8.  A Critical Evaluation of the Potentialities Version of the Central Anti-Abortion Argument

        In our preliminary examination of different versions of the central anti-abortion argument we identified two versions that seemed especially worthy of closer examination.  In the previous lecture we considered the biological version of the argument, and we saw that it is open to decisive objections.  In this lecture I shall consider the potentialities version of the argument.

        One way of formulating this version of the argument is as follows:

(l) All innocent organisms that have the potential to acquire the capacity for thought and self-consciousness have a serious right to life.

(2) It is at least prima facie very seriously wrong to kill anything which possesses a serious right to life.

(3) Therefore it is at least prima facie very seriously wrong to kill an innocent organism that has the potential to acquire the capacity for thought and self-consciousness.                      [From (1) and (2)]

(4) Any human fetus, embryo, or zygote is itself an innocent organism that has the potential to acquire the capacity for thought and self-consciousness.

(5) Therefore it is at least prima facie very seriously wrong to kill a human fetus, embryo, or zygote.
                                                                                                                            [From (3) and (4)]

(6) Abortion involves the killing of a human fetus, embryo, or zygote.

(7) Therefore abortion is at least prima facie very seriously wrong.        [From (5) and (6)]

        In our preliminary examination of the potentialities version of the argument, we noticed that that argument would not show that abortion is always prima facie wrong in itself.  The reason is that the premise that is introduced at step (4) in that version of the argument - namely:
 

Any human fetus, embryo, or zygote is itself an innocent organism that has the potential to acquire the capacity for thought and self-consciousness

is false.  For some fetuses are anencephalic, or else have brains that are so defective that they can never support the capacity for thought and self-consciousness, and such humans, therefore, do not possess the potentiality in question.

        However, while this shows that the argument in question cannot support the extreme anti-abortion position, the argument, if it were not otherwise defective, could be modified to support a conclusion of great scope and interest, and one that would refute all liberal positions on abortion, and almost all moderate positions.  For the argument would establish the following, very important conclusion:
 

(7*) Abortion is at least prima facie very seriously wrong, except where the embryo or fetus in question is anencephalic, or suffers from certain very severe brain defects.

        Let us consider, then, whether the argument is otherwise sound or not.  Here the crucial question is whether the first premise in the argument is true or false:
 

All innocent organisms that have the potential to acquire the capacity for thought and self-consciousness have a serious right to life.

8.1 The Question of Potentialities

        We have seen that a crucial question that must be answered before one can definitely settle the issue of the moral status of abortion is whether potentialities by themselves suffice to give something a right to life.  As the importance of this question was not really noticed until around the early 1970s, one cannot find many arguments bearing upon this issue in the great ethical theorists of the past.  Since the early 1970s, however, a variety of arguments have been offered on both sides of this issue, and I shall briefly sketch, and comment upon, the more important of these in what follows.
 

8.2  Arguments in Support of an Affirmative Answer

        Four main arguments have been offered in support of the view that potentialities can in themselves give something a right to life, or, at least, can make the destruction of something just as seriously wrong as the killing of a normal, innocent, adult human being.

Argument 1:  Comas and Potentialities

        The thrust of this first argument is that while it is not wrong to kill a person who has suffered upper brain death, and who thus is in an irreversible coma, it is wrong to kill someone in a temporary coma.  It is then suggested that the difference between the two cases is a matter of potentialities, and thus that potentialities do give something a right to life.

Critical Comments

1.  Active versus Passive Potentialities

        A person who advances the potentialities version of the anti-abortion argument has to draw a distinction between active potentialities and passive potentialities, where this distinction is roughly as follows:

X has an active potentiality for the acquisition of property P

means

All of the positive causal factors that are required for a process that would give rise to the possession of property P are present in X.

X has a passive potentiality for the acquisition of property P

means

There is something that could be done to X that would initiate a process that would give rise to the possession of property P.

        Why must an advocate of the potentialities version of the anti-abortion argument draw this distinction?  One reason will emerge when we consider an argument, advanced by Mary Anne Warren, for the view that potentialities do not in themselves provide the basis of a right to life, since we shall see that it is only by drawing a distinction between active and passive potentialities that any response to Warren's argument is possible.

        But one can also see, in a direct fashion, why that distinction is needed.  For consider a spermatozoon and an unfertilized human egg cell.  If these are brought together, and then placed in an appropriate environment, the eventual result will be an individual with the capacity for thought and self-consciousness.  The combination of a spermatozoon and an unfertilized human egg cell (plus a uterus) therefore has the potentiality of giving rise to an individual with the capacity for thought and self-consciousness.  Accordingly, if it were very seriously wrong to destroy such a potentiality, it would be very seriously wrong to destroy an unfertilized human egg cell.  The latter, however, is surely not true.  Consequently, what the advocate of the potentialities argument must say is that while it is wrong to destroy active potentialities, it is not wrong - or, at least, not nearly as wrong - to destroy passive potentialities.

