The Life Issues & the Witness of Walker Percy

Walker Percy’s fiction and especially his philosophical essays serve as an antidote to the often facile, shallow, and dishonest propaganda typical of pro-abortion advocacy. They are beautifully written, insightful, entertaining, and not least life-affirming.

Walker Percy

In January of 1988, fifteen years after Roe v. Wade, Walker Percy, doctor, novelist, philosophical writer, Catholic convert, and father sent a letter to the New York Times in which he articulates his position against abortion. The letter was not published. It should be noted, however, that the Times had published an earlier op-ed by Percy (1981) which was arguably more balanced than the later letter. In it he took pains to point out the faults and foibles of both sides of the abortion controversy.

In any serious consideration of the abortion controversy, then or now, various issues emerge. In looking at Percy’s engagement with it over his professional career, I have singled out five for focus here: 1) the scientific facts regarding human conception; 2) the view of the fetus as person or as something less; 3) names, naming, and, more broadly, nominalism as a philosophical viewpoint; 4) scientism vs. science (and, integral with it, human dominance over nature); and, not least, 5) the concept of the “greater good” for society relative to abortion. They are all relevant to Percy, they are all interrelated and, to vary a well-worn analogy, the parts are best understood in relation to the whole. What is evident also is that these issues cannot be separated from the sanctity of human life that Percy strongly affirms. The documents upon which the following discussion draws include correspondence, essays, interviews, and in particular Percy’s last novel, The Thanatos Syndrome.

In the 1988 letter to the Times, Percy presents a viewpoint that clearly the editors found objectionable. He begins by establishing the basis for his position on two related issues—one religious, the other scientific. In typical Percy fashion, he concedes in advance that these arguments are convincing only to those on one side of the debate:

Thus, while it may be argued that in terms of Judeo-Christian values individual human life is sacred and may not be destroyed, and while it is also true that modern medical evidence shows ever more clearly that there is no qualitative difference between an unborn human infant and a born infant, the argument is persuasive only to those who accept such values and such evidence.[i]

Virtually to concede the force of the religious argument in this case is one thing; after all, Percy knows full well that he is potentially engaging a largely secular, unbelieving audience. The gesture of conceding the scientific evidence carries with it, however, a sharp ironic edge, intended or otherwise. (It says in effect: “Do you really want to defend your position at the cost of denying scientific fact, normally one of your main supports?”) That aside, Percy steps up the argument by suggesting that those who advocate abortion for various socially “admirable” reasons—avoiding overpopulation, affirming a woman’s autonomy over her reproductive life, precluding the possibility of inflicting suffering on unwanted lives—are getting close to sanctioning consequences both unseen and dangerous.

This is where he really gets the attention of the Times editors. For he injects an analogy drawn from the period of the pre-Nazi Weimar Republic in Germany. The physicians, social scientists, and legal minds of that era who advocated getting rid of the unfit and the unwanted for the betterment of society are not unlike those present day “honorable institutions” including the Times who, while defending human rights in general, appear not to accept the “premise of the sacred provenance of human life.”[ii]

By extension, he says as warning, once a society allows for the elimination of “unborn and unwanted babies . . . it is not difficult to imagine an electorate or a court . . . who would favor getting rid of useless old people, retarded children, anti-social blacks, illegal Hispanics, gypsies, Jews . . .”[iii] Percy is careful in this passage to avoid intimating that abortion advocates are acting in the manner of the Nazis themselves. But it hardly mattered. As he observed in a 1989 interview, “Nothing offends the American liberal more than being compared to the German liberals of the Weimar Republic.”[iv]

To return to the scientific basis for opposition to abortion, the facts of the matter as to when human life begins are, of course, readily available. As Percy noted in his 1988 letter, one can only point them out; one cannot force another to accept them. That being said, however, we may have to conclude that those who ignore or dismiss the scientific facts around conception do so at the risk of abandoning reality and the whole sphere of rational, evidential discourse. If it is replaced by pure propaganda, we should not be surprised.

In any event, one typical document in the copious literature concerning human conception comes from the American College of Pediatricians. A brief quotation from an online article entitled “When Human Life Begins” provides a simple touchstone:

The American College of Pediatricians concurs with the body of scientific evidence that corroborates that a unique human life starts when the sperm and egg bind to each other in a process of fusion of their respective membranes and a single hybrid cell called a zygote, or one-cell embryo, is created.[v]

In confirmation, Dianne Irving in “When Do Human Beings Begin? ‘Scientific’ Myths and Scientific Facts,” writes, “A zygote is the beginning of a new human being (i.e., an embryo).[vi]

Percy in his Times op-ed piece had charged the pro-abortion lobby with intellectual dishonesty—perpetrating a “con job”—both in their refusal to acknowledge the beginning of human life at conception and by suggesting that the pro-life advocates based their position purely on religious dogma. While it is true that many such advocates are religious people, the charge is simply a red-herring designed to distract.[vii]

In another letter, a private one, that Percy wrote in response to a Dr. Charles A. Ely of Columbia University in New York, he emphasizes the fact of the “individual life of the human fetus.” This is a view the doctor had apparently called into question.[viii] His correspondent, concerned in particular with overpopulation, had introduced an analogy of pushing people out of a lifeboat. Pursuing that image, Percy suggests that the point of difference between him and Dr. Ely lies in both who gets pushed out and who does the pushing. It appears that the doctor was suggesting that not practicing abortion would require a drastic measure like that indicated by the analogy. Percy concludes that for his part, he would choose not to be a pusher but rather one of those, with Mother Teresa, who would help collect the unwanted victims. Otherwise, one would be participating in an action Percy characterizes as touched by the demonic.

It is true that a compelling case has been made many times over for the sanctity of human life from a religious perspective. One such is John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae or the “Instruction on Respect for Human Life,” by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.[ix] The position of the Catholic Church on abortion is not in question. It is perfectly clear. (And it is not unique to that body.) There are, of course, some in the Church who deviate from it and defy its teachings. For Percy, of course, those teachings are entirely defensible and compelling, even while recognizing that much of his audience takes issue with them. It is an audience—much of it secular, liberal, and non-Catholic—that by hook or by crook he hopes to reach, even if he will not be able to change minds to any significant degree. While reference is made here to those teachings, this essay is mainly focused, however, on the issues noted at the outset.[x]

To return to them, then, the beginning of human life is only one of those issues at play in the complex controversy over abortion and the life issues in general. One of the most important of these is personhood.

