Abortion Shineups
The Fundamental Question in the Abortion Debate:
Under what circumstances, if any, is it morally permissible to have an abortion?
A Related Question, But
One to Keep Separate:
Under what circumstances, if any, should it be legally permissible to have an
abortion?
Some Possible Answers to the Fundamental Question:
Extreme Anti-Abortionism: It is always morally wrong to have an abortion.
Extreme Pro-Abortionism: It is always morally permissible to have an abortion.
Life of the Mother: Abortion is morally permissible when it is performed to save the life of the mother; abortion is wrong in all other circumstances.
RIL: It is morally permissible to have an abortion when the pregnancy is due to rape or incest or when the life of the mother is in danger; abortion is wrong in all other circumstances.
Viability: Abortion is morally permissible if performed when the fetus is not viable but morally wrong if performed when the fetus is viable.
Contraception: Abortion is morally permissible if the mother has taken reasonable precautions against getting pregnant.
Two Main Elements of the Traditional Debate:
1. To answer the Fundamental Question in the Abortion Debate is to resolve a conflict that arises between two principles, the Principle of Autonomy and the Principle of Non-Maleficence (or, to put it another way, between a right to autonomy and an alleged right to life).
2. Answering the Fundamental Question in the Abortion Debate depends crucially upon the status of the fetus: if the fetus has “full moral standing,” then some anti-abortionist position is correct; if the fetus has “no moral standing,” then a pro-abortionist position is correct.
Side Issues
1. The Alleged Hazards of Abortion to the Pregnant Woman (as a consideration against abortion)
2. The Alleged Benefits of Abortion to the Fetus (as a consideration in favor of abortion)
3. The Slippery Slope (as a consideration against abortion)
4. Overpopulation (as a consideration in favor of abortion)
An Incomplete History of Abortion in Western Culture
• Practice of abortion widespread in ancient times as a method of birth control.
“ ... there must be a limit to the procreation of children. If contrary to these arrangements copulation does take place and a child is conceived, abortion should be procured before the embryo has acquired life and sensation; the presence of life and sensation will be the mark of division between right and wrong here.
- Aristotle, Politics VII 16 (335-330 B.C.)
• The Bible contains very few references to abortion, none of which prohibits abortion.
• The Jewish Talmud teaches that the fetus is not a person and has no rights.
• “For us, murder is once for all forbidden; so even the child in the womb ... .”
- Tertullian, Apologeticus IX 8 (about 198 A.D.)
• The Assyrians, Sumerians, and Babylonians had laws which forbade abortion. Evidently, Assyrians impaled women on stakes for attempting abortion.
• Neither St. Augustine nor St. Thomas Aquinas (the two most prominent medieval Christian theologians) considered early-term abortion to be homicide; Aquinas thought “ensoulment” occurred well after conception.
• 1312: Aquinas’s view embraced by the Church in the Council of Vienne.
• In the Pre-Modern Period, Church maintains that abortion is wrong when it is performed to conceal sexual sins.
• In United States, from colonial times to 19th century, common law permits abortion until “quickening.”
• Early to mid 1800’s: Not a single statute in United States concerns abortion. Advertisements for abortion-inducing drugs are common.
• 1869: Pope Pius IX wrote in Apostolicae Sedis that all abortion was homicide and that excommunication is the required penalty for abortion at any stage of pregnancy. Statement an implicit endorsement – the Church’s first – of the idea that ensoulment or personhood begins at conception.
• Late 1800’s: American Medical Association is formed, lobbies against abortions not performed by licensed doctors.
• 1873: Comstock Law is passed in U.S., an anti-obscenity law severely prohibiting communications concerning contraception and abortion.
• mid 1900’s: Comstock provisions begin to erode
• 1965: The Second Vatican Council, in Gaudium et Spes (§51), declared: “Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception; abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.”
• 1973: In Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court legalizes abortion nationwide. Ruling, based on constitutional right to privacy, prohibits laws regulating abortion in the first trimester.
• 1979: In Colautti vs. Franklin, U.S. Supreme Court rules states may seek to protect a fetus that has reached viability, but gives doctors rather than legislators discretion in determining the timing of fetal viability.
• 1996: RU-486: U.S. Federal Drug Administration declares RU-486 – the “abortion pill” – safe and effective; sale of drug, also called “mifepristone” and “Mifeprex,” given final FDA approval in 2000; no U.S. drug companies sell the drug to this day, perhaps for fear of consumer boycott or shareholder action.
• 2003: Partial-Birth
Abortion: U.S. Senate and House of Representatives vote to ban so-called “partial
birth” abortions; President Bush signs bill into law, marking first time
federal government has banned an abortion procedure since Roe v. Wade
legalized abortion in 1973.
