Abortion Debate - News & Analysis

 Table of Contents for this page

1 - Indroductions to Abortion

2 - History of Abortion

3 - Philosophy of Abortion

4 - More Advanced Philosophy Arguments


Pew Research Center - Views on abortion, 1995-2021
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-abortion/

The Criminalization of Abortion Began as a Business Tactic;
Abortion was common during the 19th century
https://www.history.com/news/the-criminalization-of-abortion-began-as-a-business-tactic

Abortion Is Central to the History of Reproductive Health Care in America
https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/issues/abortion/abortion-central-history-reproductive-health-care-america

Embryology - How Does a Single Cell Become a Whole Body? https://immortalista.blogspot.com/2022/08/embryology.html




 Different Definitions of Abortion

Abortion: Examples of Definitions

The following is a partial list of definitions as stated by obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN) textbooks, dictionaries, and encyclopedias:

Major OB/GYN textbooks
  • The National Center for Health Statistics defines an "abortus" as "[a] fetus or embryo removed or expelled from the uterus during the first half of gestation—20 weeks or less, or in the absence of accurate dating criteria, born weighing < 500 g." They also define "birth" as "[t]he complete expulsion or extraction from the mother of a fetus after 20 weeks' gestation. [...] in the absence of accurate dating criteria, fetuses weighing <500 g are usually not considered births, but rather are termed abortuses for purposes of vital statistics."[12]
  • "[T]he standard medical definition of abortion [is] termination of a pregnancy when the fetus is not viable".[13]
  • "Termination of a pregnancy, whether spontaneous or induced."[14]
Other OB/GYN textbooks
  • "Termination of pregnancy before 20 weeks' gestation calculated from date of onset of last menses. An alternative definition is delivery of a fetus with a weight of less than 500 g. If abortion occurs before 12 weeks' gestation, it is called early; from 12 to 20 weeks it is called late."[15]
  • "Abortion is the spontaneous or induced termination of pregnancy before fetal viability. Because popular use of the word abortion implies a deliberate pregnancy termination, some prefer the word miscarriage to refer to spontaneous fetal loss before viability [...] The National Center for Health Statistics, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the World Health Organization (WHO) define abortion as pregnancy termination prior to 20 weeks' gestation or a fetus born weighing less than 500 g. Despite this, definitions vary widely according to state laws."[16]
Major medical dictionaries
  • "The spontaneous or induced termination of pregnancy before the fetus reaches a viable age."[17]
  • "Expulsion from the uterus an embryo or fetus prior to the stage of viability (20 weeks' gestation or fetal weight <500g). A distinction made between [abortion] and premature birth: premature infants are those born after the stage of viability but prior to 37 weeks."[18]
  • "[P]remature expulsion from the uterus of the products of conception, either the embryo or a nonviable fetus."[19]
Other medical dictionaries
  • "[T]he termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus".[20]
  • "Induced termination of pregnancy, involving destruction of the embryo or fetus." "abortion."[21]
  • "Interruption of pregnancy before the fetus has attained a stage of viability, usually before the 24th gestational week." "abortion."[22]
  • "[A] spontaneous or deliberate ending of pregnancy before the fetus can be expected to survive." "abortion."[23]
  • "[A] situation where a fetus leaves the uterus before it is fully developed, especially during the first 28 weeks of pregnancy, or a procedure which causes this to happen...[T]o have an abortion to have an operation to make a fetus leave the uterus during the first period of pregnancy."[24]
  • "1. Induced termination of a pregnancy with destruction of the fetus or embryo; therapeutic abortion. 2. Spontaneous abortion."[25]
  • "Although the term abortion is generic and implies a premature termination of pregnancy for any reason, the lay public better understands the word ‘miscarriage’ for involuntary fetal loss or fetal wastage."[26]
  • "The termination of pregnancy or premature expulsion of the products of conception by any means, usually before fetal viability."[27]
Bibliographies
  • "An abortion refers to the termination of a pregnancy. It can be induced (see Definitions, Terminology, and Reference Resources) through a pharmacological or a surgical procedure, or it may be spontaneous (also called miscarriage)." "Definitions of abortion vary across and within countries as well as among different institutions. Language used to refer to abortion often also reflects societal and political opinions and not only scientific knowledge (Grimes and Gretchen 2010). Popular use of the word abortion implies a deliberate pregnancy termination, whereas a miscarriage is used to refer to spontaneous fetal loss when the fetus is not viable (i.e., not yet unable to survive independently outside the womb)."[3]
Major English dictionaries (general-purpose)
  • "1. a. The expulsion or removal from the womb of a developing embryo or fetus, spec. (Med.) in the period before it is capable of independent survival, occurring as a result either of natural causes (more fully spontaneous abortion) or of a deliberate act (more fully induced abortion); the early or premature termination of pregnancy with loss of the fetus; an instance of this."[28]
  • "[A]n operation or other procedure to terminate pregnancy before the fetus is viable" or "[T]he premature termination of pregnancy by spontaneous or induced expulsion of a nonviable fetus from the uterus".[29]
  • "[T]he removal of an embryo or fetus from the uterus in order to end a pregnancy" or "[A]ny of various surgical methods for terminating a pregnancy, especially during the first six months."[30]
  • "[T]he termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus: as (a) spontaneous expulsion of a human fetus during the first 12 weeks of gestation (b) induced expulsion of a human fetus (c) expulsion of a fetus by a domestic animal often due to infection at any time before completion of pregnancy."[31]
  • "1. medicine the removal of an embryo or fetus from the uterus before it is sufficiently developed to survive independently, deliberately induced by the use of drugs or by surgical procedures. Also called termination or induced abortion. 2. medicine the spontaneous expulsion of an embryo or fetus from the uterus before it is sufficiently developed to survive independently. Also called miscarriage, spontaneous abortion."[32]
  • "a medical operation to end a pregnancy so that the baby is not born alive".[33]
Other dictionaries
  • "The deliberate termination of a pregnancy, usually before the embryo or fetus is capable of independent life."[34]
  • "A term that, in philosophy, theology, and social debates, often means the deliberate termination of pregnancy before the fetus is able to survive outside the uterus. However, participants in these debates sometimes use the term abortion simply to mean the termination of pregnancy before birth, regardless of whether the fetus is viable or not."[35]
  • "1. An artificially induced termination of a pregnancy for the purpose of destroying an embryo or fetus. 2. The spontaneous expulsion of an embryo or fetus before viability;"[36]
Encyclopedias
  • "[T]he expulsion of a fetus from the uterus before it has reached the stage of viability (in human beings, usually about the 20th week of gestation)."[37]
  • "Expulsion of the products of conception before the embryo or fetus is viable. Any interruption of human pregnancy prior to the 28th week is known as abortion."[38]
  • "The expulsion or removal of a fetus from the womb before it is capable of independent survival."[39]
  • "[Abortion] is commonly misunderstood outside medical circles. In general terms, the word 'abortion' simply means the failure of something to reach fulfilment or maturity. Medically, abortion means loss of the fetus, for any reason, before it is able to survive outside the womb. The term covers accidental or spontaneous ending, or miscarriage, of pregnancy as well as deliberate termination. The terms 'spontaneous abortion' and 'miscarriage' are synonymous and are defined as loss of the fetus before the twenty-eighth week of pregnancy. This definition implies a legal perception of the age at which a fetus can survive out of the womb. With great advances in recent years in the ability to keep very premature babies alive, this definition is in need of revision."[40]
  • "Abortion is the intentional removal of a fetus or an embryo from a mother's womb for purposes other than that of either producing a live birth or disposing of a dead embryo."[41]
Philosophical essays
  • "The act that a woman performs in voluntarily terminating, or allowing another person to terminate, her pregnancy."[42]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_abortion


The Abortion Debate  - is the ongoing controversy surrounding the moral, legal, and religious status of induced abortion. The sides involved in the debate are the self-described "pro-choice" and "pro-life" movements. 

Pro-choice emphasizes the woman's choice whether to terminate a pregnancy. 

  • Pro-life proposes the right of the embryo or fetus to gestate to term and be born. 

Both terms are considered loaded in mainstream media, where terms such as "abortion rights" or "anti-abortion" are generally preferred. Each movement has, with varying results, sought to influence public opinion and to attain legal support for its position.

Many people believe that abortion is essentially a moral issue, concerning the commencement of human personhood, rights of the fetus, and bodily integrity. The debate has become a political and legal issue in some countries with;

  • anti-abortion campaigners seeking to enact, maintain and expand anti-abortion laws, while
  • abortion-rights campaigners seek to repeal or ease such laws while expanding access to abortion.

Abortion laws vary considerably between jurisdictions, ranging from outright prohibition of the procedure to public funding of abortion. The availability of safe abortion also varies across the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_debate



George Carlin on Abortion

Why, why, why, why is it that most of the people who are against abortion are people you wouldn't want to fuck in the first place, huh? Boy, these conservatives are really something, aren't they? They're all in favor of the unborn. They will do anything for the unborn. But once you're born, you're on your own. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don't want to know about you. They don't want to hear from you.

No nothing;

  • No neonatal care
  • no day care,
  • no head start,
  • no school lunch,
  • no food stamps,
  • no welfare,
  • no nothing.

If you're preborn, you're fine; if you're preschool, you're fucked.

Conservatives don't give a shit about you until you reach military age. Then they think you are just fine. Just what they've been looking for. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. Pro-life... pro-life... These people aren't pro-life, they're killing doctors! What kind of pro-life is that? What, they'll do anything they can to save a fetus but if it grows up to be a doctor they just might have to kill it? They're not pro-life. You know what they are? They're anti-woman. Simple as it gets, anti-woman. They don't like them. They don't like women. They believe a woman's primary role is to function as a brood mare for the state.

Pro-life... You don't see many of these white anti-abortion women volunteering to have any black fetuses transplanted into their uteruses, do you? No, you don't see them adopting a whole lot of crack babies, do you? No, that might be something Christ would do. And, you won't see alot of these pro-life people dousing themselves in kerosene and lighting themselves on fire. You know, moraly committed religious people in South Vietnam knew how to stage a goddamn demonstration, didn't they?! They knew how to put on a fucking protest. Light yourself on FIRE!! C'mon, you moral crusaders, let's see a little smoke. To match that fire in your belly.

Here's another question I have: how come when it's us, it's an abortion, and when it's a chicken, it's an omelette? Are we so much better than chickens all of a sudden? When did this happen, that we passed chickens in goodness? Name six ways we're better than chickens... See, nobody can do it! You know why? 'Cuz chickens are decent people. You don't see chickens hanging around in drug gangs, do you? No, you don't see a chicken strapping some guy to a chair and hooking up his nuts to a car battery, do you? When's the last chicken you heard about came home from work and beat the shit out of his hen, huh? Doesn't happen. 'Cuz chickens are decent people.

But let's get back to this abortion shit. Now, is a fetus a
human being? This seems to be the central question. Well;

  • if a fetus is a human being, how
    come the census doesn't count them?
  • If a fetus is a human being, how come when there's a miscarriage they don't have a funeral?
  • If a fetus is a human being, how come people say "we have two children and one on the way" instead of saying "we have three children?"

People say life begins at conception, I say life began about a billion years ago and it's a continuous process. Continuous, just keeps rolling along. Rolling, rolling, rolling along.

