborn human being begins to move about in the womb at approximately eight (8) weeks’ gestation.

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It is important to understand the reality of abortion: it ends a human life. Consider the impact of over 60 million human lives that have been ended. How many future presidents, sports stars, or cultural icons have been aborted? We will never quite know the impact of the reality of abortion because our potential as humans is so infinite. Abortion is not a simple medical procedure, but a life-changing decision that has significant consequences for women, their future families, and our society. In the United States, more than 60 million abortions have been performed since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in 1973. That’s 60 million lives that were never given a chance to live and make a contribution to society. We believe that this is a tragedy that must be addressed. Americans United for Life works in advocating for pro-life policies and programs that provide alternatives to abortion and support for women and their families.

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Moral foundations of pro-choice and pro-life women

Mariola paruzel-czachura.

1 Institute of Psychology, University of Silesia in Katowice, Grazynskiego 53, 40-126 Katowice, Poland

2 Penn Center of Neuroaesthetics, Goddard Laboratories, University of Pennsylvania, 3710 Hamilton Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA

Artur Domurat

Marta nowak.

3 Healio Institute of Psychotherapy in Katowice, Bazantow 35, 40-668 Katowice, Poland

Associated Data

The materials, data, and code are available at https://osf.io/793cr/?view_only=None . The study was preregistered at https://aspredicted.org/i9fa8.pdf .

Opinions on abortion are more polarized than opinions on most other moral issues. Why are some people pro-choice and some pro-life? Religious and political preferences play a role here, but pro-choice and pro-life people may also differ in other aspects. In the current preregistered study ( N  = 479), we investigated how pro-choice women differ in their moral foundations from pro-life women. When the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ) was applied (i.e., when declared moral principles were measured), pro-life women scored higher than pro-choice women in loyalty, authority, and purity. However, when women were asked about moral judgments indirectly via more real-life problems from the Moral Foundations Vignettes (MFV), pro-choice women scored higher than pro-life women in emotional and physical care and liberty but lower in loyalty. When we additionally controlled for religious practice and political views, we found no differences between groups in declaring moral foundations (MFQ). However, in the case of real-life moral judgments (MFV), we observed higher care, fairness, and liberty among pro-choice and higher authority and purity among pro-life. Our results show intriguing nuances between women pro-choice and pro-life as we found a different pattern of moral foundations in those groups depending on whether we measured their declared abstract moral principles or moral judgment about real-life situations. We also showed how religious practice and political views might play a role in such differences. We conclude that attitudes to abortion “go beyond” abstract moral principles, and the real-life context matters in moral judgments.

Graphical abstract

Supplementary information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-023-04800-0.

Banning the termination of pregnancy due to severe and irreversible damage to the fetus was approved in October 2020 in Polish legislation, which turned out to be one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe. Similarly, some American states have enacted new abortion restrictions in 2021 and 2022. Those changes provoked protests and showed how one moral issue, i.e., “the abortion problem”, may polarize societies. We already know that opinions on abortion were “always” polarized (Foot, 1967 ; Singer, 2011 ; Thomson, 1971 ; Watt, 2017 ), and they are also very stable (Kiley & Vaisey, 2020 ). Moreover, they are more polarized than opinions on most other moral issues (Baldassarri & Park, 2020 ; DiMaggio et al., 1996 ; Jones, 2018 ). Nevertheless, why are some individuals pro-life or pro-choice, and what characterizes those two groups?

Past research tried to answer these questions showing mainly how religiosity and political preferences shape the attitude to abortion. More religious and conservative people are usually more willing to declare pro-life (Barkan, 2014 ; Fiorina, 2017 ; Jędryczka et al., 2022 ). The abortion problem is indeed strongly related to religion, and religion is strongly related to politics (Jelen & Wilcox, 2003 ; Malka et al., 2012 ). When the religion is against abortion, for example, in the case of the Roman Catholic Church, the followers are usually pro-life (Jonason et al., 2022 ).

But moral judgments related to abortion are based mainly on the strength or salience of personal values (Rilling & Sanfey, 2011 ; Schwartz, 2007 ; Spicer, 1994 ), and religious or political preferences are just the indicators of those values (Koleva et al., 2012 ). That is probably why religious and political preferences were commonly studied as predictors of attitudes to abortion. However, one can approach the abortion problem from another perspective, i.e., look at it through the lens of moral foundations theory (Graham et al., 2018 ; Graham & Haidt, 2012 ). This theory, in its latest version, postulates six moral foundations, i.e., care, fairness, liberty (so-called three individualizing foundations), loyalty, authority, and purity (so-called three binding foundations) (Clifford et al., 2015 ).

The moral foundations theory and the abortion problem

Moral foundations theory (Graham et al., 2009 , 2013 , 2018 ; Haidt, 2001 ) was proposed to explain why moral beliefs vary so widely across cultures yet still show many similarities and recurrent themes (Haidt & Graham, 2007 ). The first version of the theory posited that people differ in evaluating the importance of five moral foundations: care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity (Graham et al., 2018 ). The care foundation (the opposite of harm ) relates to feeling empathy for the pain of others. Fairness (the opposite of cheating ) concerns sensitivity to justice, rights, and equality. Loyalty (the opposite of betrayal ) refers to the tendency to form coalitions and feel proud of being a group member. Authority (the opposite of subversion ) relates to a preference for hierarchical social interactions and feeling respect for, or fear of, people in a higher social position. Finally, the purity (previously termed sanctity ) foundation (the opposite of degradation ) refers to a propensity to exhibit disgust in response to incorrect behavior and reflects individual differences in concerns for the sacredness of values (Koleva et al., 2012 ). Care and fairness are individualizing foundations. They are person-centered and focus on protecting individuals, whereas loyalty, authority, and purity are conceptualized as binding foundations because they focus on preserving one’s group as a whole (Graham et al., 2009 , 2013 , 2018 ). In the last modification of the theory, the sixth moral foundation of liberty was added (Graham et al., 2018 ). A higher level of liberty means a higher need to be free in our choices and behaviors. Liberty is also an individualizing moral foundation.

