Abortion:  An Overview

        There are five main arguments that can be offered for holding that abortion is, either always, or at least sometimes, prima facie seriously wrong.  My approach will be to set out each argument, and then to consider whether that argument is sound.

1.  An Initial Survey of Opinions

        Before turning to the arguments, I want to see what range of opinions there is in the class, both on the general question of the moral status of abortion, and on more specific views concerning what might make abortion morally wrong.

1.1 General Questions on the Moral Status of Abortion

The first seven questions are concerned with your overall view on the moral status of abortion.

Question 1

    To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

“Abortion is always prima facie wrong, from the moment of conception onwards.”

A.  I strongly agree with that statement.

B.  I’m inclined to agree with that statement.

C.  I’m uncertain what to think about this issue, or I prefer to pass.

D. I’m inclined to disagree with that statement.

E.  I strongly disagree with that statement.

Question 2

    To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

“Early abortions are not prima facie wrong, but later abortions are prima facie wrong.”

A.  I strongly agree with that statement.

B.  I’m inclined to agree with that statement.

C.  I’m uncertain what to think about this issue, or I prefer to pass.

D. I’m inclined to disagree with that statement.

E.  I strongly disagree with that statement.

Question 3

    To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

“If a woman is pregnant due to rape, then it is not morally wrong for her to have an abortion.”

A.  I strongly agree with that statement.

B.  I’m inclined to agree with that statement.

C.  I’m uncertain what to think about this issue, or I prefer to pass.

D. I’m inclined to disagree with that statement.

E.  I strongly disagree with that statement.

Question 4

    To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

“If the embryo or fetus is known to suffer from a genetic defect that means that it will have only a short and unhappy life, then having an abortion is not morally wrong.”

A.  I strongly agree with that statement.

B.  I’m inclined to agree with that statement.

C.  I’m uncertain what to think about this issue, or I prefer to pass.

D. I’m inclined to disagree with that statement.

E.  I strongly disagree with that statement.

Question 5

    To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

“If the embryo or fetus is known to suffer from a genetic defect that means that it will be intellectually severely handicapped, then having an abortion is not morally wrong.”

A.  I strongly agree with that statement.

B.  I’m inclined to agree with that statement.

C.  I’m uncertain what to think about this issue, or I prefer to pass.

D. I’m inclined to disagree with that statement.

E.  I strongly disagree with that statement.

Question 6

    To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

“If a pregnancy is a serious threat to the physical health of a woman, then having an abortion is not morally wrong.”

A.  I strongly agree with that statement.

B.  I’m inclined to agree with that statement.

C.  I’m uncertain what to think about this issue, or I prefer to pass.

D. I’m inclined to disagree with that statement.

E.  I strongly disagree with that statement.

Question 7

    To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

“If a pregnancy is a serious threat to the mental health of a woman, then having an abortion is not morally wrong.”

A.  I strongly agree with that statement.

B.  I’m inclined to agree with that statement.

C.  I’m uncertain what to think about this issue, or I prefer to pass.

D. I’m inclined to disagree with that statement.

E.  I strongly disagree with that statement.

1.2  Possible Reasons Why Abortion Might Be Morally Wrong

        The next five questions is concerned with the extent to which various facts strike you as relevant to whether abortion is morally problematic, either all of the time, or at least some of the time.

Question 8

    To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

“At least one reason why abortion is prima facie morally wrong, either from conception onwards, or at least past a certain point in the development of the human in question, is that abortion involves the death of an organism that has an immaterial, immortal, rational mind or soul.”

A.  I strongly agree with that statement.

B.  I’m inclined to agree with that statement.

C.  I’m uncertain what to think about this issue, or I prefer to pass.

D. I’m inclined to disagree with that statement.

E.  I strongly disagree with that statement.

Question 9

    To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

“At least one reason why abortion is prima facie morally wrong, either from conception onwards, or at least past a certain point in the development of the human in question, is that abortion involves the death of an organism that has already acquired the ability to think.”

A.  I strongly agree with that statement.

B.  I’m inclined to agree with that statement.

C.  I’m uncertain what to think about this issue, or I prefer to pass.

D. I’m inclined to disagree with that statement.

E.  I strongly disagree with that statement.

Question 10

    To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

“At least one reason why abortion is prima facie morally wrong is that abortion involves the death of an organism that belongs to the biologically defined species homo sapiens.”