And say you know something? Listen, you can go back further than that. What about the carbon atoms? Hah? Human life could not exist without carbon. So is it just possible that maybe we shouldn't be burning all this coal? Just looking for a little consistency here in these anti-abortion arguments. See the really hardcore people will tell you life begins at fertilization. Fertilization, when the sperm fertilizes the egg. Which is usually a few moments after the man says "Gee, honey, I was going to pull out but the phone rang and it startled me." Fertilization.

But even after the egg is fertilized, it's still six or seven days before it reaches the uterus and pregnancy begins, and not every egg makes it that far.

Eighty percent of a woman's fertilized eggs are rinsed and flushed
out of her body once a month during those delightful few days she has.

They wind up on sanitary napkins, and yet they are fertilized eggs.

So basically what these anti-abortion people are telling us is that any woman who's had more than more than one period is a serial killer!

Consistency. Consistency. Hey, hey, if they really want to get serious, what about all the sperm that are wasted when the state executes a condemned man, one of these pro-life guys who's watching cums in his pants, huh? Here's a guy standing over there with his jockey shorts full of little Vinnies and Debbies, and nobody's saying a word to the guy. Not every ejaculation deserves a name.

Now, speaking of consistency, Catholics, which I was until I reached the age of reason, Catholics and other Christians are against abortions, and they're against homosexuals. Well who has less abortions than homosexuals?! Leave these fucking people alone, for Christ sakes! Here is an entire class of people guaranteed never to have an abortion! And the Catholics and Christians are just tossing them aside! You'd think they'd make natural allies. Go look for consistency in religion.

And speaking of my friends the Catholics,

When John Cardinal O'Connor of New York and some of these other Cardinals and Bishops have experienced their first pregnancies and
their first labor pains and they've raised a couple of children on minimum wage, then I'll be glad to hear what they have to say about abortion.

I'm sure it'll be interesting. Enlightening, too. But, in the meantime what they ought to be doing is telling these priests who took a vow of chastity to keep their hands off the altar boys! Keep your hands to yourself, Father! You know? When Jesus said "Suffer the little children come unto me", that's not what he was talking about!

So you know what I tell these anti-abortion people? I say "Hey. Hey. If you think a fetus is more important that a woman, try getting a fetus to wash the shit stains out of your underwear. For no pay and no pension." I tell them;

Think of an abortion as term limits.
That's all it is  -  Bioligical Term Limits.

http://www.songlyrics.com/george-carlin/abortion-lyrics/





Abortion - Encyclopedia of Philosophy


The central moral aspect concerns whether there is any morally relevant point during the biological process of the development of the fetus from its beginning as a unicellular zygote to birth itself that may justify not having an abortion after that point. 


Leading candidates for the morally relevant point are: the onset of movement, consciousness, the ability to feel pain, and viability. The central legal aspect of the abortion conflict is whether fetuses have a basic legal right to live, or, at least, a claim to live.

The most important argument with regard to this conflict is the potentiality argument, which turns on whether the fetus is potentially a human person and thus should be protected. The question of personhood depends on both empirical findings and moral claims.


The article ends with an evaluation of a pragmatic account. According to this account, one has to examine the different kinds of reasons for abortion in a particular case to decide about the reasonableness of the justification given. Take the example of a young, raped woman. The account suggests that it would seem cruel and callous to force her to give birth to “her” child. So, if  this pragmatic account is correct, some abortions may be morally justifiable whereas other abortions may be morally reprehensible.


Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

https://iep.utm.edu/abortion/



 Abortion and Personhood: What the Moral Dilemma Is Really About - Glenn Cohen

The Beginning of Human Personhood

The moment when a human is first recognized as a person. There are differences of opinion as to the precise time when human personhood begins and the nature of that status. The issue arises in a number of fields including science, religion, philosophy, and law, and is most acute in debates relating to abortion, stem cell research, reproductive rights, and fetal rights.


Traditionally, the concept of personhood has entailed the concept of soul, a metaphysical concept referring to a non-corporeal or extra-corporeal dimension of human being. However, in modernity, the concepts of subjectivity and intersubjectivity, personhood, mind, and self have come to encompass a number of aspects of human being previously considered to be characteristics of the soul. With regard to the beginning of human personhood, one historical question has been: when does the soul enter the body? In modern terms, the question could be put instead: at what point does the developing individual develop personhood or selfhood?


Related issues attached to the question of the beginning of human personhood include both the legal status, bodily integrity, and subjectivity of mothers and the philosophical concept of "natality" (i.e. "the distinctively human capacity to initiate a new beginning", which a new human life embodies).


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beginning_of_human_personhood


Considerations in Deciding on the Morality of Abortion

One could argue that the first step in rational resolution of the abortion controversy should come from mutual understanding of the various positions. After that would be needed discussion, agreement, and resolution of the many issues involved. Besides the discussion of relevant issues (above) here are some other considerations that have been raised.


Mother’s freedom over her body: Pro-choicers sometimes assume that the fetus is part of the mother’s body and the mother can do what she wants with her body. But many people think that you can’t always do what you want with your own body. For example, some people think killing yourself is wrong, most of us think using your body to intentionally hurt another innocent person is wrong, damaging your body through substance abuse is often considered wrong (what if you can no longer work to support your family?), etc.


Fetus as part of the mother’s body: The relationship between the mother’s body and the embryo or fetus is unique. Is it so clear that the fetus is “part” of the mother’s body, like an internal organ is part of the body? Is it because it is physically located within the body of the mother? If through some bizarre technology the fetus were physically located outside her body, would the same claim be made? If it is because they are connected, doesn’t that then also mean the mother is part of the body of the embryo or fetus? If it’s simply that the mother’s body supports the embryo and fetus, how does this make one part of the other? Many things are supported by other things without the former being a part of the latter – a child is supported by a parent, and a hospital patient is supported by a heart-lung machine, for instance. Is it because the fetus and other tissues are growing from the egg cell that was part of the mother? The egg cell might have been part of her body, but the sperm cell was not, and the resulting organism is from both. So if what makes the fetus part of her body is that it grew from her cell, then the fetus is equally part of the father’s body. What is part of the body of the mother is the uterus, of course, and the uterus is in contact with other tissues that are not there when she is not pregnant, and which are not obviously considered the mother’s body parts – the uterine sac, the placenta, etc. The point is not that the fetus is not depending on the mother or not in contact with the mother, but that it is not clear that all the relevant tissues – especially the fetus – can be described without controversy as belonging to the mother’s body. What we have is its own organism with its own genetic makeup and its own body.


Arguments by Analogy: Much of the thinking on each side of the dispute consists of implicit arguments by analogy. Pro-life: A fetus and an adult are both persons, so since an adult has a right to life so too does a fetus. Pro-choice: Or a zygote is more like an unfertilized egg cell than an adult, so the zygote should have the same moral status as the egg cell.


This reasoning by analogy is not always made explicit or even realized by advocates on each side, and ironically both sides struggle with preventing analogies as much as depending on them. The pro-lifer points to similarities between the embryo or fetus and children or adult human persons, claiming all have physical or metaphysical similarities so they should have equal moral status (moral rights). But considering the undeveloped brain of the embryo and early fetus, and lack of self-consciousness of the fetus, perhaps the better analogy is with a nonhuman animal. However, they would like to prevent this parallel, because most people do not recognize nonhuman animals as having any right to life.


The pro-choicer draws analogies between the fetus and nonhuman animals, saying since the latter are not persons neither is the former. But then if personhood requires some level or reasoning or even self-consciousness and so excludes nonhuman animals and fetuses, then so too it excludes newborn infants, and the infants look like they don’t have a right to life; a conclusion the pro-choicer wants to avoid.


Legitimate reasons to get an abortion: Pro-choicers often claim that the embryo or fetus has no right to life because it is not a person. Some of these same people then claim that there can be illegitimate reasons for an abortion, such as to choose eye color. But if the fetus has no right to life, and killing it is not wrong, why exactly shouldn’t one get an abortion for any reason or no reason at all?


Moral status and its basis: How exactly does the moral status of a being derive from its physical or metaphysical status? The usual tactic is to use analogy to say, for example, normal adult humans have a certain physical or metaphysical status, and we grant them a moral status, so therefore anything relevantly similar in physical or metaphysical status should also have that moral status. But why is it wrong to murder adult humans? The philosopher Donald Marquis in fact tries to answer such a question in his writings on abortion. Marquis suggests that the reason killing innocent human beings is wrong is the loss to the victim of the value of his or her future. A child or adult who is killed loses the value of their future experiences and activities. But then this also applies to a fetus, whose future consists of the same types of experiences. It doesn’t matter that the fetus can’t actually be valuing his or her future at a moment in time. A suicidal person might not value his or her future experiences, but yet the future can still have value for the person. So Marquis thinks he has pinpointed why abortion is wrong. Not everyone agrees with his analysis.


Issues in the Abortion Dispute 

https://medicine.missouri.edu/centers-institutes-labs/health-ethics/faq/abortion



U.S. History of Abortion


Abortion in American History  

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/05/abortion-in-american-history/376851/



A Concise History of the US Abortion Debate
https://theconversation.com/a-concise-history-of-the-us-abortion-debate-118157



Abortion in America: How it Became a Partisan Issue 




Scarlet Letters: Getting the History of Abortion and Contraception Right https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/religion/scarlet-letters... 

Different Histories of Abortion in Europe and USA

Many Americans assume that legalized abortion is only as old as the Roe v. Wade ruling. In fact, as Anna Peterson discusses this month, abortion had only been made illegal at the turn of the 20th century. The different histories of abortion in Europe and the United States reveal much about the current state of American debates—so prominent in the 2012 elections campaigns—over abortion and women’s health.

  Page Table of Contents

  • Abortion at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century
  • The Road to Criminalization
  • The Criminalization of Abortion
  • "When Abortion was a Crime"
  • The Parting of Ways
  • The Seeds of Abortion Law Reform
  • The (Re)Legalization of Abortion
  • Abortion in Europe and the U.S. Today

Commonplace to Controversial: Different Histories of Abortion in Europe and USA
https://origins.osu.edu/article/commonplace-controversial-different-histories-abortion-europe-and-united-states 

Abortion was accepted in both ancient Rome and Greece.

The Romans and Greeks weren't much concerned with protecting the unborn, and when they did object to abortion it was often because the father didn't want to be deprived of a child that he felt entitled to.

The early philosophers also argued that a foetus did not become formed and begin to live until at least 40 days after conception for a male, and around 80 days for a female. The philosopher Aristotle wrote:

...when couples have children in excess, let abortion be procured before sense and life have begun; what may or may not be lawfully done in these cases depends
on the question of life and sensation. - Politics 7.16

Aristotle thought that female embryos developed more slowly than male embryos, but made up for lost time by developing more quickly after birth. He appears to have arrived at this idea by seeing the relative development of male and female foetuses that had been miscarried.

