1. The Abortion Debate

2. In this lecture… The debate Roe v. Wade Pro-life v. pro-choice
Personhood
Interests
Potentiality
Future-like-ours
Bodily autonomy
Special cases

3. The Debate
The ‘legal status’ of something refers to how it is to be regarded from the legal point of view.
The ‘moral status’ of something refers to how it is to be regarded from the moral point of view.

4. The Debate
A ‘fetus’ is an unborn child at any stage throughout pregnancy.
An ‘embryo’ is a fetus at a very early stage of pregnancy.

5. The Debate
Since abortions have been legalized (especially after the United State’s Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe v. Wade in 1973), it is one of the safest procedures, with little history of complication or side effects.
Thus, the ‘abortion debate’ is not about health issues, but moral issues.

6. The Debate
The abortion debate usually surrounds the issues of whether a fetus has a right to life, and whether the pregnant woman’s right over her own body justifies abortion even if the fetus has a right to life.

7. The Debate Does a fetus have a right to be carried to full term?
Does a pregnant woman have the right to do whatever she wants with her body, including the right to dispose of a fetus?

8. The Debate
Arguments on both sides of the debate look at issues from the third- person point of view and pay scant attention to matters of personal concern.
Approaching the question from the first person perspective (from the pregnant woman’s point of view) may involve very different considerations.

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

10. Roe v. Wade
The right to choose whether to have children was protected by the right to privacy.
Privacy can be understood as a condition in which one is not disturbed by government. In relation to abortion, privacy is defined as the right of a woman to decide what happens to her own body.

11. Roe v. Wade
However, a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy is not absolute – after the fetus becomes ‘viable’, the state may prohibit all abortions except those necessary to preserve the health or life of the mother.

12. Roe v. Wade
‘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.

13. Roe v. Wade
The 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.”

14. Roe v. Wade
The Supreme Court’s ruling might have settled the dispute over the legal status of abortion, but not its moral status.
Even if you have a legal right to seek abortion, it does not follow that doing so is morally right.

15. Pro-life v. pro-choice
People who oppose abortion call themselves ‘pro-life’, while those who support women’s right to abortion call themselves ‘pro-choice’.

16. Pro-life v. pro-choice
Pro-life argument: Because fetuses are full human beings, abortion is never justified, except perhaps to save the mother’s life.
Counterargument: The assumption that fetuses are ‘persons’ (full human beings) is questionable.

17. Pro-life v. pro-choice
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.

18. Pro-life v. pro-choice
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 effects.

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

20. Pro-life v. pro-choice
Pro-choice argument: Abortion is a private, personal decision based on the mother’s right to privacy and autonomy. Freedom of choice is a person’s fundamental right that must be protected from government interference.

21. Pro-life v. pro-choice
Pro-choice argument: Women should have the right to control their own bodies and reproduction. They should be able to decide how many children they want to have and when to have them. The government should not tell them what they can and cannot do with their bodies.

22. Pro-life v. pro-choice
Pro-choice argument: Unwanted pregnancies carry emotional burdens as well as physical ones. Pregnancy can be 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 rights and opportunities to participate fully in society.

23. Pro-life v. pro-choice
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.

24. Pro-life v. pro-choice
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 in unsuitable conditions by unqualified persons. As a result, the health and well-being of these women will be endangered.

25. Pro-life v. pro-choice
Counterargument: Enforcement problems might provide a reason not to ban abortions, but they certainly do not make abortions morally right. Legalization of abortion is undesirable because it will encourage irresponsible behavior.

26. Personhood
The debate about the rights of the embryo or fetus is often framed as the question of whether or not it is a ‘person.’
If it is a ‘person’ (if it has the moral status of a person), then it has all the rights of other persons, including a right to life.

27. Personhood
The term ‘personhood’ or ‘moral personhood’ refers to the moral status of a person.
Does a fetus have the same moral status as a fully functional person?

28. Personhood
Opponents of abortion 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 that defines the zygote (i.e. fertilized egg) as human is already present at the very moment of conception.

29. Personhood
Defenders of abortion argue that fetuses are human beings in the biological or genetic sense, but they are not ‘persons’ in the moral sense.
The biological or genetic status of the human organism does not settle the question of its moral status.

30. Personhood
If an entity has ‘moral status,’ it has intrinsic value. Its needs, interests or well-being have importance in their own right.
‘Persons’ are beings of full moral status and therefore are the subjects of rights.

31. Personhood What does it mean to be a ‘person’?
Where do we draw the line between those who are subjects of rights and those that are not?

32. Personhood
When does a fetus attain the legal and moral status of a person with a right to life?
Different people may have different views because there does not seem to be a clear cutoff point between conception and infancy.