The significance of this concept is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than in a divorce case that ran its course in the late 1980’s in Maryville, Tennessee between Junior L. Davis and Mary Sue Davis. The import was more far-reaching than that circumstance might suggest. The couple was seeking resolution to their conflict over the disposition of seven embryos, frozen in liquid nitrogen, which had been produced in vitro by his sperm and her eggs. Prior to this dispute, the couple had tried over a period of several years to have a child without success in part through the agency of medical science. It seems uncontestable that their extensive, arduous efforts had put a strain on the marriage. The question that was given to the judge to decide in any event was whether the embryos were very young infants or common property.

As a key witness in the case, Dr. Jérôme Lejeune, an eminent French geneticist, was brought in to testify for the defendant, Mary Davis, who wanted to keep the embryos alive for future implantation. Her husband, however, did not. Mrs. Davis had referred to the embryos as “her children” and asserted that she would rather see them implanted in another woman’s body than for them to be allowed eventually to die. Dr. Lejeune, upon learning of the basic details of the case and agreeing to fly to the U.S. to testify, evoked the judgement of Solomon: “If the mother said that, the trial is already decided. The true mother is the one who wants the life of the child.”[xi]

Percy, of course, never read Lejeune’s account, but it is fair to say that he would have found it compelling. It was called to my attention by one of his most astute and profound interpreters, the late Marion Montgomery, who wrote two books, as well as several essays, treating of Percy and his work.[xii] To a portion of that commentary we will return. But as for Dr. Lejeune’s testimony, he speaks eloquently to the personhood of the frozen embryos both in the trial itself and in his account of it written afterwards, The Concentration Can. At one point under questioning by Mr. Davis’ attorney, he states:

LEJEUNE: . . . If I were convinced that those early human beings are, in fact, a piece of property, well, property can be discarded, there is no interest for me as a geneticist. But they are human beings, what they are, then they cannot be considered as property. They need custody.

Following a few other exchanges, the transcript continues with this one:

CLIFFORD: Just so I understand what you’re telling us, I take it, Dr. Lejeune, from your testimony that you would be opposed to abortion?

LEJEUNE: Oh, I dislike killing anybody. That is very true, sir.[xiii]

These brief extracts hardly do justice to the eloquence and passion of the doctor’s witness, let alone his expertise, all of which helped to win the day. Clearly, for Dr. Lejeune, there is no sharp distinction that can be made between an “embryo” and a “person.” The trial at which Dr. Lejeune testified ended in a decision in favor of Mrs. Davis. However, on appeal the decision was overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court (on June 1, 1992) in favor of Mr. Davis, who did not wish to be held liable for children potentially born from the frozen embryos.

As the late Charles E. Rice, legal scholar and professor in Notre Dame’s Law School, noted in an afterword to The Concentration Can, “The controlling legal issue in abortion is personhood,” which entails among others the right to life. “Legalized abortion in the United States is premised on the contrary holding of Roe v. Wade that the unborn child . . . is not a ‘person’ and therefore is not entitled to the rights to life and to the equal protection of the laws . . . .”[xiv] The crux of the matter exceeds, of course, the legal determination of who is entitled to protection by the Constitution and the laws of the land. The matter goes to the sanctity of human life. One accepts that premise or one does not. Clearly Dr. Lejeune’s witness was more than a description of the nature of conception and the determination of when life begins. It goes to the view—the vision—of that life itself as a unique, precious, created being.

Here is Montgomery on the high Court’s final judgement:

Given our emotionally charged moment, it will continue to be possible to reject or disregard, without refuting, the evidence of genetic science as presented by Professor Lejeune. At conception a unique life exists . . . The high court [by its judgement] thus holds the embryos to be property and not persons. It is an act whereby they reject reality through a gnostic feeling, rather than by the gnostic thought which one ordinarily attributes to the theorist, and in the interest of the convenience to the father in this instance.[xv]

Part and parcel with the reductionist view of the high Court that the embryos are merely property is a truncated view of chronology, one that is indeed characteristic of the mindset of abortion advocates in general. In short, the unborn has no vouchsafed futurity, no inherent right to a life beyond the womb (or for that matter in it). Thus, it is unthinkable that an embryo would be seen—that is, imagined—as a person to the abortion advocate. At a certain early stage, it cannot even be “seen” with ultrasound technology. The future simply must not exist for the fetus—or as they might say, “fetal tissue”—that has been marked out for destruction for whatever reason.

By contrast, it is, of course, the future that expectant parents are keenly, hopefully focused upon. For it is the future that will bring new life into their lives. It is unthinkable for them not to imagine what their child will look like, who it will favor, how they will be as parents, what name they should give to him or her which will somehow, they hope, designate this child as one of a kind and precious beyond the power of words themselves. The child will be signed by this name and, if the parents are Christian, will be christened as well in baptism with the sign of salvation.

We will take up the issue of names and naming shortly, but to reinforce Percy’s views on the current topic, we note an instructive passage from The Thanatos Syndrome, his last novel. The main plot centers on solving the mystery of certain strange behaviors being manifested in Feliciana parish, which turn out to be side effects of a scheme of social betterment through chemistry. The protagonist is Dr. Tom More, who appeared earlier in Love in the Ruins. He is now much chastened since spending time in jail for dispensing drugs illegally to long-haul truck drivers. Thus, he is a typical, flawed Percy character who nevertheless serves to advance the author’s thematic concerns.

In an early discussion he has with Bob Comeaux, a fellow physician and an advocate of “pedeuthanasia,” Comeaux argues that a child does not achieve personhood until sometime in the second year. It is at that time that he or she, with the acquisition of language, becomes conscious as a self.[xvi] More for his part, while not agreeing, does not engage his colleague in debate here. Ultimately he realizes that the secretive scientific scheme of his fellow physicians—adding heavy sodium to the water supply to modify unwanted behaviors—is destructive of the human project in general and of the individual, human person in particular. The scheme supposedly has many positive effects—such as reducing violent crime, teenage suicide, teenage pregnancies, wife battering, etc.—but the costs outweigh the benefits. In fine, it is counterproductive to destroy personhood in order to “save” humanity, typical of the gnostic attempt to control being. At the novel’s end, some of those involved in the heavy sodium project literally receive a dose of their own medicine with results both comic and appropriately “karmic.” They are reduced temporarily to a pre-verbal, pongid condition.