BBC - Ethics - Abortion: Historical attitudes to abortion
https://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/abortion/legal/history_1.shtml 




Abortion - Pros & Cons - ProCon.org 
https://abortion.procon.org/ 


Arguments For & Against Abortion - Debating Europe  https://www.debatingeurope.eu/focus/arguments-for-and-against-abortion/



Abortion Debate Hasn't Always Been Focused on the Fetus' Right to Life 

https://sciencenorway.no/a/1864207 


The Rhetoric That Shaped The Abortion Debate  

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127931932


The Abortion Debate, Explained By Experts 

https://www.elitedaily.com/news/what-to-know-abortion-debate-explained-experts 


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide



Introduction to Medical Ethics & Abortion

  -  by Bonnie Steinbock

Contents
Framing the Issue
Ethical Considerations
 - Conservative
 - Liberal
 - Moderate
The Legal Perspective
 - Outlawing abortion methods
 - Imposing limits based on fetal sentience
 - Protecting women’s health

Abortion was legalized in 1973, but the topic remains controversial. The central ethical question in the abortion debate is over the moral status of the embryo and fetus. Opinions range from the belief that the fetus is a human being with full moral status and rights from conception to the belief that a fetus has no rights, even if it is human in a biological sense. Most Americans’ beliefs fall somewhere in the middle. Moral philosophers from various perspectives provide nuanced examinations of the abortion question that go beyond the standard political breakdowns. In 1973 in Roe v. Wade, the United States Supreme Court based its finding of a woman’s constitutional right to have an abortion up until viability on two factors: the legal status of the fetus and the woman’s right to privacy. In 2007, the Supreme Court upheld a law signed by President Bush in 2003 that opposes a form of abortion called intact dilation and extraction, or “partial-birth abortion.” The law includes no health exception. In 2016, the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot place restrictions on the delivery of abortion services that create an undue burden for women seeking an abortion.

Framing the Issue

Despite the 1973 ruling by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade that women have a constitutional right to make the decision to terminate a pregnancy, abortion remains one of the most divisive and emotionally charged issues in American politics. At one end of the debate over this practice are those who regard abortion as murder—a despicable and heinous crime. At the other end are those who regard any attempt to restrict abortion as a violation of women’s rights to privacy and bodily self-determination. Most Americans are somewhere in the middle.

The central philosophical question in the abortion debate concerns the moral status of the embryo and fetus. If the fetus is a person, with the same right to life as any human being who has been born, it would seem that very few, if any, abortions could be justified, because it is not morally permissible to kill children because they are unwanted or illegitimate or disabled. However, the morality of abortion is not necessarily settled so straightforwardly. Even if one accepts the argument that the fetus is a person, it does not automatically follow that it has a right to the use of the pregnant woman’s body. Thus, the morality of abortion depends not only on the moral status of the fetus, but also on whether the pregnant woman has an obligation to continue to gestate the fetus.

Ethical Considerations

Public opinion on abortion falls into three camps—conservative, liberal, and moderate (or gradualist)—each of which draws on both science and ethical thinking.

  - Conservative

Conservatives regard the fetus as a human being, with the same rights as any human being who has been born, from the beginning of pregnancy onward. Some conservative groups—such as the Catholic Church—consider the fetus to be a human being with full moral rights even earlier than the beginning of pregnancy, which occurs when the embryo implants in the uterus. The Church regards the embryo as a full human being from conception (the conjoining of sperm and egg). This is because at conception the embryo receives its own unique genetic code, distinct from that of its mother or father. Therefore, Catholic doctrine regards conception, not implantation, as the beginning of the life of a human being.

Although conservatives concede that the fetus changes dramatically during gestation, they do not accept these changes as relevant to moral standing. Conservatives argue that there is no stage of development at which we can say, now we have a human being, whereas a day or a week or a month earlier we did not. Any attempt to place the onset of humanity at a particular moment—whether it is when brain waves appear, or when the fetus begins to look human, or when quickening, sentience, or viability occur —is bound to be arbitrary because all of these stages will occur if the fetus is allowed to grow and develop.

A secular antiabortion argument given by Don Marquis in 1989 differs from the traditional conservative view in that it is not based on the fetus being human, thus avoiding the charge of “speciesism.” Rather, Marquis argues that abortion is wrong for the same reason that killing anyone is wrong—namely, that killing deprives its victim of a valuable future, what he calls “a future like ours.” It is possible that some animals have a future like ours. If so, then killing them is also wrong. This raises two questions about what it is to have a future like ours. First, what precisely is involved in this notion? Does it essentially belong to rational, future-oriented, plan-making beings? If so, then killing most nonhuman animals would not be wrong, but neither would killing those who are severely developmentally disabled. Second, at what point does the life of a being with a future like ours start? Marquis assumes that we are essentially human animals, so our lives start with the beginning of our organisms. But Jeff McMahan denies this, arguing that we are essentially embodied minds, and not human organisms. In McMahan’s view, our lives do not start until our organism becomes conscious, probably sometime in the second trimester. Early abortion, in his view, does not kill someone with a future like ours, but rather prevents that individual from coming into existence – in much the way contraception does.

  - Liberal

Liberals, like Mary Anne Warren in her classic defense of abortion, do not deny that the fetus is biologically human, but Warren denies that biological humanity is either necessary or sufficient for personhood and a right to life. Indeed, Warren thinks that the conservative is guilty of a logical mistake: confusing biological humans and persons. She argues that species membership is an arbitrary basis for moral standing, and maintains that it is the killing of persons, not humans, that is wrong. Persons are beings with certain psychological traits, including sentience, consciousness, the capacity for rational thought, and the ability to use language. There may be some nonhuman persons (e.g., some animals), and there may be biological humans that are not persons, including early gestation fetuses, who have no person-making characteristics. By the end of the second trimester, fetuses are probably sentient, but even late gestation fetuses are less personlike than most mammals. Therefore, if killing animals is permissible, so is abortion, throughout pregnancy.

In 1971, Judith Thomson gave a completely different pro-choice argument, claiming that even if the personhood of the fetus were granted, this would not settle the morality of abortion because the fetus’s right to life does not necessarily give it a right to use the pregnant woman’s body. No one, Thomson says, has the right to use your body unless you give him permission–not even if he needs it for life itself. At least in the case of rape, the pregnant woman has not given the fetus the right to use her body. (Thus, Thomson’s argument, somewhat ironically for an article entitled “A Defense of Abortion,” provides those who are generally anti-choice with a rationale for making an exception in the case of rape, as do many pro-lifers–though not the Catholic Church.) Thomson maintains that whether a woman has a moral obligation to allow a fetus to remain in her body is a separate question from whether the fetus is a person with a right to life, and depends instead on the amount of sacrifice or burden it imposes on her.

In 2003, Margaret Little argued that while abortion is not murder, neither is it necessarily moral. A pregnant woman and her fetus are not strangers; she is biologically its mother. However, she may have conflicts of duties. For example, a woman’s relationship to her children who have been born goes beyond mere biological connection and imposes stronger obligations. For this reason, their interests may trump those of the fetus. At the same time, even if the fetus is not a person, it is a “burgeoning human life,” and as such is worthy of respect. Many women believe that bringing a child into the world when they are not able to nurture it would be disrespectful of human life. The main reason women choose abortion, according to Little, is that they think it would be wrong to have a child when they are not capable of being good mothers.

  - Moderate

The moderate, or gradualist, agrees with the liberal that a one-celled zygote is not a human person, but agrees with the conservative that the late-gestation fetus is virtually identical to a born infant. Thus, the moderate thinks that early abortions are morally better than late ones and that the reasons for having them should be stronger as the pregnancy progresses. A reason that might justify an early abortion, such as not wanting to become a mother, would not justify an abortion in the seventh month to the moderate.

The Legal Perspective

In 1973 in Roe v. Wade, the United States Supreme Court based its finding of a woman’s constitutional right to have an abortion up until viability on two factors: the legal status of the fetus and the woman’s right to privacy. Concluding that outside of abortion law, the unborn had never been treated as full legal persons, the Court then looked to see if there were any state interests compelling enough to override a woman’s right to make this personal decision for herself. It decided that there were none at all in the first trimester of pregnancy. In the second trimester, states may impose restrictions intended to protect maternal health. The state’s interest in protecting potential life becomes “compelling,” and trumps the woman’s right to privacy only until the fetus becomes viable, somewhere between 24 and 28 weeks. After viability, states may prohibit abortion altogether if they choose, unless continuing the pregnancy would threaten the woman’s life or health.

Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992) pitted the justices who wanted to reverse Roe against those who wished to preserve it. Neither side won, and the result was a compromise written by Justices O’Connor, Kennedy, and Souter. It upheld Roe’s central finding, that women have a constitutionally protected right to choose abortion, prior to viability, while rejecting the trimester framework. Casey held that the state’s profound interest in protecting potential life existed at all stages of pregnancy, not just after viability. States may enact procedures and rules reflecting its preference for childbirth over abortion, so long as these rules and procedures do not constitute an “undue burden” on the woman’s choice.

The Court interpreted the undue burden standard as permitting a counseling requirement directing doctors to provide information about the abortion procedure, the relative risks of abortion and childbirth, embryonic and fetal development, and available resources should the woman choose to carry to term, provided the information given to the woman is truthful and not misleading. The Court also upheld a waiting period of 24 hours, as its intent is to make the abortion decision more informed and deliberate. However, the Court struck down a husband notification provision, for two reasons. First, such a requirement may put women at risk. Second, requiring husband notification reflects and perpetuates a now unconstitutional understanding of the marital relationship. The husband’s interest in the life of the child does not permit the state to empower him with a “troubling degree of authority” over his wife.

When it became clear to those in the anti-abortion camp that Roe was unlikely to be overturned, a new strategy of restricting abortions was developed. This strategy includes outlawing particular methods of abortion, imposing time limits based on claims of fetal sentience, and imposing restrictions on clinics and doctors who perform abortions in the name of protecting maternal health.

  - Outlawing abortion methods

In 2003, President Bush signed into law a bill that banned a particular abortion technique, known to doctors as “intact dilation and evacuation” and to the general public as “partial-birth abortion.” The bill described intact D&E as a “gruesome, inhumane” procedure that is “never medically necessary to preserve a woman’s health,” in which a fetus is partially delivered alive and a physician performs “an overt act that the person knows will kill the partially delivered living fetus.”

The law, which included no health exception, was found unconstitutional in 2005 but was upheld by the Supreme Court in the case of Gonzales v. Carhart in 2007. The majority reaffirmed its rulings in Roe and Casey that, before viability, a state may not prohibit any woman from making the ultimate decision to terminate her pregnancy. At the same time, states may enact restrictions on abortion for the purpose of expressing its concern for potential life, as long as they do not impose a substantial obstacle to her seeking an abortion. The majority held that the Partial-Birth Abortion Act did not impose an undue burden on women seeking abortions in the second trimester, since there were other methods available to physicians, in particular, the standard dilation and extraction, in which the fetus is dismembered prior to being removed from the woman’s body.

In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg described the ruling as “alarming,” and said that it “tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.” For example, intact dilation and extraction may be safer for the woman–and more likely to preserve her future fertility–than standard dilation and extraction, because dismembering the fetus in utero might puncture her uterus. Ginsburg argued that decisions about whether a particular procedure is medically indicated should belong to the woman’s doctors, and not to the Congress of the United States.