Noonan’s Main Argument
Noonan’s Thesis: Abortion is morally wrong unless it is required
to save the life of the mother.
Noonan’s Non-Maleficence Principle: It is morally wrong to injure
another person unless it is done to save your life.
Noonan’s Main Argument
1. It is morally wrong to injure another person unless it is done to save your
life.
2. All fetuses are persons.
3. Therefore, it is morally wrong to injure a fetus unless it is done to save
your life.
4. All abortions injure the fetus.
5. Therefore, it is morally wrong to abort a fetus unless it is done to save
your life.
An Improved Version of Noonan’s Main Argument
A Principle about Killing: It is morally wrong to kill an innocent person
unless it is done to save a life.
An Improved Version of Noonan’s Main Argument
1. It is morally wrong to kill an innocent person unless it is done to save
a life.
2. All fetuses are persons.
3. Therefore, it is morally wrong to kill a fetus unless it is done to save
a life.
4. All abortions kill the fetus.
5. Therefore, it is morally wrong to abort a fetus unless it is done to save
a life.
Noonan’s Equivocation
Premise 1 Disambiguated:
1B. It is morally wrong to kill an innocent person in the biological sense
unless it is done to save a life.
1P. It is morally wrong to kill an innocent person in the psychological
sense unless it is done to save a life.
Premise 2 Disambiguated:
2B. All fetuses are persons in the biological sense.
2P. All fetuses are persons in the psychological sense.
Noonan’s Equivocation:
1P. It is morally wrong to kill an innocent person in the psychological sense
unless it is done to save a life.
2B. All fetuses are persons in the biological sense.
3. Therefore, it is morally wrong to kill a fetus unless it is done to save
a life. INVALID INFERENCE
The Fallacy of Equivocation:
An argument commits the fallacy of equivocation when it uses the same word to
mean two different things in two different premises.
Example:
1. Money is commonly kept in banks.
2. All banks are sides of rivers.
3. Therefore, money is commonly kept in sides of rivers.
Two Concepts of Personhood
The word ‘person’ is ambiguous (that is, it has at least two distinct meanings).
Passage from Michael Tooley, “Personhood,” in Kuhse and Singer (eds.), A Companion to Bioethics:
Basic Moral Principles and the Concept of a Person
In everyday discourse, the term ‘person’ is used in two rather different ways. Sometimes its meaning is purely biological, and it is used to refer simply to individuals belonging to our own species, Homo sapiens. Often, however, people refer to entities that are not humans – such as gods, angels, possible extraterrestrials – as persons. Or they wonder whether certain animals, such as whales, dolphins and primates, may not be persons. The term ‘person’ is then being used in a very different way – namely to refer, not to individuals belonging to a certain species, but instead to individuals who enjoy something comparable, in relevant respects, to the type of mental life that characterizes normal adult human beings.
It is the latter concept that has come to play a central role in ethics, and the reason is that a number of considerations strongly support the idea that the concept of a person is crucial for the formulation of many basic moral principles, including ones concerned with the morality of killing.
‘Person’ in the Biological Sense: a member of Homo Sapiens
examples: each of us; coma patients; human corpses; fetuses
‘Person’ in the Psychological Sense: a creature with a psychology similar to ours (it is conscious; is self-conscious; engages in reasoning and in rational deliberation; has the capacity to communicate; devises and carries out plans)
examples: each of us; C3P0 (from Star Wars), Chewbacca (from Star Wars); Spock (from Star Trek); Data (from Star Trek); any intelligent enough alien, robot, or computer; God (if He exists)
Tooley’s Claim: It is the concept of a person in the psychological
sense that plays a role in moral principles about killing (such as “A
Principle about Killing” above).
A Third Concept of Personhood: Moral Personhood
Moral Standing (also “Moral Considerability”)
An entity has moral standing if it matters, morally speaking, how that entity is treated (apart from the effects on others); if the entity can’t be treated in just any way we please.
An entity with no moral standing can be treated in any old way (if it doesn't affect others).
An ordinary rock on the side of the road probably has no moral standing.
A normal adult human being has full moral standing.
Some creatures (perhaps cats and dogs) may have some moral standing without having full moral standing.
Persons in the Moral Sense:
A person in the moral sense is just a being with full moral standing.
Normal adult beings are persons in the moral sense.
(This does not imply that they are good people.)Being a person in the psychological sense is probably sufficient for being a person in the moral sense.
Being a person in the biological sense is probably neither necessary nor sufficient for being a person in the moral sense.
Stott's Argument for Fetal Personhood
Stott's Argument for Fetal
Personhood*
1. All fetuses (except in very unusual circumstances), if they were allowed
to develop, would develop into things that are persons (in the moral sense).
