abortion and the human person · in any way up to the end of the ﬁrst trimester. according to...

Abortion and the Human Person

Abortion and the Human Person

We turn now to a moral issue in which the philosophy of the human person plays a central role:

the question of the morality of abortion.

Many people think of abortion as a political issue, and they are correct. But it is a political issue only because it is first and

foremost a moral issue.

Here, we will focus primarily on abortion as a moral issue. However, morality is always connected with politics too. Politics and

morality are ultimately inseparable.

One of them approaches the issue from the “pro-life“ view, and the other other from the “pro-choice“ view.

From the pro-life perspective, the issue of abortion has many similarities to the issue of slavery in pre-Civil war America. Consider the following parallels:

• Slavery is a grave offense against humanity itself.

• Slavery is a moral evil that should not be tolerated in a civilized culture. It cannot be left to private judgment.

• The majority of Americans in the pre-civil war era thought that slavery should be legal, though many were uncomfortable with it.

• Slavery was a highly controversial question in the political life of this country. Many arguments were made on both sides of the issue.

As a prelude to our discussion, here are two analogies from history that may help in thinking about abortion.

From the pro-choice perspective, we might compare abortion to the freedom of women to work outside the home:

• Early in the 20th century, there were many moral objections to women in the workforce.

• People saw that there are advantages and disadvantages of having women in the workforce. The obvious advantage is that women ought to have the right to pursue their goals and passions as much as men. And having a female perspective in the workforce surely enriches it.

• Yet since few men (to this day) are willing to stay at home with the children, having women in the workforce usually means that young children must go without the love and care of a parent during the day. Virtually all studies show that this is a bad thing for children.

• These advantages and disadvantages are hard to weigh. So the government ought not to interfere in a woman’s (or a man’s) decision whether to work outside the home.

Both the issue if slavery and the issue of women in the workforce have similarities (including historical similarities) with the issue of abortion.

But which is a better analogy? Notice that the ultimate response of our society was different in each case.

We banned slavery absolutely.

But we gave women the right to decide (just as men can) whether to work outside the home.

And most of us think that, in both cases, these were the morally correct responses.

Some Facts and DefinitionsBefore looking at abortion more closely from a philosophical perspective, it

is important for us to get clear on some basic facts about it.

What is an abortion?Abortion is sometimes called “termination of a pregnancy.” However, this

is an imprecise label. Pregnancy can be terminated in many ways other than through abortion. For example, a pregnancy is terminated when

labor is induced in order to deliver a baby alive. Abortion, as we will use the word, is the termination of a pregnancy in such

a way that the life of the developing organism is intentionally ended.

What is a fetus?Fetus is a Latin word that means “little one” or “little child”.

The developing organism is called a fetus at the end of the 8th week after conception. This transition marks the point where the organism has all of the body parts and internal organs of an adult human being.

Before the 8th week, it is called an embryo.

Some Facts About Abortion

When can an abortion legally be performed?According to the supreme court, all laws must permit abortion through

all nine months of pregnancy.

The Roe vs Wade decision in January of 1973 prohibited states from restricting abortion in any way up to the end of the first trimester.

According to Roe, states cannot pass any laws that restrict abortion in the second trimester unless those laws are solely for the sake of the mother.

In the third trimester, Roe allowed states to restrict abortion for other reasons, so long as the life or health of the mother is not endangered.

Thus, although it is a rare occurence, an abortion can be legally performed in this country right up until the moment of birth, for any reason that a doctor will sign off on.

(States can and do restrict abortion further, though if their laws contradict Supreme Court rulings they can be challenged and overturned.)


When are most abortions performed?About 90% of abortions are performed in the first trimester, that is, the first thirteen

weeks after conception.

About 1.3% of abortions performed in the US (around 12,000) can be considered “late-term.” This means that they are performed around or after the time fetus becomes

viable, or able to survive outside the womb.

How are abortions performed?Medical abortions are possible up to about the end of the 7th week of pregnancy. In

such an abortion, medication is used to cause the developing organism to be expelled from the uterus. This can take a few days to occur.

The most common type of surgical abortion is vacuum aspiration where the organism is removed through a small tube, via suction. Abortions like this cannot normally be

performed after the 13th week of pregnancy because the organism is too large.

In the second and third trimester, the method known as dilation and evacuation (D&E) is most often used.


In the second and third trimester, the method known as dilation and evacuation (D&E) is most often used.

In a D&E abortion, the cervix is dilated and a pair of forcepts with sharp teeth is used to remove the limbs of the organism one by one, followed by its torso and head which

are crushed and removed in pieces with the same instrument.

Intact dilation and extraction is now extremely rare because it has been outlawed at the federal level, except in cases where the life of the mother is at stake.

Another method of late-term abortion known as intact dilation and extraction (IDE) differs from D&E abortion in that the fetus is not dismembered. This method is

sometimes called “partial birth” abortion, especially by those who oppose it.

