In a discussion on this blog a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I used to be pro-life. Someone (Joe?) asked at that time:
Okay-dokey. Here’s the argument that changed my mind on abortion. (This isn’t the approach I’d necessarily take nowadays, however.)
In my youth – up to age 16 or so – I was abortion-agnostic. I didn’t really have an opinion one way or the other.
In late high school and early college, I was mildly pro-life. My argument was that it wasn’t possible for us to know for certain when “personhood” begins. Given that we are stuck with uncertainty, I thought it was logical and humane to err on the side of preserving life. Therefore, I argued, abortion should be illegal except when needed to preserve the mother’s life.
What changed my mind was reading an essay by some philosopher (alas, I no longer know the name of the author or the essay).
The author of the essay argued that, to judge abortion, we need to balance harm done to a woman forced to give birth, against harm suffered by an aborted fetus. However, in order to be harmed by the loss of its future, a fetus would need to have valued its potential future at some point in its existence. To value its potential future, it must have a history of
a) Awareness of itself as a being which exists across time, into the future.
b) Anticipating and preferring its own future existence.
If a fetus is not capable of both those things, then it is not harmed in any meaningful way by being aborted. All that it loses is a future it has never valued.
So that was the argument that switched me from being pro-life to pro-choice.
* * *
Now, I can anticipate three objections to this argument, none of which are very persuasive.
1) “What about the mentally disabled”?
Mentally disabled people, contrary to what is implied by this question, do have a sense of self extending into the future, and do anticipate their future.
2) “What about people in comas or asleep?”
First of all, it’s inaccurate to assume that people in comas have no brain activity; being in a coma is not the same thing as being brain-dead. They merely have no way of expressing brain activity, which is not the same thing.
More importantly, a fetus has never experienced a sense of self across time, or anticipated a future. A person in a coma has done both these things. Therefore, the person in a coma would be harmed by being killed in a way a fetus is not.
Consider, for instance, person “A,” who just loooooves chocolate pudding. A walks into a room where there is set out a dish of chocolate pudding for him to eat. A says “Oh boy! Chocolate pudding! I can’t wait to eat it!”
Just then, Stephen Sondheim walks into the room. Naturally, A is overwhelmed by the presence of the worlds greatest songwriter, and all thoughts of chocolate pudding escape A’s mind.. During this period, I enter the room and eat A’s chocolate pudding.
Have I done A harm? I think I have, because he was anticipating eating his chocolate pudding, and (once Mr. Sondheim wanders away) A will be hurt and disappointed to discover his puddingless state.
Now, contrast this with person B. Person B doesn’t like chocolate pudding – he hates the stuff, and always will. Furthermore, B didn’t even know that chocolate pudding was available.
Now suppose I again eat the chocolate pudding. Has B been just as harmed by this as A was? No. A and B are not in parallel situations; A is being deprived of something A values, whereas B isn’t being deprived of anything B values.
3) “Aren’t you providing a justification for infanticide?”
The third likely objection is that this logic may justify infanticide. This is a “woman? What woman?” argument, and considering how the woman is affected will clear it up.
Before birth, there is a conflict of rights between the fetus and the mother. The rights of the fetus to its future must be balanced against its mother’s right to control her own body. A fetus has only a weak interest in its future, since it doesn’t know or care if it has a future or not. Put against a woman’s strong interest in owning her own body, the interest of the fetus in continuing its life is easily overwhelmed, justifying an abortion.
However, the same thing is not true once an infant has been born. Since there is no longer a conflict between the infant’s right to life and the mother’s right to control her own body, infanticide cannot be justified by appealing to the mother’s interests in bodily autonomy. Therefore, once it’s born, the infant’s right to life takes precedence..
Ha! I love it! The “woman? what woman?” argument–what a great name. I’m gonna have to steal that from you.
Well, the Amy Richards thing has made me do a double take. It is interesting to see how you came to where you are today.
1. How do we know that the unborn (fetus or baby, I hope unborn is neutral) does not anticipate or feel?
2. In the future; no one knows really what will occur. Couldn’t the same arguments for abortion also be used for wasting valuable resources? Not only are those future who will be affected people not born, they are probably not even a concept of a concept of a concept. We could be saving for a future that will never be (natural catastrophe etc. etc.)
3. The unborn may or may not feel pain. There is some indication that it does. While the needs of the mother (certainty that she is human) may (and do in my book) outweigh the needs of the unborn (uncertaintiy about it being a human), that doesn’t mean that the needs of the unborn should have no relevance. This is basically a wanton destruction argument in its essence. To destroy without reason; I find this morally wrong. While one person’s reason may not be another, arguments based on “want” do not seem to me to carry moral weight to allow destruction to take place.
Most likely a newborn can not anticipate and prefer much of anything; it reacts to a given situation. Anticipation doesn’t begin at birth although where the cut off point is I wouldn’t even begin to know.However, I don’t see how you can distinguish in this case, betweewn a newborn of a few minutes and a almost newborn.
Why does it necessarily create harm to the mother to force her to carry a baby to term if the physical harm is light, and the emotionally harm is light? I know, how does one measure? That is a problem, and one reason I haven’t taken out a pro-life sign. But a single normal birth generally doesn’t create life long difficulties; it can. But so can an abortion. (or for that matter, having one’s wisdom teeth pulled.)
Thanks, Amp. Glad you shared that. And interesting to see that at least a few people are indeed affected by philosophical arguments.
That said, I wonder if the argument really works. The whole linchpin of the argument seems to be that an entity isn’t really harmed if it loses out on some future experience that it didn’t value for some reason. In the fetus example, the future experience is . . . well, everything about life. That’s what is lost. But the reason that the fetus doesn’t value its entire future life is because it is relatively ignorant at that stage. (Your (a) and (b) are really just explanations for why the fetus doesn’t value the future; it’s the lack of valuing that does the real work.)
But doesn’t this argument do way too much? Are you really trying to imply that an entity doesn’t really “lose” anything if its “loss” merely affects some future experience that it hasn’t learned to value yet?
Consider:
1) The hypothetical assassination of Lincoln in 1859, and how that would have affected the ignorant slaves who would have been emancipated by him, but who instead remained in slavery under Stephen Douglas and his successors until their deaths. Did the assassination of Lincoln harm them or not? I’d say yes. Even if they were totally unaware of Lincoln. If the possibility of emancipation was taken away from them, they were harmed.
2) You buy a lottery ticket on a lark. Your ticket would have won, but someone at the lottery secretly switches the results before anyone knows. You’re ignorant of this, obviously, and you never expected to win anyway, so you never really “valued” the experience of winning the lottery that night. But you still lost out on that experience and money.
In both examples, I’d say that the person experienced a serious and significant loss, even if they never “valued” the alternative.
* * *
Your distinction with infanticide is also unconvincing. All of your reasoning about the fetus — awareness of self, valuing the future –absolutely applies to newborns too. It takes several months before babies even begin to recognize themselves in a mirror. And “preferring its own future existence” — well, I’m not sure that applies even to toddlers, who don’t really know what death is.
So you explain by pointing to the conflict of rights with the mother:
Well, now, who says? Bodily autonomy isn’t the only reason for having someone killed, after all. There are lots of other rights that might be impinged by someone else’s existence. Suppose the baby is the fifth in a poor family who is about to be evicted; they don’t have time to put the baby up for adoption because they’re about to run out of money this week. Why doesn’t their right to financial well-being, right to property, right to family autonomy, right to food, etc., all take precedence over the newborn’s barely-existent right to life?
Or are you saying that the right to bodily autonomy is the ONLY thing that could outweight someone’s right to life? But if that’s what you’re saying, that right to life must be awfully substantial after all, since it takes precedence over all other human rights.
“If a fetus is not capable of both those things, then it is not harmed in any meaningful way by being aborted. All that it loses is a future it has never valued.”
This argument makes the assumption that the only reason to oppose abortion is because the baby doesn’t know what it is being deprived of. I posit that we as a society should hold life to a higher place and demonstrate through our action how precious we believe it to be. Just because the baby doesn’t have an idea of what is being terminated when it is aborted doesn’t mean it is excluded from the basic human right to life that we have said belons to all people who just happen to be outside of a womb.
This leads us to the question of just when a fertilized egg becomes a ‘person’. I would suggest that as soon as the baby could survive outside the mother we could consider it a person. That may not satisfy all who oppose abortion, but it is a place to start.
I would just like to add that I am not opposed to abortion, but would like to see some common sense restrictions placed on the procedure. I reject the notion that women have the ‘right’ to kill their unborn children whenever they want to. An accidental pregnancy or stupid behavior doesn’t exclude an unborn person from the right to life. All that is left for us as a society is to determine when personhood begins.
1. How do we know that the unborn (fetus or baby, I hope unborn is neutral) does not anticipate or feel?
Well,I suppose you could argue that very late-term abortions – those taking place in the third trimester – might be aware fo themselves existing through time and be anticipating a future. I don’t think that’s likely, because you can’t really be conscious of self over tmie before yo’ve had a variety of experiences. But you could make the argument.
Before 24 weeks, however, the unborn fetus doesn’t have a cerebral cortext with working connections to the brain. It is physically impossible for a human to think or feel any emotion without a cerebral cortext. Since the vast majority of abortions take place before the 24th week, we can be absolutely positive that the vast majority of abortions kill a creature who is physically incapable of thought or feeling.
2. An aborted fetus will never feel anything. That’s not speculative; that’s a fact. We know it for certain. In contrast, we don’t know for certain that the world has no future, and therefore our planning should include the possibility that it does.
3. Before it has a working cerebral cortext, the unborn might have reflex actions, but it does not feel pain in any emotionally meaningful sense. I do think that as the pregnancy nears its end, the fetus gathers much more moral weight. So while I don’t see anything necessarily wrong with aborting a late-term fetus, I do beleive that to deliberately cause it unnecessary pain would be wrong.
However, as we get later and later in teh pregnancy, fewer and fewer abortions are performed; and those that are performed are increasingly likely to represent cases where an abortion is more urgently needed. So it seems to me that the increasing moral weight of the fetus in the third trimester is, apparently, something that people are taking account of in real life.
While one person’s reason may not be another, arguments based on “want” do not seem to me to carry moral weight to allow destruction to take place.
Why not? What’s wrong with “wants”?
Reading the comments in various blogs about Amy Richards, it’s clear that many people find it unspeakably selfish of her to prefer to mix career and motherhood, and to prefer to bear & raise one child instead of three. I disagree; I don’t think having a career or not is a trivial concern (especially for a semi-single mother), nor do I think the difference between raising one child (or spacing out one’s children) and raising three is a trivial difference.
However, I don’t see how you can distinguish in this case, betweewn a newborn of a few minutes and a almost newborn.
First of all, in the real world there is no such thing as an elective abortion of an almost newborn. I’m not aware of a single documented case of an elective abortion being performed on someone who could just wait a couple of days and give natural birth.
Secondly, I think the difference is that a newborn is not part of it’s mothers body, so there is no conflict between the newborn’s right to life and the mother’s right to bodily autonomy.
Why does it necessarily create harm to the mother to force her to carry a baby to term if the physical harm is light, and the emotionally harm is light?
Loss of freedom is a harm, in and of itself. Being forced to give birth against one’s will is harmful, in and of itself.
Joe:
Your emancipation example makes no sense. It’s based on the idea that there was no expectation that electing Lincoln instead of Douglas would bring about the end of slavery faster. But of course there was a wide expectation that electing Lincoln would do exactly that, which is why the South was so anti-Lincoln.
When I buy a lottery ticket, I certainly anticipate having a fair chance of winning. Taking that away from me is robbing me of something I anticipate having, so at some level is doing me harm.
* * *
Suppose the baby is the fifth in a poor family who is about to be evicted; they don’t have time to put the baby up for adoption because they’re about to run out of money this week. Why doesn’t their right to financial well-being, right to property, right to family autonomy, right to food, etc., all take precedence over the newborn’s barely-existent right to life?
