Abortion.

Abortion

In this lecture… The abortion debate Pro-life vs. pro-choice
Personhood Sentience and interest Potentiality Future-like-ours Bodily autonomy

The Abortion Debate ‘Abortion’ is the deliberate termination of an unwanted pregnancy. A ‘fetus’ is an unborn child at any stage throughout pregnancy. An ‘embryo’ is a fetus at a very early stage of pregnancy.

The Abortion Debate The ‘abortion debate’ is not about health issues, but moral issues. Abortion has been legalized in many western countries. (In the United States, for example, after the Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe v. Wade in 1973.) It is one of the safest medical procedures, with little history of complication or side effects.

The Abortion Debate The abortion debate is often framed in terms of a clash between two basic rights: the fetus’ right to life and the mother’s right over her own body. A key question concerns the moral status of the fetus, i.e. whether or not the fetus should be treated as a person with full moral rights.

The Abortion Debate The debate usually surrounds two main issues: [1] whether a fetus has a right to life, and [2] whether the pregnant woman’s right over her own body justifies abortion even if the fetus has a right to life.

The Abortion Debate Does a fetus have a right to life in the same way that adults are generally recognized as having a right to life? If the fetus does have a right to life, can it be overridden by the competing rights of the pregnant woman?

The Abortion Debate The United States Supreme Court in the Roe v. Wade (1973) decision established that a woman’s constitutional right to privacy includes a right to abortion. Prospective mothers are free to abort for personal reasons up until the third trimester (i.e. during the first 6 months of pregnancy).

The Abortion Debate However, a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy is not absolute – after the fetus becomes ‘viable’ (by the seventh month of pregnancy), the state (government) may prohibit all abortions except those necessary to preserve the health or life of the mother.

The Abortion Debate ‘Viability’ refers to the stage of fetal development where a fetus is capable of surviving – given suitable intensive care – outside the mother’s womb. The Court’s decision came close to espousing viability as the cutoff point between not having a right to life and having one.

The Abortion Debate The Supreme Court held that the state has a legitimate interest in protecting potential life and that this interest becomes compelling at viability ‘because the fetus then presumably has the capability of meaningful life, outside the mother’s womb.’

The Abortion Debate The Court’s ruling might have settled the dispute over the legal status of abortion, but not the debate over the moral permissibility of abortion. Even if a woman has a legal right to an abortion, it does not follow that it is morally justified to abort a fetus.

Pro-life vs. pro-choice
People who oppose abortion call themselves ‘pro-life’, while those who support women’s right to abortion call themselves ‘pro-choice’. Let us consider some of the arguments on both sides of the abortion debate:

Pro-life argument: It is wrong to take the life of an innocent person. Abortion is impermissible because it involves killing an innocent person. Counterargument: The assumption that fetuses are ‘persons’ (full human beings) is questionable.

Pro-life argument: There are plenty of readily available contraceptives on the market. If a woman does not use them, it is her own fault and she has to take responsibility for her carelessness. Counterargument: No contraceptive method is 100% effective.

Pro-life argument: Permitting abortion would lead to horrible consequences such as widespread infanticide and moral breakdown. Counterargument: Abortions have been performed in the U.S. and many other countries for quite some time without the slightest evidence of harmful social consequences.

Other pro-life arguments include, for example, [1] abortions emotionally harm the mother; [2] abortion denies society the possible benefits those children could produce; and [3] families eager for children are denied the opportunities of adopting unwanted children.

Pro-choice argument: Abortion is a private, personal decision based on women’s right over their own bodies and reproduction. Women’s reproductive freedom, which includes the right to decide how many children they want to have and when to have them, has been widely accepted as a basic human right.

Pro-choice argument: An unwanted pregnancy can be a significant interruption in a woman’s life, and motherhood can bring a serious disruption of her hopes and plans. If women are denied the right to abortion, they are denied the right and opportunity to participate fully in society.

Pro-choice argument: Someone too immature or otherwise not ready for a child could harm the child or end up leaving the child as a burden to society. These ‘unwanted’ children are likely to end up with problems later in life, so are the mothers who were forced to bear them.

Pro-choice argument: If women do not have legal access to abortion, many of them will have to resort to back-street abortions carried out by unqualified persons. As a result, the health and well-being of these women will be endangered.