While language and language acquisition are certainly crucial to Percy’s thinking, especially in his concerted pursuit of semiotics, he cannot as an orthodox believer accept the notion advanced by his character Comeaux regarding personhood and language. (Nor, of course, does More.) In a 1988 interview with Percy, however, when the interviewer alludes to Comeaux’s argument in the novel, Percy seems to hedge a bit while simultaneously enlarging the scope of the discussion:

I wanted to avoid getting into this highly polarized pro-choice, pro-life, and anti-abortion thing because it’s a lot more than that. We’re talking about the thanatos, the death syndrome as the spirit of the times, which is a lot more than abortion. I think Dr. More said that the age of Thanatos began with the Battle of the Somme and the Battle of Verdun in 1916 when we had the paradox of the flower of European civilization . . . beginning to commit suicide.”[xvii]

In order to give him the benefit of the doubt, we must grant his point here with regard to the overall intention of the novel, keeping in mind as well that his witness is complex, manifesting itself in essays, in interviews, and in his fictional work. One notices, however, a certain wobbliness in Percy’s response that may be less than reassuring.

Finally, regarding the concept of personhood, Montgomery in the same text cited earlier writes,

Our own point is that there is undeniable evidence, produced by science itself, that the unborn is already a person who is attuned to a considerable knowledge of its own being, and by a language already used between that small creature and its mother, though not by a spoken word on the part of the person we call ‘fetus.’ It responds intelligently to the spoken word of the parent by its signifying movement.[xviii]

In addition, Montgomery provides an extensive survey of the growing literature on various forms of communication between mother and child in utero—voice, words, music, even feelings—which have both negative and positive impact on the infant. The evidence at least tentatively suggests support for the concept of personhood in early stages of development (6 months, say), but the scientific community at that time was apparently not able to provide unambiguous conclusions drawn from the evidence of their studies. One of the perennial challenges for the scientific mind is to bridge the gap between the evidence which they see and the philosophical, logical—and even theological—implications of it. If the implications are not followed and discerned (that is, by an approach not limited by science itself) then the evidence is at risk of remaining mere data. But as fascinating and fraught with possibility as that pursuit is, we must leave it there for now.[xix]

As for the significance of names and naming, one of our concerns in the present context concerns both what things are called and why. When such naming changes, it gets our attention. A shift may suggest shiftiness. In Percy’s op-ed piece cited earlier, he notes the “chronic misuse of words, especially in the fobbing off of rhetoric for information.”[xx] This misuse was paramount in the Maryville case as we see in Dr. Lejeune’s account of it. One term that medical witnesses for the opposing side used in the trial was “pre-embryo.” As Dr. Lejeune made clear, there is no such thing as a “pre-embryo.”[xxi] (There is nothing before an embryo. It exists only after the union of sperm and egg.) Even though the name-change game is old, disingenuous, and transparent—at least to some—those who have something to hide still play it. For them and the unaware, it serves to cloud what is actually taking place. If abortion is referred to as the “interruption of pregnancy,” for example, it appears to be a common, and temporary (!), medical procedure of little note.[xxii]

One fundamental problem, of course, with the abuse of language is that it becomes impossible not only to arrive at common ground but also to communicate at all. In one of Percy’s works on semiotics recently published, he has a telling sentence about the collaborative nature of naming, even with simple objects: “But unless you and I say it is a pencil, unless it is a pencil for both of us, we may not say anything at all about it.”[xxiii]

For Dr. Lejeune one of the issues at Maryville was not just the fate of seven frozen embryos but what he calls a “nominalist quarrel.”[xxiv] It is a quarrel far older than 1989 and one fraught with serious implications. Richard M. Weaver traces its origin to the thought of William of Occam (14^th century), who, in simplest terms, proposed the doctrine that universals do not have a real existence: “The practical result of nominalist philosophy is to banish the reality which is perceived by the intellect and to posit as reality that which is perceived by the senses.”[xxv] A rose by any other name may smell as sweet (a reference Lejeune evokes from Romeo and Juliet, II, ii, 38-49), but abortion called by another name will be mainstreamed and made to seem innocuous.

For the thoroughgoing nominalist, words are mere playthings to be manipulated at will in order to manipulate those at whom they are aimed. That they should be used to designate the truth of things as “perceived by the intellect” is anathema. To this mindset, then, the pro-life advocate who calls the fetus a “baby” let alone a “person” is simply indulging in a mind game. But assuredly for Percy and others it is no game. In The Thanatos Syndrome he presents, in the person of Fr. Smith, what happens when words, signs, can no longer sign, that is, convey the meaning they are supposed to carry.

Fr. Smith is a typical Percy priest in that, while he plays a significant role in advancing thematic concerns, he is at the same time deliberately derogated as a character, as if to say that we really don’t have to pay attention to what he says. (Which is Percy’s backhand way of saying we’d better. Other similar examples are Fr. Boomer in The Last Gentleman and Fr. Weatherbee in The Second Coming. They are both personally unimpressive men, but Percy sees them as “Apostles” of the Word in Kierkegaard’s sense of the term.[xxvi]) Fr. Smith appears to be suffering from a combination of the aging process, alcohol abuse, a sense of guilt, and general spiritual malaise. That being said, he nevertheless bears witness to a larger malady in Feliciana, a place name that is itself ironically inappropriate.

His problems manifest themselves in language. As he tells Dr. More in one conversation, words no longer signify.[xxvii] When Tom probes him, he says that they have been deprived of their meaning. It is not a question of belief as regard what the words signify—here belief in God and so on. Rather the words have simply been evacuated of meaning. Patricia Poteat argues that the evacuation of meaning Fr. Smith points to is the disappearance of the Transcendent from the world, not merely Feliciana. It has been replaced, he senses, with human transcendence in which man has assumed the role of God in human affairs.[xxviii] It manifests itself in particular in those characters behind the “Blue Boy” scheme of drugging the citizenry into a state of Utopian bliss.

In Fr. Smith’s Confession, he is able now to name what was an evil he had only dimly understood as a young man visiting Germany, that is, the systematic elimination of useless, unwanted life by certain doctors of the Weimar Republic. Moreover and more importantly, he believes that the doctors of Feliciana are for all practical purposes reincarnations of their German counterparts. Fr. Smith’s confession—a curious role reversal—is designed in part to warn Tom of the dangers to him of affiliation with his colleagues and their schemes. It is not immediately clear that Tom understands him, although his subsequent actions indicate he does. The Thanatos Syndrome may be seen as a cautionary tale as well for a contemporary audience, especially one concerned with life issues in the twenty-first century.

