This series of three newspaper columns by Olavo de Carvalho was collected in this order in the book “The Minimum You Need To Know So As Not To Be An Idiot”.
“Desire to Kill” explores the abortion debate, emphasizing that it revolves around the fundamental choice to abort rather than rational arguments. It highlights the ethical dilemma of uncertain fetal humanity, framing it as a moral risk and ultimately argues against abortion, concluding that no benefit justifies risking a potential human life. Olavo suggests that the pro-abortion stance is driven by an irrational desire to assert freedom and honor, rather than reasoned debate.
“Logic of Abortionism” argues that the morality of abortion is uncertain because it cannot be definitively proven whether a fetus is an extension of the mother’s body or a separate human being. Given this uncertainty, Olavo contends that the morally justifiable position is to refrain from abortion, as no one should arrogate the right to commit an act that might be homicide. The column criticizes abortion advocates for not recognizing the concept of species and suggests that their position relies on the idea that the status of being human is a social convention rather than a natural fact. Olavo also accuses abortion advocates of moral insensitivity and dishonesty in promoting their agenda.
“Candid Conversation about Abortion” is a commentary broadcasted on Radio Imprensa on December 4, 1996, discussing the morality and logic surrounding the abortion debate. The piece argues that the central question of the abortion debate revolves around whether the fetus is considered human. It critiques both spiritualist and materialist perspectives that claim the fetus is not human, with the author emphasizing that every attempt to argue otherwise encounters illogical contradictions. The column further contends that even if one considers the fetus as an organ or part of a woman’s body, its removal can be likened to self-mutilation. Olavo highlights that the fetus is also partially the father’s, challenging the idea that the mother has sole rights over it. Towards the end, the piece asserts that abortion advocates deceive women, leading them down a path of potential guilt and despair. The commentary concludes with an appeal to women, urging them to recognize the true intentions of those who support abortion rights, implying that they might be driven by insincere motives.
Desire to Kill
Jornal da Tarde, January 22, 1998
Friends and readers ask me for an opinion on abortion. However, inclined by nature towards saving effort, my brain refuses to form an opinion on anything unless it finds a good reason to do so. Faced with any problem, its instinctive reaction is to fiercely cling to the natural right not to think about the matter. But, while arguing in favor of this right, it ends up having to ask itself why the darn problem exists in the first place. Thus, what was an attempt not to think ends up becoming an investigation of fundamentals, which is the most philosophical endeavor that exists. Future authors of disparaging biographies will rightly say that I became a philosopher out of sheer laziness to think. However, as laziness grades matters on the scale of minimum priority attention, I ended up developing a keen sense of the difference between problems imposed by the fate of things and those that only exist because certain people want them to exist.
Now, the problem of abortion belongs, quite evidently, to the latter category. The question of abortion exists because the practice of abortion exists, not the other way around. The fact that someone decides in favor of abortion is the presupposition of the existence of the abortion debate. But what is presupposed in a debate cannot, at the same time, be its logical conclusion. The choice for abortion, being prior to all discussion, is impervious to arguments. The abortion advocate is an advocate by free choice, which disregards reasons. This freedom is directly asserted by the act that carries it out and, when multiplied by millions, becomes a freedom that is generally recognized and consolidated as a “right.” Hence, the discourse in favor of abortion avoids the moral problem and clings to the legal and political terrain: it doesn’t so much want to affirm a value as to establish a right (which, in theory, can coexist with the moral condemnation of the act).
As for the content of the debate, opponents of abortion argue that the fetus is a human being, and killing it is a homicide. Supporters argue that the fetus is just a piece of flesh, a part of the mother’s body that she should have the right to remove at will. At the current score of the dispute, neither side has managed to persuade the other. It is not reasonable to expect them to, because in the present civilization, there is no consensus on what human nature is or isn’t, and there are no common premises that can underpin a resolution.
But the tie itself ends up transfiguring the entire discussion: in the face of it, we move from an ethico-metaphysical dispute, insoluble in the present conditions of Western culture, to a simple mathematical equation whose solution should, in principle, be identical and equally persuasive for all beings capable of understanding it. This equation is formulated as follows: if there is a 50% chance that the fetus is human and a 50% chance that it is not, betting on the latter hypothesis is literally choosing an act that has a 50% chance of being homicide.