In an IDE abortion, labor is induced and the fetus is delivered breech until only the head remains in the birth canal. At this point a catheter is inserted at the

base of his or her neck and the contents of the skull are suctioned out through it. This causes the skull to collapse so that the remainder of the now-deceased

organism can be easily delivered.


How many abortions are performed in the USA?The following statistics are from 2017, reported by the Guttmacher Institute (Planned Parenthood’s research affiliate):

In 2017, just under 1 in 5 prengancies (excluding miscarriages) ended in abortion (18.4%)

In 2017, about 1.2 million legal abortions were performed in this country.Of these, about 340,000 were medical abortions (i.e. non-surgical).

Why do women seek abortions?The following information is from the Guttmacher Institute’s 2005 study of what women cited

as their reasons for seeking an abortion. Most women gave more than one answer.

Would interfere with school or career 38%

Mother has health problems: 12%

Not ready for a child: 32%Relationship problems or concern about being a single parent 48%

Can’t afford a baby now: 78%

Has enough children already 38%

Rape or incest: <1.5%

Fetus may have health problems: 13%

Between 1973 and 2011 that number is well over 61 million.

Some Facts About AbortionSome Facts About Abortion

What kind of organism is it that dies in an abortion?

The organism that dies in an abortion is a human organism, having a genetic code and metabolic processes distinct from the mother.

Thus, if what we mean by a “human being” is a distinct biologically human organism, then a human fetus is clearly a human being.

It is a scientific fact that the organism that dies in an abortion is a biologically distinct human organism and this is generally acknowledged

by those who favor legalized abortion.

However, as we will see, the moral status of that human organism is a hotly contested question in the abortion debate.

1. It is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human person.2. A human fetus is an innocent human person.C. It is wrong to intentionally kill a human fetus.

The Standard Argument Against Abortion

When thinking carefully about the morality of abortion, it is useful to frame the question in terms of the following simple argument:

And it is probably safe to say that if either of the premises of this argument were obviously false, then abortion would not be nearly so controversial.

Almost everyone who thinks abortion is immoral will agree that this is a sound argument.

Thus, in order to argue that abortion is morally permissible, one needs to show that one of the premises of this argument is false.

As such, those who defend the morality of abortion usually fall into one of two groups: those who reject premise 1 and those who reject premise 2.


We begin with the second premise, which is probably the one that most people who support legal abortion

will reject.

So in order to deny that a human fetus is a human person, we will have to deny the following claim:

Some people try to deny that the fetus is a human organism. But this is just to

deny the biological facts.

A better strategy for denying this premise is to distinguish between a human being (an organism that is genetically human) and

a human person.

A human person is a human being that has basic human rights. A human person is “one of us” such that we have to treat it morally in the same way we treat other

humans.

All human beings are human persons.

2. A human fetus is an innocent human person.


But to deny this claim, we must logically accept this claim:

All human beings are human persons.


Some human beings are not human persons.

But then, we have to accept that:

Some human beings do not have the same basic human rights as us.

Clearly, these are not the people in history that we most admire.



Some human beings do not have the same basic human rights as us.

It is worth noting that many people in history have accepted this claim. Here are some examples:

Anyone in history who has argued in favor of enslaving another race.Anyone in history who has argued in favor of exterminating another race.

Anyone in history who has argued against the human rights of another human group.

Anyone in history who has argued against the human rights of people with disabilities.Anyone in history who has argued against the human rights of women.

That does not prove that the above claim is false, however. But it is a historical pattern that should, perhaps, make us proceed with caution.

Is it possible that in the case of human fetuses we are correct in making this distinction between human beings with rights and human beings without rights?



Is it possible that in the case of human fetuses we are correct in making this distinction between human beings with rights and human beings without rights?

One question to ask is this:

If merely being human is not enough for an organism to have human rights, what would be enough?

And who gets to decide?

For class today, we read a famous paper written by the philosopher Mary Anne Warren in 1973.

Warren argues that a human fetus is not a human person. And she claims that it is easy to see why this is true.

Let’s look at Warren’s argument.


I suggest that the traits which are most central to the concept of personhood, or ‘humanity’ in the moral sense, are, very roughly, the following:1) consciousness (of objects and events external and/or internal to the being), and

in particular the capacity to feel pain;2) reasoning (the developed capacity to solve new and relatively complex problems);3) self-motivated activity (activity which is relatively independent of either genetic

or direct external control);4) the capacity to communicate, by whatever means, messages of an indefinite

variety of types, that is, not just with an indefinite number of possible contents, but on indefinitely many possible topics;

5) the presence of self-concepts, and self-awareness, either individual or racial or both.