For those who are committed advocates of the value of human life from conception to natural death, there is at least one key takeaway from Fr. Smith’s language crisis with implications beyond the story itself. And that is the perennial problem in our culture of communicating the message of life’s “sacred provenance” to those who do not seem to share that vision for various reasons, of varying validity. It becomes harder and harder, it seems, to get a life-affirming message through especially in the context of competing messaging which is deliberately deceptive and manipulative. As John Desmond notes, “language contains not only the power to name truth but also a terrible capacity for deception and self-deception.”[xxix]

The opportunity for such deception is not limited to language. Percy finds potential for it even in the context of the scientific enterprise itself. We saw the doctors in the Maryville case who testified in support of Mr. Davis using the fraudulent neologism “pre-embryo.” While not evidence of wholesale dishonesty by scientists per se, it is a reminder of the human capacity in the medical field itself for disingenuousness.

Percy is unquestionably a respecter of science and the scientific method. But he is wary of what he calls “scientism,” a perversion of the real thing. In an essay not published until its appearance in Signposts, he draws the distinction: “Science, natural science . . . is primarily a method . . . of arriving at truths of a certain order about natural phenomena.” By contrast,

Scientism is characterized less by the practice of a method of discovery and knowing than by what can only be called a surrender of sovereignty and a willingness to believe almost as a matter of course that the scientific method by virtue of its spectacular triumphs and the near magic of its technology can be extrapolated to a quasi-religious, all-construing worldview.[xxx]

In other words, scientism assumes that science is the only gateway to knowledge worthy of the name. If something cannot be seen, verified, measured, repeated experimentally, it is of absolutely no value.

In one of his last efforts touching on the scientific enterprise in general, his 1989 Jefferson lecture, he seems to go farther in his critique of it in suggesting that “as it is presently practiced, [it] fails on its own terms,” and not because of its dismissal of concerns upon which the humanistic disciplines are focused. The failure has rather to do with a “confusion and incoherence of its own theories and models”[xxxi] Percy proposes in this speech a remedy for this failure under the aegis of semiotic theory as developed by Charles S. Peirce. It is a fascinating theory. To pursue it further here, however, would be a diversion.

More to the point as far as the issue of scientism is concerned is what it has led to in the arena of human procreation and the life issues generally. What it has led to for one, I would suggest, is the very sort of fertility experimentation seen in the Maryville case along with countless others like it. For clearly the view of scientism in practice does not see the embryo in the same light as Dr. Lejeune and others like him, that is, as fellow members of the species. Embryos, and the sperm and eggs that produce them, are merely genetic material to be manipulated to achieve certain desired goals. One cannot help sympathizing certainly with couples who want to be parents, but the question has to be raised as to whether the end is, for them, worth the means, physically, spiritually, morally. I can only suppose that the Davises found that it was not. Is it just possible that others might arrive at the insight that the process is also inherently such a manipulative perversion of natural, conjugal procreation as to spur a rethinking before deciding to participate in it? This perversion cannot be neatly separated, of course, from ethical concerns about the production of multiple embryos in the IVF process.[xxxii]

However that may be, one feature of scientism that should be readily apparent is that it seeks power over what we call nature. As Dr. Lejeune notes, “Our domination over nature increases inexorably. We become more powerful every day, and every day our anxiety will increase.”[xxxiii] It is not difficult to realize why that should be so. Here is C. S. Lewis’s observation on man’s alleged power over nature in his aptly named The Abolition of Man:

And as regards contraceptives [not to mention abortion], there is a paradoxical, negative sense in which all future generations are the patients or subjects of a power wielded by those already alive. By contraception simply, they are denied existence; by contraception used as a means of selective breeding, they are, without their concurring voice, made to be what one generation, for its own reasons, may choose to prefer. From this point of view, what we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument [emphasis added].[xxxiv]

The question is, Who wields power over whom? For Lewis, the choice is between acting as rational spirits in light of the values of the Tao­—the universal moral law—or electing to be victimized by those who see the human being as mere “nature to be kneaded.”

The exercise of this power over nature, of course, is justified, according to its proponents, by the concept of the greater good, or quality of life for as many as possible, etc. Before laying out what is typically meant by this idea, I want to note a use of the phrase in a document cited earlier, Evangelium Vitae, in connection with the concept of the sanctity of life. In a discussion of man’s bodily, earthly life John Paul allows as how such life is not an absolute, “especially as he may be asked to give up his life for a greater good [emphasis added.]”[xxxv]  He subsequently cites examples from Scripture of those who gave up their lives in that manner. The act to which the Pope refers is intentionally sacrificial and self-giving. (We might think also of the “supreme sacrifice” of a soldier in wartime.)

In a 1987 essay, “If I Had Five Minutes with the Pope,” written in anticipation of this same Pope’s visit to New Orleans, Percy refers to the practice “wherein surplus fertilized ova are either discarded or frozen or experimented with—in the name of improving the ‘quality of life’ of mankind.”[xxxvi] What should stand out in this instance is that the life sacrificed (to use the same term with a difference) is not one’s own. This life belongs to another who well may never see the light of day in the reproductive numbers game that is afoot. In a caustic, satirical moment in the same essay, Percy suggests that the “scientist” found so treating the unborn should as recompense have his own genetic material treated in just the same manner. One wonders if Percy had been reading his fellow satirist Juvenal who in his Satire VI excoriates the abortionist—“paid to murder mankind in the womb”—who administers an abortifacient “with [his] own hand” in order to escape in this instance becoming a father himself.[xxxvii]

While no satirist, Fr. Smith in an early passage of Thanatos attacks Tom More and his colleagues in no uncertain terms. He acknowledges that they are decent and generous, but goes on:

You are a member of the first generation of doctors in the history of medicine to turn their backs on the oath of Hippocrates and kill millions of old useless people, unborn children, born malformed children, for the good of mankind—and to do so without a single murmur from one of you.[xxxviii]

Bob Comeaux at novel’s end, in an attempt to establish a moral equivalency between himself and More, asserts: “We were after the same thing, the greatest good, the highest quality of life for the greatest number [emphasis added].”[xxxix] Comeaux does not wait for a response; in fact he doesn’t want one. He is an ideologue who only wants to justify himself and his actions in his own mind. My hunch is that what the Comeaux’s of the world want is to stake out ground that makes them appear to be ethical, moral, and right in a socially responsible manner. That is enough. For then they can in theory justify whatever action follows from their position of wanting to do the good, right thing—even if it is in some manner destructive.