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

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

35. Personhood
Some hold that birth is the decisive cutoff point between nonpersonhood and personhood.
But this seems an arbitrary distinction. There is no reason to suppose that the fetus’s status one second before birth is miraculously transformed one second after birth.

36. Personhood
Mary Anne Warren: Birth, rather than some earlier point, marks the beginning of true moral status.
Warren maintains 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?

37. Personhood
By virtue of what characteristics does an entity have ‘personhood status’ and thereby possess a right to life?

38. Personhood
To answer this question, 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.

39. 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.
But if fetuses do not have the moral status of persons, we do not have a moral duty to treat them as persons – they are not subjects of rights.

40. Personhood
Counterargument [1]: Although the term ‘person’ is typically defined in terms of mental or psychological characteristics, there is no agreement concerning which characteristics are the most important. And there is often little or no explanation as to why mental characteristics should make a moral difference.

41. Personhood
Counterargument [2]: If abortion is permissible simply because fetuses do not meet the requirements of personhood, then infanticide should also be permissible because it is difficult to show relevant differences between the capacities of the late fetus and the newborn.

42. Personhood
Counterargument [3]: Not all humans have those qualities mentioned in Warren’s list, while some animals may possess them. Severely retarded children, severely senile adults, and people in persistent vegetative states do not possess those properties, while dolphins, chimpanzees and apes may possess them.

43. Personhood
Counterargument [4]: Personhood arguments were used in the past as an excuse or justification for oppression – women, slaves, Jews, certain racial groups, the disabled, etc. were once believed, for one reason or another, to be non-persons.

44. 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 we treat them equally as members of the human community?

45. Personhood
Is the decision about whether to continue or end a pregnancy more or less the same as the decision about whether to cut one’s hair? Is it morally right to treat fetuses as mere objects?

46. Interests
Personhood is not the only basis for moral consideration. Another important factor is interests.
According to the ‘interest theory of rights’, there is no reason to suppose that only fully functional persons have interests.

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

48. Interests
To have rights is to have protected moral status. Interests are a necessary condition for the attribution of rights.
If the primary function of rights is to protect interests, a being that lacks interests does not need rights because it cannot be harmed and therefore does not need protection.

49. Interests
Having rights seems to presuppose having interests, which in turn seems to presuppose having wants, hopes, fears, likes and dislikes.
Some argue that fetuses cannot have interests simply because they cannot think or feel, experience anything, or want anything.

50. Interests
According to this view, fetuses are incapable of being harmed and they do not have any interests to be protected.
It is therefore mistaken to say that abortion violates the fetuses’ rights because entities that do not have interests cannot have rights.

51. Interests
Counterargument [1]: Fetuses are ‘sentient’ beings in the sense that they, too, have feelings. Since fetuses can feel pain, they have an interest in not being caused to suffer.

52. Interests
Counterargument [2]: Although fetuses may not have interests now, they will acquire interests once they are born. Their future interests can be harmed by events that occur while they are still in the womb. For example, smoking, drinking alcohol, or taking narcotic drugs during pregnancy can cause a child to be born with serious impairments.

53. Interests
Counterargument [3]: A wrongful act done today may harm someone in the future who is not yet born or even conceived. For example, putting poisonous ingredients into powdered milk to be sold in the markets 12 months later is obviously immoral because of the harm it will cause to future newborns.

54. 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 functional person either.
Should we treat a potential person in exactly the same way we treat an actual person?

55. Potentiality
Some argue that the fetus is a potential person and has the capability of becoming an actual person. For this reason, a fetus should be valued and respected for that potential and be accorded the same moral status and protection that we accord each other.

56. Potentiality
It does not necessarily follow that full moral or legal status should be awarded on the basis of ‘potentiality’.
Having the potential to become an musician is not the same as being an musician, and a potential person is not equal to an actual person.

57. Potentiality
We feel a sense of loss when a mature apple tree is felled or chopped down, but we do not feel the same sense of loss at the destruction of an apple seed.
The question is: Can we justify the killing of a fetus on the basis of an analogy between seeds and fetuses?

58. Potentiality
No, because this is a false analogy: fruit trees are valued by us because they bear fruit (because of their extrinsic values to us), whereas human beings have intrinsic worth in virtue of the kind of being they are (they are valued for their own sake).

59. Potentiality
The fetus is a potential person but it is not an actual person. Nor should it enjoy the same rights as an actual person .
For example, teenagers will have the right to vote when they reach the age of eligibility, but it does not mean that they now have the right to vote.

60. Potentiality
Counterargument: This, again, involves a false analogy. The ‘right to life’ (a natural or fundamental right inherent to all human beings) and the ‘right to vote’ (a legal right granted to a specific class of people by legislation) are rights of very different nature.