Because they could regain all those rights (to the extent that the newborn infringes on those rights) just by giving the newborn up for adoption. So there’s no necessity at all of infringing on the newborn’s right to life. There is no genuine conflict of rights going on there.
Jeremy wrote: I posit that we as a society should hold life to a higher place and demonstrate through our action how precious we believe it to be.
Why? I don’t see what’s so precious about non-sentient life, which is what virtually all abortions involve. When someone is utterly, completely, beyond-any-doubt braindead, we don’t insist on keeping the body alive forever. What I respect about life isn’t the ability to breathe, but the ability to think and feel.
This leads us to the question of just when a fertilized egg becomes a ‘person’. I would suggest that as soon as the baby could survive outside the mother we could consider it a person. That may not satisfy all who oppose abortion, but it is a place to start.
Okay. I’m suggesing that it can be considered a person once it’s been born. Unlike viability, this has the advantage of being a reasonably clear borderline. But I’d certainly be willing to compromise on viability, as long as the usual exceptions for preserving the life and health of the mother were included.
1) The example did NOT concern Southerners in general, but illiterate and ignorant slaves who DIDN’T KNOW who Lincoln even was. Would they have been deprived of anything if Lincoln had been assassinated earlier, or if he had decided to let the South secede after all? Yes.
2) Forget what you normally do. Imagine someone who never buys a lottery ticket because he thinks they’re a scam, but one of his friends says, “Hey, let me give you this ticket. Just for fun! Lighten up!” He looks at the ticket with disgust and disdain (like the person in your chocolate pudding example), and never expects to win. Is he deprived of anything if the ticket would have won but for fraud at the lottery headquarters? Yes.
Anyway, if you didn’t like my examples, forget them. As I’ve said before, someone can always nit-pick at analogies, precisely because they’re analogies. That’s beside the point. Point is, you can imagine an infinite number of situations where someone is deprived of something that she didn’t value because (like the fetus) she had no idea. But she is still deprived.
* * *
On my other point, read it again. By my very example, the family is about to run out of money right now, and there is no time to consider going through all the rigmarole of adoption. No time at all. The only way they will have money to eat today is if they refuse to buy the newborn’s formula and instead buy food for themselves. So the real balance is their own right to live versus the newborn’s right to live. And by your own criteria, the newborn’s life doesn’t really count for much, since the newborn doesn’t value its future any more than a fetus. Newborns just can’t think in those terms yet.
Even better example: Eastern European country. Woman running an orphanage full of hungry newborns. There is NOWHERE to give up the newborns for adoption, because the orphanage is the last stop. Now suppose she runs out of money, and has to choose: Formula for the babies, or food for herself. Again, by your own criteria, the babies have very little interest here, because they are not capable of valuing anything, let alone contemplating matters of life and death. So is the woman justified in giving the newborns some anesthetic, and then killing them? They wouldn’t have any pain, and they wouldn’t lose anything that they are capable of valuing.
I consider myself generally a pro-Choice American, based on how abortion is practiced here, but I don’t know if I would feel the same if I lived elsewhere. I’d probably support a sufficiently tightly worded ban that only included 3rd trimester abortions with appropriate exceptions for the physical health of the mother, but nothing more, and I have opposed all of the Republican “partial birth” bans that have been attempted and passed. (When my older daughter was 8 months in utero, we would often play a “poke game” through her mother’s uterus. Sometimes she would instigate the game herself when she heard my voice, but never with other voices. That meets my “awareness of existence across time” standard.)
On the other hand, last week China announced that it was banning “sex selection” abortions, as there are now 119 boys for every 100 girls in China. The result will be about 30-40 million more Chinese men than Chinese women. I would never support a similar law here, but I can’t say that I oppose that law in China, even though it’s affecting lots of choices of lots of individuals in lots of trimesters.
BTW, it took me hours to figure out why your site was not letting me post.
Turns out that I was using the word “Socailist” (spelled correctly), and that if you take off the first two and final letter, you get a particular drug that has been spamming ads and that your site blocks. Once I eliminated all references to left-wing political ideologies, the post went though.
The preciousness of non-sentient life is evidenced in the rest of nature. Just because something is non-sentient doesn’t mean it’s not important. If you got rid of all the non-sentient life on this planet, we would cease to exist. The importance of an unborn child lies in its potential. Again I make the argument that either we consider the rights of the unborn as we apply them to other people.
Your argument about a woman being forced to give birth against her will disregards her will in the act which put the baby there in the first place. Excluding the instances during which a woman gives no consent to the act of intercourse, (which account for a very low percentage of pregnancies) the woman has taken the responsibility upon herself of the known consequence of having sex. I suggest here that the vast majority of women who are having sex also have the knowledge of what the act represents biologically. As I said before, a woman’s poor choices should not infringe upon the rights of an unborn person.
I am continually amazed at the lack of personal responsibility when it comes to dealing with an unwanted pregnancy. Using the ‘woman’s right’ argument just illustrates the lack of more thought out argument, in my opinion. If a woman (or man) didn’t want a baby, there are many decisions that could be taken before the fact to prevent impregnation. Using abortion as an after the fact contraceptive, aside from the pro-choice or pro-life points of view, is a collossal waste of resources. Furthurmore, the risks to a woman’s health during abortion as a medical procedure are assumed whether undertaken as a choice, or as a necessity. Assuming there is no risk to the mother’s health other than those normally associated with childbirth, the unborn person’s rights must be protected. When a woman engages in an activity which could cause her to become pregnant, she assumes the risks associated with that behavior.
My own hypothetical is misleading, of course, because almost zero abortions are done to literally save the mother’s life. A better analogy to the reasons for most abortions would be this:
Eastern European country. Woman running an orphanage full of hungry newborns. There is NOWHERE to give up the newborns for adoption, because the orphanage is the last stop. Now suppose she gets tired. She has to spend too much time on her feet. It is physically uncomfortable. Besides, she is trying to save money to go back to school, but the babies are requiring too many expenses. But there’s no one else she can call. The legislature is out of money for the year, and they hate orphanages anyway. The population is too poor; that’s why their babies are here in the first place. There is no way whatsoever for her to cut back on her physical obligations and expenses other than to let some of the babies die.
Again, by your own criteria, the babies have very little interest here, because they are not capable of valuing anything, let alone contemplating matters of life and death. So is the woman justified in giving some of the newborns some anesthetic, and then killing them? They wouldn’t have any pain, and they wouldn’t lose anything that they are capable of valuing.
I think there’s something problematic (although I’m not exactly sure what) in the fact that the argument only works for terminated futures. If, for example, you performed limb reductions or other harmful operations on a fetus and then allowed it to be born, it would eventually learn to value the thngs it didn’t have as a result of your actions, and hence would end up having suffered a loss. (This would be the chocolate-pudding-contains-essential-nutrients variant of the Sondheim example.)
The sharp cutoff at birth is also unconvincing (there must be a cutoff somewhere, but it seems to me that it depends on a combination of viability and the invasiveness of the operation required to terminate the pregnancy).
In my own evolution on this, I was ultimately far more swayed by arguments borrowed from first-amendment (and other constitutional) jurisprudence. If you can’t prohibit behavior you think is wrong without also prohibiting behavior you think is OK or having some panel of arbiters claiming to reach into someone’s head and decide what they should have been thinking, then you can’t prohibit the behavior. I don’t get to reach motive this way, which is also kinda unsatisfying.
(One of the things I find more than a little interesting about the Amy Richards flap is that a) if she had terminated all three we would never have heard word one b) everyone seems to assume that such triplets would have been successfully carried to term and born healthy and without complications.)
In Watership down, in Woundwort’s warren, there was a great deal of overcrowding, and does (girl rabbits) were getting pregnant but not having the litters. Apparently, Frith (their God-figure) had made them a promise, as a race, that when there is little chance for a decent life for her offspring, that it is the does privilege to take them back into her body, to re-absorb them was the term I believe was used.
If only we had this option! If only we could get past the “christian” reich that insists that nothing is more important than the supposed sanctity of a ball of cells that does not yet have awareness.
We are not a society or culture that protects or takes care of children who lack money, therefore I cannot in good consience insist that a child MUST be brought into the world.
It’s fascinating to read that you were convinced by a philosophical argument; I’m impressed that you were receptive to it. I suppose college-age and college-context people are likely to be receptive to such arguments.
My own convincer was not philosophical but political; my mother told me that when considering abortion in or around 1969, she was reasonably well-off and well-connected, and it was clear that she could have a safe procedure only because she was well-off and well-connected. My belief in the legality of abortion is based on that; it would be, as it was before, a law restricting the actions of the poor but not the rich. I am also against what a comment above called ‘common sense restrictions’ as those would even more disproportionately be imposed on the poor, the ill-informed, and the rural.
In addition, I am male, and can’t imagine being willing to go through childbirth; I am grateful but amazed that anybody is. Yes, I know many pregnancies and deliveries are fairly easy and painless, but as far as I can tell most are pretty brutal. I suppose I would, grudgingly, be willing to undergo that much pain for my parents or other close loves, but in all honesty if my mother were faced with the choice, today, of going through that much pain over that period, or having me die quickly, I would forgive her for choosing the easy (but morally wrong) way.
So, under the circumstances, I can’t support making abortion illegal, even though I think it’s almost always the morally inferior choice.
Anyway, just my thoughts,
-Vardibidian.
Why does it necessarily create harm to the mother to force her to carry a baby to term
Rachel Ann, I don’t mean this in an offensive way: have you ever carried a baby to term? The answer to your question would be self-evident, I’d think, if you had.
Jeremy, the pregnancy-as-punishment argument is silly because it values the life of the fetus only in relation to the mother’s (and, presumably, father’s) behavior that caused its conception. Why is it OK to kill a baby born of rape, but not one born of a night of too many shots of tequila? Either the fetus’s life has value or it does not, and I don’t think you can morally argue that a human life is of less value depending on the circumstances of its conception.
In all other cases where people suffer known risks, by the way, we allow them to mitigate their behavior. No doctor tells a downhill skiier “Sorry, I won’t fix your leg. You knew the risks. Maybe if you’d tripped and fallen accidentally, but you break it, you live with it.” No emergency room refuses to treat a patient who, driving drunk, ran into a tree and sustained injuries entirely due to his drunk driving.
The ONLY reason to treat abortion as different from a broken leg, or a drunk-driving injury, is because of the belief that a fetus is a human being. And it’s nonsense for humanity to be put on a sliding scale, just so you can have the moral satisfaction of treating pregnancy as a just punishment for careless sexual behavior.
Wookie wrote: “We are not a society or culture that protects or takes care of children who lack money, therefore I cannot in good consience insist that a child MUST be brought into the world.”
That doesn’t address the question of whether abortion is the necessary preventative tool or not. I still say the choice exists BEFORE the unborn person is extant in the womb. Poor choices and lack of planning on the part of the man or woman don’t preclude the rights of the unborn person.
Mythago,
The broken leg analogy is not relevant because it doesn’t involve the rights of another person. I’m not speaking about pregnancy-as-punishment, rather as a logical consequence of a concious action. How about the death-as-punishment argument you seem to be making about the baby and its right to live?
Regarding the rape argument, I excluded it from my point, and therefore made no remarks regarding that situation. I didn’t say it was OK to kill the baby resulting from rape, I merely said that in cases other than that, the woman has accepted pregnancy as a logical risk associated with her behavior, and as such should regard the right of the unborn person to live as more important than her right to be comfortable. As I argued, she chose to assume the risks associated with that behavior, and it must be asserted that life is more important than comfort.
Jeremy, if my mother made “bad choices” and ended up pregnant with me, I’d much rather she get an abortion than be forced to birth me against her will. I’d rather be a wanted child than a punishment.
As a punishment, forced parenthood fails miserably. It led to unhappy marriages. It led to adoptions that tore the mother apart (since the father could and often did say, “You’re a slut and I’m not doing anything to help you” and got a way with it). It led to abused kids. It led to angry, resentful, and neglectful parents.