Counterargument: Although the arguments above make a strong case for legal abortion rights, it does not follow that abortion is always morally permissible. If the fetus is an entity that has moral status, moral justification is required for any action that might inflict harm, suffering or death on the fetus.

Personhood The debate about the rights of a fetus is often framed as one about the moral status of the fetus, i.e. whether the fetus should be regarded as a ‘person’ or whether it should be treated as a part (i.e. cells or tissue) of a pregnant woman’s body.

Personhood Expressions such as ‘personhood’, ‘moral personhood’, and ‘personhood status’ are often used to refer to the full moral status of a person. The question is: Does a fetus have the full moral status of a person, or any moral status at all?

Personhood If an entity has ‘moral status’, it has intrinsic value. Its needs, interests and well-being have importance in their own right. ‘Persons’ are beings of full moral status and therefore are entitled to a full set of rights, the most important of which is the right to life.

Personhood Anti-abortionists argue that to kill a fetus is to murder a human being. This claim is supported by the fact that all the necessary genetic material (the ‘genetic code’) that defines the zygote (i.e. fertilized egg) as human is already present at the very moment of conception.

Personhood Defenders of abortion argue that a fetus is human only in the biological or genetic sense. Fetuses, on this view, do not possess the relevant properties that qualify them as ‘persons’ (i.e. full members of a moral community).

Personhood What does it mean to be a ‘person’? What necessary properties or capacities must an entity possess if it is to be counted as a person? When, if ever, does a fetus attain the full moral status of a person with a right to life?

Personhood Some argue that the fetus attains personhood at around the eighth week when brain activity becomes detectable. However, if brain activity is a sufficient condition for personhood, many animals will have to be treated as persons.

Personhood Some say that a fetus should be considered a person when ‘viable’ (i.e. being able to survive outside the mother’s body). However, with improved medical support, very premature fetuses can be kept alive, challenging what counts as ‘viable’.

Personhood Some hold that birth is the decisive moment when the child attains moral status. But this seems arbitrary because there is no reason to suppose that the child’s moral status one second before birth is miraculously transformed one second after birth.

Personhood For Mary Anne Warren, birth, rather than some earlier point, marks the beginning of true moral status. Warren argues that if a fetus is to be considered a person, then so should sperm. Does this mean that we need to protect the rights of sperm? Of course not.

Personhood Mary Anne Warren makes a distinction between ‘humans’ in the biological or genetic sense (genetic humanity), and ‘persons’ in the moral sense (moral humanity). 33

Personhood Warren suggests a series of traits or characteristics that are central to the concept of ‘personhood’; namely, [1] consciousness, [2] reasoning, [3] self- motivated activity, [4] the capacity to communicate, and [5] the presence of self-concepts.

Personhood Warren’s list sets a very high threshold for ‘personhood’. Thus it seems impossible, at least according to Warren, for a fetus to be a person. For Warren, although fetuses are biologically or genetically human, they do not qualify as members of a moral community.

Personhood But if fetuses do not have personhood status, we do not have a moral duty to treat them as persons. Therefore, abortion is permissible because it does not involve killing a ‘person’.

Personhood Counterargument [1]: It is not clear which mental capacities or psychological traits are necessary (or sufficient) for moral status or personhood status. And there is no explanation as to why differences in mental capacities or psychological traits should make a moral difference.

Personhood Counterargument [2]: If abortion is permissible simply because fetuses do not meet the requirements of personhood, then infanticide (i.e. killing babies) should also be permissible because it is difficult to show that there are any significant differences between the capacities of the late-term fetus and the newborn.

Personhood Counterargument [3]: Not all humans possess those qualities mentioned on Warren’s list, while some animals may possess them. The severely retarded, people in advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease, and people in comas do not possess those properties, while dolphins and apes may possess some of them.

Personhood Is it morally permissible to kill unconscious and severely retarded humans, or very small children, simply because they do not exhibit the required characteristics for personhood? Should they be treated as members of the moral community?

Personhood Is the decision to terminate a pregnancy more or less the same, in moral terms, as the decision to remove an unwanted part of one’s body, such as cutting one’s hair or trimming one’s fingernails? Is it morally permissible to treat fetuses as mere objects?