Only two studies tested how moral foundations might be related to attitudes to abortion. In the first study, Koleva and colleagues (Koleva et al., 2012 ) found that purity (measured by the Moral Foundations Questionnaire – MFQ of Graham and colleagues) predicted being pro-life. Specifically, they conducted two studies involving thousands of participants and a variety of moral issues (among them: the abortion problem), and they tested if the endorsement of five moral foundations may predict judgments about these issues, also testing the role of political ideology (measured by self-assessment on a scale from very liberal to very conservative ), age, gender, religious attendance (i.e., frequent church attendance), and interest in politics. Regarding the abortion problem, only purity predicted attitude to abortion, next to conservative ideology and frequent church attendance. Despite the relevance of this result, this study focused only on declared preferences for moral foundations (i.e., used MFQ). We already know that those abstract preferences or principles do not always predict real-life decisions (Bostyn et al., 2018 ; Schein, 2020 ). For example, regarding the abortion problem, it was already found that some people, despite declaring they are against abortion, decided to help a close friend or family member seeking an abortion (Cowan et al., 2022 ). That is why we also need to study moral foundations more indirectly, for example, by asking about moral decisions close to real life. Additionally, Koleva and colleagues did not test the relevance of the liberty foundation, which was later added to the MFT (Clifford et al., 2015 ; Graham et al., 2018 ). Moreover, they tested only general attitudes to abortion (for example, not measuring the possible impact of the abortion law on the participants or their close others). Lastly, they conducted the study before the latest law changes in 2020–2022, which could also impact attitudes toward such an important social issue.

In the second study, Jonason and colleagues ( 2022 ) asked 255 women and men from Poland about their attitudes toward Poland’s ban on abortion. They showed that Catholics were higher on binding moral foundations (measured via MFQ) than non-Catholics and that Catholics perceived the new situation in Poland with less negativity, which led them to support the ban more than non-Catholics. These results are consistent with past findings, as generally, being religious and conservative is related to being pro-life, and religiosity and conservatism turn out to be linked to binding moral foundations (Kivikangas et al., 2021 ; Saroglou & Craninx, 2020 ). Despite the relevance of this study, it also focused only on declared moral foundations (i.e., MFQ) and did not measure liberty as a new moral foundation (Clifford et al., 2015 ; Graham et al., 2018 ). Moreover, it focused mainly on attitudes toward Poland’s recent ban on abortion. Finally, the two studies mentioned above analyzed the general population, so it is hard to make general conclusions about the differences between pro-choice and pro-life. One possible way to study this issue deeply could be by studying two samples of individuals who clearly define themselves as pro-choice or pro-life. We aimed to do this in the current research.

The current research

We aimed to provide deeper insights into the moral foundations among pro-choice and pro-life individuals. We wished to build on past work (Jonason et al., 2022 ; Koleva et al., 2012 ) in six ways:

• we used two measures of moral foundations that could allow more general conclusions about the differences between being pro-life and pro-choice as they measure moral foundations directly (MFQ) and indirectly (MFV). Specifically, we measured moral foundations not only by asking about the declaration of moral preferences (declared the importance of and attitude to abstract moral principles) using MFQ (Graham et al., 2009 ) but also by measuring participants’ assessment of immoral actors in concrete, real-life scenarios using MFV (Clifford et al., 2015 ). Measuring declarative abstract moral principles with MFQ makes sense; nevertheless, abortion is a common real-life problem involving concrete actions and choices to be made (Cowan et al., 2022 ; Maddow-Zimet et al., 2021 ). Because MFQ relies on respondents’ rating of abstract principles, it is tough to say anything about respondents’ moral judgment of concrete scenarios (Clifford et al., 2015 ). Moreover, those abstract principles do not always predict real-life decisions (Bostyn et al., 2018 ; Schein, 2020 ), e.g., some people, despite being against abortion (declaration of abstract principle), decide to help a close friend or family member who is seeking an abortion (Cowan et al., 2022 ). That is why we used MFV, an indirect measure of moral foundations based on real-life situations;
• by using MFV, we measured the new moral foundations of liberty, and to our best knowledge, we are the first to test the role of this foundation in the abortion problem;
• by using MFV, we were able to measure two types of care foundation, i.e., emotional and physical care, so this way, we could test the sensitivity to emotional or physical harm in our sample;
• we narrowed the sample to women. We did it for obvious biological reasons, i.e., women are more directly affected by the abortion rule than men. Past studies also show that our attitudes may be stronger if an object or issue may impact our lives more directly (Albarracín, 2021 );
• we decided to test two groups of women (i.e., pro-life and pro-choice). Past research (Jonason et al., 2022 ; Koleva et al., 2012 ) did not study such opposite groups; by this design, we could look for the clear differences between them;
• we measured attitudes to abortion in more detail than in past studies (Jonason et al., 2022 ; Koleva et al., 2012 ). Specifically, we asked women about their attitude to abortion in three ways: by direct question whether they are pro-choice or pro-life, by asking about their views on four detailed issues concerning the new abortion law in Poland, and by using a scale that helped us to measure Full and Conditional Abortion Support (see Measures section).