Instead of stopping abortion, criminalization led to unsafe back-alley abortions, which often killed the mother. That might be fine for those who think these immoral sluts deserved whatever they got, but let’s not fool ourselves into thinking it’s “pro-life”.
But the problem with that, Jeremey, is who becomes the judge of wether or not appropriate precautions were taken?
Who becomes the judge to say “well that woman was just an idiot, having too much to drink” or “that couple should have realized their condom broke” or “You were above the weight that birth control pills are designed for” (150lbs, if I remember correctly)?
Poor choices and lack of planning are easy to point fingers at, but impossible to prove, and utterly devestating to the person at the recieving end of the blame.
Sorry, I was taking your statement to imply that poor choices and lack of planning were elements in wether or not abortion should be allowed… that in a way, that an adult persons planning or precautions (or lack thereof), is what gives the parent-to-be rights (or no rights) compared to the fetus.
What’s to stop your mother from giving you up for adoption? You’re assuming that because I have the opinion that unborn persons have that right to life that I also believe the woman has the obligation to raise the child. That is not a logical conclusion to draw from my statements.
Another assumprion you made is that I think the poor choices that lead to unwanted pregnancies is immoral, another false assumption. I only believe in personal responsibility, meaning taking responsibility for one’s actions without infringing on other’s rights.
Finally, let me say that I am pro-choice. What I mean by that is although I am personally opposed to abortion, I realize that making it illegal is not going to solve the problems associated with it. I believe that we should work to reduce the number of abortions performed rather that banning the practice. I am only attempting to argue the ethics involved in taking the rights of an unborn person who cannot defend themselves. There is no punishment involved with taking responsibility for one’s actions, and to argue that there is reflects lack of any thoughtful argument at all.
The truth is, an arbitrary line needs to be drawn somewhere. It seems to me that birth is a sensible place to draw the line; I don’t know when an infant gains the ability to percieve itself as having a future, but I’m pretty sure it happens sometime after birth.
Furthermore, unlike “viability” or “able to percieve self over time,” we actually know when birth has happened, which makes it a much more practical arbitrary dividing line than any other line I’ve seen suggested.
* * *
Joe, being pregnant, and being a life-support system for a fetus, is fundimentally different, in both its intimacy and its consequences, from being an infant’s guardian. I’ll think about it further to see if I can articulate why in a way that you might understand.
Regarding desire, in your examples the slaves desired freedom, and the lottery ticket owner desired money. In both your examples, they are being deprived of something they want, even if they are unaware of the exact mechanism by which they are losing what they want.
I’m not saying that killing a fetus is acceptable because fetuses desire to live, but are unaware of the mechanism by which abortion deprives them of life – which is what I’d have to be saying for either of your examples to be relevant. I’m saying killing a fetus is acceptable because a fetus does not value being alive at all.
* * *
Jeremy, I’m not convinced at all that abortion involves the rights of another person, so I think the broken leg argument is relevant.
You seem to be saying that personhood can exist even without such things as the ability to think or to experience emotion; a body without a brain, if it were being kept alive by machines, would apparently be a person in your view. I disagree. I think the ability to think and to feel emotions is the very essence of being meaningfully alive.
Yes, trees and plants have some value, despite not being able to think. But they don’t have so much value that I’d sacrifice a women’s ability to control her own reproduction to spare a tree’s life.
The broken leg analogy is not relevant because it doesn’t involve the rights of another person.
Yes, that was the point in my last paragraph. You are conflating two arguments: the fetus’s right to life, and the risk assumed by the mother. The latter does not change the former.
If a fetus is a human life, then the mother’s risk is irrelevant. If I throw my six-month-old baby out the window, it is murder. I am not excused from infanticide if the conception was the result of nonconsensual conception. The life of the baby is the ONLY difference between a drunk driver’s head injuries and a pregnancy, as far as “logical consequences” and “do we allow you to mitigate those consequences” go.
There are only two reasons to forbid mitigation of those consequences in the case of pregnancy. Reason #1 is that the baby is a human life. That’s a trump card; we need look no further into what the mother did or didn’t do. From the baby’s POV, it is irrelevant whether it got here because Mom lovingly planned a conception with her husband, or whether Mom was gang-raped by the Hell’s Angels.
Reason #2 is that Mom has to suck it up because she took a risk and yes, if you argue that, you are arguing for punishment. When you start throwing around minimizing terms like “comfort” or “convenience” to discuss pregnancy, it seems pretty clear to me what the mindset is here.
Where I wrote “meaningfully alive” above, I should have said “meaningfully a person.”
Mythago, although I agree with your post, I think it would make things less confusing if you’d say “person” instead of “human life.”
The fetus is a human life; it’s biologically human, and it’s alive. So if you’re saying that abortion can’t be justified if the fetus is a human life, then that means abortion can’t be justified.
I only believe in personal responsibility, meaning taking responsibility for one’s actions without infringing on other’s rights.
Absolutely. Which is why, if a fetus is a person, abortion is impermissible and the mother’s responsibility is irrelevant. I don’t see how logical consequences or responsibility in any way diminish personhood.
If all we’re discussing is responsibility, then the mother is taking responsibility by making the choice to abort. Irresponsibility would be carrying to term, taking no care whatsoever about the health of the fetus, and then throwing it in a Dumpster after the birth. Abortion is a method of dealing with the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy.
What’s to stop your mother from giving you up for adoption?
Gosh, I don’t know. Maybe the idea of putting heself through a pregnancy and then giving up the resulting baby doesn’t appeal. And frankly, why on earth should she have to even be pregnant if she doesn’t want to be? Sorry, but I’d rather not have her look at me and think about going through all of that.
Adoption is not like giving away a pair of shoes. I know someone who had to do it, and it ripped her apart. You carry a pregnancy–with all of the physical issues–to term, and then have the kid taken away. You have people come up to you when you’re visibly pregnant and ask you if you’re choosing names for the baby or if you’ve decorated the nursery yet, and see how well you deal with it. If it’s a choice between that or getting an abortion in my first trimester, option B wins hands down.
So many pro-lifers claim that abortion is painted as the “easy” alternative when it’s not–yet they do the same with adoption.
Amp: You dismissed my Eastern European example by saying this: Joe, being pregnant, and being a life-support system for a fetus, is fundimentally different, in both its intimacy and its consequences, from being an infant’s guardian.
Yes, that’s true. But your argument didn’t say that pregnant women have fundamentally unique rights that are higher than all other conceivable human rights. No, your argument was entirely based on saying that the fetus’s right to life is uniquely lower (or non-existent) than all (or most?) other rights, because the fetus can’t value that right.
In other words, your whole point was how the fetus’s right is so low, not about how the pregnant mother’s right is so uniquely great.
And if the fetus’s right to life is uniquely low, so is the newborn’s right to life. They are both identical in their complete inability to envision the future, place values on things, etc.
So if the fetus’s right to life is so low that it can be outweighed by the mother’s right to save money and to an education and avoid physical discomfort, why isn’t the newborn’s right to life also outweighed by the orphanage worker’s right (even if it’s less than the pregnant woman’s right) to save money and get an education and avoid physical discomfort?
In logical terms, you’re saying that A (fetal rights) is so negligible that it is less than B (pregnant woman’s rights). My response was that A should encompass newborn rights too, and that A might then be less than C (other adults’ rights). Your response is illogical: It merely consists of saying that “C is less than B.” Well, OK. C is less than B. But that’s not the question. The question is whether C (adults’ rights) can still be greater than A (fetal/newborn rights).
Mythago,
As I said before, I am not referring to pregnancy resulting from rape, only as a consequence of a concious choice. Since I assert the unborn person has rights, the fact that the woman doesn’t want the consequenses of the pregnancy are irrelevant. I am not speaking about anything else, just pregnancy resulting from concentual activity.
Taking responsibility for one’s actions is not punishment. Aborting a fetus is not taking responsibility, it is avoiding it.
The brain of an unborn person is well developed by week 19, and although they have no sense of anything outside themselves, to say they can’t experience emotion is not supportable. Although they may not have a definition for what they experience, we cannot say they do not experience it. Point of reference doesn’t make emotion more valuable. Since we cannot know what the unborn person is experiencing, we should err on the side of that person’s right to exist. The fact that emotion may exist is reason enough to assume it does.
Since I assert the unborn person has rights
Then why the other arguments about responsibility? Those are irrelevant if the unborn person is, in fact, a person. You don’t need to go on about sex or responsibility at all. Unborn = person with rights, therefore abortion = murder.
I am not speaking about anything else, just pregnancy resulting from concentual activity.
Then you’re refusing to really discuss the ramifications of your argument. Why is that?
You are saying is pregnancy is a known risk of sex, therefore a woman who chooses to engage in sex is assuming the risk of pregnancy. That raises some pretty obvious questions:
–What if the woman did not choose to engage in sex?
–What if the woman did not know that pregnancy was a likely risk of the sexual activity? (And then we get into degrees of “did not know”. If the woman truly believed that it was impossible for her to get pregnant, is she really assuming the risk?)
There are two answers to those questions. One is that the fetus is a person, so the questions are irrelevant–and thus your whole argument about responsibility is superflous. The other is that since assumption of risk = responsibility, no assumption of risk = no responsibility.
Aborting a fetus is not taking responsibility, it is avoiding it.
So by “responsibility,” you mean “having the baby.”
Jeremy, the brain is only “well developed” by week 19 if you consider a brain without a functioning cerebral cortex “well delveloped.”
This link is the very first result that came up when I googled “fetus develop cerebral cortex”; the site doesn’t appear to have a dog in the abortion fight one way or the other. Note they place the development of the cerebral cortex in the seventh month, which is to say at week 25 or thereafter.
This page gives a more detailed account (and, again, doesn’t seem to have a dog in the abortion fight). The cerebral cortex continues to develop for some time after birth – but it starts functioning before birth. It is not, however, functioning at six months, let alone at 19 weeks!
Being required by law to take responsibility–the kind of “responsibility” someone else comes up with–for an action is wrong. You might think abortion is a bad decision, but we don’t outlaw anything based only on the fact that it’s a bad decision.
(Actually, it depends on the action; we fine people for all kinds of things. I rescind my comment in the name of nuance.)
We don’t, for example, tell people they can’t marry again because they’ve made stupid choices the last five times they married. Even though such stupid choices clearly affect other people (perhaps even children born of those marriages). There is no law that says “Look, bozo, you married the guy, you’re stuck with him.”
The only reason for preventing mitigation of consequence through abortion is if the fetus is a person. And if that’s so, talking about bad choices is muddying the waters.
Ampersand says:
The truth is, an arbitrary line needs to be drawn somewhere. It seems to me that birth is a sensible place to draw the line; I don’t know when an infant gains the ability to percieve itself as having a future, but I’m pretty sure it happens sometime after birth.
I understood your argument earlier to be that the appropriate dividing line is when an entity can value its future experiences.
I imagine that there is some way to assess when this happens, so I don’t see why you have to have reference to birth as an arbitary dividing line.
Bioethicists have suggested ways to measure when this capacity kicks in. Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer thinks it is around six months.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe Singer’s conclusions are not based on current thinking in neonatology, but lean more heavily on the notion of the greater good (i.e. that infanticide is justified under certain circumstances).
What’s clear is that the baby is no longer inside another human being’s body after birth. Any consideration of the mother’s autonomy–the interest Amp is balancing against potential personhood here–ends at that point.
Mythago,
I’ve carried five babies to term, and I have not suffered harm. I should have written, great harm in there…Yes, there are mild problems possibly associated with my having five babies jump on my bladder for instance. But real harm? It is not a given that one will be harmed by a birth. Most women do just fine.