61. Potentiality
A potential person does not automatically develop into an actual person over time.
We are not born persons but become such through socialization. For a newborn to develop into a ‘person’, it must be properly raised, fed and educated, and have opportunities to establish relationships with others.

62. Potentiality
Potentiality, therefore, does not imply actuality. Becoming a person is not a biological given but an interactive process.
Infants abandoned or severely neglected by parents fail to learn to speak and take on animal characteristics.

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

64. Potentiality
Very few people regard abortion as the moral equivalent of contraception. For most people, it takes no reason at all to justify contraception, but it takes some reason to justify ending a pregnancy. Why?

65. Future-like-ours
Don Marquis argues that abortion is immoral. Why? Because abortion involves killing.
But what is wrong with killing? Because killing robs its victim of a future of value, according to Marquis.

66. Future-like-ours
What makes killing wrong is the loss to the victim of the value of the victim’s future.
Killing deprives its victim of all the goods of her future she otherwise would have experienced.

67. Future-like-ours
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.”

68. Future-like-ours
A ‘future of value’ or ‘future-like- ours,’ according to Marquis, include all the activities, projects, experiences and enjoyments that are either valuable for their own sake or are means to something else that is valuable for its own sake.

69. 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.

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

71. Bodily autonomy
Judith Jarvis Thomson defends abortion while granting her opponents the concession that the fetus is a person from the moment of conception.

72. 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.

73. 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?

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

75. Bodily autonomy
Staying connected to the violinist may be the kind thing to do, but disconnecting oneself does not violate the violinist’s right to life.
The right to life (a ‘negative right’) does not include the right to have all the assistance needed to maintain that life (a ‘positive right’).

76. Bodily autonomy
A ‘positive right’ can be seen as a right to be provided with something, whereas a ‘negative right’ is simply a right to be left alone.

77. 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 a woman is not morally required to allow the fetus to use her body.

78. Bodily autonomy
The violinist scenario shows that no one has the right to use the body of another person against her will.
The fetus, therefore, does not have the right to use the body of the mother for sustenance or survival against her will.

79. Bodily autonomy
The mother who chooses to support her child by sustaining the pregnancy is performing a virtuous act (as a ‘Good Samaritan’ would do) but one that she is not obliged to perform. In other words, the mother does not have a duty to carry the fetus to term.

80. 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 (performing an abortion).

81. 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.

82. 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.

83. Bodily autonomy
Counterargument [3]: Thomson assumes that the fetus is like an uninvited guest who has no right to use the mother’s body. It can be argued, however, that once a woman voluntarily engages in sexual intercourse, she has suspended her right to privacy and autonomy by engaging in an act that brought a new being (the fetus) into existence.

84. Bodily autonomy
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.

85. Bodily autonomy Thomson’s ‘expanding child’ scenario:
Suppose you find yourself trapped in a tiny house with a rapidly growing child. You are already up against the wall of the house and in a few minutes you will be crushed to death. Is it morally permissible for you to attack the child to save you own life?

86. Bodily autonomy
For Thomson, if a pregnancy endangers a woman’s life, she is morally justified to seek abortion on grounds of self-defense.

87. Bodily autonomy The ‘people-seeds’ scenario:
Suppose there are ‘people-seeds’ drifting about in the air like pollen. If you open the windows, one may drift in and take root in your carpets. You do not want children, so you fix up your windows with fine mesh screens.

88. Bodily autonomy
If, however, one of the screens is defective and a seed drifts in and takes root, is it permissible for you to rid your house of the unwelcome intruder?

89. Bodily autonomy
Thomson seems to think that if a woman has taken all necessary precautions, she may seek abortion because she has no duty to bear a child she does not want.

90. Special cases
If a pregnant woman’s life is at risk, abortion could be viewed as the lesser of two evils.
For example, chemotherapy for cancer treatment may cause a miscarriage; in which case the death of the fetus is a secondary effect of treating the mother.

91. Special cases
When the mother’s life is in danger due to pregnancy, we quite naturally feel more sympathy and concern for a person with fully developed capacities and a network of established relationships than we do for a fetus which has neither.

92. Special cases
In the case of an unintended and unwanted pregnancy, it seems reasonable to weigh the harm of forcing the woman to give birth to an unwanted child against the harm of destroying a fetus.

93. Special cases
If a poor decision led to the pregnancy in the first place, how much worse will the decisions be when they are being made for the baby who will have to live with the consequences?

94. Special cases
Do you think that access to abortion should be provided to teenage girls who got pregnant? What about poor families with several children that cannot afford another child?

95. Special cases
Two women were raped. One decide 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?

96. Special cases
Do you agree with the view that abortion on the grounds of fetal abnormality is morally and legally objectionable in discriminating against disabled people? Why or why not?