Following past research (Jonason et al., 2022 ), we hypothesized that pro-life women would have higher levels of binding moral foundations than pro-choice women. Because moral foundations measured by MFQ and MFV correlated positively in past research (Clifford et al., 2015 ), we expected to observe the same pattern of results for both of them.

The Research Ethics Committee of the University of Silesia in Katowice accepted the current study. The materials, data, and code are available at https://osf.io/793cr/?view_only=None . The study was preregistered at https://aspredicted.org/i9fa8.pdf . We report all measured variables in this study.

Participants and procedure

We preregistered a survey with a sample of at least N  = 300 respondents, n  = 150 women pro-choice, and n  = 150 women pro-life. Using G*Power 3.1.9.7 software suggested that we need to recruit two independent groups of ca. 150 participants, assuming alpha error probability of 0.05, power of 0.8, and low-to-medium effect size of 0.33 (of differences between groups on a dependent variable in two independent group comparisons). Because participants’ membership to one of two groups would be defined post hoc – based on the dichotomous question about support for abortion – and the allocation ratio to the groups was hard to predict a priori, we preregistered that if we collect more data in any of the two expected subsamples, we will include them in the analyses. We stopped the data collection when the smaller group had n  = 150.

Our online study was conducted during a specific time in Poland in 2021, just after the Polish government introduced the new abortion law. We want to highlight that it was a stormy time when many people went on the streets to express their support for women’s rights, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, so despite that, their lives were directly in danger. Like the study by Jonason and colleagues ( 2022 ), contrary to Koleva and colleagues’ ( 2012 ) study, we asked about a real-life problem, as abortion was the main topic in media, hospitals, homes, etc.

Women were invited to an anonymous online survey in Qualtrics using the snowball method via the University of Silesia’s website and social media platforms. Five hundred sixteen participants took part in the study. All participants had Polish nationality and spoke the Polish language. We excluded participants who did not agree to participate in the study after reading the instruction ( n  = 6), did not answer attention check questions ( n  = 3), and one man from the sample. We also excluded participants ( n  = 27) with too short (less than 3:30 min.) or too long (more than 28 min.) survey completion times, defined by logarithms outside the interquartile range of [ Q 1–1.5 IQR , Q 3 + 1.5 IQR ] 1 .

The analyzed sample consisted of 479 women, split into two groups: pro-choice women ( n  = 332, M age 26.34, SD  = 7.53) and pro-life women ( n  = 147, M age 27.84, SD  = 7.20). Among pro-life women, n  = 123 (83.7%) declared being Catholics, n  = 11 (7.5%) reported being atheists, and n  = 13 (8.8%) declared being other than Catholics (i.e., Buddhists, Protestants, other and not specified). Among pro-choice women, n  = 158 (47.6%) reported being Catholics, n  = 155 (46.7%) declared being atheists, and n  = 19 (8.8%) declared being other than Catholics (Buddhists, Judaists, Orthodox Catholics, Protestants, other and not specified). However, it is worth noting that 177 (53.3%) pro-choice women practiced religion, and 11 (7.5%) pro-life women were not religious.

Group check

Our two groups were distinguished by asking women if they were pro-choice or pro-life. However, to ensure that women correctly divided themselves as pro-choice or pro-life, we asked them about more detailed attitudes to abortion (see section Measures ).

Attitude to abortion

Women were asked about their attitudes to abortion in three ways. First, respondents answered a single question about whether they were pro-choice or pro-life (“If you had to define your own attitude towards abortion clearly, you are: pro-choice/pro-life”). This question was used to identify the two subsamples. Second, the participants expressed their views on four detailed issues concerning the new abortion law in Poland. The first question, “What is your attitude to the verdict issued by the Constitutional Court?” was answered on a scale from 1 ( I definitely do not support ) to 7 ( I definitely do support ) (variable: Attitude to New Rule in Table  1 ). The other three questions were about the potential impact of a new law on them personally (variable: Personal Influence in Table  1 ), on their close others (variable: Influence on Close Others in Table  1 ), and generally on other women (variable: General Influence in Table  1 ) and they were answered on a scale from 1 ( definitely negative ) to 7 ( definitely positive ). Third, participants read six statements about attitudes to abortion and evaluated to what extent they agreed with the statements using a scale from 1 ( I disagree ) to 5 ( I agree ). The first three statements were: “I support the full right to abortion, which is the inalienable right of every woman”, and “Abortion is a woman’s personal matter, and no one else can decide for her whether she should have an abortion or not”, “Abortion should be allowed regardless of the reason”. Averaged answers for these three statements created the index of Full Abortion Support (Cronbach α  = 0.92). Similarly, the following three statements: “Abortion should be allowed only if the pregnancy threatens the life or health of the mother ”, “I support the introduction of the full right to abortion, but only up to the 12th week of pregnancy”, and “Abortion is allowed only when we are sure that the child will be born with a genetic defect” were to create the Conditional Abortion Support index, however, due to its low consistency ( α  = 0.11), we decided to analyze them separately.