But my point is this; the fact that she would have to carry the babies to term despite her desire to have only one, does not necessarily result in harm. The pregnancy could, it could result in feeling upset, but if abortion weren’t an option outside of the health of the mother, or because of rape or incest, if this was just the state, then i’m not sure the mother would be harmed by the lack of access to abortion.
i guess what I am saying is I am no longer comfortable with the concept of abortion on demand; abortion for physical and health concerns yes (and in Amy’s case that may have ended up in the same place) but abortion because i just don’t want it? I don’t think i am comfortable with that any more; and almost all of the arguments in favor of maintining the status quo are turning me further away from a completely pro-choice stance.
Mythago: Well, actually, I do believe his conclusions are based on current thinking in neonatology at least when it comes to sentience and ‘personhood’, though admittedly he also leans heavily on ‘greater good’…
Interestingly I went from a pro-choice Mormon to a pro-life progressive over the last decade (so much for neat categories!).
Not to say that I’m not conflicted about that switch and my stance. I constantly question.
I am though, unconvinced by the argument against the last objection (‘personhood’ leading to infanticide). Even birth is only a step towards independence, not independence, from the mother (given our legal system), the infant is still dependent on the mother’s body and care, wholly. One can (and Singer does) argue that the lack of ‘personhood’ and the sole dependence on another is argument for infanticide.
He puts ‘personhood’ at 6 months, as a biologist I would put it closer to 12-18 months, but even then its not fully formed ‘personhood’. The difference between a 8 month term fetus and a 1 month after birth child in the sense of personhood is not very great, nor between 1 month and 3 month…. etc.
I just don’t see birth as a good cut off point, an easily observable difference (inside/outside), but not a really good cut off point (dependence is still absolute, autonomy isn’t completely returned). I’m not even so sure about 8, 7, 6 months pregnancy (theoretically a fetus of this age can survive outside the womb, the woman’s autonomy isn’t completely the issue)
but then, I don’t know where the cut off is either.
not sure what I’m making an argument for. Just I’m a conflicted, pro-life progressive.
the infant is still dependent on the mother’s body and care, wholly
No, it is not. An infant breathes on its own and can be kept alive by somebody other than the mother. It’s dependent on other people for its survival, but unlike a fetus in the womb, there are people other than the mother who can provide that.
he infant is still dependent on the mother’s body and care, wholly
No, it is not. An infant breathes on its own and can be kept alive by somebody other than the mother. It’s dependent on other people for its survival, but unlike a fetus in the womb, there are people other than the mother who can provide that.
granted, i overspoke. The child can now breath on its own (still needs warmth, norishment, protection, everything else, etc). And the mother can place the infant in another’s care (I well know, I’m an adoptive parent), still the infant is dependent on that mother making those decisions and dependent on the other person they are placed with (parent, state, guardian). The argument of personhood still holds (they are not yet a ‘person’) and autonomy (whether now its the woman’s autonomy or the new care giver). So the autonomy/personhood argument still holds in my view, only changed somewhat in degree (not kind) and perhaps transfered to another adult.
And, one could make the argument (and do) that at 35 weeks the child isn’t solely dependent on the mother or controlling the mother’s autonomy as it did when a 3 month fetus (it could, in practice we know, survive if labor was induced). (I guess that is why we have the abortion laws we do about third trimester abortions).
Anyway, just a caveat. I rarely get into the abortion discussion any more. Every past one always seemed to be acrimonious and personal and jump out as soon as it does. Got enough on my plate to have to deal with another controversial topic. Please take my statements in the way they are meant: questioning, not ‘authorative’ (no matter the tone I
it could, in practice we know, survive if labor was induced
But you have to induce the labor. Honestly, one can disagree about personhood and so forth, but when a child is born its existence no longer must directly affect the mother’s control over her body, and so in my opinion the autonomy argument is over at that point. Legally speaking, the child does not have *zero* autonomy.
I’m too busy lately to really respond to such posts, so I’ll just make this one comment, hoping I’m not repeating anything anyone else said, and stay out.
A few people here have basically told a convoluted version of the “but what if the fetus was a potential Beethoven or cancer curer (or Abraham Lincoln, as indirectly implied in some of the above cases)?” argument. This one never flies for me, since, to put it flippantly, for every potential Lincoln aborted there are plenty of potential Hitlers aborted as well. The extreme unpredictability of a fetus’s eventual worth to society is a foolish basis from which to decide to abort or keep it.
Mythago wrote:
What’s clear is that the baby is no longer inside another human being’s body after birth. Any consideration of the mother’s autonomy–the interest Amp is balancing against potential personhood here–ends at that point.
Maybe I misunderstood Amp’s argument. I thought he was saying that Entity X is not entitled to (although it may be granted) a continued existence if Entity X isn’t aware of and doesn’t value its future.
If that’s his position, what’s there to balance? Why would there be any consideration other than the mother’s preferences, whatever they may be?
(Don’t have time to read through all the comments; apologies if I repeat what someone else said).
Just goes to show that philosophy is not “pointless word-games”, as so many people keep telling me and my friends. For me, the tipping point was when I realized that legal or not, women are going to have abortions anyway. If they’re illegal, they’ll use coat-hangers; and they’ll die. And then I realized that it’s completely unacceptable, to force a woman to give birth *against her will*, as if she were nothing more than a brood mare, a baby-making machine. Those two realizations were the start for me. I want one of those bumper stickers that say “I’m Pro-Choice and I Vote!”
A completely different argument for me is looking at it from outside our own emotionally-charged perspective, which assigns a value to the fetus which it simply does not have, but is only a product of our biases and biology.
Sarah Hrdy wrote something very interesting about this in her book, Mother Nature. She describes Rick Santorum from a primatologist’s perspective:
That’s what the anti-choice side of the debate is all about, to me: primates trying to regulate how other members of the troop reproduce. Pro-lifers always remind me of baboons compulsively sniffing butts.
excuse me, but a woman’s will is not at all involved when a pregnancy occurs. even if she wants it to happen, that mere wanting does not MAKE it happen.
and whether or not she wants the pregnancy is immaterial. she still has an absolute right to bodily autonomy. if she changes her mind later for ANY reason at all, it’s her body and she has the right to decide whether she will sustain another life with it.
viability really has nothing to do with it. whether a fetus is human has nothing to do with it. whether someone else feels good about the woman’s decision has nothing to do with it. until anti-choicers legalize rape and remove the consent requirements for blood and organ donation and surgery, until NOBODY in this country has the right to bodily autonomy, abortion on demand should remain legal.
which assigns a value to the fetus which it simply does not have
I’m not sure I follow the meaning here. A fetus has no value? It doesn’t have a value we assigned it? (and what value have we assigned it?), what value doesn’t it have (at 36 weeks say) that a one week old infant has?
I don’t think the argument is that a living being that has not reached full sentience has zero value and zero rights (which leads to the pro-infanticide position), but rather that it has partial value and partial rights. This value and these rights must be weighed against the rights of others. While the exact fractional rights of a pre-sentient is obvously subject to argument (as is the question of whether pre-sentients should have more rights than non-sentients) the set of weights that produce current abortion law appear to be:
pre-sentient (1st or 2nd trimester) fetus’s right to life versus right to mother’s bodily autonomy: mother’s bodily autonomy wins absolutely
sub-sentient (3rd trimester) fetus’s right to life versus mother’s right to bodily autonomy: debatable, abortion can be restricted and is in some places
sub-sentient (3rd trimester) fetus’s right to life versus mother’s right to health and life: mother’s health and life wins absolutely, restrictions on 3rd trimester abortions must include health exception
sub/pre-sentient (first 6 month or year) infant’s right to life versus unspecified adult’s right to not have to be bothered by taking care of an infant: infant’s right to life wins
sub-sentient (and non-human) cat’s right to life versus unspecified adult’s right to not have to be bothered by taking care of a cat: adult’s right to not be bothered wins
While one could reasonably argue that a 1 month old infant has had a massively larger exposure to complex environments and is therefore significantly more sentient than a 9 month fetus, obviously this doesn’t hold for a 10 minute newborn and a 9 month fetus, so the major change in status is not the sentience of the infant. Instead, birth is the appropriate dividing line because it represents the point at which the right that is infringed by forbidding killing the sub-sentient being drops from being bodily autonomy to convenience.
Furthermore, birth represents a useful dividing line because it is a dividing line. A fetus is a very different creature from a baby: it engages in very different physical processes and, more importantly, it engages in very different social processes. The social interactions of a baby (even if they are ones in which the newborn is largely passive) grant it a far higher status within the human/social universe, and therefore lead to it being granted much greater human/social rights.
One can certainly argue that this system of weighting of rights is not correctly balanced, or one could argue that certain variables within this system (e.g. being a human versus being pre-sentient) should be given an infinite weight, and that therefore abortion should not be allowed, but the basic system and sets of statuses seem fairly clear and inarguable to me.
It seems to me the question of motive for the abortion matters to many people because they don’t set the weighting on a pure right to bodily autonomy high enough to out-weigh the right to life of a sub-sentient. Therefore, they need to measure the additional rights that are being invoked before they can decide the justice of the situation.
Charles–A vague “sentience” isn’t the psychological characteristic Ampersand has advanced as being the appropriate dividing line between those humans who have a right to continued existence and those who don’t.
It could be that you disagree with Ampersand about what psychological characteristic we should look at when we try to decide who has the right to a continued existence.
I wanted to explore, and I hope Ampersand will want to explore, the merits of his specific proposal.
It is that if Entity X:
a) Has awareness of itself as a being which exists across time, into the future.
b) Anticipates and prefers its own future existence
then Entity X has the right to a continued existence.
If this is the right dividing line?
Is it the only relevant characteristic to consider?
Ampersand seems to say “yes” to both, because once he has advanced it, he concludes that “the fetus is not harmed in any meaningful way by being aborted”.
I take it that this means that Ampersand believes that entities who do not possess characteristics A and B are not harmed in any meaningful way if they are destroyed.
I’m trying to find out if that is what Ampersand believes. If he does, I wonder why he thinks that any balancing of the interests of the mother and the fetus have to occur at all.
I would have thought that his position implies that entities who do not possess A & B simply don’t have any interests to balance against the interests of others.
But Ampersand may think that other factors do matter and bring about a need for balancing of interests.
I’m hoping he’ll tell us what he thinks.
That’s what the anti-choice side of the debate is all about, to me: primates trying to regulate how other members of the troop reproduce. Pro-lifers always remind me of baboons compulsively sniffing butts.
Way to go. Let me see if I can think of something equally ignorant and dismissive towards the pro-choice side: “Pro-choicers always remind me of primitive cannibals satisfying their blood-lust, because they think that killing innocent babies will somehow make them stronger.” Nice, huh? It totally misses the motivations of the people on that side of the debate.
And even if your characterization of pro-lifers’ motives is true, what’s wrong with that anyway? Nobody goes around claiming that baboons or bonobos have the wrong system of government. They do what they do, and that’s that. If we’re to be judged as primates, the only real principle is this: If pro-lifers are stronger than you, you lose.
Emily,
Sorry, I was intending sentience as a stand in for Amp’s proposed criteria.
However, my vagueness is related to the fact that those criteria are not a simple binary. There is a continuum from things that absolutely don’t meet the criteria, e.g. rocks, to things that almost completely don’t meet it, e.g. 8 week fetuses and flatworms, to things that mostly don’t meet it, e.g. 27 week fetuses, to things that somewhat meet it, e.g. 9 month fetuses and newborns, to things that mostly meet it, e.g. 6 month olds and cats.
This is where the question of balancing arises (to my mind).
Also, although I’m sure Amp will answer for himself, I would point out that I don’t think this is intended to be a complete description of all possible rights potentially involved. There are certainly other rights of any number of parties that might be involved. It is merely that the right to life of the fetus and the right to bodily autonomy of the pregnant woman are suggested to be far and away the dominant conflicting rights in this situation, and that probably the potential right to life of the fetus is the only involved right likely to outway the right to bodily autonomy.