Sentience and interest
Sentience is the capacity to experience pleasure, pain and other conscious mental states. Some philosophers believe that the possession of sentience is a sufficient condition for the possession of moral status and moral rights.

Sentient beings can be harmed or benefitted in ways that have to be taken into account when we make moral judgments and decisions. For example, any being that has the capacity to feel pain has an interest in not being made to suffer.

An early-term fetus, i.e. one still in the earliest stages of its development, is non-sentient. Scientific evidence suggests that human fetuses begin to acquire and develop the capacity of sentience sometime into the second trimester of pregnancy.

Thus, it can be argued that moral status should only be accorded to the late-term fetus, which is sentient, but not to the early-term fetus, which is non-sentient. An early-term fetus cannot have wants, feelings or conscious experience. As such, it cannot have interests in any meaningful sense.

The interest theory of rights asserts that the possession of interests is both necessary and sufficient for moral status and moral rights. To have moral status (and moral rights) is to be the kind of being whose interests must be considered (and protected) from the moral point of view.

If the primary function of rights is to protect interests, a being that lacks interests, such as an early-term fetus, cannot have rights because it cannot be harmed and does not need protection.

As long as the early-term fetus is non-sentient, it is not possible to do anything harmful to its interests or make it worse off. As long as the early-term fetus is not morally considerable, no moral justification would be necessary for early-term abortions.

Counterargument: Although an early- term fetus may not have interests now, it is a potential person whose future interests can be harmed by what we do today. Abortion, therefore, is morally impermissible because it harms the future interests of a potential person.

Potentiality A fetus is a potential person, not an actual person. A potential person is surely not an object, but it is not a fully-functioning person either. Should we give the same respect to potential persons as we do to actual persons?

Potentiality The argument from potentiality asserts that a fetus has the potential to become an actual, fully- functioning person. As such, the fetus should be valued and respected for that potential and be accorded the same moral status and moral rights that we accord to actual persons.

Potentiality However, opponents to the potentiality argument point out that there are significant differences between potentiality and actuality. Someone who has the potential to become a teacher is not yet a teacher, and therefore should not be put in charge of lessons.

Potentiality An acorn has the potential to be an oak tree. But we do not feel sorry for the destruction of an acorn in the same way we feel a sense of loss when a mature oak tree is cut down. Although teenagers will have a right to vote in the future, they are not entitled to vote until they have reached the age of eligibility.

Potentiality Another objection to the potentiality argument is that potential persons do not automatically become actual persons over time. Some infants that were abandoned or severely neglected by parents fail to learn to speak and take on animal characteristics.

Potentiality For a newborn to develop into a ‘person’, it must be properly raised and educated, and have opportunities to establish relationships with others. Potentiality, therefore, does not necessarily imply actuality. Becoming a person is not a biological given but an interactive process.

Potentiality The unfertilized egg and sperm, like an embryo or a fetus, also have the potential to become a fully- functioning person. Does it imply that we should treat sperm and eggs with the same respect as we treat human beings?

Future-like-ours One version of the potentiality argument claims that abortion is wrong because it prevents a being (the fetus) from actualizing its potential. Don Marquis argues that abortion is immoral. Why? Because abortion involves killing. But why is killing wrong?

Future-like-ours Because killing robs its victim of a future of value. Killing deprives its victim of all the goods of her future she otherwise would have experienced. According to Marquis, what makes killing wrong is the loss to the victim of the value of the victim’s future.

Future-like-ours Don Marquis: ‘For any killing where the victim did have a valuable future like ours, having the future by itself is sufficient to create the strong presumption that the killing is seriously wrong.’

Future-like-ours A ‘future of value’, according to Marquis, includes all the activities, projects, experiences and enjoyments that are either valuable intrinsically or are means to something else that is valuable intrinsically.

Future-like-ours We know that fetuses have valuable futures because we were all fetuses once. Thus, abortion is wrong simply because fetuses have futures like ours. What makes it wrong to kill a fetus is exactly what makes it wrong to kill you and me.

Future-like-ours Counterargument [1]: There is no guarantee that a fetus will have a ‘future of value’ or ‘future-like-ours’, especially for cases of unwanted pregnancies.