With this, the whole question becomes clearer than the most resistant of brains could demand. In the absence of absolute certainty about the inhumanity of the fetus, removing it presupposes a moral (or immoral) decision made in the dark. We can preserve the life of this creature and later discover that we have engaged our high ethical feelings in vain in defense of what ultimately was just a mere thing. But we can also decide to remove the thing, running the risk of discovering, too late, that it was a human being. Between caution and reckless gambling, what should we choose? Which one of us, armed with a revolver, would consider themselves morally authorized to pull the trigger if they knew there was a 50% chance of hitting an innocent creature? In other words, betting on the inhumanity of the fetus is like tossing a coin for the survival or death of a potential human being.
At this point in the reasoning, all arguments in favor of abortion have become arguments against it. Because here we leave the realm of the indecisive and encounter a globally established consensus: no defensible or indefensible advantage, no real or hypothetical benefit to third parties can justify risking the life of a human being in a bet.
But, as we have seen, the pro-abortion choice is prior to any discussion, which is why the abortion advocate resents and denounces any contrary argument as “repressive violence.” The pro-abortion decision, being the precondition of the debate’s existence, could only seek in the debate the ex post facto legitimization of something that had already been irreversibly decided with or without debate. The abortion advocate could not even yield to irrefutable evidence of the humanity of the fetus, let alone to mere assessments of a moral risk. They simply want to take the risk, even with a 0% chance. They want it because they want it. For them, the death of unwanted fetuses is a matter of honor: it is about demonstrating, through acts and not through arguments, a self-founding freedom that disregards reasons, a Nietzschean pride for which the slightest objection is unbearable constraint.
I believe I discover here the reason why my brain obstinately refused to think about the matter. It sensed the futility of any argument in the face of the brutal and irrational assertion of the pure desire to kill. Of course, in many abortion advocates, this desire remains subconscious, concealed by a veil of humanitarian rationalizations that media support strengthens, and the clamor of activists corroborates. However, it is also clear that arguing with people capable of lying so tenaciously to themselves is futile.
Logic of Abortionism
Diário do Comércio, October 14, 2010
Abortion is only a moral issue because no one has ever been able to prove, with absolute certainty, whether a fetus is merely an extension of the mother’s body or a full-fledged human being. The very existence of the endless discussion shows that the arguments from both sides sound unconvincing to those who hear them, if not also to those who put them forward. There is, therefore, a legitimate doubt here, which no answer has been able to assuage. Transposed to the level of practical decisions, this doubt becomes the choice between prohibiting or authorizing an act that has a 50% chance of being an innocent surgical procedure like any other, or, on the other hand, a premeditated homicide. Under these conditions, the only morally justified option is, evidently, to refrain from performing it. In the light of reason, no human being can arrogate the right to freely commit an act that they themselves cannot say, with certainty, whether it is or is not homicide. Furthermore, between the prudence that avoids running the risk of such homicide and the rashness that rushes to commit it in the name of hypothetical social benefits, the burden of proof certainly lies with the defenders of the latter option. Never having been an abortion advocate capable of proving conclusively the inhumanity of fetuses, their opponents have every right, and even the non-declinable duty, to demand that they refrain from an action whose innocence is a matter of uncertainty even for them.
If this argument is self-evident, it is also clear that the vast majority of current abortion advocates fail to grasp its scope, for the simple reason that opting for abortion presupposes an inability—or, in some cases, criminal ill will—to grasp the concept of “species.” A species is a set of common, innate, and inseparable traits, whose presence places an individual, once and for all, within a nature shared with countless other individuals. Members of the same species belong together, eternally, even those not yet born, including the unborn who, when conceived and born, will carry the same common traits. It’s not hard to understand that the cats of the 23rd century, when born, will be cats and not tomatoes.
The choice for abortion requires, as a prerequisite, the inability or refusal to grasp this concept. For the abortionist, the condition of being “human” is not an innate quality defining members of the species, but a convention that those already born can choose to apply or not apply to those not yet born. Who decides whether or not the fetus in gestation belongs to humanity is a social consensus, not the nature of things.