Also, as I suggested with the cat example, society as a whole (and Amp as well, who is not a vegetarian) certainly counts other criteria besides the 2 he listed as being extremely important in determining access to rights: being human is also a huge factor. I think that that criteria was probably left unstated because it is a factor that is constant throughout the question of abortion and infanticide and murder.
It is possible that Amp believes that his criteria are binary (Singer seems to). However, what I was trying to point out is that the current legal status of abortion and infanticide can be reasonably well described if we assume that it is not a binary criteria. The alternative legal status of abortion and infanticide, i.e. abortion being illegal but not equivalent to murder, also seems to be best described by treating Amp’s criteria as non-binary and relevant, although it also obviously involves weighting other factors, such as humanness, more heavily.
However, as you have pointed out, if the criteria are binary, and the cutoff point is not magically set to correspond very closely with birth, then other criteria would need to be invoked to explain why late term abortion is permissable, and infanticide is not.
Actually, if the criteria is set to the start of 3rd trimester, no other criteria are needed to explain the most restrictive abortion laws permitted in the US. Once the criteria is met, only self-defense justifies killing. However, other criteria would need to be invoked to explain why abortion is still punished less harshly than infanticide.
Let me see if I can think of something equally ignorant and dismissive towards the pro-choice side
You’ve posted dismissive and insulting comments about pro-choicers before, Joe, so the shocked umbrage rings a little hollow.
Nobody goes around claiming that baboons or bonobos have the wrong system of government.
I should hope not. Bonobos have an extended social network maintained by lots of casual sex. Who in their right mind would criticize that?
Charles writes:
If the criteria are binary, and the cutoff point is not magically set to correspond very closely with birth, then other criteria would need to be invoked to explain why late term abortion is permissable, and infanticide is not.
I think you’re saying that Ampersand’s proposal standing alone implies that infanticide is morally permissible.
That is, if a two-day-old baby is not aware of itself as a being which exists across time, into the future, and if this baby does not anticipate and prefer its own future, then it is not harmed in any meaningful way by the elimination of its future. (I suppose it isn’t relevant how its future is eliminated–through withholding nutrition or through an act of violence.)
But that’s only if Ampersand’s criteria is taken by him to be binary and not something that emerges rather quickly right around the time of birth.
Ampersand himself wrote that “A fetus has only a weak interest in its future, since it doesn’t know or care if it has a future or not. (As I’ve said, I’m confused about this, because I would have thought that his proposal translates into the fetus having no interest in its future, rather than a weak interest.)
Ampersand doesn’t believe that infanticide is morally permissible, so the questions we have for him so far are:
1) Does he think the characteristic he has advanced as the important one develops slowly over time in utero (this is what you, Charles, believe, right?)
2) Does he think the characteristic emerges rather suddenly or becomes full-blown quickly right around birth?
3) Based on his criteria, why does he think the fetus has any interest in a future?
4) Depending on how he answers those questions, are there factors (other than its subjective orientation toward the future) that would govern our thinking about whether it is permissible to terminate a two-day old baby? What are they?
P.S. Peter Singer writes that:
…the liberal search for a morally crucial dividing line between the newborn baby and the fetus has failed to yield any event or stage of development that can bear the weight of separating those with a right to life from those who lack such a right…the conservative is on solid ground in insisting that the development from the embryo to the infant is a gradual process. (Singer, Practical Ethics, p. 195)
These considerations come into play when conservatives say that an entity with levels of development isn’t usually denied basic rights when it is at a less mature stage of its development.
P.P.S.
Peter Singer also writes:
To have a right to life, one must have, or at least one time have had, the concept of having a continued existence. (Singer, Practical Ethics, p. 189)
I wonder if this essay is the one that struck Ampersand with such force when he was in college.
I can’t speak for Amp, but I think birth is a pretty bright line at which a ‘right to life’ should attach. I’m not sure that Singer’s analysis considers the mother’s competing interest, though.
Emily:
These considerations come into play when conservatives say that an entity with levels of development isn’t usually denied basic rights when it is at a less mature stage of its development.
Well, that’s true after birth. We generally attribute to newborn babies the same rights of personhood that we attribute to children and to adults. But we have never held that fetuses have the rights of a person in our legal and cultural tradition, except in rare and isolated circumstances.
We have to draw a line somewhere, and for various reasons we have decided that birth is the most appropriate place to do it. That doesn’t mean that fetuses have no rights or interests at all, just that they don’t have the rights of a person.
Emily,
I greatly appreciate your summation/clarification of what I was saying, and you are right about my position.
I’m not sure I agree though that enities that develop gradually are not denied rights that would be granted to them at a later stage of development. It seems to me that this is routinely done, frequently with a relatively arbitrary dividing line that may or may not be perfectly related to the gradual progression of development.
New born infants are routinely denied rights that are granted to adults, and those rights are incrementally granted to them over the course of their first 18, 21, or 35 years.
A romantic pairing is progressively granted rights based on the participants choosing to declare various dividing lines to have been crossed in the gradual development of their relationship (engagement entails certain limited rights, and obviously marriage entails a larger package of rights, earlier/alternative dividing lines confer moral rights, even if they don’t confer legal rights).
Also, under current law, develping fetuses are granted progressive rights during gestation (at the arbitrary dividing line of 2nd/3rd trimester when the right to life of the fetus is permitted to outway anything except the right to life and health of the pregnant woman), with a much larger set of rights being added at the arbitrary dividing line of birth.
I still think that the critical distinction at birth is not the rights accorded the infant versus the rights accord the fetus, but the drop in importance of the rights that are typically competing with the rights of the infant/fetus after birth.
I’m with Dana: women deserve the same body autonomy as men, period. Don’t want something happening to your body, don’t have to put up with it. A couple of others pointed out that women will have abortions anyway, legal or not, and those of us who remember the hospital wards full of mutilated women who preferred mutilation to pregnancy realize that this decision should never be made by anyone except the one undergoing it. Rachel said that 5 pregnancies hadn’t hurt her; I think that’s great, but her experience is not normative for all other women forever. Pregnancy can be literal slavery — and that’s not my own experience, but I recognize that my own experience isn’t normative either. When my (alas, only) child was born it was the happiest day of my life, and I can’t imagine what it would have been like to make an abortion decision, but if I’d had to, the last thing I would have wanted would be to have ANYONE ELSE — especially anyone NOT FEMALE, which would include practically all the legislators and “pro-life” leaders who are constantly sounding off about it, as if they had the slightest fucking idea what they were talking about — interfering with that decision.
Regarding Peter Singer, the truncated quotes Emily provides from Practical Ethics are not as significant as they might appear. Singer’s utilitarian moral philosophy eschews a rights-based analysis of ethical questions in favor of the application of the principle of equal consideration of interests. For Singer, the question of whether a being has a right to life is of much less importance to an analysis of the moral status of killing that being than the question of its interests and the interests of others who may be affected by that killing. In short, just because Singer believes a particular being or type of being does not have, or may not have, a right to life does not mean that he considers the killing of that being to be an ethical act.
Hi. Sorry I haven’t been participating much here, but I have been reading and thinking. I’d like to particularly welcome Emily’s participation.
Charles has been pretty correctly describing my views so far (not a surprise, since he knows me better than virtually anyone else in the world). But I should speak for myself a little. Here are some questions Emily asked:
1) I believe “the concept of having a continued existence” (to swipe Singer’s phrase) develops slowly over time in utero and probably continues developing ex utero as well. I doubt that even a newborn infant has fully developed “the concept of having a continued existence,” but that’s not something I claim to know for certain.
I don’t believe it’s physically possible for “the concept of having a continued existence” to have even begun developing before the cerebral cortex exists and begins functioning, at around 25 weeks.
2) I don’t think “the concept of having a continued existence” springs fully into existence suddenly after birth.
The conflict between mom’s right to bodily autonomy and the baby’s interest in living pretty much ends at birth, however.
3) Before the cerebral cortex, I don’t think the fetus has any self at all, and therefore it has no self-interest. Any moral weight given to the fetus’ existence at this point is “borrowed” from the value other people place on the fetus’ continued existence. Also, if the fetus is going to be allowed to develop into a person, then that future person’s interests have moral weight, which affects how one should treat the fetus. (I.e., if a mother doesn’t intend to abort the fetus, then I think she should not drink heavily.)
Once the cerebral cortex exists and is connected to the brain, then I think the fetus develops the seed of a self, and therefore a seed of self-interest. This tiny seed grows over the 10-13 weeks until birth, and then continue growing post birth, as the brain develops more folds and surface area and becomes capable of more and more complexity. (This physical process continues until the baby is about a year old).
4) I’m not sure what you mean by “subjective orientation toward the future,” so I may not be answering this question correctly.
I’d say that a two-day-old has a right to life that comes from a couple of sources.
First of all, a two-day-old might have the rudimentary beginnings of “the concept of having a continued existence.” When it was still in its mothers body, the very weak chance that this might exist in rudimentary form is not, to my thinking, enough to overwhelm the mother’s right to bodily autonomy (which definitely exists). Now that that conflict of rights is gone, however, we should err on the side of respecting even a small possibility that a two-day-old has some form of “the concept of having a continued existence.”
Second of all, we should take not only the infant but the entire society into account. In our society, there is a nearly-universal belief that the purposeful death of an infant is a horrifying, terrible thing. Even if you argue that killing a two-day-old doesn’t harm the baby’s interests, it would certainly cause a real and large degree of anguish for the rest of us, which – all else held equal – we should try to avoid.
Furthermore, allowing the legal killing of a two-day-old would, because of the universal acceptance of a two-day-old’s right to life, lead to an enormous undercutting of people’s faith in government. I don’t think it’s unrealistic to think that riots could develop around hospitals with maternity wards. These are things it’s best to avoid, when avoiding them is practical.
I don’t think this “borrowed” interest is enough to overwhelm the mother’s interest in bodily autonomy (and besides, the conviction that the fetus has a right to life is far less universal pre-birth). But once the women’s bodily autonomy is no longer an issue, this “borrowed” interest looms much larger.
Finally, we should consider that there is no significant interest in favor of killing two-day-old infants. Joe’s rather extreme hypothetical aside (as Joe himself has told me, bad cases make bad law), no one benefits significantly from a right to kill two-day-olds. Given the lack of any right or principle which is served by killing a two-day-old, even relatively weak reasons to respect the two-day-old’s right to life will win the day.
No, it’s not; I clearly remember that the author of the essay I read was female (or, at least, had a female name). However, clearly this author was thinking along similar lines to Singer; perhaps she was influenced by Singer (or vice-versa).
Regarding a post-birth baby, Trey wrote:
Yes, but if the guardian – whoever it is – finds that they can’t stand the dependency, they can simply give the infant up for adoption. And just as I’d argue that an unwilling pregnant mother should have the right to abort, unwilling post-birth guardians should have the right to put their baby up for adoption.
First of all, 35 week elective abortions are incredibly rare – I’m not sure you could come up with even a single example of this actually happening. When people say “late term” abortions, they’re usually referring to abortions after the 18th week.
Secondly, induced labor (at any stage) is significantly more dangerous to a mother than an abortion, which is why most responsible doctors choose an abortion if a late-term pregnancy needs to be ended.
In fact, ever since the Supreme Court’s Casey decision, the legal borderline has no longer been the third trimester; the legal borderline is viability. For exactly the reasons you said.
Hello Ampersand and Charles,
Unfortunately, I’m leaving on a week’s vacation. Perhaps we can resume this later on.
When I said “subjective orientation toward the future” I meant that as short-hand for Ampersand’s proposal.
If I understand your answers, you are saying that this psychological characteristic isn’t present at or shortly after birth. I agree with that.
I don’t agree that the characteristic has been slowly developing in utero, though. I don’t see a basis for believing that an eight-month-old fetus has any more of this characteristic than a five-month old fetus. What would be the basis for saying that a fetus at either stage has more than 0% of this characteristic? (The older fetus has more wiring, but the characteristic itself is absent–that’s how I’d see it.)