…We needn’t suppose that an entity must have all of these attributes to be properly considered a person; (1) and (2) alone may well be sufficient for personhood, and quite probably (1)-(3), if “activity is construed so as to include the activity of reasoning. All we need to claim, to demonstrate that a fetus is not a person, is that any being that satisfies none of (1)-(5) is certainly not a person.


Warren then concludes:

“I think that a rational person must conclude that if the right to life of a fetus is to be based upon its resemblance to a person, then it cannot be said to have any more right to life than, let us say, a newborn guppy (which also seems to be capable of feeling pain), and that a right of that magnitude could never override a woman’s right to obtain an abortion, at any stage of her pregnancy.”

It is not difficult to see that if Warren’s argument justifies abortion, it could easily be used to justify infanticide as well. Warren herself admits this.

And this is precisely the conclusion that many pro-choice philosophers who followed her have drawn.

Peter Singer writes:

Peter Singer (1946 - )

“Newborn human babies have no sense of their own existence over time. So killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living. That doesn’t mean that it is not almost always a terrible thing to

do. It is, but that is because most infants are loved and cherished by their parents, and to kill an infant is usually to do a great wrong to its parents.”


So if we accept a definition of “person” like that of Warren and Singer (one that depends on “self-consciousness”) then it seems that we must

accept that (at least in some cases) infantacide is morally right.

Do we want to do that?

If not, then in order to justify abortion by denying premise 2, we must find some other definition of “person” that excludes the fetus,

but includes infants.

Here is a possible definition:

A human organism is a person once it is “viable” that is, once it can survive outside the womb.


You can remove the fetus from the mother’s womb and keep it alive until it grows to a normal sized newborn.

Many people think this is a good definition of a person because viability is the first moment when the fetus doesn’t

strictly need the mother.

On the other hand, if you abort a viable fetus, then you are killing a human being that could have survived and become an adult person with no more aid from

the mother’s body.



Some people think this is the best way of deciding whether or

not an abortion is moral.

If we adopt this definition of a person, then it would be morally wrong to abort a fetus at or after ~24 weeks gestation.

But as long as you abort it before 24 weeks, then that would be morally acceptable.

After all, the vast majority of abortions (more than 95%) take place before viability. So this definition of

a person would make almost all abortions morally ok.



Why would the fetus suddenly become a person at viability?

Still, why should it matter whether the organism can survive without the mother?

(To the left of

the line it’s

okay to kill it.

)



An even bigger problem is this: the time of viability depends on how much medical technology we have. The more technology, the earlier viability is.

But do we really think that whether or not a human being has human rights depends on

our medical technology?


Why would the fetus suddenly become a person at viability?

So if personhood depends on viability then that means personhood also depends on medical technology.


A human fetus becomes a person once it is “viable” that is, once it can survive outside the womb.

That would force us to say that a human fetus becomes a human person later in Africa, than it does in the US, because

of the difference of technology.

And that is a deeply disturbing claim…

But do we really think that whether or not a human being has human rights depends on our medical technology?


So it looks like viability isn’t the right criterion for personhood.

And even if we could come up with another definition of ‘person’ that excludes fetuses but not other human beings, could we be

confident that it is true?

There is great danger here. If we get this wrong we will be dehumanizing an entire class of people,

just because their human rights are inconvenient for us.

It has been done before.


So there are significant difficulties in denying premise 2 of the standard argument against abortion.

Let’s look at the prospects for denying premise 1.

In order to deny premise 1, we must give strong evidence that even IF the human fetus is a person, it is still morally acceptable to kill it,

at least sometimes.

Now at first glance premise 1 seems extremely plausible. It does seem wrong to intentionally kill innocent persons!

In fact, “the intentional killing of an innocent person” is the standard definition of murder. So denying premise 1 means denying that murder

is always morally wrong.

Now at first glance premise 1 seems extremely plausible. It does seem wrong to intentionally kill innocent persons!

1. It is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human person.

Is there a way to argue that it is sometimes okay to kill of an innocent person?

One way might be to appeal to the following principle:“Any action that leads to better consequences in the world is always morally

okay, no matter what the action is.”If this principle is true, then it might be okay to kill an innocent person, IF the

overall consequences would be better than not killing the person.

The consequentialist principle might allow us to justify abortion in cases when the woman’s life is clearly in danger. But less than 1% of abortions are

performed for that reason. Could this principle justify abortion in other cases?

This is called the “consequentialist” principle and it is strongly rejected by the Catholic tradition of ethics. Nevertheless, there are some people who believe it.

So let’s take a look at it.


The fetus’s right to life conflicts with the woman’s right to control her body. And one’s body is one’s most important possession. This is why some people

say nothing should limit here choices about what to do with her body.