        But now the problem is that the argument based upon the case of the comatose individual shows too much, for if that case really showed that active potentialities by themselves endow something with a right to life, it would also show that passive potentialities do so as well.  For consider the case of a person who is in a coma, and who will never come out of it on his or her own, but who would recover if a certain operation were performed.  Killing such a human being would be just as seriously wrong as killing the person who is in a temporary coma from which he or she will emerge without assistance.  So if the case of the comatose individual showed that potentialities by themselves give something right to life, it would show that passive potentialities also do this.

2.  Potentialities, or the Persistence of Memory and/or Personality?

        But what, then, is going on in the case of the comatose individual?  The answer is that in that case more is present than just certain potentialities, either active or passive.  For the individual's brain contains the physical basis of his or her memories, and of his or her personality traits.  In short, the states that make for personal identity are present in the brain of the comatose individual, and, because of this, what is present is not just a general potentiality for the existence of an individual who is capable of thought and self-consciousness: there is also the potentiality for the continued existence of the person who enjoyed thought and self-consciousness in the past, and it is this that makes the killing of such an individual seriously wrong.

Argument 2:  Potentialities and an Entity's Intrinsic Value

        The principle underlying this second argument is this:
 

The value of an entity is related to the values of the things into which it may develop, taking into account the relevant probabilities.

        Since, then, a fetus has a reasonable chance of developing into a normal, adult person, its value must be reasonably close to that of an adult person.

Critical Comment

        One needs to distinguish between destroying something that has value - where something has value if it makes the world a better place - and destroying something that, though it need not make the world a better place, does have a right to life.  The above principle relates to value, not to rights.  What would be needed, then, for the argument would be something like the following principle:
 

The extent to which an entity possesses a given right R is related to the extent to which the things into which it may develop possess right R, taking into account the relevant probabilities.
 

Argument 3:  Potentialities and Infanticide

        If potentialities do not give an entity a right to life, and something like capacities are necessary, then a fetus will not have a right to life, but neither will a newborn baby, since a newborn baby does not have those capacities that give something a right to life - such as the capacities for thought and self-consciousness.  So infanticide will not be morally wrong - which surely cannot be correct.  Therefore, potentialities must give something a right to life.

Critical Comments

        Those who advance this argument usually assume that one can establish the claim that infanticide is morally wrong simply by appealing to one's moral intuitions.  There are two questions that one needs to ask about such an appeal.  First, as we saw earlier, there are reasons for thinking that an appeal to moral intuitions is appropriate only in the case of basic moral principles.  For if a principle is derived, one should be able to set out the derivation, and then ask whether the basic principle in question is supported by one's moral intuitions.  But mightn't the claim that human infanticide is wrong itself be a basic moral principle?  Not if basic moral principles should be free of all reference to physical properties, such as species membership.

        The second point arises from the fact that anthropologists have claimed that, in the past, infanticide was accepted in at least some circumstances by most societies.  It seems, then, that the intuitions that are being appealed to in this argument are by no means universally shared.  This in turn leads to the question of what grounds one has for holding that it is one's own intuitions that are correct on this matter.

        The upshot is that further argument is needed if this line of argument can be sustained.

        A different response to this argument is advanced by Mary Anne Warren in the "Postscript" to her article, "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion".  Warren attempts to show that there are consequentialist objections against infanticide that do not apply - or that do not apply with equal force - to abortion.

Argument 4:  Consequentialism, and the Value of Additional Happy People

        The final argument appeals to certain forms of consequentialism - where consequentialism is the view that the right action is the one that will result in the best balance of desirable states over undesirable states.  The basic idea, then, is that if a fetus has an active potentiality for acquiring the capacity for thought and self-consciousness, then that is also a potentiality for the existence of an individual who is likely to be happy.  Other things being equal, then, it is wrong to destroy such a potentiality, since the world is likely to be one that contains less happiness.

Critical Comments

        There are many things to be said about this argument.  Many philosophers, for example, hold that consequentialism is not a satisfactory ethical theory.  Others, who are consequentialists, maintain that what has value is not the addition of happiness to the world, but the addition of happiness to individuals who already exist.  The main point to be made in the present context, however, is, I think, that this line of argument would prove much more than anti-abortionists are likely to want to accept.  Thus it would also show, for example, that destroying a passive potentiality is just as seriously wrong as destroying an active potentiality, and, consequently, that intentionally refraining from reproducing is just as seriously wrong as having an abortion.
 

8.3  Arguments in Support of a Negative Answer

Argument 1: Mary Anne Warren's Cloning Argument

        In her article "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion", Mary Anne Warren has argued that if potentialities gave something a right to life, then every cell in one's body would have a right to life, since if the nucleus of such a cell were to be transferred to an unfertilized human egg cell from which the nucleus had been removed, the resulting cell would develop in exactly the same way that a fertilized human egg cell develops.