Ampersand, when you have spoken in this discussion about how rare it is to abort a fetus close to birth, I’m not clear on whether I understand the force of that claim in the context of evaluating your proposal.
Very late-term abortions are rare but I’m assuming that one can still mull over whether they are morally permissible according to this or that proposal.
If it is a consequence of a particular proposal that elective abortions are morally permissible at 38 weeks gestation, some people would take this consequence to be a reductio of that proposal, regardless of the relative frequency of such abortions. Perhaps you would disagree about whether what might be only a thought experiment is relevant for assessing the adequacy of this (or other?) moral proposals.
“I can’t speak for Amp, but I think birth is a pretty bright line at which a ‘right to life’ should attach. I’m not sure that Singer’s analysis considers the mother’s competing interest, though.”
This debate, even here on this thread, has shown very clearly that people rarely if ever consider the competing ineterests of the mother. EVER.
The dividing line is at birth because the competing right of the mother to bodily autonomy disapears at birth. Thus, while the unborn person right before birth, and the newborn may have exactly the same lack of self-interest, before birth this right to life must be balanced against the mother’s right to bodily autonomy while after birth that is no longer the case. So, the same weaker right to life of the unborn loses out in competition with the mothers right to bodily autonomy, but wins out against other rights of the mother and others once the unborn is born.
Finally, we should consider that there is no significant interest in favor of killing two-day-old infants. Joe’s rather extreme hypothetical aside (as Joe himself has told me, bad cases make bad law), no one benefits significantly from a right to kill two-day-olds.
So said Amp.
Not true, I say. My hypothetical of the Eastern European orphanage wasn’t so far from reality. There are any number of people who run those things whose lives might be made easier by killing half the infants in their care. If “not valuing the future” is the test for whether someone has a right to life, then a lot of infants could be dispatched.
Plus, there are MILLIONS of people in the Third World who can’t — despite the facile statements of American pro-choicers — simply give their children up for adoption. There’s just no one to give their children to. And yet their lives would be immeasurably easier, in many cases, if they could lawfully kill a six-month old in a time of famine. In fact, the burden that a baby places on their lives is far, far greater than the burden placed on rich white Westerners like Amy Richards.
So again, if “valuing the future” is the test, there should be lots and lots of Third World infants who are eligible for killing.
Joe, it’s not pro-choice advocates making the ‘facile’ statement that women can easily give their children up for adoption. “Well why don’t you just have the baby and adopt it out?!” is from your side, I’m afraid.
You present a false dilemma, at any rate: people in developing countries lose resources and harm themselves by carrying children to term, period. Far better to give them access to Western conveniences that prevent famine and unsustainable families in the first place. Don’t you think?
“Mythago” – both sides claim that adoption is easy — when it suits their purposes. Pro-lifers say that adoption is easy when they want to argue that women should let their children live. Pro-choicers argue that adoption is easy (as Amp did above) when they want to argue that infanticide is somehow murder while abortion is a valuable right. This becomes especially important when they put forth rationales for abortion (as Amp did above) that (1) directly state that fetuses have no interest in future existence, and (2) unavoidably imply the same as to newborns. In other words, when they suddenly realize that every single one of their arguments about the un-personhood of the fetus applies equally to newborns, they say, “Well, of course you can’t commit infanticide, no matter how great are your interests in preserving your own health/resources, because you could just give the kid up for adoption at that point.”
Not so easy, not for many of the world’s poor people.
Joe, as I’m sure you know, Amp did not say that adoption is easy. He was comparing an unwilling guardian giving a child up for adoption to an unwilling mother giving up a child by having an abortion.
Nobody is rushing out to prosecute people in refugee camps, or starving in war zones, who kill newborns because they can’t afford to feed them. That’s not really your argument, anyway.
OK, that’s the comparison. But so what?
This isn’t a matter of prosecution, but whether Amp and his comrades are willing to accept the logical consequences of his argument. If the fetus has no interest in future life, neither do newborns. If the fetus’s life is outweighed by an American woman’s desire to avoid a few months of discomfort, a newborn’s life would be even more easily outweighed by a Third World mother’s interest in avoiding starvation.
Frankly, given the alternatives of killing a small infant, and giving the same infant up for adoption with all the social condemnation that would entail, I’ll stand by my statement that it’s simpler to give the infant up for adoption. (I admit that I’m imagining a United States case.)
However, I never said it was “easy” to give up a baby for adoption.
Nor, by the way, did I “directly state that fetuses have no interest in future existence” – at least, not fetuses after the cerebral cortex has developed and has a functioning attachement to the brain. What I said is that the fetus’ interests may begin developing after the cerebral cortex begins functioning, and gradually develops from that point forward; but the interest is not strong enough to overwhelm a pregnant woman’s interest in bodily autonomy.
This is why I don’t like responding to you, Joe. These are not minor distinctions. I’m trying to make a nuanced argument, and it’s pointless doing that with you, because – purposely or not – you consistantly misstate my argument in ways that conveniently bolster your argument.
Now, to your case. You wrote:
Then you wrote…
My hypothetical of the Eastern European orphanage wasn’t so far from reality.
I think you’re being unrealistic, but I think it’s a matter we’ll have to agree to disagree on.
But, to take your example seriously for a moment, I’d say that the woman in your example has made a committment to do her best to keep all the infants given to her care alive; it is on this basis that she is given her position, and on this basis that people bring her infants to take care of. I’d argue that therefore, under the circumstances you describe, the moral thing for her to do is suffer until she can find a replacement or an assistant.
Back to Joe:
And although I’d find that distressing – a six-month-old definitely has enough self-awareness to qualify as a human person, in my opinion – it seems to me that this is a very strong argument in favor of all birth control methods, including abortion. If someone has no ability to care for a child (and I count giving up a child for adoption as caring for it), it’s much more responsible to abort it.
Even if you alterned your example after-the-fact to make it a two-day-infant, I’d still find the situation very distressing. I don’t think the death of a two-day-infant is as bad as the death of (say) a five-year-old, but neither do I feel that it’s nothing. Furthermore, in your example the child was absolutely wanted, except for the starvation problem, which makes it particularly tragic.
There are two things that we should examine: First, what are the causes of the famine and poverty? (Nowadays, famines are generally caused by political factors, which should be avoidable). Second, what has prevented this woman (and her partner, if any) to be able to use family planning to space out her pregnancies so that she can afford to keep her children fed?
In the US, there’s a limited amount most ordinary voters can do to help poor third-world women who are stuck with babies they can’t feed. One thing we can do is vote for politicians who will oppose the global gag rule, support UNFPA, and support pressuring the WTO and World Bank to fogive the debts of developing countries. We can also look into passing much firmer restrictions on the trade and importing of diamonds, which would help in parts of Africa, at least.
Of course, all of that is far more likely to come about if we elect pro-choice politicians.
* * *
Bottom line: It’s possible, as Joe suggests, that my moral argument for abortion’s legitimacy – based as it is on a combination of respect for women’s bodily autonomy and a logical assesment of the mental capacity of a fetus – would lead to infanticide under the extreme circumstances seen in some of the worst places on earth; circumstances that have generally been caused by highly immoral wars, by unrestrained criminality and profiteering, by terrorism and by despotic or at least irresponsible governments.
Even if Joe’s right about that, my suggestion is that instead of giving up on respecting women’s rights and giving up on thinking logically about fetal mental capacity, it would be better to work on ending the factors that have brought people to such desparate circumstances in the first place. The immoral part of Joe’s example isn’t my philosophy; it’s the fact that in a world in which there is more than enough food to go around, political and economic factors are allowed to press people to near-starvation, and governments cannot afford to adequately fund and staff orphanages.
OK, that’s the comparison. But so what?
So, again, Amp was addressing the argument that a newborn baby “depends on its mother” just like a fetus in the womb does, which isn’t the case. It’s a separate argument from Amp’s discussion of moral awareness.
a few months of discomfort
As long as you keep on with this silliness, you’re just going to appear ignorant. Reducing the miracle of gestation and birth to “discomfort” or “inconvenience,” as if it were a difficult bowel movement, actually trivializes your points.
FWIW, I’m still waiting eagerly to hear why you believe pre-viability fetuses have less right to life than those post-viability.
Joe wrote: If the fetus has no interest in future life, neither do newborns.
Again, I didn’t say a fetus has “no interest” in future life, unless you’re referring to a fetus pre-cerebral cortex.
If the fetus’s life is outweighed by an American woman’s desire to avoid a few months of discomfort, a newborn’s life would be even more easily outweighed by a Third World mother’s interest in avoiding starvation.
I really wouldn’t have the heart to condemn a women in such a situation. It would be far better had the newborn been aborted well before birth, instead.
However, since abortion is illegal in most of the developing world, the only abortion she could have gotten would have been an unsafe illegal abortion. She might have ended up one of the 69,000 women who die every year after getting illegal unsafe abortions.
Those who call themselves pro-life are unclear on the concept. Even if they are vegetarians, they still kill plants. Phooey.
Amp —
Sorry, but my statement of your argument was correct. You didn’t refer to cerebral cortexes, or to the belief that fetuses might have even a small interest in future life at some point. If you recall, you said this:
To value its potential future, it must have a history of
a) Awareness of itself as a being which exists across time, into the future.
b) Anticipating and preferring its own future existence.
If a fetus is not capable of both those things, then it is not harmed in any meaningful way by being aborted.
Even one-year olds are not capable — not the least little bit — of “preferring their own future existence.” They don’t even have any concept of the “future” to begin with, let alone “existence.” They are as utterly incapable of valuing the future as are fetuses.
I think you are egregiously overestimating the capabilities of newborns just to avoid the uncomfortable fact that your argument equally applies to infanticide. (What on earth really makes you think that newborns can value the future? They won’t be able to talk in those terms for several years, and you can’t remember your own experience of being a fetus or a newborn.)
Look at it this way: Your argument is that the fetus’s ability to value the future is zero. Therefore, its right to life is zero (or, if you want to dispute that, put its right to life at 1). Then, on a scale of 1 to 10, the pregnant woman’s interest in autonomy is a 10. So the 10 outweights the 1. Fine.
My point is that if the fetus’s ability to value the future is 0 or 1, so is the newborn’s. And all sorts of adult interests might be less than the 10 of the pregnant woman, but might still amount to 3 or 4. And guess what: 3 or 4 still outweighs a 1.
Conclusion: If “valuing the future” is what creates the right to life, then newborns are just as incapable of that as are fetuses. Thus, their interest in life might be easily outweighted by any number of adult interests.
Joe –
First, you utterly ignored my main argument in response to your “developing world” argument. Do you concede the point?
* * *
As I said in the original post, “This isn’t the approach I’d necessarily take nowadays.” I didn’t write all that stuff about cerebral cortex and the like in the original post because I don’t recall that being in the essay I read 18 years ago. But it certainly does form an important part of my view now, and I’ve developed that theme at great length in the comments discussion on this thread. I’m assuming you’ve read the comments; if you have not, then it’s not my fault if you can’t follow the discussion accurately.
Nonsense. I live with an 8-month-old, and anyone observing her can see that she anticipates experiencing a future. If, while she’s watching, you take the funny-colored spoon that she associates with being fed and put a little chocolate frosting on it, she’ll anticipate being able to eat the chocolate frosting soon – she’ll grin, make happy noises, and watch the spoon intently. If you then throw the frosting away or eat it yourself, she’ll grow angry because she’s been deprived of a treat she was anticipating herself eating.
Clearly, she is capable of prefering a future existence (in this case, a future in which she eats frosting), and she’s been capable of it for many months.
As for a newborn – I have doubts. It seems to me that developing an awareness of self over time requires not only brain capacity but having experienced a variety of stimuli. A newborn (and a post-24 weeks fetus) does have at least some brain capacity. But if your experiences never change significantly – if all you experience day after day is the inside of a womb, with only slight variations – is it possible to develop a sense of self over time?