One of Percy’s critics, who is especially hard on this novel, takes issue with our author’s perspective on abortion and the life issues generally. He does not engage such ontological or metaphysical questions such as what or who a fetus is. Nor does he touch on what an abortion is. In a typical passage he writes,

The Thanatos Syndrome implies that abortion exists because an ill-defined group of male scientists is out to restructure society according to their perverse design. In fact, abortion exists because women in sufficient numbers in America and elsewhere have demanded control over their reproductive lives.[xl]

He continues in the same vein, but in the first place, the novel implies no such thing about the origin of abortion. The fictional scientists’ effort at restructuring society includes, among other alleged benefits, the reduction of unwanted pregnancies especially among teens and hence the need for abortions, as seen in Comeaux’s harangue. The critic’s ideology has clearly led him into a splenetic misreading of the text. What he fails to see, moreover, is that both he and Bob Comeaux are cut from the same cloth. Bob Comeaux in fact may be seen as the fictional personification of just such critics, which is not to say that Percy intended him to serve in that capacity.

Exactly how much women’s “control over their productive lives” might lead to the greater good is a question that cannot be answered here. I would suggest though, as many have before me, that such a calculus ought to include those who, unable to speak for themselves, are subject to that control. Moreover, the issue cannot be honestly engaged until those engaged in the discussion recognize the fetus as more than “tissue,” that is to say, as one of us. 

If the greater good, if a higher quality of life for the greatest number, is a worthy goal, then surely it is appropriate to ask: What is the cost of achieving it and who pays it? One clear victim of abortion is the child in the womb. But what about those directly involved in the procedure, as bearer of the child, as nurse, doctor, and so on? Some seem to have reconciled themselves to their role; others not so much. They remain internally conflicted to one degree or another. In a study of an abortion hospital, In Necessity and Sorrow (1976), the author profiles both patients and staff members who are there either to have an abortion or to facilitate one, as patient, counselor, nurse, doctor, and so on. Reading this document may call for a strong stomach, but it is most revelatory regarding the processes and the people involved.[xli] A brief review is accordingly in order.

The first example I’ll cite is a doctor, age 36, who professes to have no conflict about doing abortions. As a refugee from Hungary, he is a strong believer in individual rights; accordingly “accordingly, he believes a woman in the U.S. is perfectly within her rights to terminate a pregnancy. As for the role of the doctor himself, “There has to be a person where the buck stops” (Denes, 69). He, of course, is that person. In that role he is certainly destined to serve the greater good as he defines it. (Other doctors interviewed, however, are not quite so sure.)

A counselor, age 22, injects religion into her interview, although it is not entirely clear why. (The interviews sometimes provide only the answers and not the questions asked.) She says she believes in God, but church doctrines are “malarkey” and the people are hypocrites. Then curiously she adds, “The only time I thought about abortions in terms of religion was when I saw fetuses and one was born alive” after a saline injection (Denes, 39). She does not elaborate on that suggestive remark, adding only that the baby was “tiny” and “cute.” But she observes that the nurse on duty got very angry at the courier who was assigned to take the baby to Bellevue Hospital for his saying, Why bother, it was going to die anyway? The nurse, unlike the counselor, it appears, was not quite at peace in her role of facilitating the greater good.

A second counselor, age 28, provides a rationale for the work they do at the hospital, but acknowledges that they are “killing a baby.” Under the circumstances—an unwed mother, a financially strapped family, etc.—“that’s necessary and probably better for the baby. You have to realize that these children would be unwanted and a lot of times uncared for, so it’s much better that they are not brought into the world” (Denes, 76-77). She is thus a clear voice for the concept of providing the greatest benefit for the greatest number. And we could hardly find a better example of the ease with which some make decisions for others who have no voice in the matter. Is it just possible, however, that her rationale, and that of others, is actually more of a rationalization, an attempt at healing a divided soul?

The last story I’ll touch on presents an eighteen-year old, twelve weeks pregnant, on the D & C floor. It is the most poignant of all the interviews with patients. Or rather, it is utterly heartbreaking. Regarding the decision to abort, she notes that her parents, while upset, told her it was up to her and no one else. She is a child of the age of autonomy, as Percy might observe.[xlii] She begins by describing her arrival at the hospital, the preparation, and the procedure itself. She had thought about keeping the baby and marrying the father, but they both realized it was not a realistic plan. Her grip on reality is, perhaps, typical of an eighteen year old: “I knew I was pregnant but acted like I wasn’t” (Denes, 174). On the issue of guilt, she professes to feel none, although she had been told she would by both Catholic school mates and printed “garbage” about it. It is not clear that she feels no remorse.

Most riveting is the image the author gives us of a small, painted plaster statue of the Virgin Mary on the girl’s bedside table, a gift of her aunt: “In the Virgin’s arms is the child. Her red lips smile. Her blue eyes shed brown, bumpy tears. Her pale skin and multicolored clothes are pockmarked in white where the paint has chipped” (174). The girl says she prayed before she came and after, when she was hurting, to make the pain go away. She goes on, “I just tell it [the statue] things, because I don’t know what to say. I just treat her like a person [emphasis added]” (175). (For non-Catholics, it should be emphasized that prayers “to” a statue are in fact directed toward the person represented by it.) She also recounts praying directly to God.

What is heartbreaking about this story is not just the unfortunate circumstances related, but the girl’s interaction with them. She is clearly not equipped to negotiate her way here. She is utterly unprepared. Whatever the nature of her home training, whatever the substance of her religious education, they are virtually of no meaningful use to her here and now. It is sad beyond words. The greater good may arguably in some sense have been served, but how has she herself as a precious child of God been served? That is not at all clear in the narrative as given. The statue of the B.V.M. is seen by her as a person, but the baby that had been in her womb only hours before, a replica in part of her own physical being, is not. It had been extracted and disposed of, later to be incinerated.

As to the Marian statue itself, a comparison with another statue of the Virgin in a story about another Catholic girl in crisis may be instructive. The other child is a four-year old French girl named Thérèse Martin, who in October of 1882 fell seriously ill—with convulsions, delirium, severe pain—following her sister Pauline’s becoming a Carmelite religious. (This sister was a second mother to Thérèse following their mother’s death.) The child’s inexplicable condition became worse, and there seemed at one point to be no hope of recovery. Was it perhaps the work of the devil, they later reflect, at the first entry of one of the sisters into religious life? A miracle was sought. The deeply religious family brought a statue of the Blessed Mother into Thérèse’s room, and her sisters stormed heaven with prayers for their little one. Here briefly is St. Thérèse of Lisieux’s account of what happened next from her autobiography, The Story of a Soul:

Suddenly the statue seemed to come to life and grow beautiful, with a divine beauty that I shall never find words to describe. The expression of Our Lady’s face was ineffably sweet, tender, and compassionate, but what touched me to the very depths of my soul was her gracious smile. Then, after all my pain vanished, two big tears started to my eyes and fell silently . . . They were indeed tears of unmixed heavenly joy.[xliii]

Following the family’s prayers and her own communion with the Virgin, Thérèse experienced a healing. For the sceptic or the secularist, such experiences are, of course, always suspect. And indeed there is no way definitively to prove cause and effect. For the faithful Catholic, on the other hand, what are called miracles are simply the concrete manifestations of divine grace operating in the sensible world—extraordinary but not impossible.

