“I can only imagine how you feel,” I wrote. “I really think it’s more than cliche to say that men should be humble about this matter.”
About 36 hours later, over my morning coffee, I saw an article on The Times website about men and abortion, and I read this passage:
Paul Noble, 57, a retired Illinois high school teacher, grew up in a “very white, very Catholic” community in suburban Chicago. He said he had learned from those around him that he had to be “pro-life”.
His perspective changed during his sophomore year of college in Wisconsin. He was a resident assistant at his dorm at the time, and a young woman came to him for advice. “She sat down and immediately started crying. She said, ‘I don’t know what to do. I’m pregnant,” said Mr. Noble. She explained to him that her boyfriend had broken up and that having a baby was not an option.
“I was just a little crazy listening to her talk,” Mr. Noble said. “This feeling washed over me — I don’t know if it was shame or humility — and I remember thinking to myself, ‘Why did I think I had the right to have an opinion on this subject?'”
He is of course entitled to an opinion. Men have a role in reproduction, a role in families, a role in communities. And it is foolish to think that individuals should develop moral beliefs and make political judgments only on matters that most directly and immediately affect them. That’s not how democracy works, that’s not how human nature works, and that’s not how societies work.
But he recognized something important, something essential, namely that he would never be able to fulfill a potential life, with all the fear, pain, sacrifice and difficult decisions that often accompany that process. In our culture, he would probably never feel the level of responsibility for a child that so many people expect mothers to take on immediately and happily and forever. The commitment to him was vastly different from the commitment to his fellow student. That did not rule out an opinion, but it certainly forces ‘humility’.
I love that he uses that word. I wish it was in mind for more of us – for all of us. I wish Judge Clarence Thomas felt a little humility as he elevated his and his scheming wife’s regressive vision for our country above a majority of American values. I wish his most conservative Supreme Court colleagues—who would “prefer to legislate American law as they think it should be, even when ignoring a long-standing precedent,” as David Leonhardt noted in The Morning— newsletter in The Times – get to know themselves again with it.
“The arrogance and impertinence of the opinion is breathtaking,” wrote Linda Greenhouse in The Times, referring to Roe’s turnaround, and she’s right. Regardless of the flaws of the Roe decision itself, it provided US law for: half a century, where culture shifted, opportunities for women expanded, and the science of coping with unplanned and unwanted pregnancies advanced. a precedent That long lasting, with ripple effects That broad, business.
Bret Stephens also commented in The Times on Friday’s seismic court ruling: “To me, the word that comes to mind is arrogance. Supreme arrogance.” It’s no coincidence that he and Linda, occupying different places on the ideological spectrum, landed on the same term.
I’m talking specifically about humility and arrogance in the context of Roe, but I also think and speak more broadly than that. In our political battles, in our personal lives, we all have to think and consider the limits of our understanding. We should all accept that the world does not exist to reflect our preferences or validate our prejudices. It’s richer for that. And peace depends on such acceptance.