On the other hand, a 30-week fetus does have some stimuli. It feels its mother move around it; it hears its parents voices (muffled); if it is uncomfortable, it kicks until mother shifts her position. Is ten to 12 weeks of that (from the point when the cerebral cortex begins working at least a little, through birth) enough to develop a very rudimentary sense of self over time? I kinda doubt it, but I can’t say for sure.
Once birth happens, of course, a great variety of stimulation begins. The baby then has everything it needs to develop a sense of self over time – a functioning brain and a variety of experiences. What we don’t know is, how long does it take?
There’s no doubt at all that a newborn infant experiences some satisfaction from suckling, for example. At what point does the newborn begin to anticipate suckling (which requires a rudimentary sense of self over time)?
I have no idea. But, as I said earlier in this discussion: A two-day-old might have the rudimentary beginnings of “the concept of having a continued existence.” When it was still in its mother’s body, the very weak chance that this might exist in rudimentary form is not, to my thinking, enough to overwhelm the mother’s right to bodily autonomy (which definitely exists). Now that that conflict of rights is gone, however, we should err on the side of respecting even a small possibility that a two-day-old has some form of “the concept of having a continued existence.”
I could reverse this by suggesting that you are ridiculously underestimating the capabilities of all infants (e.g., “Even one-year olds are not capable — not the least little bit — of ‘preferring their own future existence'”) just to bolster your argument.
I won’t say that, though, because I have no idea if it’s true or not. That sort of bullshit speculation about what motivates one’s opponent is the lowest form of debate; I try to avoid it, and as long as you’re a guest on my blog I want you to try to avoid it as well.
So many objections, where do I begin?
AMP said: However, as we get later and later in teh pregnancy, fewer and fewer abortions are performed; and those that are performed are increasingly likely to represent cases where an abortion is more urgently needed. (end quote)
Show us one case where an abortion is needed, urgently needed. In the less than 3% of pregnancies where a “mother’s” health/life is in danger a C-section is performed vs. late term vaginal abortions, which take days to execute. You’ll never find a doctor saying, in order to save your life, ma’am, you must have an abortion. Complete myth.
Regarding the mother’s body, freedom, rights, autonomy and dreams, I don’t see what that has to do with me, you, or any physician. Why are physicians allowed to take part in the abortion process? How is the fetus infringing on the rights of abortion clinics and physicians to the point that they must step in and actively end life? I would never advocate a woman giving herself an abortion because I don’t believe it is an ethical choice; however, I would not advocate laws to make the process easier and safer.
AMP said: I don’t see what’s so precious about non-sentient life, which is what virtually all abortions involve. (end quote)
What happened to erring on the side of caution? Do you know how many abortions are performed after the first trimester? Approximately 77,000 in the United States. Is that virtually none to you?
AMP SAID: When someone is utterly, completely, beyond-any-doubt braindead, we don’t insist on keeping the body alive forever. (end quote)
Do you actually know anyone who is beyond-any-doubt braindead? Do you think that a mother who wants to abort her child stops and says to the physician, “Would you mind performing expensive tests just to make sure the life inside me is completely, beyond-any-doubt braindead before aborting it?” I think not.
AMP SAID: I’m suggesing that it [a fertilized egg] can be considered a person once it’s been born. Unlike viability, this has the advantage of being a reasonably clear borderline. But I’d certainly be willing to compromise on viability, as long as the usual exceptions for preserving the life and health of the mother were included.
What about the Saline and Hysterotomy abortions that have the frequent complication of live birth? Do you think it humane to neglect those viable lives once there are out of the womb? I realize that the simple loophole could be killing the baby before cutting the cord. There is subjective justification in everything. (end quote)
Everyone has become desensitized to abortion. We are told it is rare and safer and that should be OK. Well, it’s not OK to me but even if it is to you, when do you receive a real wake up call? Amy in NY wasn’t enough for some. She had other options. There are always other options. She was even agreeing to give up “her rights” in order to carry one.
AMP SAID: However, since abortion is illegal in most of the developing world, the only abortion she could have gotten would have been an unsafe illegal abortion. She might have ended up one of the 69,000 women who die every year after getting illegal unsafe abortions. (end quote)
Ending human life should feel like a risky mistake. It should be dangerous and shameful. I regret that our country chooses to endorse 1.6 million legal abortions for being safe, clean little procedures that are a blip on the map.
I would never advocate a woman giving herself an abortion because I don’t believe it is an ethical choice; however, I would not advocate laws to make the process easier and safer.
This isn’t even coherent.
If abortion is not an ethical choice, then who performs the abortion is irrelevant. If it is an ethical choice, then again, it is irrelevant whether the mother aborts on her own or gets somebody else to do it.
Mythago – My apologies for the confusion. Basically, I see abortion as wrong/unethical and therefore, don’t think that physicians should be allowed to play a role in them just b/c that would be safer for the mother.
Someone said: One of the things I find more than a little interesting about the Amy Richards flap is that a) if she had terminated all three we would never have heard word one (end)
Good point. I’m shocked by the reasons people have abortions all the time; however, I’m againt having them. Amy Richards gained media attention because of her blatant selfishness in the eyes of so many people who are pro choice based on the false assumption that women won’t abuse the right beyond “emergency” situations (that don’t exist).
This right infringement business just doesn’t hold up. There was NOTHING I could do as a child to earn myself a death sentence. There are very few ways I can infringe on someone’s right as an adult to earn myself a death sentence, especially an immediate one. OK, fine, say the baby (which the mother had a hand in creating) is in fact infringing on the mother’s right to bodily autonomy. How does this make abortion legal? I don’t see any pro-abortionists looking for ways to save the new life as well as to return bodily independence to the mother.
An abortion is never performed to save a mother’s life. The only reason to have an abortion is to kill an unborn child.
Jen:
Show us one case where an abortion is needed, urgently needed. In the less than 3% of pregnancies where a “mother’s” health/life is in danger a C-section is performed vs. late term vaginal abortions, which take days to execute. You’ll never find a doctor saying, in order to save your life, ma’am, you must have an abortion. Complete myth
This claim is nonsense. Abortion is sometimes needed to protect a pregnant woman’s life or health.
Regarding the mother’s body, freedom, rights, autonomy and dreams, I don’t see what that has to do with me, you, or any physician. Why are physicians allowed to take part in the abortion process?
Because abortion is a medical procedure that usually requires the knowledge and skills of a physician.
How is the fetus infringing on the rights of abortion clinics and physicians to the point that they must step in and actively end life?
It isn’t. Abortion clinics and physicians are necessary for the reason I just stated.
What happened to erring on the side of caution?
Nothing. What does “erring on the side of caution” have to do with it?
Do you know how many abortions are performed after the first trimester?
In the United States, only about 10%.
Everyone has become desensitized to abortion. We are told it is rare and safer and that should be OK.
Abortion isn’t really rare. Abortion is certainly safer than completing a pregnancy and delivering a baby.
Amy in NY wasn’t enough for some. She had other options. There are always other options.
The fact that she had other options is irrelevant. She exercized her right to choose the option to abort.
Ending human life should feel like a risky mistake. It should be dangerous and shameful.
With respect to abortion, no it shouldn’t. It is and should be safe. And the vast majority of women who choose to have an abortion have nothing to be ashamed about.
Jen:
This right infringement business just doesn’t hold up. There was NOTHING I could do as a child to earn myself a death sentence.
So what? What does that have to do with abortion?
OK, fine, say the baby (which the mother had a hand in creating) is in fact infringing on the mother’s right to bodily autonomy. How does this make abortion legal?
It doesn’t make abortion “legal.” What makes abortion legal are the actions of legislators and judges.
It does make abortion a right. A woman has the right to refuse to use her body as a physical life-support system for a developing fetus, just as she has a right to refuse to donate blood or organs or tissue to save another person’s life.
I don’t see any pro-abortionists looking for ways to save the new life as well as to return bodily independence to the mother.
Before viability, there is no way to terminate a pregnancy without also causing the death of the fetus.
An abortion is never performed to save a mother’s life.
Yes it is.
The only reason to have an abortion is to kill an unborn child.
Nonsense. The most obvious reason to have an abortion is to terminate a pregnancy.
How does this make abortion legal?
Read Roe v. Wade if you really do not understand the legalities.
Basically, I see abortion as wrong/unethical and therefore, don’t think that physicians should be allowed to play a role in them just b/c that would be safer for the mother.
If you see abortion as wrong, then who gets to perform the abortion is irrelevant. Your argument is like saying “I believe murder is immoral, so I don’t think anyone should be allowed to hire hit men.”
Don P: I know someone in a sound bite may have told you that abortion saves lives but it flat out doesn’t. Seriously, do some research. And 10% after the first tri-mester? Try over 20%. 20% of 1,600,000 is a lot, a lot of abortions. Also, terminating a pregnancy is the same as killing an unborn child.
How are you defining viability? How do you know there is no way to save the new life? Tearing a more developed fetus limb from limb doesn’t suggest concern. That should not be a form of birth control (and before you say it, look at the statistics and tell me you don’t see a correlation between unprotected sex by singles resulting in abortions).
Mythago: Roe vs. Wade was written prior to some of the scientific advancements and discoveries we have today. I certainly understand people 30, 20, and maybe even 10 years ago thinking this may not matter (esp. if they don’t subscribe to various religious beliefs that support pro-life), but here we are in a day when we know how quickly heart beats can be detected, we can magnify tiny development until we see that it looks like a miniature version of a 3rd trimester baby, we can film them living out their daily womb routine and see the first hints of personality. Roe vs. Wade revisited will be a different story, I hope. It’s a tougher call for some than others, I realize.
Mythago: Roe vs. Wade was written prior to some of the scientific advancements and discoveries we have today.
Those advancements don’t really hurt Roe, I’m afraid. Have you read it? It doesn’t say ‘well, the fetus doesn’t have a heartbeat until X weeks so abortion till then is OK.’
look at the statistics and tell me you don’t see a correlation between unprotected sex by singles resulting in abortions
Could you provide these statistics?
Jen:
Don P: I know someone in a sound bite may have told you that abortion saves lives but it flat out doesn’t. Seriously, do some research.
It does save lives and I have done the research. You’re the one who doesn’t know what she’s talking about. A woman is about ten times more likely to die from completing a pregnancy than from terminating it. This is the conclusion of the most reputable public health organizations in the world, organizations such as the CDC and the WHO.
And 10% after the first tri-mester? Try over 20%.
It’s not “over 20%.” It’s about 10%. And only about 1% are performed after the second trimester. These figures come from the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which is generally regarded as providing the most comprehensive and accurate statistical information on abortion in America. Even anti-abortion groups cite its data.
Also, terminating a pregnancy is the same as killing an unborn child.
No it isn’t. The fact that all live births and deliveries terminate a pregnancy without “killing an unborn child” proves, as if proof were needed, that your claim above is false.
How are you defining viability?
Ability to live outside the womb.
How do you know there is no way to save the new life?
From the medical evidence.
Tearing a more developed fetus limb from limb doesn’t suggest concern.
Forcing a woman to complete an unwanted pregnancy doesn’t suggest concern either.
“However, in order to be harmed by the loss of its future, a fetus would need to have valued its potential future at some point in its existence”
There’s a huge logical hole in this argument, and this sentence is it. You can be harmed by the loss of something whether you recognize, at the time, the value of that something of not.
If you are a person who think that economic freedom is unimportant (for example), then you will not value it. But if I take it away from you, and as a result you starve in a ditch, then you have been harmed by my action. The fact that you didn’t value what you had is immaterial.
You’ve misunderstood my argument. I said “at some point in its existence” – it doesn’t matter to my argument when its potential future is valued, just if it is ever valued at all.
Your counterexample, however, says that I can be harmed by something’s loss even if I don’t recognize its value “at the time.” But by linking it to a moment in time – “at the time” – you’ve made your counterexample irrelevant to my arguement.