The eighteen-year-old, by contrast, experienced neither healing nor vision as far as we know. For her, a problem was solved at the expense of the life she had carried within her body for twelve weeks. Was the concept of the greater good fulfilled in this case? Again, some would argue that it was and not only in this one but in countless others. But I would ask again, when it comes to seeking the greater good, Who pays the price for it and, additionally, who rightfully decides the matter?

On that question, one of Percy’s biographers alludes to the novelist’s discussions with a psychologist friend on abortion, euthanasia, and related issues following the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. He writes to her of hearing on a recent Dick Cavett show the response of Dr. Christian Barnard to the question of who makes the decision about the quality of life: “Said Doc Barnard: ‘Why, the doctors.’”[xliv] Apparently that answer was at least concerning for Percy. I contend that among those least qualified to make decisions regarding abortions, done in the name of improving the quality of life for many, are doctors who have a vested interest in performing them. But are eighteen-year old girls who are prepared neither for life nor for motherhood any better qualified, autonomous souls though they may be? His biographer adds that for Percy early on the abortion decision was one of “conscience . . . reached between man or woman and God.” As we have seen, though, he became increasingly concerned with the disingenuous shaping of public opinion by the media about abortion, which in turn leads to shaping law and public policy.

The fact that abortion remains an unsettled issue at present except by law suggests a certain intractability. No resolution, no real agreement seems even remotely possible without, for one, the clear and honest use of language in discussing the various issues surrounding it. The likelihood of that happening is, I would say, remote on the part of abortion advocates. But let us look at language as it was used recently by two Texas judges in the case of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals supporting a law to stop live-dismemberment abortion:

[Abortion] dismembers the living unborn child and extracts the unborn child one piece at a time from the uterus through the use of clamps, grasping forceps, tongs, scissors, or a similar instrument that, through the convergence of two rigid levers, slices, crushes, or grasps, or performs any combination of those actions on, a piece of the unborn child’s body to cut or rip the piece from the body.[xlv]

This, of course, is the very kind of language that the abortion industry seeks to exclude from any discourse that might reach the eyes or ears of those who have an unwanted pregnancy. It is language that dispels the fog of unknowing that veils what an abortion physically is. The language is precise, concrete, and direct. It is language rooted in reality. It is the language of those who do not flinch from what abortion horrifically is. If it offends some people, it is likely because they want to avoid looking at what they condone, promote, or participate in. That is understandable. But it is not the response of an adult human being who wishes to function in the real world in terms of clear perception, information processing, conceptual ability, and moral acumen.

As the foregoing paragraph might suggest, the problem is, of course, more fundamental than language. It has to do with differing world views. And one particular view has to do with how people are seen: in the mass or singly—one person at a time.

To revisit the healing of St. Thérèse, we might ask whether in this instance the greater good was also served. Whatever the agency of her restoration, she is still only one person. Why should she especially count? By contrast, millions of young women (and older) find themselves in the plight of our eighteen-year old every year throughout the world. Yet even if Thérèse is only one person, she has had a profound effect, after her death and subsequent canonization, on millions of men and women who never knew her in life. Is not that in fact service to the greater good by virtue of her aiding the journey of many souls toward their supra-temporal destiny? (And one does not have to believe in such a destiny to answer the question affirmatively. She has helped millions in any event and still does.)

But leaving aside that question for a moment, one of the unacknowledged, inherent flaws of the greater good concept as construed by some is its very scope—it concerns the masses, the undifferentiated many. To those preoccupied with numbers, that will seem a plus. From the perspective of Christian revelation, however, one individual soul has measureless worth and at every stage of life, from natural birth to natural death. The story of the eighteen-year old may be typical—that is, it is like many, many others—but it is, nevertheless, about one person. (The child she carried inside her body for twelve weeks was also one person.) The story of Thérèse may be atypical, but it, too, is about one person.

But beyond the matter of how people are seen, the problem with the greater good as conceived and practiced by some is that in the very effort to achieve good for many it leaves out others who have no voice for themselves but who still have a vital interest in the community of persons to which they are denied access. This view is one that will make sense only to those who are willing and able to see the denied as persons, even if, at the moment, they do not walk around on two feet and hold jobs. For some of the Deciders (and Influencers)—be they doctors, politicians, newspaper editors, couples—the interests of the born adult simply trump those of the unborn infant, every time whether looked at individually or collectively. It is, in fine, a failure of the moral imagination. To them, what is not seen does not exist and, thus, does not merit consideration.

The Deciders may continue to decide and act with regard to the five issues named at the outset in a certain way. Again, these are the scientific facts around conception, the fetus as person or possession, naming and nominalism as a philosophical viewpoint, scientism and man’s wielding of power over nature, and human betterment or quality of life for the many. Walker Percy’s address to them, with regard to the life issues generally and abortion in particular, is clearly counter to that of the Deciders who have been anointed as the arbiters regarding the unborn, the unfit, the aged. He may not have changed their minds, but at the very least he called them out so that others might take notice: this is what they do.

Nothing that has been said here is likely to change the minds of the Deciders in the least. (Having said that, one cannot help thinking, though, of Saul/Paul on the road to Damascus.) What one can hope for realistically is that those who are not among them—the undecided, prospective parents who are anxious and afraid, those who have simply never thought much about the matter, and possibly others—might see the value of Percy’s witness in both his fiction and non-fiction and be moved to act upon it. The reader of his fiction and especially his philosophical essays may find them difficult, and indeed they present a challenge. But among other things, they serve as an antidote to the often facile, shallow, and dishonest propaganda typical of pro-abortion advocacy. They are beautifully written, insightful, entertaining, and not least life-affirming. Those undecided or perplexed about the life issues in general have many decisions and challenges to deal with. One of the first and most vital is that of discerning how to determine how the truth of things stands. One would do well to draw upon the searching witness of Walker Percy as one guide along the way.

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[i] Walker Percy, “An Unpublished Letter,” Signposts in a Strange Land, ed. Patrick Samway, S.J. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1991), 349.

[ii] Ibid., 350.

[iii] Ibid., 351.

[iv] Walker Percy, “Out of the Ruins” (An Interview with Scott Walter), in More Conversations With Walker Percy (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993), 229. I would suggest that the analogy is so offensive because it is entirely apt.