  - Imposing limits based on fetal sentience

In 2010, Nebraska banned all abortion after 20 weeks, on the ground that a fetus at that stage can feel pain. Since then, 14 more states (Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin) have passed similar laws. In 2015, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act passed the House of Representatives; the motion to consider the bill in the Senate was withdrawn. The bill prohibits a physician from performing an abortion after 20 weeks, except where necessary to save the life of a pregnant woman (excluding psychological or emotional conditions) or in cases of rape or incest against a minor.

Although such laws have not been challenged in court, they are clearly unconstitutional, since the Supreme Court has reaffirmed in Casey and Carhart a woman’s constitutional right to choose abortion, prior to viability, and 20-week old fetuses are not viable. Some premature infants are being saved as early as 22 weeks. However, it appears that, absent development of an artificial placenta, 22 weeks represents the absolute lower limit on viability.

Are 20-week old fetuses sentient? The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says it knows of no legitimate scientific information that supports the claim that a 20-week old fetus can feel pain. However, some researchers think that fetuses might become sentient as early as 17 weeks. In March 2016, Utah became the first state to require doctors to give anesthesia to women having an abortion at 20 weeks or later. The law does not apply to women having abortions needed to save their lives, or in cases of rape or incest. An obstetrician-gynecologist in Utah, who spends half of a Saturday each month in an abortion clinic, protested in the New York Times, “You’re asking me to invent a procedure that doesn’t have any research to back it up. You want me to experiment on my patients.”

  - Protecting women’s health

As stated above, Casey allowed states to restrict abortions based on a concern for women’s health as long as the restrictions did not impose an undue burden on the choice. A key issue raised by Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, decided in 2016, was how judges should evaluate such health-justified restrictions. The case concerned a 2013 Texas law that required any physician performing an abortion to have admitting privileges at a hospital not more than 30 miles from the abortion facility, and required any abortion facility to meet the minimum standards for ambulatory surgical centers. The district court said that the law was unconstitutional because of its impact on access to abortion in Texas. Many abortion facilities would be unable to meet these requirements and would be forced to close, thereby severely limiting access to abortion. Moreover, the law’s provisions were unnecessary to protect women’s health. Abortion is an extremely safe procedure with very low rates of complications and virtually no deaths.

Writing for the majority, Justice Breyer said that “the Court, when determining the constitutionality of laws regulating abortion procedures, has placed considerable weight upon evidence and argument presented in judicial procedures.” In other words, states may not simply assert that the restrictions are necessary, but must have factual evidence to show that they are. Moreover, the Court has an independent constitutional duty to review factual findings where constitutional rights are at stake. Presumably, this decision ends the strategy of seeking to limit abortion in the guise of protecting maternal health.

Resources

Experts

Hastings Center Fellow and professor 
emeritus of philosophy at 
The University at Albany/State University of 

Thomas H. Murray, PhD
President Emeritus and Fellow, 
The Hastings Center thmurray46@gmail.com 

Maggie Little, BPhil, PhD
Director, The Kennedy Institute of Ethics; 
Hastings Center Fellow littlem@georgetown.edu

The Hastings Center
Registered 501(c)(3). EIN: 02-0594709
https://www.thehastingscenter.org/briefingbook/abortion/


Philosophical Aspects of the Abortion Debate

Logical Arguments that can be made either in support of or in opposition to abortion.

Contents

- Overview

- Philosophical Arguments;

• Criteria for personhood

• The natural capacities view

• The deprivation argument

• The bodily rights argument

• Respect for human life

Overview

The philosophical arguments in the abortion debate are deontological or rights-based. The view that all or almost all abortion should be illegal generally rests on the claims: 

  1. that the existence and moral right to life of human beings (human organisms) begins at or near conception-fertilization; 
  2. that induced abortion is the deliberate and unjust killing of the embryo in violation of its right to life; and 
  3. that the law should prohibit unjust violations of the right to life. 

The view that abortion should in most or all circumstances be legal generally rests on the claims: 

  1. that women have a right to control what happens in and to their own bodies; 
  2. that abortion is a just exercise of this right; and 
  3. that the law should not criminalize just exercises of the right to control one's own body and its life-support functions.

Although both sides are likely to see the rights-based considerations as paramount, 


some popular arguments
appeal to consequentialist or
utilitarian considerations. 

For example; 

  • pro-life advocacy groups sometimes claim the existence of post-abortion syndrome or a link between abortion and breast cancer, alleged medical and psychological risks of abortion. On the other side, 
  • pro-choice groups say that criminalizing abortion will lead to the deaths of many women through "back-alley abortions"; that unwanted children have a negative social impact (or conversely that abortion lowers the crime rate); and that reproductive rights are necessary to achieve the full and equal participation of women in society and the workforce. 

Consequentialist arguments on both sides tend to be vigorously disputed, though are not widely discussed in the philosophical literature.

Philosophical argumentation on the moral issue

Contemporary philosophical literature contains two kinds of arguments concerning the morality of abortion. 

  • One family of arguments (following three sections) relates to the moral status of the embryo—whether or not the embryo has a right to life; in other words is the embryo a "person" in a moral sense. An affirmative answer would support claim (1) in the central pro-life argument, while a negative answer would support claim (2) in the central pro-choice argument.
  • Another family of arguments (see the section on Thomson, below) relates to bodily rights—the question of whether the woman's bodily rights justify abortion even if the embryo has a right to life. A negative answer would support claim (2) in the central pro-life argument, while an affirmative answer would support claim (2) in the central pro-choice argument.

Philosophical Aspects of the Abortion Debate - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_aspects_of_the_abortion_debate


Moral & Philosophical Importance of Abortion

Access to safe abortion has been labelled as a fundamental human right by the International Women's Health Coalition, who stated that:


  • A woman should have the choice to carry a pregnancy to term or not;
  • Abortion services should be part of a comprehensive sexual health programme;
  • Lack of funding and illegality do not reduce the number of abortions, they only serve to put the woman's health in danger.

Despite this, abortion is illegal or difficult to access in many countries and has recently come under renewed attack in the Western world.


In the USA, certain states have introduced laws requiring women to listen to fetal heart beat monitors or to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound scan before being permitted to proceed with an abortion, with the thinly-veiled intent to discourage them.


Recently in the UK, MP Nadine Dorries proposed an amendment to abortion legislation that would have prevented abortion providers, such as Marie Stopes International and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, from offering pre-abortion counselling to women on the basis that their advice was ‘not independent’. They would instead be directed to ‘Crisis Pregnancy Centres’ for supposedly independent counselling. However, many of these centres are run and funded by religious groups with prominent anti-abortion agendas.


The amendment was withdrawn due both to lack of support and to a national campaign against it. But the motives behind the amendment, and the more extreme pieces of legislation being passed in the USA, call for the arguments of legality, morality and access to be re-evaluated.


Traditional Arguments


Against Abortion


A common argument against abortion is that it is equivalent to murder – specifically infanticide – and in this way it is immoral and unjustifiable.


One of the best known philosophical arguments to this effect is that of Don Marquis, who claimed that murder is illegal because it deprives the murdered person of their potential future. Consequently, abortion is murder as it deprives the fetus of its potential future, and therefore abortion is morally wrong and should not be allowed from the moment of conception.3 However, this does not take into consideration that the zygote formed at conception is a very different entity from that which will ultimately be born and go on to experience a future.


Therefore, it could be reasoned that Marquis's argument rather endorses a policy of abortion up to the point of viability, as once a fetus has reached this stage it will be highly similar to a newborn child that can go on to experience a future.


For Abortion


There are two main arguments in favour of abortion. First, that of Mary Anne Warren, who argued that it is a person, rather than simply a human being, that is entitled to rights, including the right to life. Abortion could therefore be deemed acceptable, as while a fetus is undeniably a human being, it is not a person. Warren goes further by suggesting that 


intelligent extraterrestrial beings could be regarded as persons and therefore deserving of rights, rather than rights being reserved only for humans, and goes on to list several criteria of personhood, including consciousness, reasoning, activity, communication and self-awareness.

 

This argument is often objected to as it does not take into account that people who are temporarily comatose cannot fulfil her criteria of personhood and therefore could be killed with impunity as a result of her argument. Similarly, infants up to the age of 1 or 2 years can be incapable of fulfilling these criteria and so her argument could be used to justify infanticide. However, Warren has responded that from the point of birth a child does not need to biologically rely on its mother any longer as it can be cared for by anyone; thus if the mother did not want the child, killing it would not be her only option.


The Second argument is that of Judith Jarvis Thomson in ‘A Defence of Abortion’. Her essay generates several ‘thought experiments’, the most discussed being that of 


~The Violinist~ 


  • The world's top violinist falls ill and the Society of Music Lovers kidnaps you and hooks him up to you to make use of your kidneys for the next 9 months until he recovers. If you are parted any sooner, he will die. 
  • The essay then goes on to consider several assumptions and reasons that would make it permissible or impermissible to detach the violinist and leave him to die before the 9 months are over.


The central principle of the argument is that 


  • even though the violinist has a right to life, that right does not supersede your right to choose whether or not to remain connected to the violinist for 9 months. 


Thomson considers the stance that in this instance you have been kidnapped by the Society for Music Lovers and have not chosen to participate, equating the whole thought experiment to pregnancy as a result of rape, and she accepts that this does not necessarily hold for a pregnancy resulting from consensual heterosexual intercourse. However, this argument relies on the assumption that pregnancy is a foreseeable consequence of heterosexual intercourse.


First, if a heterosexual couple engaging in sexual activity make use of one or more methods of contraception it can be said that while pregnancy is a foreseeable consequence, it is an unlikely one and the woman in this scenario does not morally or philosophically have a responsibility to give life to something that she took so much effort to avoid.


Second, a person may not necessarily associate the act of sexual intercourse with pregnancy; that is to say, when a person meets a member of the opposite sex to whom they are attracted, it is unlikely that their intention is to ‘have a baby’ with them, whereas they may intend to have sexual relations with them. This highlights a psychological separation between sex and ‘making babies’ that may lead to sexual behaviour that makes pregnancy more likely (not using contraception), as pregnancy is no longer a ‘foreseeable’ outcome. This is especially true for young people who are reaching sexual maturity, yet have not reached emotional maturity.


Related to this is the concept of ‘normalised deviance’, where an incorrect or unsafe action is carried out, but no negative consequence results, and so the incorrect or unsafe action becomes viewed as being correct and safe. This can be applied to having unprotected sex, but not getting pregnant. It can also apply to smoking a cigarette but not getting lung cancer. However, the greater the number of times the ‘deviant’ act is committed – be it unprotected sex or smoking cigarettes – the greater the likelihood that a negative consequence will result.


We do not condemn to death those who have contracted lung cancer due to smoking; rather, we offer them help and treatment. Similarly, it can be reasoned that a woman would be within her rights to terminate a pregnancy on the basis of not considering the outcomes of unprotected sexual intercourse, in other words, making a mistake.


A New Argument


Access to safe abortion is not only a human right; it is a measure of a society's development with regard to women.


Western society has a strong patriarchal basis, which has at least in part emanated from the influence of Christianity: the Bible and the teachings of the Church historically emphasise a woman's role as being the property of a man and to be subordinate to him. Gender equality only began to take steps forward in the UK as recently as 100 years ago and our society still retains many patriarchal features and influences, as can be seen in another bill proposed by Nadine Dorries, who wished to make abstinence education compulsory in the UK, but only for young girls.