Descriptive statistics and differences between pro-choice and pro-life women in religious practice, political views, and attitudes to abortion

The numbers in brackets are the variable’s scales

Moral Foundations Questionnaire

We used a Polish adaptation (Jarmakowski-Kostrzanowski & Jarmakowska-Kostrzanowska, 2016 ) of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ; Graham et al., 2009 ) to measure the degree to which the participants endorsed five sets of moral intuitions (i.e., care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity) in moral decision-making. The scale consists of 30 items that measure the moral foundations in two ways: a relevance subscale (15 items) showing how important each one of the moral foundations is for a person, and a judgments subscale (15 items), which measures the extent to which people agree with various moral opinions connected with the different moral foundations. An example item for care is “It can never be right to kill a human being”; for fairness: “When the government makes laws, the number one principle should be ensuring that everyone is treated fairly”; for loyalty: “People should be loyal to their family members, even when they have done something wrong”; for authority: “Men and women each have different roles to play in society”; and for purity: “People should not do things that are disgusting, even if no one is harmed”. A 1 to 6 response scale was used for all items, where 1 was not at all relevant or strongly disagree , and 6 was extremely relevant or strongly agree . Responses were averaged to give an overall score for each foundation. Cronbach alphas were found to be moderate for care ( α  = 0.61) and fairness ( α  = 0.56) and high for loyalty ( α  = 0.77), authority ( α  = 0.76), and purity ( α  = 0.82).

Moral Foundations Vignettes

It measures moral foundations based on evaluating other people’s behavior violating them (MFV; Clifford et al., 2015 ). The randomized set of 21 vignettes was used in our study, three vignettes per moral foundation. Apart from using five classic moral foundations, it includes a liberty foundation and two types of care, i.e., sensitivity to emotional harm to humans or non-human animals (care emotional) and sensitivity to physical harm to humans or non-human animals (care physical). An example item for care emotional is “You see a woman commenting out loud about how fat another woman looks in her jeans”; for care physical: “You see a zoo trainer jabbing a dolphin to get it to entertain his customers”; for fairness: “You see a boy skipping to the front of the line because his friend is an employee”, for liberty: “You see a man forbidding his wife to wear clothing that he has not first approved”; for loyalty: “You see the US Ambassador joking in Great Britain about the stupidity of Americans” [changed into Polish Ambassador in Germany]; for authority: “You see an employee trying to undermine all of her boss’ ideas in front of others”; for purity: “You see an employee at a morgue eating his pepperoni pizza off of a dead body”. The 5-point scale was used from 1 ( not at all wrong ) to 5 ( extremely wrong ). We did translation-back-translation of MFV (see Materials at OSF). Cronbach alphas were satisfactorily high for care emotional ( α  = 0.88), fairness ( α  = 0.71), liberty ( α  = 0.72), authority ( α  = 0.71), and loyalty ( α  = 0.76), and moderate for care physical ( α  = 0.68) and purity ( α  = 0.56).

Religious practice

Participants were asked to evaluate their level of practicing religion on a scale from 1 ( I don’t practice at all ) to 8 ( I am a very practicing person ). Additionally, we asked about which type of religion they practiced (if they practiced any).

Political views

We asked participants two questions about their political views, one related to economic issues (“Please indicate on the following scale your political views relating to economic issues”) on a scale from 0 ( State participation should be very small ) to 7 ( State participation should be very high ), and the other one related to social issues (“Please indicate on the following scale your political views relating to social, cultural issues”) on a scale from 0 ( very conservative ) to 7 ( very liberal ).

Descriptive statistics and differences between pro-choice and pro-life women in religious practice, political views, and attitudes to abortion are shown in Table  1 . The two groups differed (Welch t-tests) significantly in practicing religion (lower among pro-choice) and political views on social issues (higher liberal views among pro-choice), but there was no difference between the groups in views on economic issues. Pro-choice and pro-life women differed in full support for abortion, meaning the two groups differed in their extreme views on abortion. Moreover, pro-life women had stronger beliefs that the new abortion rule in Poland would positively impact themselves personally, their close others, and women in general. In contrast, pro-choice women believed more that the new law would harm all women, themselves, and their close others.

Regarding conditional support, women pro-life agreed more with two statements allowing abortion conditionally when the pregnancy threatens the mother’s life or health and when one is sure that the child will be born with a genetic defect. Women pro-choice agreed more with the third statement allowing the right to abortion until the 12th week of pregnancy (Table  1 ).

Summing up, the observed differences, especially in full support of abortion, show that women accurately classified themselves into one of the two groups, and we can be sure that the groups indeed evaluate abortion from different standpoints (however, see the limitation section for elaboration on improving such classification).

Next, we run analyses to see if moral foundations measured in two ways (i.e., MFQ and MFV) correlated. As shown in Table  2 , we received positive correlations among analogous dimensions of moral foundations, replicating past results (Clifford et al., 2015 ).

Pearson correlations between moral foundations measured by MFQ and MFV

* p  < .05, ** p  < .01, *** p  < .001 two-sided.

Finally, we run analyses to see if the groups differ in moral foundations (ANOVA) and when controlling for political views and religious practice simultaneously (ANCOVA).

Preregistered analyses

Do pro-choice and pro-life women differ in moral foundations.