2. There is no point in the development of a fetus at which it first becomes
a person (in the moral sense).
3. If a thing x, were it allowed to develop, would develop into a thing with
property P, and there is no point at which x first acquires property P, then
x has had property P from the moment x came into existence.
4. Therefore, all fetuses (except in very unusual circumstances) are persons
(in the moral sense) from the moment they come into existence.
Counterexamples to Stott’s
Principle (Premise 3):
- fetuses and the property the ability to read
- people who earn a penny a second for a trillion seconds and the property being
rich
- ordinary people and the property being old
*
this argument is taken from Richard Feldman,
Reason and Argument, second edition (1999), p. 383
Other Views about Moral Personhood
a. Life
The Life Theory of Moral Personhood:
a being is a person in the moral sense if and only if it is alive
b. Psychological Personhood as Moral Personhood
The Psychological Theory of Moral Personhood:
a being is a person in the moral sense if and only if it is a person in the psychological sense
c. Birth
The Birth Theory of Moral Personhood:
a being is a person in the moral sense if and only if the being has been bornThe Container View:
a being is a person in the moral sense only if it is not inside another personThe Dependency View:
a being is a person in the moral sense only if it does not depend on another person for the workings of its important biological systems.
d. Viability
The Viability View:
a being is a person in the moral sense only if it is capable of surviving outside the uterus of its mother (if it has a mother and was once implanted in her uterus).
Marquis
Marquis’s Strategy for Answering the Abortion Question:
Figure out why it is wrong to kill us (in other words, identify the feature
that acts of killing adult human beings have that make them wrong); See if acts
of killing fetuses also have this feature.
The Desire Theory of the Wrongness of Killing:
What makes killing us wrong is that it runs counter to a very strong desire
in us: the desire not to die; it is wrong to kill a living thing only when that
thing desires not to die.
A Pro-Abortion Argument Based on the Desire Theory:
1. If a living thing lacks the desire not to die, then killing it is typically not morally wrong.
2. Fetuses lack the desire not to die.
3. Therefore, it is typically not morally wrong to kill a fetus.
The Future-Like-Ours Theory of the Wrongness of Killing:
What makes killing us wrong is that it deprives us of the value of our future;
it is wrong to kill a living thing when it deprives the thing of a future like
ours.
a “future like ours” is a future containing valuable activities, projects, experiences, and enjoyments.
Five Consequences of the Future-Like-Ours Theory:
a. implies
that being biologically human is not a morally significant category.
b. it is open to the possibility that it is wrong to kill some nonhuman animals.
c. does not entail that active euthanasia is always morally wrong
d. entails that it is equally wrong to kill children and infants and for the
same reason that it is wrong to kill adults.
e. entails that it is morally wrong to kill unborn fetuses (i.e., that abortion
is in general morally wrong) and for the same reason that it is wrong to kill
adults, children, and infants.
An Anti-Abortion Argument Based on the Future-Like-Ours Theory:
1. If a living thing would have a future like ours, then killing it is typically morally wrong.
2. Fetuses would have a future like ours.
3. Therefore, it is typically morally wrong to kill a fetus.
The Future-Like-Ours Theory
of Moral Personhood:
a being is a person in the moral sense if it would have a future like ours
Thomson’s Violinist
A Marquis-Inspired Argument
1. It is morally wrong to kill a living thing if (i) the thing killed is innocent,
(ii) killing the thing would deprive it of a future like ours, and (iii) the
killing is not done to save any lives.
2. Typical abortions are killings of a living thing such that (i) the thing
killed is innocent, (ii) killing the thing would deprive it of a future like
ours, and (iii) the killing is not done to save any lives.
3. Therefore, typical abortions are morally wrong.
a typical abortion is an abortion that is not done to save the life of the mother (or any other lives) and that is not an abortion of a severely disabled fetus.
The Famous Violinist Argument Against Premise 1 of the Marquis-Inspired Argument:
1. If Premise 1 of the Marquis-Inspired Argument is true, then it is morally
wrong for you to unplug yourself from the famous violinist.
2. It is not morally wrong for you to unplug yourself from the famous violinist.
3. Therefore, Premise 1 of the Marquis-Inspired Argument is not true.
Thomson’s Position (?)
Consider a relation between two beings with these features:
1. The relation is parasitic.
2. Both parties to the relation have full moral standing.
3. The relation is burdensome to the host.
4. The host did not consent to the relation.
The relationship in the Case of the Famous Violinist displays these features.
Thomson’s Position (?):
When a pregnancy displays the above four features, it is ok to abort; unwanted
pregnancies typically display the above four features.
Controversy over #4.