The ideology behind singling out young women as being responsible for saying no to sex is born out of the patriarchal notion of hegemonic masculinity: that 


  • it is a male's prerogative to be sexually driven and experienced and that it is natural for him to ‘sow his wild oats’, whereas 
  • a female should be modest and restrained lest she become pregnant, a condition that would have an irreversible effect on her life. Herein lies the importance of contraception and abortion.


First, contraception theoretically liberates women from the fear of falling pregnant, so allowing a different sexual culture to develop in which women are able to explore their sexuality, experiment and have multiple sexual partners in a way that had previously been the preserve of men. 


Second, and more importantly, abortion allows women to reverse what used to be an irreversible event in their lives. This comes into a greater degree of conflict with patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity than contraception does and is thus a more controversial issue.


Contraception can be viewed in a positive light by patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity as it can be seen to encourage women to engage in sex as they will not need to worry about the consequence, namely pregnancy. 


Abortion, however, is less acceptable as it is the act of removing and rejecting the sperm of a male. This goes against hegemonic masculinity and patriarchy, which emphasise the importance of virility and fertility of men. As such, a patriarchal society will be more inclined to oppose access to abortion as it is seen, by extension, to be an act of emasculation.


It is for this reason that access to abortion is such an important measure of progress. A society that permits abortion recognises that women are more important than the ‘seed’ of a male that they may be carrying.


Conclusion


As politicians and lobbying groups of varying backgrounds seek to restrain the rights of women in terms of access to abortion it must be remembered that: abortion is justifiable morally and philosophically; that abortion is a way for an individual woman to correct a mistake that she and her partner have made and avoid an otherwise unavoidable future; and that for women and society as a whole it is part of our further social evolution towards equality.

https://srh.bmj.com/content/39/1/51

Philosophers On the Ethics and Politics of Abortion




https://dailynous.com/2019/06/10/philosophers-on-ethics-politics-abortion/


An Argument That Abortion Is Wrong - by Don Marquis

Judith Thomson (1971) has argued that even if one grants (for the sake of argument only) that fetuses have the right to life, this argument fails.  Thomson invites you to imagine that you have been connected while sleeping, bloodstream to bloodstream, to a famous violinist. The violinist, who suffers from a rare blood disease, will die if disconnected.  Thomson argues that you surely have the right to disconnect yourself.  She appeals to our intuition that having to lie in bed with a violinist for an indefinite period is too much for morality to demand.  She supports this claim by noting that the body being used is your body, not the violinist's body.  She distinguishes the right to life, which the violinist clearly has, from the right to use someone else's body when necessary to preserve one's life, which it is not at all obvious the violinist has. Because the case of pregnancy is like the case of the violinist, one is no more morally obligated to remain attached to a fetus than to remain attached to the violinist.

It is widely conceded that one can generate from Thomson's vivid case the conclusion that abortion is morally permissible when a pregnancy is due to rape (Warren, 1973, p. 49; and Steinbock, 1992, p. 79).  But this is hardly a general right to abortion.  Do Thomson's more general theses generate a more general right to an abortion?  Thomson draws our attention to the fact that in a pregnancy, although a fetus uses a woman's body as a life-support system, a pregnant woman does not use a fetus's body as a life-support system.  However, an opponent of abortion might draw our attention to the fact that in an abortion the life that is lost is the fetus's, not the woman's.  This symmetry seems to leave us with a stand-off.

Thomson points out that; 

  • a fetus's right to life does not entail its right to use someone else's body to preserve its life.  However, 
  • an opponent of abortion might point out that a woman's right to use her own body does not entail her right to end someone else's life in order to do what she wants with her body.  
  • In reply, one might argue that a pregnant woman's right to control her own body doesn't come to much if it is wrong for her to take any action that ends the life of the fetus within her.  However, 
  • an opponent of abortion can argue that the fetus's right to life doesn't come to much if a pregnant woman can end it when she chooses.  

The consequence of all of these symmetries seems to be a stand-off.  But if we have the stand-off, then one might argue that we are left with a conflict of rights: a fetal right to life versus the right of a woman to control her own body.  One might then argue that the right to life seems to be a stronger right than the right to control one's own body in the case of abortion because the loss of one's life is a greater loss than the loss of the right to control one's own body in one respect for nine months.  Therefore, the right to life overrides the right to control one's own body and abortion is wrong.  Considerations like these have suggested to both opponents of abortion and supporters of choice that a Thomsonian strategy for defending a general right to abortion will not succeed (Tooley, 1972; Warren, 1973; and Steinbock, 1992).  In fairness, one must note that Thomson did not intend her strategy to generate a general moral permissibility of abortion.


https://homeweb.csulb.edu/~cwallis/382/readings/160/marquis.html 


You Can’t Lose What You Ain’t Never Had:
A Reply To Marquis On Abortion

Don Marquis’s article, “Why Abortion Is Immoral”,1 has been anthologized very quickly and very widely. It is easy to see why. Marquis presents the most sophisticated and detailed argument against abortion in the literature. This makes it important to determ- ine whether his argument succeeds. I will argue that it does not.


1. Marquis Argument


Marquis’s argument takes the form of an inference to the best expla- nation. He begins with the assumption that it is morally wrong to kill me or you or any normal adult human in normal circumstances. He then proposes an explanation of why this is morally wrong. He also criticizes several alternative explanations, usually by showing that these alternatives conflict with his (or our) moral intuitions (or beliefs) about other cases. He concludes that his proposal is the best explanation of the moral wrongness of killing, and this supports its underlying moral principle.


Marquis’s proposed explanation is that it is morally wrong to kill a normal adult human except in extreme circumstances because it is morally wrong to cause “the loss to the victim of the value of its future” (192). He then claims that an abortion also causes a fetus to lose a valuable future, so abortion is also morally wrong except in the same extreme circumstances…


…So far, then, it seems to me that Marquis is winning the debate. No critic has yet revealed a fatal flaw in his argument. However, there is such a flaw. That, along with the philosophical interest and wide- spread distribution of his argument, makes it worthwhile to look again at Marquis’s argument.


In my view, the central flaw in Marquis’s argument is a fallacy of equivocation. When Marquis applies his proposed explanation to abortion (192), his basic argument is this:


  1. It is morally wrong except in extreme circumstances to cause anything the loss of a valuable future.
  2. Abortion causes a fetus the loss of a valuable future.
  3. Therefore, abortion is morally wrong except in extreme circumstances.


What does the term “loss” mean here? Losing a future is not like losing one’s car keys, or even like losing money in the stock market. So, what is the loss of a future? The answer is not clear, and Marquis says nothing to clarify his idea.


We can begin to understand losses by looking at examples. Suppose the winner of a race will receive a valuable trophy that is now held by an official. Lee and Kristin are the only racers, so Lee will win unless Kristin beats him; but Kristin wins the race. When Kristin wins, does she cause Lee the loss of a valuable trophy? One could answer both “Yes” and “No” in different ways. Kristin’s act of winning the race causes Lee to lose the race and causes his loss of the race. Kristin thereby prevents Lee from gaining the trophy. This line of reasoning might make it seem that Kristin’s winning causes the loss of the trophy to Lee. In another way, however, it seems odd to say that Kristin causes Lee any loss of the trophy, because Lee does not own the trophy, and he does not have any right either to gain the trophy or to win the race. As the great sage Muddy Waters said, “You can’t lose what you ain’t never had.”


This suggests two ways to talk about losses. The first is neutral or non-moral:


(NL) An agent’s act causes the neutral loss of something valu- able to a loser if and only if (i) the agent does the act, and (ii) the loser does not gain or keep the valuable thing, but (iii) the loser would gain or keep the valuable thing if the agent did not do the act.


Kristin’s act of winning the race does cause this neutral kind of loss to Lee of the trophy. Such neutral losses contrast with moral losses, which can be defined roughly like this:


(ML) An agent’s act causes the moral loss of something valu- able to a loser if and only if (i) the agent does the act, (ii) the loser does not gain or keep the valuable thing, (iii) the loser would gain or keep the valuable thing if the agent did not do the act, (iv) the loser has a moral right to the means necessary for gaining or keeping that valuable thing, and (v) the agent does not have a moral right to those means.


Kristin winning the race does not cause a moral loss to Lee, since Lee did not own the trophy or have any right to gain the trophy or to win the race. Details might be controversial, but (NL) and (ML) represent two general approaches to losses. 


This distinction creates two ways to read Marquis’s argument (1)–(3). First suppose that the argument refers to neutral losses as on (NL). It is clear that (2) abortion causes a neutral loss of a future to a fetus (assuming the fetus would live if the abortion were not performed). Since Marquis calls this premise “obvious” (192), here he seems to have neutral losses in mind. However, it is then less clear that (1) it is morally wrong except in extreme circumstances to cause a neutral loss of a valuable future. If the term “loss” does not imply any moral right, it is not obvious why it is morally wrong to cause such a neutral loss.


This problem is solved if Marquis refers to moral losses as on (ML). To cause a moral loss is to violate the loser’s moral right when the agent has no moral right to do so. This makes it clearer why (1) it is normally morally wrong to cause the moral loss of a valuable future. However, it is less clear that (2) abortion causes the moral loss of a future to a fetus. If the term “loss” implies a moral right, then we cannot determine whether abortion causes any loss to the fetus until we determine whether the fetus has a moral right to the necessary means to its future. It would beg the question in this context to assume this controversial premise without any argument. Not only does Marquis not give us any argument for this claim, but also it is hard to see how he could give any such argument without running into all of the standard troubles which plague previous argu- ments against abortion (and which Marquis discusses forcefully in the first part of his article).


Thus, each use of the term “loss” makes one premise clearly true but leaves the other premise questionable. This seems to be a kind of equivocation. The point is not that readers cannot tell whether Marquis refers to moral losses or to neutral losses. At most places in his article, it is pretty clear that Marquis refers to neutral losses. Nonetheless, the terms in which the argument is formulated are ambiguous in this context, and the force of the argument for many readers depends on a confusion between these two kinds of losses. That is how the argument commits the fallacy of equivocation.


4. The Best Explanation


To respond to this charge, Marquis needs to show that the argument works when the ambiguity is removed and the term “loss” is used in a single way throughout. But then does it refer to neutral losses or to moral losses? Marquis cannot always refer to moral losses, since then premise (2) would beg the question, as I just showed. The only viable alternative is for Marquis to stick to neutral losses throughout his argument. This use of the term “loss” makes it obvious that (2) abortion causes a loss of a valuable future, so all Marquis has to do to save his argument is to show that (1) it is morally wrong except in extreme circumstances to cause the neutral loss of a valuable future. He would probably claim that this is exactly what is supported by his inference to the best explanation...


Conclusion


Overall, then, Marquis’s argument fails to show that abortion is immoral to the extent that he claimed. To save his argument, Marquis would need to show that a fetus has a moral right to the means it needs to gain its future or that the woman lacks a moral right to control her blood and womb or else that the pregnant woman’s loss is so minor or so grossly disproportionate to the fetus’s loss that it would be morally wrong for her to refuse to let it use her body, despite the disparity in rights. Such issues are controversial, and one of Marquis’s main goals was to sidestep them. What I have tried to show is that he cannot really avoid them in the end.


https://sites.duke.edu/wsa/papers/files/2011/05/Reply-to-Marquis-on-Abortion.pdf
https://home.csulb.edu/~cwallis/382/readings/160/marquis.html



Judith Jarvis Thomson: A Defense of Abortion


It sounds plausible. But now let me ask you to imagine this. You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, "Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you--we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you." Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says. "Tough luck. I agree. but now you've got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him." I imagine you would regard this as outrageous, which suggests that something really is wrong with that plausible-sounding argument I mentioned a moment ago.