Yes. As shown in Table  3 , when we analyzed differences between groups (ANOVA) using the classical measure of moral foundations (i.e., MFQ), we found that pro-life women had significantly higher binding foundations than pro-choice women, i.e., loyalty (medium effect size), authority (medium effect size), and purity (large effect size). We observed a different pattern of results when using the MFV (with small effect sizes for all results), a more indirect measure of moral foundations. For binding moral foundations, only loyalty seemed to play a role here, i.e., pro-life women had a higher level of loyalty than pro-choice women. However, pro-choice women had higher levels of both types of care (i.e., emotional and physical) and liberty than pro-life women. Fairness, authority, and purity did not differentiate those groups using MFV.

Tests of effects in ANOVA and ANCOVA

* p  < .05; ** p  < .01; *** p  < .001. The rows contain tests of one ANOVA with moral foundation as a dependent variable and attitude toward abortion as a factor, and one ANCOVA, extending the ANOVA with the set of covariates: religious practice, political views on economic issues, and political views on social issues

Exploratory analyses

Do pro-choice and pro-life women differ in moral foundations when we control religious practice and political views.

Yes. When we controlled for political views and religious practice simultaneously (ANCOVA), we found no differences between groups regarding declared moral foundations (MFQ). However, in the case of real-life assessments (MFV), we observed the same pattern of results for care and liberty as when using ANOVA, but now loyalty did not differentiate these two groups. Additionally, we observed differences in fairness, authority, and purity in such a way that women pro-life had higher levels of those foundations than women pro-choice. All found effects were small.

Past research tried to explain attitudes to abortion mainly by looking into religious and political differences between pro-choice and pro-life people. However, attitudes to abortion may also be related to an individual’s moral views (Jędryczka et al., 2022 ; Jonason et al., 2022 ), and sometimes moral foundations may even be an as good predictor of attitudes to abortion as a religious practice or political conservatism (Koleva et al., 2012 ). In the current research, we looked into the problem of attitudes to abortion more deeply by studying, directly and indirectly, moral foundations among pro-choice and women pro-life women.

When we asked about moral foundations directly (using MFQ of Graham and colleagues, 2009 ), we confirmed our preregistered hypothesis that pro-life women have higher binding foundations than pro-choice women. This result is consistent with past findings (Jonason et al., 2022 ). However, we found a different pattern of results when measuring moral foundations indirectly, i.e., by MFV (Clifford et al., 2015 ). For binding foundations, only loyalty seemed to play a role here, i.e., pro-life women had a higher level of loyalty than pro-choice women. Regarding individualizing foundations, pro-choice women had higher care (physical and emotional) and liberty levels than pro-life women. Fairness, authority, and purity did not differentiate those groups when applying MFV.

Moreover, when we additionally controlled for religious practice and political views (ANCOVA), we found no differences in moral foundations between groups regarding declared moral foundations (MFQ). However, in the case of real-life assessments (MFV), we observed higher care and liberty among pro-choice (just like in ANOVA) and higher fairness, authority, and purity among pro-life. We conclude that religious practice and political views may explain differences between pro-choice and pro-life, but only in the case of declared moral foundations (MFQ) and not in MFV (when individuals make moral judgments about real-life behaviors). Because we found differences between pro-choice and pro-life women (whether we controlled religious practice or political views or not), we conclude that studying indirect moral judgments (i.e., using MFV) may reveal hitherto unknown “hidden” differences between pro-choice and pro-life women.

Specifically, our results show intriguing nuances in the problem of abortion as we found that pro-choice and pro-life women differ in declared abstract moral principles (MFQ) and sensitivity to violating those principles in real-life situations (MFV). On the one hand (i.e., when using the MFQ), women who were pro-life were the women who intensely cared about binding foundations, which was also related to their more vital religious practices and higher conservatism on social issues. It simply means that women who were pro-life cared more about binding foundations than pro-choice women, so they declared that they cared about being loyal, listening to authorities, and not violating the purity foundation, which is strictly related to religious sanctity (and indeed, this foundation’s one of the first names was even sanctity ) (Graham et al., 2018 ). Indeed, past studies showed strong correlations between religion and binding moral foundations worldwide (Saroglou & Craninx, 2020 ) and conservative political preferences and binding foundations (Kivikangas et al., 2021 ). Similar associations were found between five moral foundations, religiosity, political preferences, and acceptance of the new abortion rule in Poland (Jonason et al., 2022 ) or between preference for group-based hierarchy and pro-life (Osborne & Davies, 2009 ). When we controlled for religious practice and political views, the differences between pro-choice and pro-life women disappeared, so we can conclude that – at least for declared abstract moral foundations – being religious and conservative plays a central role in the abortion problem.

On the other hand (i.e., when using the MFV), we showed that this is only one part of the story. We know it because when indirectly measuring preferences for moral foundations, the same women (i.e., pro-life) had higher levels of only loyalty foundation when compared to pro-choice women. The importance of loyalty to the abortion problem is consistent with theory and past findings (Jonason et al., 2022 ). Higher levels of loyalty are related to being more religious and conservative (Saroglou & Craninx, 2020 ). The more surprising result is that authority and purity foundations did not play an essential role in the abortion problem when measured indirectly. This result contradicted past findings when moral foundations were measured directly (Jonason et al., 2022 ). It may be related to a different approach to measuring moral foundations by MFQ and MFV. For example, purity is more directly connected to religiosity in MFQ than in MFV, and their operationalization is slightly different (Crone, 2022 ). We suspect it is the most reasonable explanation for finding no differences here. However, when we additionally controlled for religious practice and political views, we replicated the higher level of care and liberty among pro-choice, but we also found a higher level of fairness, authority, and purity among pro-life. Future researchers could try to explain those nuances more deeply, e.g., by conducting longitudinal studies or using more complex measurements of religiosity and political preferences. We observe inconsistent patterns of results for binding moral foundations measured via MFV, so we should be more tentative about the interpretation and conclusions from our study. We need more studies on this issue to understand why we observed such inconsistency.