A.  I strongly agree with that statement.

B.  I’m inclined to agree with that statement.

C.  I’m uncertain what to think about this issue, or I prefer to pass.

D. I’m inclined to disagree with that statement.

E.  I strongly disagree with that statement.

    The final two questions require a little explanation.  Question 11 involves two ideas.  The first is the idea that an adult human person is identical with things that existed earlier.  In particular, the claim that if Mary is an adult human being, then Mary is identical with all of the following things: (a) Mary when she was a year younger; (b) a certain five-year old child; (c) a certain toddler; (d) a certain infant; (e) a certain fetus; (f) a certain embryo; (f) a certain fertilized human egg cell.

    The second idea is this.  If A is identical with B, and if killing A is morally wrong, then killing B is also morally wrong.

Comment:  Later, we’ll consider whether they ideas are right.  

Question 11

    To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

“At least one reason why abortion is prima facie morally wrong is that abortion involves the death of an organism that, had it not been killed, would have been identical with something that certainly has a right to life – namely, a normal adult human person.”

A.  I strongly agree with that statement.

B.  I’m inclined to agree with that statement.

C.  I’m uncertain what to think about this issue, or I prefer to pass.

D. I’m inclined to disagree with that statement.

E.  I strongly disagree with that statement.

    Question 12 is concerned with whether what philosophers call “potentialities” can give something a right to life.  What is a potentiality?  This is something that we’ll need to consider more closely later on.  For the moment, however, let us say that something potentially has a certain property if it will, in the normal course of development, come to have that property.

    Thus, to say, for example, that a human embryo potentially has the property of being able to think, or that it has the potentiality for acquiring the ability to think, is to say that while it does not yet have the ability to think, it will, in the normal course of its development, provided it survives, come to have the ability to think.

Question 12

    To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

“At least one reason why abortion is prima facie morally wrong is that abortion involves the death of an organism that has the potentiality for acquiring the ability to think at some later point.”

A.  I strongly agree with that statement.

B.  I’m inclined to agree with that statement.

C.  I’m uncertain what to think about this issue, or I prefer to pass.

D. I’m inclined to disagree with that statement.

E.  I strongly disagree with that statement.

This completes the survey.  Let us now turn to examine the arguments.

2.  The First Anti-Abortion Argument:  Possession of an Immaterial, Rational Soul

        Outside of philosophical circles, there are I think two main reasons that people have for thinking that human embryos and fetuses have a serious right to life, and therefore for thinking that abortion is prima facie seriously wrong.  The one is that they think that species membership is morally significant in itself, and, in particular, they think it is a basic moral principle that members of the biologically defined species homo sapiens have a right to life.  The other is that they believe that humans differ from members of other species in having an immaterial, immortal, rational soul, and they think that that gives one a right to life.

        The latter argument tends not to get advanced, of course, by anti-abortion lobby groups, since they don’t want to be exposed to the objection that laws should not be based upon religious beliefs.  But it is surely true that the belief that humans have immaterial souls is frequently a reason why people believe that abortion is wrong, especially given that the Catholic Church’s central argument against abortion rests upon the assumption that adult humans have immaterial, rational souls, and that there is at least a serious possibility that human embryos and fetuses do so as well.

        The first anti-abortion argument can be put as follows

Argument 1

(1) If something has an immaterial, immortal, rational soul, then it has a right to life.

(2) Either humans have an immaterial soul from the moment of conception, or else they acquire an immaterial soul before birth.

(3) Therefore, either abortion at any time after conception destroys an entity with an immaterial soul, or, at least, late-term abortions destroy such an entity.

(4) Therefore, either abortion is always prima facie wrong, or, at least, late-term abortions are prima facie wrong.

What are the usual replies to the argument that abortion is wrong because human embryos and fetuses have immaterial, rational souls, and therefore have a right to life?

Answer 1

    One very common answer to this argument is that even if we grant that normal adult humans have immaterial, rational souls, we do not know at what point in the development of a human organism that organism first acquires an immaterial soul, and so we do not know that a soul is present from conception.

Evaluation of Answer 1

    The problem with answer 1 is that if normal, adult humans have souls, then there is a real possibility that humans have souls from conception onward, and so even if we cannot know when humans first acquire souls, and thus cannot know at what point abortion violates a right to life, we still have grounds for rejecting abortion, from conception onwards, since we are not justified in running the risk of killing an organism with an immaterial soul, and so with the right to life.

    Before turning to a second answer, consider the following questions.

Question 13

    To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

“Though people die from a wide variety of types of causes, it turns out that the deaths of at least 50% of the human race have the same type of cause.”

A.  I strongly agree with that statement.

B.  I’m inclined to agree with that statement.

C.  I’m uncertain what to think about this issue, or I prefer to pass.

D. I’m inclined to disagree with that statement.

E.  I strongly disagree with that statement.

    The above statement, quite surprisingly, is true.  But what is the type of cause in question?