 

In this case, of course, you were kidnapped, you didn't volunteer for the operation that plugged the violinist into your kidneys. Can those who oppose abortion on the ground I mentioned make an exception for a pregnancy due to rape? Certainly. They can say that persons have a right to life only if they didn't come into existence because of rape; or they can say that all persons have a right to life, but that some have less of a right to life than others, in particular, that those who came into existence because of rape have less. But these statements have a rather unpleasant sound. Surely the question of whether you have a right to life at all, or how much of it you have, shouldn't turn on the question of whether or not you are a product of a rape. And in fact the people who oppose abortion on the ground I mentioned do not make this distinction, and hence do not make an exception in case of rape.

 

Nor do they make an exception for a case in which the mother has to spend the nine months of her pregnancy in bed. They would agree that would be a great pity, and hard on the mother; but all the same, all persons have a right to life, the fetus is a person, and so on. I suspect, in fact, that they would not make an exception for a case in which, miraculously enough, the pregnancy went on for nine years, or even the rest of the mother's life.

 

Some won't even make an exception for a case in which continuation of the pregnancy is likely to shorten the mother's life, they regard abortion as impermissible even to save the mother's life. Such cases are nowadays very rare, and many opponents of abortion do not accept this extreme view. All the same, it is a good place to begin: a number of points of interest come out in respect to it.


https://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm 


The Argument From Fetal Potential


One of the most famous, and concurrently one of the most derided, arguments against the morality of abortion is the argument from fetal potential


This argument maintains that the fetus' potential to become a human person and enjoy the valuable life common to human persons entails that its destruction is prima facie morally impermissible. It is important to note here that the term "person" is used here in the strict philosophical sense; it is not meant to denote any and all human beings, as it is normatively used, but rather any being, human or nonhuman, that has the mental capacity to be rational, self-conscious, autonomous, and a moral agent.


One of the reasons that this argument is so interesting is that it is simultaneously ridiculed by some philosophers, and lauded by others. Many who reject the argument do so because they believe that it results in what is often called the "sperm/ova problem": if we regard the potential of a fetus to become a person as a morally relevant reason against killing it, we must also hold the same of human gametes, who also possess the potential to become persons. For example, Bonnie Steinbock writes:


The strongest objection to the argument from potential is that it seems to make contraception, and even abstinence, prima facie morally wrong. If the objection to abortion is that it deprives the zygote of a "future like ours," why, it maybe asked, cannot the same complaint be made of contraceptive techniques that ill sperm, or prevent fertilization? Why don't gametes have "a future like ours"?... so if abortion is seriously wrong because it kills a potential person, then the use of conceptive is equally seriously wrong. In using spermicide, one commits mass murder!


L.W. Sumner makes a similar accusation:


... as far as the potentiality argument is concerned, abortion and contraception are both wrong, both equally wrong, and both wrong for precisely the same reason.


Conversely, other philosophers hold that the argument from potential is significant because it is the only thing that explains the stewardship that adult human beings have in regard to human neonates. Newborn infants lack the psychological maturity to possess goals, aims, beliefs, or purposes. This does not, however, exclude them from the moral community. The reason why it does not is because we realize that infants have the potential to develop these conscious goods, and it is this potential that, as Jim Stone argues, grounds the infant's interest in growing up and realizing that potential. 


Every single semester that I teach the issue of abortion in class, 


  • I put up a picture of two cells that look striking similar, almost identical. I then reveal to my students that one is a skin cell, and the other is a fertilized egg at the zygotic stage of development. 
  • "Do they have the same moral status"?, 
  •  I ask them. When I scratch my arm and kill skin cells, is my action as morally problematic as abortion? 

My students always answer that the two cell types are morally different; that the zygote is of a different status than my skin cells. In defense of this distinction, they always give the same reason: 

  • the zygote, if implanted into a uterus, has the potential to become a baby who will then become a person, whereas 
  • my skin cells do not. 

Since the vast majority of my students, in my seven years of teaching, share this intuition, I think that it is an intuition that is worthy of being explored rather than cavalierly dismissed.


Revisiting the argument from fetal potential | Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine 

https://peh-med.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1747-5341-2-7



Critical Evaluation of the Biological Version of the Central Anti-Abortion Argument


This version of the argument runs as follows:


(l) All innocent organisms belonging to the biologically defined species, Homo sapiens, 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 belonging to the biologically defined species, Homo sapiens.[From (1) and (2)]


(4) Any human fetus, embryo, or zygote is itself an innocent organism belonging to the biologically defined species, Homo sapiens.


(5) Therefore it is at least prima facie very seriously wrong to kill a human fetus, embryo, orzygote. [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)]

 

--------------------------------------------------

7.1Three Objections to the Biological 

Version of the Anti-Abortion Argument


The crucial objections to this version of the central anti-abortion argument both concern the first premise:


All innocent organisms belonging 

to the biologically defined species, 

Homo sapiens, have a serious 

right to life.


Three objections are especially important.


A. The thrust of the first is that this premise cannot be correct, since there are clear-cut counterexample to it; there are cases where killing an innocent organism belonging to the biologically defined species, Homo sapiens, or letting one die, is not even prima facie seriously wrong (see 7.2 below)


B. The thrust of the second is that it can be shown that this premise cannot express a basic moral principle, and that, because of this, the present argument needs to be expanded to make explicit the underlying, basic moral principle that is involved.Doing so, however, involves shifting to some other version of the anti-abortion argument - such as one that appeals to the presence of an immaterial soul, or one that appeals to capacities, or one that appeals to potentialities.The upshot of this second criticism accordingly, is that the biological version of the central anti-abortion argument cannot be a stand alone argument: it ultimately reduces to one of the other versions of the central anti-abortion argument, and if those other versions fail, so then does the biological version.


C. The third objection, like the second, starts out by arguing that the claim that all innocent organisms belonging to the biologically defined species, Homo sapiens, have a serious right to life cannot be a basic moral principle, but it then goes on to argue that when one attempts to derive that claim from basic principles, any such derivation will fail, either because the derivation employs a purely descriptive claim that is false, or because the derivation employs a moral principle that is not itself tenable, or because the premises being appealed to do not entail the claim that all innocent organisms belonging to the biologically defined species, Homo sapiens, without exception, have a serious right to life.

 

-------------------------------------

7.2 The Counterexample Objection


First, then, the counterexample objection - the thrust of which is that there are cases where killing an innocent organism belonging to the biologically defined species, Homo sapiens, or letting one die, is not even prima facie seriously wrong.These include:(i) the case of an organism that has suffered upper brain death;(ii) the case of an organism that has suffered whole brain death;(iii) the case of an anencephalic infant.


The argument, then, runs as follows:


(1)Even though such human beings may very well be innocent, killing or letting die in such cases is not seriously wrong;


(2)Therefore, such humans, although innocent, do not have a serious right to life.


(3)Therefore it is not true that all innocent organisms belonging to the biologically defined species, Homo sapiens, have a serious right to life.


In thinking further about some of these counterexamples, it is useful to consider a range of cases, and to ask what one's intuitions are about the moral status of killing, or letting die, in each of these cases involving innocent human beings:


Case 1: A psychologically normal, and physically normal, individual;


Case 2: A psychologically normal individual, but one who is temporally in need of a life-support system;


Case 3: A psychologically normal individual, but one who is permanently in need of a life-support system;


Case 4: A psychologically normal individual, but one whose lower brain has been destroyed, and who has an artificial lower brain.


Case 5: An individual who has no mental life at all, and who never will, because he has no upper brain, but who remains alive because his lower brain, or brain stem, is undamaged.


Case 6: An individual who has no mental life at all, and who never will, because he has no upper brain, but who remains alive because of an artificial lower brain.


Case 7: An individual who has no mental life at all, and who never will, because he has no upper brain or lower brain, but who remains alive because of an external life-support system.


The idea is to begin by considering the two cases that are furthest apart, and to ask whether they are morally different.If one's intuition is that they are, one then considers intermediate cases, in order to isolate the relevant factor.


Most people, when they do this, conclude that the moral divide is between cases 4 and 5.That is to say, they view it is as being very seriously morally wrong to kill, or to allow to die, people falling under cases 1 through 4, but not those falling under cases 5 through 7.This in turn strongly suggests that what is relevant in the counterexample cases is the permanent absence of any mental life:it is this that makes it the case that one does not possess a right to life. 


http://spot.colorado.edu/~tooley/Abortion4.html



The Ethics of Abortion

https://www.csus.edu/indiv/g/gaskilld/ethics/abortion.htm 




University of Missouri - Health Ethics - Abortion FAQ


Introduction

Abortion is one of the most controversial issues of modern times. In the interests of promoting understanding the controversy, we try to present the major views on abortion in as impartial a fashion as possible. We focus on the ethical arguments and underlying issues rather than on political considerations that might also be involved.

Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice

Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy. The kind of abortion that is controversial is induced abortion, in which the embryo or fetus is prematurely removed or caused to be expelled. Induced abortions are commonly voluntary (elective). Induced, elective abortion is in contrast to spontaneous abortion, or miscarriage, in which the embryo or fetus is involuntarily expelled because of accidental trauma or disease.

The two chief positions on the morality of abortion can be called the “pro-life” position and the “pro-choice” position. The basic pro-life position holds that induced abortions are morally impermissible (morally wrong, morally prohibited). The basic pro-choice position holds that induced abortions are morally permissible (morally allowable, not morally wrong). Variations on these basic pro-life and pro-choice positions are possible and will be discussed below.

Issues in the Abortion Dispute

One way to see the abortion dispute is that opposing positions disagree because of differing perspectives on one or more key issues or factors:

  • the moral status of the embryo or fetus
  • the metaphysical and physical status of the embryo or fetus
  • the moral rights of a person

Moral status: The moral status of an entity is:

  1. Whether it deserves to be treated in a certain way.
  2. Whether it can engage in right and wrong behavior.

The first notion falls under the rubric of whether and in what sense the entity is a moral patient, the second is whether it is a moral agent.

As moral patients, humans are normally considered to have moral rights – the right not to be harmed by others, for instance. Humans are also normally considered moral agents in that their behavior can be judged right or wrong. They are under moral obligations and duties to behave in a certain way toward other moral patients.

Metaphysical and physical status: Metaphysics deals with questions about the ultimate nature and categories of reality. The metaphysical status of a being is how it should be classified with respect to what we take to be the most basic categories and types of reality and experience: whether it has subjective existence or is an object only, whether it is a person, whether it has or is an immaterial soul, etc. 

The physical status of a being is the nature of its physical (and mental) existence. It could be alive, dead, able to exist on its own, be at a certain stage of maturity, be of a particular species, and possess physical organs and capabilities such as a brain, central nervous system, and intelligence.