Regarding the individualizing moral foundations (MFV), pro-life women scored lower in physical and emotional care and liberty foundations than pro-choice women (also when controlling for religious practice and political views). Regarding care, it simply means that pro-choice and pro-life women gave similar declarations about how important it is for them to care about others (MFQ). However, they differed in indirect measures of care in such a way that pro-choice women had higher levels of care than pro-life women (MFV). These results are the most intriguing for us. Women being pro-life sometimes argue that they care about all life, so abortion should be banned. Nevertheless, we did not find confirmation of this in empirical results. Surprisingly, those women who were pro-choice had higher levels of emotional and physical care than pro-life women. It means that when making moral decisions about other people, pro-choice women were more sensitive to violations of care foundation or, in other words: they disliked the suffering of others more than pro-life women. According to some approaches in moral psychology, the foundation of care is the most critical, and people make their moral judgments mainly based on a simple question: Is anyone hurt? (Gray et al., 2012 ; Schein & Gray, 2018 ). Future studies are needed to explain those differences in care, looking for possible sources of them, maybe in the levels of empathy (Zaki, 2018 ), moral identity (Aquino & Reed, 2002 ; Paruzel-Czachura & Blukacz 2021 ), moral absolutism (Vecina et al., 2016 ), or more general attitudes to violence (Vecina et al., 2015 ).

As MFQ does not allow measuring the liberty foundation, we only studied its level using the MFV, and we found that pro-choice women had a higher level of liberty than pro-life women. The importance of liberty is consistent with theoretical assumptions of being pro-choice (Foot, 1967 ; Singer, 2011 ; Thomson, 1971 ; Watt, 2017 ), and it is the first result confirming empirically that, indeed, being pro-choice is related to highlighting liberty when making moral decisions about what behavior is right or wrong.

Some individuals may say they are pro-life or pro-choice because of their religious or political preferences. Indeed, we found significant relations between stronger practicing of religion, conservative views on social issues, and being against abortion. However, we also found this may be too straightforward to describe this problem because there are atheists and believers in both groups of women, i.e., pro-choice and pro-life. We need more studies to understand the complex attitudes to abortion, for example, by studying only a sample of atheists. It is also worth highlighting again that past studies showed that moral foundations might be as good a predictor of attitudes to abortion as religious or political views (Koleva et al., 2012 ). Because of the importance of the abortion problem in our everyday lives, we need more studies to understand possible differences between pro-choice and pro-life people beyond simple explanations that abortion is just a matter of religion or politics.

Our study is not free from limitations. First, we tested only one sample. There is a possibility that different samples (e.g., from other cultural or religious backgrounds) would bring different results. We cannot know to what extent the results are dependent on the Polish context and the abortion protests, and this is a limitation that needs to be addressed in future research. We need replications of our study, especially in diverse samples, including countries where the abortion law changed, similar to Poland. Attitudes to abortion may be sensitive to changes in law, which made thousands of women protest for their rights on the streets in the case of Poland. Second, we did not study whether being pro-choice or pro-life is moderated by individual differences. For instance, attitudes or moral judgments may depend on personality (Pratto et al., 1994 ). Does personality matter for the abortion problem, and if yes, how? (Jonason et al., 2022 ). Third, we also did not study how situational factors may impact attitudes toward abortion, and some research shows that this issue is worth future investigations (Bago et al., 2022 ; Bilewicz et al., 2017 ). Fourth, two compared groups were identified based on a direct question about their position on pro-life or pro-choice. To cope with false self-identification, we asked additional questions about attitudes toward the abortion problem and the new law in Poland. Admittedly, we confirmed that women correctly assigned themselves to the group for or against abortion (see results: group check). However, we did not avoid the problem related to the situation that some participants who claimed to be pro-life or pro-choice had more mixed feelings about the rest of the questions. We conducted additional analyses to understand this issue more deeply ( Supplementary Materials ). Specifically, we presented the percentages of participants’ answers within the two groups on the six statements expressing full or conditional support for abortion (Table S1 ). This table shows that most participants correctly assigned themselves to the group. However, there were participants whose feelings were mixed. Moreover, we conducted the hierarchical cluster analysis on the three statements expressing full support for abortion and observed that some participants do not belong to the two obtained clusters (Table S2 ). Because we did not preregister to drop such participants out, we did not do it. However, we recommend implementing better control of this issue in future studies to ensure that such groups are created properly. Fifth, we measured religious practice and political views by only single items. In future studies, researchers could use more complex measures of those variables, e.g., the Centrality of Religiosity Scale (Huber & Huber, 2012 ) or the Resistance to Change-Beliefs Scale (White et al., 2020 ). Sixth, it is worth noticing that the correlations between the factors estimated through the MFQ and the MFV are mediocre, or some correlate not exactly as the theory would expect. For instance, MFV authority correlates with MFQ fairness. Perhaps different results with MFQ and MFV might be caused by the imprecision of the instruments in measuring moral foundations. Lastly, there is also a possibility that different results would be obtained in non-WEIRD samples (that are White, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) (Henrich et al., 2010 ), as some research has suggested different patterns of moral judgments in non-WEIRD samples (e.g., Smith & Apicella 2022 ; Sorokowski et al., 2020 ; Turpin et al., 2021 ; Workman et al., 2022 ). Despite all the above limitations, we believe that because of our topic’s theoretical and practical relevance, our study brings an important puzzle to understanding polarization regarding the abortion problem.