    The answer is that at least 50% of human beings die via miscarriages.  (Some estimates are higher than 50%.)

    Before proceeding, let me ask what your reaction is to that piece of information.

Question 14

    To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following view?

“The United States government should immediately invest very large sums of money in medical research projects to prevent these deaths from happening.”

A.  I strongly agree with that statement.

B.  I’m inclined to agree with that statement.

C.  I’m uncertain what to think about this issue, or I prefer to pass.

D. I’m inclined to disagree with that statement.

E.  I strongly disagree with that statement.

    Let’s now compare your answers to that question with your answers to the following question.

Question 15

    To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following view?

“If a new disease arose that killed half of seven-year old children, then the United States government should immediately invest very large sums of money into medical research projects to prevent those deaths from happening.”

A.  I strongly agree with that statement.

B.  I’m inclined to agree with that statement.

C.  I’m uncertain what to think about this issue, or I prefer to pass.

D. I’m inclined to disagree with that statement.

E.  I strongly disagree with that statement.

    Let’s now turn to the second answer to the first anti-abortion argument.

Answer 2

    Even if normal adult human beings have immaterial, rational souls, early abortions do not involve a serious risk of bringing about the death of something with an immaterial, rational soul, and so with a right to life.  The reason is that God would not put souls in developing human organisms at a certain point if half of the humans in question were then going to perish via miscarriage.

Evaluation of Answer 2

    This is an interesting answer that some well known Catholic theologians and philosophers have advanced – for example, Hans Küng and Joseph Donceel.  But the answer involves a number of religious assumptions that are problematic.  For example, if God exists, he has allowed many horrendous things to occur – such as the Holocaust, and various natural disasters.  So how can one be confident that he doesn’t also allow half of the human race to perish before birth?

    In any case, I think that there is a very different answer that is decisive.

Answer 3

1.  According to contemporary psychology, the human mind is identical with the human brain, and not with any immaterial substance.

2.  This view is not a speculative theory propagated by irreligious scientists.  On the contrary, as we saw earlier, it is a conclusion for which there is very strong evidence, including

(1) Mild blows to the head can cause unconsciousness.

(2) Serious damage to different parts of the brain can result in different types of psychological and cognitive impairment.

(3) Diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, can radically affect one's mental functioning, one's memories, and so on.

(4) As one ages, various psychological capacities, such as memory, gradually decline.

(5) The mental capacities of very young members of our species gradually increase as they mature.

(6) Psychotropic drugs can alter mood very significantly, can relieve depression and anxiety, can give rise to paranoia, or reduce it, and so on.

(7) The differences that one finds both between humans and other animals and between different species of non-human animals correlate with differences in the structures present in the relevant brains.

In short, there is a wealth of familiar phenomenon that would be surprising and unexpected, and not at all what one would predict, if the mind were an immaterial substance, but that falls perfectly into place if the mind is, instead, the brain.  There is, accordingly, massive evidence against the view that the mind is an immaterial substance.

     The fact that this first anti-abortion argument is unsound is quite significant.  For one thing, the basic argument that the Catholic Church offers for believing that abortion is seriously wrong rests upon the assumption that normal, adult human beings have immaterial, rational souls.  The Catholic argument against abortion is, accordingly, untenable.

3.  The Second Anti-Abortion Argument:  The Ability to Think

The second anti-abortion argument appeal to the following ideas:

(1) If something possesses the ability to think, then that thing has a right to life.

(2) Developing human organisms either have the ability to think from the moment of conception, or they acquire that ability at some point prior to birth.

    Given these two claims, the conclusion is that abortion is morally wrong at least past a certain point in the development of the embryo or fetus, and may be wrong from conception.

    The failure of the first anti-abortion argument quickly enables one to see that this second argument is very problematic, and probably untenable.  In the first place, once it seen that there is very strong evidence that adult humans do not have immaterial, rational souls, and that the mind, accordingly, rather than being identical with an immaterial substances, is identical with the brain, it is clear that the second argument cannot support the view that abortion is prima facie seriously wrong from the moment of conception, since it is some period of time before the brain even begins to develop.

    In the second place, having a brain does not mean that one has the ability to think.  The human capacity for thought is based upon the part of the brain that is the last to develop – namely, the cerebral cortex.  So if humans acquire the ability to think before birth, it is quite late in the development of the fetus.

    Finally, it is the general view of those who are familiar with detailed information about the development of the human brain – and this includes religious people who do not believe that humans have immaterial souls – that even the brain of a full-term fetus does not possess the neuronal circuitry necessary for the capacity for thought.  If this is right, then abortion cannot be wrong because it destroys something with the ability to think.