Human beings are creatures of the species homo sapiens. (Some anthropologists speak of several subspecies, with present modern humans as homo sapiens sapiens and earlier modern humans as an extinct subspecies homo sapiens idaltu.) The intent is to denote a particular creature biologically, with humans clearly different than chimpanzees, dolphins, and oak trees.

Philosophers use the term “person” in a sense distinct from the phrase “human being.” “Human being” is a biological term, while “person” is a metaphysical designation referring to a being with certain traits such as consciousness, reason, moral agency and moral patiency, communication skills through language, the ability to have a life that matters to the person, the ability to live a meaningful life, etc. The exact criteria for personhood are debated.

Generally human beings are considered persons, but there could be persons who are not human beings. For example, if members of another species were rational and moral but just not homo sapiens, biologically, we might still say they were persons. Creatures of the species homo neanderthalis (“Neanderthal man”) buried their dead and used tools but are not usually considered to have been human beings, though they were humanlike, and it’s possible we would have thought of them as persons. Another example of persons not human would be a race of alien beings living on another planet who behaved morally and rationally but were clearly not human. (We are not saying there definitely are nonhuman persons, just that there could be, if “human being” is a biological designation and “person” designates a being more by functioning and capacities.)

The moral rights of a human person: Human beings are typically considered to be persons, so we may speak of human persons. Apart from having official legal rights granted by governments, human persons are considered to have “human rights,” which are moral rights, entitlements to be treated in certain ways. A human person has rights to life and liberty (the right not to be harmed and the right to be free to pursue one’s own way of life as long as it doesn’t interfere with the liberty of others).

The right to life includes the right not to be murdered. But self defense is generally considered morally permissible. One does nothing wrong in killing a violent attacker if that is necessary as a last resort to save one’s own life. But if every human person has a right to life, the question arises of whether killing the attacker in self-defense violates the right to life of the attacker. Different interpretations of this situation are possible. One could say that the attacker has a right to life but that right may be overridden or outweighed by other considerations, such as preserving one’s own life. Or one could say that rather than having a right to life per se, a human has a right not to be killed unjustly. Killing a violent attacker is an instance of a just killing. Or one could say that an innocent human person has a right to life but the attacker is not “innocent” and so has no such right to life.

Relevance of these issues to the abortion controversy: The morality of abortion depends to some extent on how the embryo or fetus deserves to be treated: in what sense it is a moral patient, whether it has the moral rights not to be harmed and to pursue a life, what kind of moral consideration it is owed. We seem to take the moral status of a being to depend on its metaphysical or physical status. For example, we think humans and rocks deserve different kinds of treatment because they are different metaphysically or physically. So it might be that the moral status of an embryo or fetus depends on its metaphysical or physical status: whether it is a person, whether it is conscious, whether it has a soul, etc. Moral status alone might not determine whether abortion is morally permissible, though, for some thinkers believe other factors might override the moral status of the fetus.

In summary, one way of looking at the relevance of the above issues to abortion is:

  • The moral status of the embryo or fetus, unless overridden, might determine whether it was morally permissible to terminate the pregnancy.
  • The moral status of the embryo or fetus might derive from or be supported by the metaphysical or physical status or nature of the fetus.
  • There might be other morally-relevant factors or considerations that would outweigh or override the moral status of the embryo or fetus and change the ethical judgment about the permissibility of abortion.

The situation is complicated by the fact that the embryo and fetus are undergoing continual physical development. The physical development of the embryo and fetus occur during a nine-month period. First an egg cell (oocyte or ovum) is fertilized by a sperm cell (spermatozoon) during a 24 hour long process. During this time the sperm cell moves through the area surrounding the egg cell, enters the egg cell, and merges its genetic material with the genetic material in the egg cell. Completion of this process results in a single-celled zygote with chromosomes from both sperm and egg cells.

About 30 hours after fertilization is complete the zygote begins cell division and the number of cells increases. “Twinning” (dividing into identical twin embryos) may occur up to the eight-cell stage. (This is different than fraternal twins from two distinct fertilized egg cells.) At nine cells, the cells start arranging themselves into a pattern. At four days after fertilization the organism moves to the uterus, floats for about two days, and then it attaches itself to the uterine wall between the seventh and twelfth day (implantation). At the end of the first week the organism is attached to the uterine wall and is being nourished by the mother.

After implantation, cells further differentiate and the embryo is increasingly structured. Some rudimentary form of the heart is pumping the embryo’s own blood within a month. There is some indication that brain waves can be recorded by about six weeks. At the end of eight weeks the embryo is “swimming” within a fluid filled amniotic sac. At nine weeks the organism is a fetus, the heart is almost fully developed by the tenth week, within a few more weeks the brain is fully formed, and by the fifteenth week the eyes face forward and the ears are on the side of the head. Movement felt by the mother (“quickening”) may occur from about the eighteenth week and the fetus is viable from about the twenty-second week, when it is eight inches long and weighs a pound. Birth is usually after thirty-nine weeks.

During the process of embryonic and fetal development, the organism is alive, attached to the mother for life support, and increasingly resembling a human baby in appearance. The developing organism is termed an “embryo” up until the end of eight weeks and after that a “fetus.” Use of the term “pre-embryo” for up until the fourteenth day is controversial.

Some thinkers believe that the moral status of the embryo or fetus changes depending on its particular stage of physical development. For those thinkers, before a particular point abortion is morally permissible, while after that point it is impermissible. But there is disagreement about where that line of demarcation is: viability (when it can survive outside the womb), quickening (detectable movement within the womb), brain waves occurring, resembling a baby in appearance, etc.

Implicit Lines of Reasoning Behind the Positions

Unfortunately, due to the tremendous acrimony each camp feels toward the other, usually neither side attempts to understand the other. Pro-lifers shout “The fetus is a human being!” at pro-choicers, and pro-choicers shout back “A woman has a right to do what she wants with her own body!” Each side remains perplexed about why repeating these slogans fails to convince the other side.

People hold views about the morality of abortion for various reasons, some political or emotional. But it is possible to depict one or more lines of reasoning each side implicitly relies on when they are thinking and arguing rationally.

The simplest line of reasoning behind the pro-life position is something like the following:

  1. The embryo or fetus is a person
  2. Persons have a right to life
  3. Therefore the embryo or fetus has a right to life
  4. It is wrong to kill a being with a right to life
  5. Therefore it is wrong to kill an embryo or fetus.

Many variations on the above are possible.

  • Sometimes the claim is not that the embryo or fetus is a person but that it is a human being. Often the thinker making this claim means by “human being” something close to what philosophers mean by “person.” At other times the thinker really does mean to identify the embryo or fetus as falling under the biological category of homo sapiens.
  • Sometimes the belief is not that the embryo or fetus is a person but that it is a potential person. The assumption is that a potential person has actual rights, not just potential rights, and these include the right to life.
  • Pro-lifers sometimes also believe that, except in cases of rape, the mother and father of the embryo or fetus should be held morally responsible for conceiving the child and bear the consequences of their actions. The attitude is that if they didn’t want a child they should have taken better precautions. Killing an innocent embryo or fetus is not a proper way to bear that responsibility.
  • Some pro-lifers believe that in certain exceptional cases abortion is morally permissible. Such cases include situations where it is necessary to abort the fetus to save the life of the mother, or where it is highly likely the mother would die if the fetus were carried to term. Other more controversial cases involve incest and rape. In such cases the interpretation would be that the fetus is not innocent or that the right to life of the fetus can be overridden or outweighed by these other factors or circumstances.

The basic pro-life position depends on an analogy drawn or assumed between the embryo or fetus and a normal, innocent human being or person. It is believed that the embryo or fetus is relevantly similar to the normal human being or person and so it has the same right to life and should be treated in the same way as any other being with a right to life. Pro-lifers take this similarity to be obvious and the analogy to be easy to understand; hence they are perplexed and angered at the pro-choicers’ seeming refusal to treat an embryo or fetus in the same way they would treat a normal, innocent human person.

There are two basic lines of reasoning assumed by different pro-choice groups. One line of reasoning sees the embryo or fetus as not a person and so not having the right to life possessed by a person. The other line of reasoning grants that an embryo or fetus might be a person but sees other factors or considerations as outweighing or overriding any right to life of the fetus.

“Not a person” argument

  1. Only persons have a right to life.
  2. An embryo or fetus is not a person.
  3. Therefore an embryo or fetus has no right to life.
  4. If a being has no right to life, it is not wrong to kill it.
  5. Therefore it is not wrong to kill an embryo or fetus.

Overriding factors argument

  1. The right to life of any being may be overridden by other factors occurring.
  2. An embryo or fetus may have a right to life
  3. Therefore any possible right to life of an embryo or fetus may be overridden by other factors occurring.
  4. If a being’s right to life is overridden by other factors occurring, it is not wrong to kill that being in those circumstances.
  5. Therefore it is not wrong to kill an embryo or fetus if certain factors occur.

The second argument might be used by pro-lifers who believe that rape, incest, or saving the life of the mother are such overriding factors, but most pro-choicers have in mind others factors such as the following:

  • the child having significant potential for an impairment or genetically-based disorder
  • an unstable or unloving home environment
  • major disruption of the pregnant woman’s life plans
  • financial hardship of the pregnant woman
  • women will die from closet abortions if driven underground
  • the basic freedom of a woman to determine the course and use of her own body.

There might be debate among pro-choicers over whether the fact that a new child would be a minor inconvenience would be sufficient as a factor to override or outweigh a right to life.

The first argument would seem to have an easier time justifying abortion because it could support the view that no particular reason need be given to justify an abortion. However, some pro-choicers hold that even through an embryo or fetus is not a person and has no right to life, it deserves some sort of moral consideration. Abortion should not be taken lightly. The embryo or fetus deserves respect. Abortion should not be undertaken for frivolous reasons – such as the potential child not having the preferred eye-color (assuming that could be determined).

Pro-lifers and pro-choicers can find many places to disagree: the moral status of the embryo or fetus (whether it has the right to life), the metaphysical status of the embryo or fetus (whether it is a person), and whether moral rights can be overridden and if so what kinds of factors or considerations can override.

Considerations in Deciding on the Morality of Abortion

One could argue that the first step in rational resolution of the abortion controversy should come from mutual understanding of the various positions. After that would be needed discussion, agreement, and resolution of the many issues involved. Besides the discussion of relevant issues above, here are some other considerations that have been raised.

Mother’s freedom over her body: Pro-choicers sometimes assume that the fetus is part of the mother’s body and the mother can do what she wants with her body. But many people think that you can’t always do what you want with your own body. For example, some people think killing yourself is wrong, most of us think using your body to intentionally hurt another innocent person is wrong, damaging your body through substance abuse is often considered wrong (what if you can no longer work to support your family?), etc.

Fetus as part of the mother’s body: The relationship between the mother’s body and the embryo or fetus is unique. Is it so clear that the fetus is “part” of the mother’s body, like an internal organ is part of the body? Is it because it is physically located within the body of the mother? If through some bizarre technology the fetus were physically located outside her body, would the same claim be made? If it is because they are connected, doesn’t that then also mean the mother is part of the body of the embryo or fetus? If it’s simply that the mother’s body supports the embryo and fetus, how does this make one part of the other? Many things are supported by other things without the former being a part of the latter – a child is supported by a parent, and a hospital patient is supported by a heart-lung machine, for instance. Is it because the fetus and other tissues are growing from the egg cell that was part of the mother? The egg cell might have been part of her body, but the sperm cell was not, and the resulting organism is from both. So if what makes the fetus part of her body is that it grew from her cell, then the fetus is equally part of the father’s body. What is part of the body of the mother is the uterus, of course, and the uterus is in contact with other tissues that are not there when she is not pregnant, and which are not obviously considered the mother’s body parts – the uterine sac, the placenta, etc. The point is not that the fetus is not depending on the mother or not in contact with the mother, but that it is not clear that all the relevant tissues – especially the fetus – can be described without controversy as belonging to the mother’s body. What we have is its own organism with its own genetic makeup and its own body.