Conclusions

We conclude that to understand the attitudes to abortion more fully, we must go beyond abstract moral declarations. Our research demonstrates that pro-choice and pro-life women differed in moral foundations when (a) they revealed abstract moral foundations (pro-life women cared more about loyalty, authority, and purity than pro-choice women) and (b) when they made moral judgments closed to real-life problems (e.g., pro-choice women were more concerned than pro-life women when the foundations of emotional and physical care and liberty were violated). Concerning the latest restrictions on abortion in many places worldwide, discussions about the abortion problem have become more common in our everyday lives. This issue touched many people so much that it sparked massive protests. Hence, it is essential that people are aware of these differences between pro-choice and pro-life women, and we definitely need more studies on this topic.

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

(DOCX 24.2 KB)

Author contributions

MPC and MN contributed to the study conceptualization. MPC and AD wrote the draft. MPC and MN contributed to data collection and data preparation. AD analyzed the data. All authors accepted the final version.

Data availability

Declarations.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

1 We did not pre-register dropping those participants out. However, when we repeated the analyses for the full sample, we observed the very similar values of Cronbach alphas, the same pattern of correlations and differences between groups, and similar p-values in the performed statistical tests.

Publisher’s note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Pro Life Essays

Election latest: Labour embroiled in gambling scandal - as dropped Tory candidate vows to 'clear my name'

A former Tory candidate who was dropped for betting on the date of the election has vowed to clear his name, as the Labour Party and more police officers also become embroiled in the escalating scandal.

Tuesday 25 June 2024 17:48, UK

• General Election 2024

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Election betting scandal

• Labour candidate suspended
• Party to return £100,000 in donations
• Dropped Tory candidate vows to 'clear name'
• More police officers accused of betting on election date
• Explained: Will dropped Tory candidates still appear on ballots?
• Live reporting by Faith Ridler and (earlier)  Tim Baker
• Badenoch hits back at Doctor Who star
• Reform drops in new poll after Farage's Putin comments
• Starmer says children 'worried' about possible move into No 10

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Labour will return the £100,000 Kevin Craig has donated to the party under Keir Starmer's leadership, Sky News understands.

It comes after he was suspended as the party's candidate for the constituency of Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, having been placed under investigation by the Gambling Commission.

Sky News understands Mr Craig placed a bet that he would lose the contest next Thursday ( see 17.07 post ).

The other candidates in Central Suffolk and North Ipswich are:

• Charlie Caiger, independent;
• Tony Gould, Reform UK;
• Mike Hallatt, independent;
• Brett Alistair Mickelburgh, Lib Dems;
• Dan Pratt, Greens;
• Patrick Spencer, Conservatives.

Labour has suspended a parliamentary candidate after being told the Gambling Commission has launched an investigation into them, a party spokeswoman has said. 

Kevin Craig, the candidate for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, has been suspended from the party pending an investigation. 

It comes in the midst of a scandal over informed betting on the date of the election, with the Conservatives today withdrawing support for two candidates.

However, Sky News understands Mr Craig put a bet on the outcome of his seat - that he would lose - rather than the date of the election.

He is also understood to be the CEO of communications agency PLMR, which runs the Responsible Gambling Week initiative.

The seat had previously been held by Tory defector Dan Poulter.

A Labour spokesperson said: "With Keir Starmer as leader, the Labour Party upholds the highest standards for our parliamentary candidates, as the public rightly expects from any party hoping to serve, which is why we have acted immediately in this case."

It's 5pm - here's your teatime general election bulletin.

Today has had a heavy focus on the Conservative betting scandal - but there's been plenty more for us to sink our teeth into.

• The Conservatives have announced they will no longer be supporting the two candidates being investigated over placing bets on the election date;
• Laura Saunders and Craig Williams will still appear in on their respective ballots - but won't be supported by the party; 
• Mr Williams has since shared a video statement, claiming he "committed an error of judgement, not an offence" and insisting: "I intend to clear my name" ;
• Meanwhile, a war of words has erupted between women's minister Kemi Badenoch and Doctor Who actor David Tennant . The actor had said he wished Ms Badenoch would "shut up" while accepting an accolade at the British LGBT Awards;
• In response, the minister said: "I will not be silenced by men who prioritise applause from Stonewall over the safety of women and girls."
• Labour, meanwhile, has announced plans to tackle knife crime ;
• Sir Keir appeared at an event with actor Idris Elba as they discussed introducing a long-term strategy to tackle the issue;
• Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper has taken part in an hour-long debate with Conservative Home Secretary James Cleverly , taking in both legal and illegal migration;
• The minister said he does not "envisage" a Tory government leaving the European Court of Human Rights, despite the PM's threats to do so;
• And Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has opened up about looking after his disabled son in an interview with Beth Rigby .

Don't forget, Politics Hub With Sophy Ridge is back tonight at 7pm.