[v] https://acpeds.org/position-statements/when-human-life-begins. Accessed June 30, 2021.

[vi] See Dianne Irving, “When Do Human Beings Begin? ‘Scientific’ Myths and Scientific Facts,” International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 19, no. 3/4 (1999), 22-36, 1999, 22-36. https://www.princeton.edu/-prolife/articles/wdhbb.html. Virtually any proposition concerning conception or fertilization is potentially subject to debate. At the present juncture, however, to engage in it here would be fruitless. One has to begin at some point and proceed with a given. For the purposes of this essay, this is that point.

[vii] One such pro-life advocate, a Catholic leader at the parish level, writes to me, “Some decades ago . . . in order to make the pill more acceptable, pro-pill advocates tried to redefine when conception happened, saying that there was a new life once it was implanted. But since the pill thinned the uterine lining as one of its mechanisms, the baby would not be able to implant into the uterine lining and so was left off at the next menstruation. Thus they were able to say that the pill was okay because there never really was a life if the embryo couldn’t implant into the wall of the uterus.” (Redacted.) By the same sort of logic one could argue that a person is not self-sustaining if left on a deserted island with no food, water, or tools, etc. and no means of communication with the outside world.

[viii] Walker Percy, Letter to Dr. Charles A. Ely (2 pp.), Walker Percy Papers. Correspondence, Undated, 1945-1986, Box 1, Folder 1, Special Collections and Archives, Loyola University, New Orleans. Since the text of the letter to Percy is not available it is not entirely clear what point(s) his correspondent had made. Percy’s own position, however, is quite clear. Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons was Percy’s medical school. Also in the Percy Papers at Loyola is a 1988 congratulatory letter to Mercedes A. Wilson, a leading proponent of natural family planning in New Orleans. Percy was highly supportive of her efforts, to which he contributed his own editing and writing talents. See Jay Tolson, Pilgrim in the Ruins (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 437, 455.

[ix] Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), Encyclical Letter (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1995); Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation. Replies to Certain Questions of the Day (Boston: St. Paul Editions, 1987).

[x] The fact of differing views on abortion within the Catholic Church is not so much a matter of “conservatives” vs. “liberals.” Those who do not accept the Church’s teachings are, rather, autonomous individuals who have replaced those teachings with their own private, secular views. That some of these folks are in positions of power—in politics, law, medicine, etc.—does not lend credence or validity to those views. Their status simply provides them a platform from which to foster scandal and confusion. A prominent case in point is that of Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House. In responding to a reporter’s question referencing Archbishop Cordileone’s recent (9/23/21) remark that the abortion bill she is working on is tantamount to “child sacrifice,” she speaks as an autonomous spirit. “The archbishop . . . and I had a disagreement about who should decide this [family size]. I believe that God has given us a free will to honor our responsibilities.” For Speaker Pelosi those responsibilities clearly do not include the safety of the unborn in the womb. For her, moreover, human freedom seems to have less to do with following God’s will than it does with advancing one’s own political-social agenda. Speaker Pelosi defends her support for legal abortion: ‘God has given us a free will’ – Catholic World Report.

[xi] Jérôme Lejeune, The Concentration Can (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), 4. The account of Solomon’s judgement is found in I Kings 3: 23-27. Dr. Lejeune, M.D., Ph.D., was a professor of fundamental genetics at the René Descartes University of Paris; he was a Fellow of both the Pontifical Academy of Science (Rome) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In September of 2021, a full-length biography of Dr. Lejeune by Aude Dugast was published by Ignatius Press. Also, Dr. Lejeune’s cause for sainthood has recently been advanced. See Another step towards sainthood for Jérôme Lejeune, seven others – Vatican News.

[xii] Marion Montgomery, Eudora Welty and Walker Percy: The Concept of Home in Their Lives and Literature (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004) and With Walker Percy at the Tupperware Party (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2009). Montgomery is especially helpful in his commentary regarding Percy’s address to the life issues. Montgomery and Percy were also friends. See the interview with William Walsh, “Sorting Your Inheritance,” Christendom Review, V, 1 (n.d.), 7-8, for an amusing story about Percy’s visit to the University of Georgia to lecture in 1978. Montgomery was a professor of English there at the time and a persona non grata, as he puts it in the interview. In spite of their being kept officially apart by administration officials, Percy and Montgomery happened to meet briefly in the men’s room during a break.

[xiii] Lejeune, 91-92.

[xiv] Charles E. Rice, Afterword, The Concentration Can, 202.

[xv] Montgomery, 112. Montgomery here makes reference to one of Percy’s key terms in his evaluation of the age. It is characterized in his view by both the “theorist” and the “consumer.” The theorist, if embodied in an autonomous self, can fall prey to ideology and become a particular danger to the social order. See Lost in the Cosmos (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983), 157.

[xvi] Walker Percy, The Thanatos Syndrome (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1987), 35. For Comeaux, then, a child younger than, say, 18 months is in principle expendable. Toward the end of the novel, the characters return to the same topic but without resolution (333-334).

[xvii] Walker Percy, Interview with Phil McCombs, More Conversations, 191-192. Percy himself borrows the thanatos concept from Freud (201).

[xviii] Montgomery, 207, note 8.

[xix] Montgomery, 165-171.

[xx] Walker Percy, “A View of Abortion With Something to Offend Everybody,” Signposts, 340.

[xxi] Lejeune, 37, 197. See also Irving, 9. It is a concocted term designed for tendentious purposes. In the context of IVF procedures, it apparently intends to refer to the embryo before implantation in the uterine wall. Thus, if the implantation fails, what is lost is not an embryo. Accordingly, no great matter.

[xxii] Evangelium Vitae, Sec. 58, 95.

[xxiii] Walker Percy, Symbol & Existence, ed. Kenneth Laine Ketner, et al. (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2019), 193.

[xxiv] Lejeune, 11. See also John Desmond, a most valuable Percy critic, in At the Crossroads: Ethical and Religious Themes in the Writings of Walker Percy (Troy, NY: Whitston Publishing, 1997), 121, where he discusses Charles S. Peirce’s semiotic philosophy, a realist counter to nominalism. For Peirce, and for Percy who draws on him heavily, both ideas and actuality are real. The purpose of names—which can point to ideas—is to reveal the nature of things.

[xxv] Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences, Expanded Edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948, 2013), 3.

[xxvi] Please see my “On Speaking with Authority,” New Oxford Review, LXXXVIII, 6 (July-August 2021), 22-27.