Comments

        As I noted above, the anti-abortionist will respond by drawing a distinction between active potentialities and passive potentialities.  This provides a way of blocking Warren's argument, but it is far from clear that it is satisfactory.  For the question immediately arises as to whether the distinction between active potentialities and passive potentialities is really morally significant - a question that is raised  in a very vivid way by the "almost active" potentialities argument that follows.

        The most clear cut objection, however, to the attempt to answer Mary Anne Warren’s “cloning argument” by appealing to the distinction between active potentialities and passive potentialities is provided by the case of the comatose individual.  For while that case is an unsound argument for the view that general potentialities – such as the potentiality for acquiring the capacity for thought – in themselves can be the basis for a right to life, what the comatose case does show is that when potentialities of certain sorts are relevant to the right to life, it is both active potentialities and passive potentialities that are relevant.  So the attempt to respond to Mary Anne Warren’s argument by distinguishing between active potentialities and passive potentialities, and claiming that only the former are morally significant, cannot be sound. 

Argument 2:  The "Almost Active" Potentialities Argument

        The thrust of this argument is, first, that a fertilized human egg cell on its own - e.g., in a test tube - will not develop into a person, and so it does not in fact have an active potentiality for giving rise to an entity with the capacity for thought and self-consciousness: its potentiality is, at best, an "almost active" one.  But then, secondly, consider the combination of an unfertilized ovum lying next to a spermatozoon.  This combination is almost comparable to an isolated fertilized human egg cell with respect to its "almost active" potentiality.  For, in the former case, one needs to transfer the fertilized human egg cell to a uterus, whereas, in the latter case, one merely needs to combine the two, and then transfer the result to a uterus.   Given the small difference with respect to what must be done to produce a fully active potentiality, can there really be a great moral gulf here?

        This point can be reinforced, moreover, by a different comparison, namely that between (1) an unfertilized ovum lying right next to a spermatozoon, both of them inside a uterus, and (2) a fertilized human egg cell that is far removed from any human uterus.  Now it is the former situation that seems to involve a more nearly active potentiality, and so if potentialities count to the extent that they are nearly active, then destruction of the potentiality involved in (1) should be morally worse than destroying the potentiality involved in (2).  Destruction of the potentiality involved in situation (1), however, is not seriously wrong.  So neither is destruction of the potentiality involved in situation (2) seriously wrong.

Argument 3:  Artificial Wombs and the Generalized Potentiality Argument

        If active potentialities give something a right to life, then it would seem that the presence of any active potentiality for giving rise to an entity with the capacity for thought and self-consciousness must mean that there is something that it is wrong to destroy, regardless of exactly how the potentiality is realized.  That is to say, given any situation that will, if not interfered with, give rise to a person, it must be wrong to interfere, and to prevent a being possessing the capacity for thought and self-consciousness from coming into being.  But it turns out that there are situations that will, if not interfered with, give rise to such an entity, but where very few people think it would be seriously wrong to prevent a person from coming into being.  Consider, for example, situations where one has a spermatozoon and a unfertilized ovum, and where, in addition, the situation is such that there are factors that causally ensure that the ovum will be fertilized by the spermatozoon, and that the resulting zygote will then develop normally, so that the ultimate result, if the system is not interfered with, will be a normal adult human being.  Given such a situation, very few people would hold that it is seriously wrong to shut down the system before fertilization takes place, thus causing the spermatozoon and the unfertilized ovum to perish.  But such an action would destroy an active potentiality for the acquisition of a capacity for thought and self-consciousness. Consequently, the destruction of an active potentiality for the acquisition of a capacity for thought and self-consciousness cannot be seriously wrong.

Argument 4:  The Rights and Interests Argument

        What is the functions of rights?  According to this final argument, the function of rights is to protect corresponding  interests.  But what sorts of beings can have interests?  A plausible answer is that only something that either now has, or has had in the past, desires, can now have interests.  But if this is correct, then a fertilized human egg cell does not have interests, and so does not have rights, and this in turn implies that mere potentialities do not give something a right to life.
 

8.4  Summing Up:  The Potentialities Argument Against Abortion

        The crucial question with regard to this version of the central anti-abortion argument is whether potentialities by themselves suffice to give something a right to life.  I have considered a number of arguments on both sides, and we have seen, I believe, that all of the arguments for the view that potentialities do give something a right to life are open to strong objections.  By contrast, there are a number of very plausible arguments for the view that potentialities by themselves do not suffice to give something a right to life - arguments that have, on the whole, not even been addressed by defenders of potentiality arguments against abortion.  Unless significant objections can be mounted against those arguments, the potentiality version of the central anti-abortion argument must be set aside as unsound.