And if you're heading home from work, you might also be interested in today's Electoral Dysfunction , all about that photo of Sir Keir and his wife enjoying a Taylor Swift concert at Wembley.

Wales is a Labour heartland, but it's clearly in the sights of other parties during this election campaign.

Reform UK even launched its manifesto in a town in the south of the country, Merthyr Tydfil.

Although Wales has its own parliament and makes most of its own decisions, they still elect MPs who stand in Westminster.

Sky's Wales reporter Tomos Evans explains how the cost of living, steel industry and nuclear energy will be key issues for voters.

Our live poll tracker collates the results of opinion surveys carried out by all the main polling organisations - and allows you to see how the political parties are performing in the run-up to the general election.

It shows a drop in support in recent days for Labour and the Tories - with a jump for Reform and the Liberal Democrats.

Read more about the tracker here .

Last night, actor David Tennant urged Kemi Badenoch - the minister for women and equalities - to "shut up" as he accepted the celebrity ally accolade at the British LGBT Awards.

Accepting the trophy, the Doctor Who star said "we shouldn't live in a world" where "acknowledging everyone has the right to be who they want to be" should merit an award.

But "until we wake up, and Kemi Badenoch doesn't exist any more", he said he was happy to receive it.

"I don't wish ill of her - I just wish she would shut up," he said of Ms Badenoch.

He went on to say Pride is a "family affair" for him, adding: "We have skin in the game."

But Ms Badenoch has now responded to his comments, saying: "I will not be silenced by men who prioritise applause from Stonewall over the safety of women and girls."

Posting on X, she described him as a "rich, lefty, white male celebrity who can't see the optics of attacking the only black woman in government by calling publicly for my existence to end".

"Tennant is one of Labour's celebrity supporters," she added. "This is an early example of what life will be like if they win."

By Alix Culbertson , political reporter

The Conservatives have withdrawn support for two candidates who are being investigated over placing election bets.

There are strict rules around gambling.

Section 42 of the Gambling Act 2005 deals with cheating and says a person commits an offence if they cheat at gambling or do "anything for the purpose of enabling or assisting another person to cheat at gambling".

It adds: "It is immaterial whether a person who cheats improves his changes of winning anything, or wins anything."

Cheating is defined as an "actual or attempted deception or interference in connection with the process by which gambling is conducted, or a real or virtual game, race or other event or process to which gambling relates".

Someone found guilty of cheating at gambling can be imprisoned for a maximum of two years and/or fined, or six months in prison for a lesser offence.

Betting with insider knowledge is also not allowed as an MP, with the MPs' code of conduct prohibiting members from "causing significant damage to the reputation and integrity of the house".

Craig Williams, who has been dropped by the Tories as a candidate over betting on the election timing, said he had "committed an error of judgement, not an offence".

He insisted: "I intend to clear my name".

In a video statement shared on X, the candidate for Montgomeryshire and Glyndwr said he "remains on the ballot paper" for the election on 4 July.

After being dropped by the Conservative Party, Mr Williams will likely stand as an independent candidate in the constituency.

"I committed an error of judgement, not an offence, and I want to reiterate my apology directly to you," he says.

"I am co-operating with the routine inquiries for the Gambling Commission and I intend to clear my name."

Mr Williams is one of two Conservative candidates the party has withdrawn support for in the wake of the scandal, the other being Bristol North West hopeful Laura Saunders.

A Conservative Party spokesperson said: "As a result of ongoing internal enquiries, we have concluded that we can no longer support Craig Williams or Laura Saunders as parliamentary candidates at the forthcoming general election. 

"We have checked with the Gambling Commission that this decision does not compromise the investigation that they are conducting, which is rightly independent and ongoing."

The other candidates in Montgomeryshire and Glyndwr are:

• Jeremy Brignell-Thorp, Green Party
• Oliver Lewis, Reform UK
• Glyn Preston, Lib Dems
• Elwyn Vaughan, Plaid Cymru
• Steve Witherden, Labour

And those standing in Bristol North West are:

• Caroline Gooch, Lib Dems
• Darren Jones, Labour
• Scarlett O'Connor, Reform UK
• Mary Page, Green Party
• Ben Smith, SDP

A new voter intention poll, carried out by JL Partners, suggests Reform might be falling back in support.

The pollsters asked 2,005 adults in Britain for their opinion between Friday last week and yesterday.

It was on Friday that Reform leader Nigel Farage said the West had "provoked" Vladimir Putin into invading Ukraine - a move that was condemned widely across much of the UK political spectrum.

The results show Reform support down three percentage points compared to the week before, sitting at 15%.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, are up two points and Labour are up one.

JL Partners never showed Reform as having more support than the Tories, as some pollsters have done.

By Tom Cheshire , online campaign correspondent

There are two ways to reach voters online: pay for your adverts to end up in front of them - or produce content yourself that gets attention.

Throughout the election, we've been tracking the first of those. Labour have been the big digital spenders, with the Conservatives second, and then everyone else a very distant third.

But throwing money at it doesn't necessarily fix the attention problem. 

And some of those spending the least are getting the most interactions, with the Reform UK party doing by far the best.

Reform is also seeing the most page growth, with 32,000 new followers.

The Conservative Party by comparison has seen much slower growth, just 0.08%. 

That's only 596 more people clicking follow over the course of the election, speaking to a spluttering campaign.

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