[xxvii] The Thanatos Syndrome, 117-118.

[xxviii] Patricia S. Poteat, “Pilgrim’s Progress; or, A Few Night Thoughts on Tenderness and the Will to Power,” in Walker Percy: Novelist and Philosopher, ed. Jan Nordby Gretlund and Kari-Heinz Westarp (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991), 214. Man transcendent believes himself to have power over nature, an issue to be addressed shortly.

[xxix] Desmond, 97.

[xxx] Signposts, 297. In “Diagnosing the Modern Malaise” (1985), Percy reiterates his concern for the loss of human sovereignty and “a radical impoverishment of human relations” in the midst of spectacular technological developments (Signposts, 210).

[xxxi] “The Fateful Rift: The San Adreas Fault in the Modern Mind” Signposts in a Strange Land, 272. The rift of the title is another way of pointing to the “dread chasm that has rent the soul of Western man,” to which Dr. Tom More alludes in Love in the Ruins: The Confessions of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971), 191. According to him, and perhaps Percy as well, it is all the fault of Descartes. The Cartesian split arguably affects mostly those who elect to be affected. St. Augustine in The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (New York: Modern Library, 1993) answers the Cartesians of his day on their own terms. I quote briefly: “For we both are, and know that we are, and delight in our being, and our knowledge of it. . . In respect of these truths, I am not at all afraid of the arguments of the Academicians, who say, What if you are deceived? For if I am deceived, I am. For he who is not, cannot be deceived; and if I am deceived, by this same token I am” (370).

[xxxii] For a commentary from a philosophical perspective on the ethics of IVF, see John M. Finnis, “Personal Integrity, Sexual Morality and Responsible Parenthood,” in Why Humanae Vitae Was Right: A Reader, ed. Janet E. Smith (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 189-191. It is hard to say which is more offensive, the de facto elimination of the conjugal act or the technical details of the IVF process that replaces it. Among other things, the process diverts participants from the natural experiential stream that involves parents and child in a relational unity for which there is simply no substitute. Can the negative effects of this deprivation be proven? A better question: why should they have to be?

[xxxiii] Lejeune, 132.

[xxxiv] C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Harper One, 2001), 54-54. Lewis at the outset explains what is meant by the Tao, the key concept of this book. It is the Way of life—or put less metaphorically—the moral, spiritual ethos that is generally common, with certain differences, to every society in every time. One of its premises is a belief in objective values that says that some things are true and some false, some behaviors are ethical and some not. It is a view that runs counter, of course, to liberal relativism in moral and other matters.

[xxxv] Evangelium Vitae, Sec. 47, 77.

[xxxvi] Percy, “If I Had Five Minutes with the Pope,” Signposts, 346.

[xxxvii] Juvenal, Satire VI, Juvenal and Persius, rev., trans. G.G. Ramsay (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 131, 133. While Juvenal’s main target in this work is the loose sexual mores of Roman women, he expresses in this particular passage what appears to be a certain sympathy with their plight and none for their victimizers. In fact, in this citation, the abortionist and the father are one and the same. He alludes also to the practice of “exposure” in instances where the infant escaped the abortionist’s drugs and was delivered, only to be taken to one of the “filthy pools.” A passage like the one cited may account in part for the poet’s favorable recognition by the Christian Church. Early on the Church opposed the Roman practices of abortion and infanticide, a stand that did not win it friends in high places. See The Didache, trans. James A. Kleist (New York: The Newman Press, 1948), 16, 18, in which both practices are explicitly condemned. While exact dating is debated, the document was written between the first and third centuries A.D.

[xxxviii] Thanatos, 127.

[xxxix] Thanatos, 347.

[xl] Rodney Allen, “Fr. Smith’s Confession in The Thanatos Syndrome,” in Walker Percy: Novelist and Philosopher (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991), 197. Allen asserts of Fr. Smith’s Confession that the insistence on abortion as a logical prelude to “genocide” is both unsubstantiated and runs counter to the story’s comic ending. First of all, abortion is not mentioned in the Confession itself. That said, whether abortion is a “logical” prelude to genocide is, I suppose, debatable. What is unmistakably clear, however, is that those who perform abortions and botch them generally have no compunction in using infanticide to finish their work. Finally, as to the comic element at the end and elsewhere, one thing that the reader of Percy should not miss is that he is never more serious than when he employs comic means toward developing thematic concerns.

[xli] Magda Denes, In Necessity and Sorrow: Life and Death in an Abortion Hospital (New York: Basic Books, 1976). The title is taken from a self-conflictive sentence in her conclusion: “I speak here of the fact that abortion is an abomination unless it is experienced as a human event of great sorrow and terrible necessity” (245). As hard as she tries, her tensional rhetoric does not and cannot really resolve the conflict. Likewise, some of the patients and their significant others seem incapable of recognizing any practical connection between the procreative act and the fruit thereof. It is as if common sense, foresight, and any moral and religious training they might have had, suddenly evaporated. This is not to say they are stupid or ignorant. Rather, their personal conduct simply seems lacking in coherence, connectedness, integration. The problem is not merely unplanned pregnancies but unplanned lives. (And how hard it is, certainly, to achieve a life that has such qualities.)

[xlii] Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983), 29, 113, and 157 on the problematic nature of the absolutist autonomous spirit.

[xliii] https://www.ncregister.com/blog/st-therese-of-lisieux-was-miracuously-cured-by-our-lady-of-the-smile. The statue later became known under the title, The Virgin of the Smile. It is clear from Percy’s first published novel, The Moviegoer (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960), that he was familiar with St. Thérèse. His main character, Binx Bolling, alludes to her “Little Way” on two occasions (99, 135). Binx’s references are, however, rather flip and ironic, as befits his character.

[xliv] Jay Tolson, A Pilgrim in the Ruins: A Life of Walker Percy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 438. The question in the interview pertained to euthanasia. As for medical involvement in decision making about abortion today, see Bradley Mattes, “Adding Tragedy Upon Tragedy,” Life Issues Institute (September 3, 2021): “Some medical professionals cross the line by advising or even aggressively intimidating women into aborting their babies.” Adding Tragedy Upon Tragedy – Life IssuesLife Issues.

[xlv] The case centered on legislation referred to as SB8. The majority opinion was authored by Judges Jennifer Walker Elrod and Don R. Willet. See Bradley Mattes, “It’s How They Say It,” Life Issues Institute, August 27, 2021.  It’s How They Say It – Life IssuesLife Issues.

The featured image, uploaded by Aspen Institute Pictures, is a photograph of Walker Percy in 1987. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.