In your example, there’s a delay between when you took away my economic freedom, and when I realize that I valued what you took. However, just because there’s a delay doesn’t change the fact that I do “at some point in my existance” value what you took. It is because I’ve lost something I value that I have been harmed, in your example.
Contrast me (starving in a ditch in your example – hey, maybe I’ll lose some weight!) with a three-month fetus. A three-month fetus absolutely does not care in the slightest if it lives or dies. It cannot care. Nor, if it is aborted, will it ever, for even a single moment, care in the slightest, or in any way prefer that it not be aborted.
The fetus has not been harmed in any way; it has lost nothing it valued. A very different scenario from me starving in a ditch.
But you preclude the possibility of the fetus valuing its existence by killing it.
It’s not legitimate to say “well, if the fetus ever cared about its existence, I wouldn’t kill it”, if you’re planning to kill it before you believe it capable of caring. That’s a false test; it’s never possible for the fetus to reach the test condition, because of the action of the tester.
It’s very much like the old voting tests in the south. “We’d let the negroes vote if they could just pass our intelligence test” – and then skewing the intelligence test so that nobody can pass it.
So what?
If I say “I’m going to remove all the trees from my property, except for the ones over 50 years old,” it doesn’t make sense for you to object to my removing acorns and sprouts because if I only withheld my action for fifty years, they’d meet my requirements.
Actually, it’s more like the age rules for voting. If a five-year-old wants to vote, we don’t let her. And saying “well, if we just wait 13 years, then she’ll have the right to vote” doesn’t mean that she has any right to vote right now.
* * *
I always find the pro-life comparisons of zygotes to black people – as if black people were the moral equivilents of beings without functional brains – annoying. (Ditto for the comparisons of zygotes to Jews in the Holocaust, in case that was your next comparison.)
Essentially, you’re saying “if we assume that zygotes and fetuses are people, and then based on that assumption consider what your views would be like applied to people – for example, blacks – then it would be obvious that your argument is unjust.”
However, since we’re arguing about whether or not zygotes and fetuses are people, it’s illegitmate for you to make an argument which implicitly assumes personhood.
So, yes. To treat blacks (or jews) the same way I propose treating brainless, nonsentient fetuses would be unjust. However, since blacks (and jews) are not in fact brainless and nonsentient, the comparison is illegitimate.
Your tree example fails because you are not attempting to justify a moral action, you are conducting a simple sort. My objection to the fact that acorns, given time, will become trees is moot; you’re not conducting a sort in 50 years, you’re conducting one now. You’re not conducting a one-time sort in the case of the fetus.
Since I’m not comparing zygotes to black people, your strawman is not very interesting there.
The “so what” comes in because your original mildly pro-life position was predicated on the commonsense notion that since we don’t know when personhood begins, we should err on the side of caution.
Then you changed, because this new argument convinced you that the fetus’ side of the equation could be deprecated in significance. Which is logical; if the fetus’ interests are suddenly less important, then obviously the moral calculus changes.
However, I believe my objection to this argument is valid. A test which cannot be passed by design is not a legitimate test, and an argument which relies on such a test becomes void. Your philosopher sets up a test which fetuses that are killed can never pass, and then uses the failure on the test to justify the killing. This is circular logic, and not convincing.
Robert,
Wouldn’t your argument also apply to an egg and a sperm that are just about to meet? I assume everyone thinks it is okay to stop them from meeting at the last moment (suppose we could do this with a lazer gun or some science fiction machine). Why is it ok to stop them from meeting? Because they don’t have any interest in whether they meet or not. But that reasoning would be subject to your criticism–haven’t I set up a test that no egg and sperm about to meet can pass? Surely at some point that egg and sperm will be concerned about their future (like when it’s become an 8 year old child).
Or look at this way. Suppose there’s a computer with artificial intelligence that we know will one day become self-aware and rational and have interests in its future. That will happen to this particular computer in 2012. But now it’s 2004 and the computer isn’t self-aware or rational or interested in its future. I see nothing wrong with dismantling the computer NOW simply because NOW (and never has been) self-aware and interested in its future. But surely in reasoning as I have I have created a test “which by design cannot be passed.”
that second to last sentence of mine makes no sense. It should say:
“I see nothing wrong with dismantling the computer NOW simply because NOW it is not (and never has been) self-aware and interested in its future.”
In neither of those cases could Amp’s philosopher’s test be applied; in the one case, before the egg and the sperm meet, there is only potential. Since the human life doesn’t yet exist, it can’t have an interest in anything. Conception is one of those inflection points where it really does make sense to radically change the moral calculus involved on either side. In the other case, the computer is not a moral object because it is not alive. (Although there may be significant moral issues here, we’d need to define things a lot more than in your brief example to be able to discuss them.)
A fetus, on the other hand, is a living reality with a unique genetic composition, not a potential, and it is known to us that barring a catastrophic event, it will continue along a very well-traveled path towards adult humanity. It is part of a continuum of life. We know from personal experience that, given the opportunity to grow and mature, it will become a person who values its existence and its future.
I maintain that to say “doing this to blacks, whom we all acknowlege as people, would be unjust” is an invalid analogy, since what’s at issue is whether or not zygotes and fetuses are people.
If you think that’s a strawman, fine. I don’t agree that it is.
* * *
Many environmentalists would argue that to kill an oak tree or not is a moral question.
I have no idea what a “one-time” sort is, or why how many times one performs the sort is relevant. (Actually, a sort of the sort I described would probably be performed at least annually, since new acorns continually drop).
What we’re discussing is threshold issues. You’re arguing that if something could ever potentially pass the threshold, then to take any action which prevents something from someday passing that threshold is circular logic and illegitimate. In other words, you’re arguing that if it’s immoral to kill an ancient oak, then it must also be immoral to kill an acorn, since given enough time that acorn will pass the “ancient oak” threshold.
“I think it’s immoral to cut down acient oaks. But it’s okay to kill sprouts, since sprouts aren’t ancient oaks.”
“But that’s circular! You can’t use the fact that a sprout is not yet an ancient oak to justify preventing it from becoming an ancient oak! That’s a test designed for sprouts to fail!”
* * *
“In order for it to be immoral to cut it down, an oak has to be ancient.” Sprouts can never pass this test. The failure of sprouts to pass this testy is used to justify cutting sprouts down.
Is that circular logic?
But the question isn’t whether killing oak trees is wrong. It’s whether killing acorns and/or sprouts is wrong.
Your philosopher is saying that it’s OK, because acorns and sprouts that are killed never miss being alive, because when they’re young they don’t have perception. He’s not trying to craft a genuine test, he’s creating a justification for an existing belief (“it’s OK to kill sprouts”).
I’m not arguing that because something can potentially pass the threshold, we can never kill it. I’m arguing that a test whose answer is used to justify an action which causes the failure of the test, is invalid *as a test*.
I don’t see how this eliminates the oak tree example. The test is “is this tree ancient?” The answer to that test is used to justify an action (cutting down the tree) which causes the failure of the test (if the tree hadn’t been cut down, it would have eventually passed the test).
How does that make the “is this tree ancient” test invalid as a test?
Similarly, the question isn’t whether killing people is wrong. It’s whether klling zygotes and/or fetuses is wrong.
* * *
This is an ad hom argument; it’s saying that something about the person who made the argument makes the argument invalid. That’s not true. An argument is valid or not regardless of how the person making the argument came up with it.
Anyhow, there’s nothing wrong with starting with a belief, and then seeing if one can come up with a logical argument in support of that belief. “Can I come up with a logical, reasonably consistant argument for my beliefs” is one way reasonable people test their beliefs.
Anyhow, I was pro-life (in a mild way) when I heard this argument. In my case, the logic led to a new conclusion, not a pre-existing conclusion.
But Robert your response to me begs the exact questions that need to be answered.
Why is the fetus any less potential than an egg and sperm one moment away from meeting? We know from experience that if we allow that moment to happen then the course of nature will result in the egg and sperm becoming a human person. You say that before conception a “human life” doesn’t exist. But what is a “human life” of a 1 second old fertilized egg other than potential? You said that “Conception is one of those inflection points where it really does make sense to radically change the moral calculus involved.” But how so? The only difference you mentioned between a sperm and egg about to meet and a sperm and egg which met one day ago is that in the latter case the genetic material has already mixed, whereas, in the former the material hasn’t met just yet. Why is the genetic material having met a morally relevant distinction? To say that conception draws some morally important line (without further explanation) is just to beg the question. If the genetic information mixture is supposed to be the morally relevant difference then we might be at an impasse, as I don’t see why the mixture having already occurred as opposed to being about to occur makes a difference.
And why is it that the computer cannot be a moral object if it is not alive? If the computer shows all of the aspects of human persons which we normally value then I see no reason why we shouldn’t value them in the computer as well. (Admittedly it would be difficult to determine whether the computer had some of those attributes like self-awareness or whether it was just very good at appearing to have them.–maybe that’s what you were getting at about having to define things more before discussing my examples).
Activistgradgal, if you don’t comprehend why the creation of a human being’s genetic matrix from the fusion of two different genetic strands is significant, then there’s not really a point to us having a discussion.
But I’ll try anyway, because it beats doing my work.
I have a gun to Amp’s head (hi, Amp!) and am about to pull the trigger, but haven’t yet. (I’ll teach him to short me on the pizza money.) Versus, I have pulled the trigger, and Amp is dead. (All of my examples seem to involve killing Amp is some way or another. Perhaps I should get help.)
In one circumstance, it’s about to happen. In the other circumstance, it has already happened. To me, there is an obvious moral difference in the circumstances. In scenario A, I have committed the crime of threatening to kill someone, and probably some other torts. In scenario B, it’s homicide.
There are thresholds that once crossed cannot be uncrossed. Any number of sperm and eggs can potentially meet; once they actually DO meet, it’s a different situation than it was before.
As for the computer, nonliving things have no +moral nature. You’d have to establish that the computer has become alive.
But you’ve loaded the dice with the example of killing a person (I assume we all agree Amp is a person with moral rights). Before you shoot him, Amp is still a functioning person with interests and thoughts and feelings. Afterwards he is dead (and can’t be brought back to life) and hence has no thoughts, feelings, interests. So killing a person is a morally relevant event. It takes away the life and personhood of a being; the body goes from being inhabited by a person to just being a body. We could run the same thing with an animal. If I kill a dog it goes from being an object with (some) thoughts and (some) feelings and (some) interests, to one without. But what happens when I kill a plant by cutting it off from its roots (I don’t know much about plants, but I assume that would kill it)? Nothing morally relevant has happened in that case (I’ll stipulate that the plant isn’t an endangered species and doesn’t belong to anyone and killing it doesn’t bring about any bad consequences). The “alive” plant is no more morally relevant than the “dead” plant because being “alive” isn’t something that has moral relevance. (Which goes to the side note of the computer; if “alive” just means being bacteria, fungi, plant, animal and not being dead, then of course a computer could never be “alive.” Still I think it could certainly have moral standing.)
So what fundamentally matters, it seems, is not whether a certain threshold has been crossed, but whether crossing that threshold results in the object (Amp, the plant, the egg & sperm) going through a fundamental change in moral importance.
I did at one time assume (without having a justification) that a fertilized egg was wildly different morally speaking than an egg and sperm about to meet, until I was pushed on the question in the same way I’m now pushing. So I do indeed feel the pull of the thought that there’s something special that happens at fertilization; but I’ve never been able to come up with any good explanation of what that is. It might be that we simply have differing intuitions about the mixing of genetic material that occurs during fertilization.
As you said normally there’s potential for any sperm and egg to meet, but I’ve purposely constructed an example where that’s not the case. Sperm #12345 and Egg #6789 are just moments away from meeting in a petri dish(and there are no other sperm around). I don’t see how the fertilized egg in the next petri dish has anymore “potential” than this sperm and egg do, since crossing the threshold of fertilization does not seem to change the morally relevant status in any discernible way, if what is supposed to be morally relevant is what will happen to each egg/sperm pair nine months down the road, since the same thing will happen to both.