The degree of mental confusion necessary to believe in this idea is not small. So much so that abortion advocates rarely clearly and explicitly claim this foundational premise of their arguments. They generally keep it hidden, in obscurity (even to themselves), because they sense that stating it out loud would instantly expose it as a baseless anthropological presumption, and moreover, with catastrophic application: if the condition of being human is a social convention, nothing prevents a subsequent convention from revoking it, denying the humanity of the mentally challenged, the physically handicapped, homosexuals, blacks, Jews, Roma, or whoever else seems inconvenient at the moment.
With all the clarity that could be demanded, the choice for abortion rests on the irrational appeal to the non-existent authority to grant or deny, to whomever one pleases, the status of human being, animal, thing, or piece of thing.
It is no surprise that people capable of such mental barbarism are also immune to other impositions of common moral conscience, such as, for example, the duty of a politician to account for the commitments made by him or his party. It is with truly sociopathic moral insensitivity that Mr. Lula da Silva1 and his beloved Mrs. Dilma,2 after having endorsed the program of a party that loves and venerates abortion to the point of expelling anyone who opposes this idea, parade around claiming innocence of any complicity with the pro-abortion proposal.
It would be foolish to expect moral consistency from individuals who do not even respect the commitment to recognize that other human beings belong to the same species as they do by nature, and not by a generous — and highly revocable — concession on their part.
It is also not surprising that, in their eagerness to impose their will to power, they lie like demons. Look at the numbers of women supposedly annual victims of illegal abortion, which they claim to extol the imaginary social virtues of legalized abortion. There were millions, then thousands, then a few hundred. Now it seems they have settled on 180, when the public health system itself (SUS) has already admitted that there are only eight or nine. Of course: if you do not grasp or respect even the distinction between species, why would you also not be indifferent to the accuracy of quantities? One mental deformity carries the other embedded.
Aristotle advised avoiding debate with opponents incapable of recognizing or obeying the basic rules in the search for truth. If any pro-abortionist wanted the truth, they would have to admit that they are incapable of proving the inhumanity of fetuses and admit that, in essence, whether they are human or not doesn’t affect, in the slightest, their decision to kill them. But confessing this would be like wearing a sociopath badge. And sociopaths, by definition and inherent fate, live by appearing that they are not.
Candid Conversation about Abortion
Radio Imprensa,3 December 4, 1996
The answer to the abortion question depends entirely on two questions.
The first is: Is the fetus in the mother’s womb a human being or not?
If it’s not, then it must become a human being at some point during gestation.4 There are two classes of fools who bet on this absurd hypothesis.
Spiritualist fools believe that this happens the moment the soul “enters” the body. But the soul is not a “thing” separate from the body: it is the body’s very life. For it to enter an already existing body, the body would have had to be lifeless up to that point. In this case, one must admit that the fetus, in the first few weeks after being conceived, is dead as a doornail. Ever heard anything crazier?
Materialist fools argue that a three-month-old fetus does not visually differ from a monkey fetus — an argument that is pure monkey business. Upon closer examination, Pablo Picasso looks more like a Neanderthal man than Tom Cruise.
Every attempt to prove that the fetus is not human runs into insurmountable nonsense. But denying that another is human is the oldest excuse for those wishing to kill them. Nazi science proved, with similar arguments, that Jews were not human.
Having set aside the crazy hypothesis that the fetus is not human, the second decisive question arises: Is there any substantial difference between killing a human being in the mother’s womb and killing it after it has come out?
Pro-abortionists try to deceive women with flattery, assuring them that everything inside their bodies belongs to them, and they can do whatever they want with what’s theirs. This reasoning implies that the fetus is an organ of the woman’s body, not an independent human being. But even if the fetus were an organ, what is an organ? It is, by definition, something that cannot be removed without harming the body. So, how can they argue in support of the right to remove the fetus on the grounds that it’s an organ? If it’s an organ, removing it is mutilating the body. And, once the right to self-mutilation is accepted, it would be odious discrimination to grant it to someone wishing to cut off their own big toe and deny it to someone wanting something more refined, like cutting off their own head, or cutting off the rest of their body and walking around with just the floating head.