Future-like-ours Counterargument [2]: If abortion is wrong because it deprives a potential being of its valuable future, the same can also be said of contraception, which prevents an egg from being fertilized and thereby deprives it of a future of value.

Bodily autonomy Proponents of the argument from bodily autonomy believe that a woman has the right to decide what happens to her body and is under no obligation to support a child she does not want.

Bodily autonomy For Judith Jarvis Thomson, the focus of the abortion debate should be the pregnant woman’s right over her own body, not the moral status of the fetus.

Bodily autonomy In a well-known essay titled ‘A Defense of Abortion’, Judith Jarvis Thomson defends abortion while granting her opponents the concession that the fetus is to be viewed as a person from the moment of conception. She then introduces a thought experiment:

Bodily autonomy Imagine that you wake up in bed next to a famous violinist. He is unconscious with a fatal kidney ailment; and because only you happen to have the right blood type to help, the Society of Music Lovers has kidnapped you and plugged your circulatory system into his so that your kidneys can filter poisons from his blood as well as your own.

Bodily autonomy If the violinist is disconnected from you now, he will die; but in nine months, he will recover and can be safely disconnected. Is it morally permissible for you to unplug yourself from the violinist even though this will cause him to die?

Bodily autonomy Thomson’s answer is that the demands made upon you to remain attached to the violinist exceed those required of morally responsible people. Just as you have no moral duty to use your body to support the violinist, so a pregnant woman is under no obligation to use her body to support a child she does not want.

Bodily autonomy Staying attached to the violinist may be the kind thing to do, but disconnecting from him does not violate the violinist’s right to life. Why? Because the right to life is a ‘negative right’ which does not include the right to have all the assistance needed to maintain that life.

Bodily autonomy A ‘positive right’ can be seen as a right to be provided with some good or service, whereas a ‘negative right’ is simply a right of non-interference, a right to be left alone. For Thomson, the right to life is essentially a negative right.

Bodily autonomy Thomson does not argue against the right to life, but rather against the right to use another person’s body without the person’s consent. In other words, the fetus may have a right to life, but the pregnant woman is not morally required to allow the fetus to use her body.

Bodily autonomy The violinist scenario shows that no one has the right to use the body of another person without that person’s approval or permission. The fetus, therefore, does not have the right to use the body of the mother for sustenance or survival against her will.

Bodily autonomy A woman who chooses to support her child by carrying the pregnancy to term is performing a virtuous act (as what a ‘Good Samaritan’ would do) but one that she has no moral duty to perform. In short, the woman does not have a moral duty to carry the fetus to full term.

Bodily autonomy Counterargument [1]: Abortion is an act of extracting an unborn child that inevitably leads to its death. There is a significant difference between choosing not to assist someone (unplugging the violinist) and doing something that causes someone harm (killing a fetus).

Bodily autonomy Counterargument [2]: Thomson’s view of bodily autonomy is premised on the questionable assumption that the pregnant woman has the absolute right to do whatever she wants with her body.

Bodily autonomy But most rights are not absolute. Just as the right to swing one’s fist ends where the other man’s face begins, a woman’s right to control her own body stops at taking the life of her unborn child.

Bodily autonomy Counterargument [3]: The violinist scenario, which involves a kidnapping, can only be compared to pregnancy after rape. If a pregnant woman was not raped but had sex voluntarily, she has either tacitly consented to allow the fetus to use her body, or else has a duty to sustain the fetus because she caused it to stand in need of her body.

Bodily autonomy It can be argued that once a woman voluntarily engages in sexual intercourse, she has suspended her right to bodily autonomy by engaging in an act that brought a new life into existence.

A woman gets pregnant despite all the necessary precautions she has taken. Suppose that she wants to focus on her career and does not want to have children, is it morally justified for her to seek an abortion?

Two women were raped. One decided to keep the child and raise it as if conceived under normal circumstances. The other woman decided to have an abortion. Did both women make a good decision?

Do you think that access to abortion should be provided to teenage girls who got pregnant accidentally? What about those poor families with several children that cannot afford another one?

Do you agree with the view that abortion on grounds of fetal abnormality is morally objectionable in discriminating against people with disability? Why or why not?

Abortion.

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