For example: “The legal conventions tell us that the law recognizes a right in X against Y only where Y has a duty to X, and X may decide whether or not to hold Y to the Imagine page after page of argumentation such as this and you can grasp that this approach to rights language is not religious or historical. Rather, the typical form of argument in defense of this view of rights consists of assertions that, it is hoped, will be met with understanding and agreement in the audience that is hearing or reading the assertions. They are also not historical in that they do not rely upon a particular historical narrative regarding the development of rights language as a key component of the grounding of such language. It should be noted that these “interest” and “choice” approaches to thinking about rights are not religious, in the sense that they do not point to God as the source of rights.
This can be “finessed” by introducing the notion of protecting rights for these human beings through One key consequence of this view is that infants and mentally incompetent adults cannot be rights-holders.
Edmundson says that this view of rights is the one most commonly at work in the practices of legal officials in the developed Western world. In this view, “nothing counts as a right unless it has an assignable right-holder, and no one counts as a right-holder unless she holds the option of enforcing or waiving the duty correlative to the The function and purpose of rights language, for this theory, is very clearly to promote individual autonomy. The Choice Theory of rights is slightly different. But it is clear that the most common use of rights language in this line of thought would be in regard to self-aware human beings. An implication of this is that “only beings capable of having interests are candidate Edmundson notes that by itself this is somewhat vague there is plenty of room for debate about what sorts of entities could be construed as having interests: animals, fetuses, social groups, inanimate objects, and so forth. For the Interest Theory, rights serve to foster the interests of the rights holder. Edmundson outlines two main variations on this approach to rights, the Interest (or Benefit) Theory and the Choice (or Will) Theory. William Edmundson’s Introduction to Rights provides an effective summary of the approach to thinking about rights that seems to be most common in modern, liberal societies. They say, “We need to advance the cause of reproductive rights!” or “I support a woman’s right to choose!” But how well grounded is this use of rights language? A careful examination leads to troubling questions. Pro-choice advocates, generally speaking, love to use rights language. Human beings are very resistant to change, but change does happen. I recognize, of course, that it is highly unlikely that the left will give up its support for abortion-but it was also highly unlikely at earlier times in history that slavery would come to an end or that women would gain the right to vote. The dam is holding back the truth if truth were to come rushing in, then the whole landscape of the culture wars would be transformed. If the cultural left could recognize its error in engaging in othering to support abortion, then it would be like a dam breaking. The previous chapter addressed moral progress in American history this chapter focuses on rights language. The two Achilles’ heels of the cultural left are: a faulty understanding of moral progress and a faulty use of rights language. In this book I am placing so much emphasis on abortion because it is a key element in the culture wars that has great potential to transform American society for the better. Different people are grasping different aspects of the truth.
The situation is like the famous parable of the blind men and the elephant. But those on the right side of the culture wars, though they are correct on the topic of abortion, may have faulty views on issues such as immigration, protection of the environment, support for possession of assault rifles, and so forth. The pro-choice way of thinking is analogous to the pro-slavery position, in that both arise out of unrecognized and indefensible othering of human beings. In my view, we are in a situation that is parallel to the debate over slavery before the Civil War.
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