Having ruled out the absurd idea that the fetus is an organ, we need to determine if, even being something else, it belongs to the woman carrying it. The answer is no, because it is not made only of the ovum but also of sperm. The sperm is not produced by the mother’s body, but by the father’s, and he simply deposits it into the mother’s body. The mother, therefore, does not own the entire fetus but only a part of it; the other part, which comes from the father, is merely deposited — and she has as much right to throw the fetus in the trash as a bank has the right to throw away the money from our deposits.
The categorical rejection of the right to abortion stems from clear evidence, which only a vile mindset can deny. But the evil is not in the women who have abortions, deceived by despair. It’s in the abortion advocate, who with soft speech intends to induce them to become murderers. If they accept the proposal, either they will create yet another reason for guilt, suffering, and despair, or they will have to suppress all feelings of guilt in their hearts, becoming as cold and inhumane as their treacherous advisor.
I appeal to the poor and desperate woman, who is afraid to bring a child into the world: do not believe these false friends. When you hear a deputy, a senator, a well-situated intellectual say that he supports abortion because he feels sorry for poor women, ask him:
— But, doctor, if you are so kind and generous that you offer to help kill my little child, why can’t you give me some money to help him live?
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Editor’s Note: See “Lula is pro-abortion, yes. Evidence and more evidence, here”, documentation gathered and presented by Alberto R. S. Moteiro in October 2006, available at the link: http://www.olavodecarvalho.org/textos/mensagem_aborto.html.↩
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Editor’s Note: Dilma Rousseff’s public position on the legalization of abortion varied over the years, being sometimes in favor, sometimes completely ambiguous or incomprehensible, and sometimes against. Below are her most famous statements on the subject, all available online, some even with the original videos. In an interview on October 4, 2007 with Folha: “Look, I think there has to be a decriminalization of abortion. Today, in Brazil, it is absurd that there isn’t." In an April 2009 interview with Marie Claire magazine: "Having an abortion is not easy for any woman. I doubt anyone feels comfortable having an abortion. However, this cannot be justification for not legalizing it.” In an interview with Isto É magazine on May 8, 2010: Dilma, already a presidential candidate, says she is in favor of legislation “that obliges there to be treatment for people, so there is no risk of life, just like in developed countries around the world” and also advocates public care “for those who are in conditions to have an abortion or wanting to have an abortion”. In a debate on September 23, 2010 promoted by CNBB - National Conference of Bishops of Brazil: “I also have a clear position in defense of life. (...) Abortion is violence against women. I personally am not in favor of abortion. As president of the Republic, if elected, I will have to address the issue of the thousands of poor women in this country who use absolutely barbaric methods and systematically risk their lives. They must be protected. And in this sense, I always said that this is a public health issue. It is not an issue that can be confused with my option for promoting abortion. I don’t think this results in any benefit to society. Now, I also consider that current legislation already provides for cases where abortion is feasible and I don’t know if I think it would be necessary to expand these cases; I don’t see much sense.” At a meeting on September 29, 2010 with Catholics and Evangelicals, four days before the elections: “I personally am against abortion. I think abortion is violence against women. (...) I am not in favor of modifying the legislation.” It is also worth remembering that the National-Socialist Human Rights Plan, which proposed the legalization of abortion, took its final shape in the Chief of Staff’s Office, of which Dilma was the incumbent.↩
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Editor’s Note: Read on Heitor Bastos-Tigre’s program.↩
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Editor’s Note: “[According to the editorial of the Folha on April 15, 2007:] ‘The only alternative is to let the law establish the point, which will necessarily be arbitrary.’ That is: if we ignore whether the fetus is a person or not, the legislator can do whatever he pleases with it. Running the risk or not of killing a possible human being is just a matter of taste. Of course, the editorial writer is not aware of the immorality of what he wrote. For a sane mind, any conduct based on doubt is dubious in itself; and no one has the right to dubious action when it endangers a possible human life.” [Olavo de Carvalho, “Abortionist’s Logic”, Jornal do Brasil, April 19, 2007 — http://www.olavodecarvalho.org/semana/070419jb.html].↩
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