However, in most situations, the right to life of an innocent person seems to outweigh a person’s right to control her possessions, even her body. Mary

Anne Warren makes this same point:

“Appeal to the right to control ones body, which is generally construed as a property right, is at best a rather feeble argument for the permissibility of abortion. Mere

ownership does not give me the right to kill innocent people whom I find on my property, and indeed I am apt to he held responsible if such people injure themselves while on my property. It is equally unclear that I have any moral right to expel an innocent person

from my property when I know that doing so will result in his death.”

One way to think of this question is in terms of a conflict of rights.


One way to think of this question is in terms of a conflict of rights.

Warren, in her article, mentions Judith Jarvis Thomson’s thought experiment about the “violinist.” Let’s look at Thomson’s argument.

Judith Jarvis Thomson (1929 - )

Thomson proposes the following thought experiment: You have been kidnapped by a fanatical group of music

enthusiasts and attached to a famous violinist, who is sick, in order to keep him alive. If you detach yourself from the

violinist, he will die.

Thomson thinks that it is obviously morally acceptable to detach yourself from the violinist.

But many have thought that this is not so obvious. Nor is it obvious that detaching yourself from the violinist, who is artificially attached to you, is the same as killing a fetus whose natural and normal place is in the womb of his

or her mother.


Judith Jarvis Thomson (1929 - )

But many have thought that this is not so obvious. Nor is it obvious that detaching yourself from the violinist, who is artificially attached to you, is the same as killing a fetus whose natural and normal place is in the womb

of his or her mother.

As Warren points out it, it looks like at most Thomson’s thought experiment could justify abortion in cases

where the woman is in no way to blame for her pregnancy, such as in cases of rape.

So this way of denying the first premise of the argument against abortion does look like an up-hill battle.

If the fetus is an innocent human person with basic human rights, it is hard to see how intentionally killing it could be justified, at least in the

overwhelming majority (>98.5%) of cases.


To sum up, in order to argue that abortion is morally permissible, we need to argue EITHER:

That fetuses are human beings who do not have human rights.

OR

That fetuses are human beings who do have human rights, but those rights take a back seat to a more important right: the mother’s right to do what she

wants with her body.

In other words, we need to argue either that the fetus has no rights, or that its rights do not matter.

As we have seen, it is difficult to argue this. But let’s take a moment to ask why we would want to argue it in the first place.

In other words, we need to argue either that the fetus has no rights, or that its rights do not matter.

Why might we want to argue this?

The answer is pretty obvious: because we want to have the freedom to kill fetuses before they become children, since having a child is life-changing.

If we set aside the <1.5% of abortions where rape or incest was involved, pregnancy occurs because a man and a woman choose to have sex at a time in their life when

having a child would be inconvenient.

We want to have sex whenever and with whomever we choose, and be confident that we won’t have children, even when contraception fails. So we need abortion

as a fall-back option.

The root cause of abortion is our desire for sex without consequences.

So in order to get the sexual freedom we want, we have to convince ourselves that:

the human rights of fetuses either don’t exist or don’t matter.

the human rights of fetuses either don’t exist or don’t matter.

But do we have other options as a society? Or is abortion our only choice?

Most people who defend abortion defend it because they want to defend the rights of women, especially women who find themselves with a pregnancy

they did not plan.

It is very scary for a woman to be in this situation.And it is scary for the man as well (if, that is, he actually cares about her).

Indeed, the situation is even worse for the woman if the

father of the fetus decides not to support her.

In such a situation, abortion can seem like the only choice.

If abortion were to become illegal in our country, two things ought to happen at the same time it becomes illegal (if not before):

1) Our society should begin providing a complete support system for pregnant women.

2) Our society should begin holding the man responsible for his sexual behavior in order to reduce the burden that a woman experiences with an unplanned pregnancy.

Here are two suggestions.

• Financial support for the woman all the way through pregnancy, and through the first few years of child-rearing (if she chooses to raise the child).

1) Our society should begin providing a complete support system for pregnant women.

This might include:

• Financial support for adoption services if she chooses to put her infant up for adoption.

• Free access to social workers and other support professionals if she needs/wants it.

• Stiff anti-discrimination laws that include criminal penalties for any kind of discrimination against a woman who is pregnant.

• The father of the fetus should be expected to provide for at least half of the mother’s financial needs so that in combination with government aid, the woman is fully supported during her pregnancy with no cost to herself.

2) Our society should begin holding men responsible for their sexual behavior in order to reduce the burden that women experience with unplanned pregnancies.

And on the man’s side of things:

• These laws should be strictly enforced. Men who do not obey them should be charged with a criminal offense and sent to prison.

• Since the father is equally responsible for having brought this new human being into the world, our society should make sure that he takes responsibility for that new human being, at LEAST financially.

No civilized society should allow the killing of its little ones, just as no civilized society should allow slavery.

BUTIt is ALSO true that no civilized society should neglect to help a

woman who finds herself with an unplanned pregnancy.

It is possible to care for them both.

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