Arguments by analogy: Much of the thinking on each side of the dispute consists of implicit arguments by analogy. Pro-life: A fetus and an adult are both persons, so since an adult has a right to life so too does a fetus. Pro-choice: Or a zygote is more like an unfertilized egg cell than an adult, so the zygote should have the same moral status as the egg cell.

This reasoning by analogy is not always made explicit or even realized by advocates on each side, and ironically both sides struggle with preventing analogies as much as depending on them. The pro-lifer points to similarities between the embryo or fetus and children or adult human persons, claiming all have physical or metaphysical similarities so they should have equal moral status (moral rights). But considering the undeveloped brain of the embryo and early fetus, and lack of self-consciousness of the fetus, perhaps the better analogy is with a nonhuman animal. However, they would like to prevent this parallel, because most people do not recognize nonhuman animals as having any right to life.

The pro-choicer draws analogies between the fetus and nonhuman animals, saying since the latter are not persons neither is the former. But then if personhood requires some level or reasoning or even self-consciousness and so excludes nonhuman animals and fetuses, then so too it excludes newborn infants, and the infants look like they don’t have a right to life; a conclusion the pro-choicer wants to avoid.

Legitimate reasons to get an abortion: Pro-choicers often claim that the embryo or fetus has no right to life because it is not a person. Some of these same people then claim that there can be illegitimate reasons for an abortion, such as to choose eye color. But if the fetus has no right to life, and killing it is not wrong, why exactly shouldn’t one get an abortion for any reason or no reason at all?

Moral status and its basis: How exactly does the moral status of a being derive from its physical or metaphysical status? The usual tactic is to use analogy to say, for example, normal adult humans have a certain physical or metaphysical status, and we grant them a moral status, so therefore anything relevantly similar in physical or metaphysical status should also have that moral status. But why is it wrong to murder adult humans? The philosopher Donald Marquis in fact tries to answer such a question in his writings on abortion. Marquis suggests that the reason killing innocent human beings is wrong is the loss to the victim of the value of his or her future. A child or adult who is killed loses the value of their future experiences and activities. But then this also applies to a fetus, whose future consists of the same types of experiences. It doesn’t matter that the fetus can’t actually be valuing his or her future at a moment in time. A suicidal person might not value his or her future experiences, but yet the future can still have value for the person. So Marquis thinks he has pinpointed why abortion is wrong. Not everyone agrees with his analysis.

References
Don Marquis, “Why Abortion is Immoral,” Journal of Philosophy (1989).

https://medicine.missouri.edu/centers-institutes-labs/health-ethics/faq/abortion

University of Missouri - School of Medicine
https://medicine.missouri.edu/



Arguments about Abortion: Personhood, Morality, and Law
 Kate Greasley


ABSTRACT

Does the morality of abortion depend on the moral status of the human fetus? Must the law of abortion give an answer to the question about exactly when personhood begins? Can a law which permits late abortion but not infanticide be morally justified? These are just some of the questions this book sets out to address. An extended analysis of the moral and legal status of abortion, the book offers an account of abortion which keeps philosophical disagreement about ‘personhood’ at the centre of the debate. Structured in three parts the book considers the relevance of prenatal personhood for the moral and legal evaluation of abortion; traces the key features of the conventional debate about when personhood begins; and explores the most prominent current problems in abortion ethics literature, including the human equality problem and the difference between abortion and infanticide. It examines approaches abortion law and regulation as well as the differing attitudes to selective abortion on grounds of sex and fetal disability. The book concludes with a snapshot into the current controversy surrounding the scope of the right to conscientiously object to participation in abortion provision.

Introduction

The introduction begins with a brief discussion about why abortion is such a divisive issue. It then describes the scope of the present volume as well as the main terminologies used. Next, it sets out the book’s focus, namely the argumentative sustainability of broad propositions about the nature of abortion, about morally and legally permissible conduct, and the logical consistency of certain sets of claims. The book addresses questions such as: Does the morality of abortion depend on the moral status of the human fetus? Must the law of abortion presume an answer to the question of when personhood begins? Can a law which permits late abortion but not infanticide be morally justified? An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

Part I Ordering the Argument

1 What Should Abortion Argument Be About?

This chapter deals introduces the question about what is truly contentious in the abortion debate. It considers personhood-bypassing challenges that proceed by claiming that the personhood question is a fundamentally misconceived starting point for philosophical discussion and/or legal reasoning about abortion. It asks whether such challenges are at all convincing. In short, is there reason to throw out the personhood question in the very early stages of our moral thinking about abortion? It examines Ronald Dworkin’s view that the abortion argument is not, at root, about whether or not the fetus is a person in the philosophical sense, but rather about different ideas concerning the intrinsic value of human life.

2 Gestation as Good Samaritanism

This chapter discusses the possibility that abortion is clearly permissible in almost all cases whether or not the fetus is a person, because abortion is not, in truth, an act of killing, but only the refusal by a pregnant woman to be a Good Samaritan. It presents and criticizes Judith Jarvis Thomson’s famous ‘violinist analogy’ argument in defence of the ‘Good Samaritan Thesis’ that continued pregnancy is a form of non-obligatory assistance to another, if the fetus is a person. Against this thesis, I argue that the problem of abortion, if fetal personhood is presumed, is not a question of positive duties to rescue others, but of the negative duty to refrain from killing them. Given that this is the case, the Good Samaritan Thesis fails.

3 Abortion as Justified Homicide

This chapter considers the claim that if the fetus is a person and abortion is killing, then most abortions are instances of justified homicide. It argues that with very limited exceptions, the attempt to subsume abortion under one or more categories of justified homicide cannot be reconciled with the moral and legal constraints on killing that are otherwise generally accepted. If normal abortion is an instance of justified homicide, then it is an entirely anomalous one that explodes the conventional boundaries of permissible killing. Consequently, accounts of the abortion problem that treat it as an example of justified homicide fail to dislodge the centrality of prenatal personhood to the moral and legal status of abortion.

4 Analogical Arguments and Sex Equality

This chapter analyses the view that considerations of sex equality relegate the personhood question to irrelevancy in the abortion debate. That is, sex equality is a sound basis for abortion rights whether or not the fetus is a person. It argues that the sex equality interest in reproductive control is not sufficient to justify abortion philosophically. Other things must also be true—namely, that the fetus is not a person, certainly not in the fullest sense. If the interest in sex equality justifies abortion rights, this can only be because the fetus is something less than a person, since the furtherance of sex equality is not a justification for homicide.

Part II The Threshold of Personhood

5 Personhood Thresholds, Arbitrariness, and ‘Punctualism’

This chapter examines the punctualist and gradualist theses about the emergence of personhood. Punctualism views the beginning of personhood as something like an ‘existential pop’. On one side of the ‘pop’ there exists only human material, and on the other, a being which is essentially and completely a person. Persons do not emerge vaguely and incrementally, like human anatomy does; the beginning of their existence is instead sudden and absolute. In contrast, gradualism eschews the idea that persons come into existence instantaneously and completely—in the manner of an ‘existential pop’—and claims instead that personhood emerges gradually and incrementally. It is argued that there is good reason to reject the punctualist thesis and to accept the antithetical ‘gradualist’ view.

6 Dualism, Substantial Identity, and the Precautionary Principle

This chapter considers and rejects some further arguments for embracing the punctualist thesis and for the view that complete persons have come into being by the completion of conception. These arguments include ones that derive from the concept of dualism, which is the belief that personhood consists in something supernatural (in the literal sense of being beyond and outside of physical events); the substantial identity argument, which is in large part an argument about the possibility of substantial change: the possibility that an object or an individual can change in respect of a substantial—meaning, an essential—characteristic, and still remain the same basic thing; and the precautionary principle of assuming personhood at conception.

7 Gradualism and Human Embodiment

This chapter restates the reasons arguments for believing that our concept of a person has chiefly to do with a cluster of sophisticated cognitive and emotional capacities, and the perennial problem that not all human beings post birth possess all of those characteristics. It argues that some rejections of the so-called ‘developmental’ (capacities-based) view of personhood’s conditions use the wrong test for conceptual salience—that is, they wrongly hold that every constitutive feature of personhood must also be an essential feature of all persons. It also seeks to explain why fetuses, which do not possess any of the core capacities definitive of persons, can nevertheless be owed increasing moral respect as they develop throughout gestation on account of their burgeoning human embodiment.

8 Human Equality and the Significance of Birth

This chapter addresses two prominent issues in the abortion ethics literature: the human equality problem and the difference between abortion and infanticide. The human equality problem asserts that any theoretical account which takes personhood status to supervene on developmentally acquired attributes, such as self-consciousness or rationality, is inconsistent with a commitment to basic human equality, since those same attributes are possessed in greater and lesser degrees by human beings post-birth. The argument defends a ‘range property’ analysis of personhood, according to which personhood status, is equally possessed by all human beings past a certain minimum threshold. It suggests, moreover, that there are good reasons for the law to set that minimum threshold at live birth. However, it does call into question the conventional philosophical view that there is no morally significant difference between human beings immediately prior to and subsequent to birth.

Part III Principle and Pragmatism

9 Regulating Abortion

Part I of this book argued that whether or not the fetus is rightly considered a person is central to a moral and legal appraisal of abortion. Part II embarked on a sustained analysis of a number of arguments about fetal personhood and the constitutive properties of a person. This chapter considers what implications, if any, the conclusions in Parts I and II have when it comes to framing a good law of abortion, as well as the question of what a serious commitment to a ‘right’ to abortion would entail. It also examines problems arising from some obvious gaps between the morality of reproductive decision-making and the justifications for legal interference, including the well-rehearsed ‘back-street abortion argument’.

10 Selective Abortion

This chapter considers the special problems associated with selective abortion, focussing on two types: sex selective abortion (SSA) and ‘fetal abnormality abortion’ (FAA). Not only are selective abortions on the basis of sex and disability the most politically relevant kinds (since other characteristics either are not typically tested for or cannot be detected during pregnancy); moral attitudes toward them have also been harnessed in interesting ways in the wider battle over abortion rights. It is argued that both opponents and supporters of abortion rights may not be able to, with consistency, direct specific moral opprobrium at SSA without making the same statements about FAA. All the same, though, it is argued that philosophical opponents of abortion are simply in error to claim there is anything inconsistent about supporting abortion rights generally whilst arguing that there are good reasons to support exceptional restrictions on selective abortion.

11 Matters of Conscience

This chapter comments on the controversy surrounding the scope of the right of medical practitioners to conscientiously object to participation in abortion provision. It addresses the question of how conscience exemptions for abortion practice ought to be framed within the context of permissive abortion regulation and what sorts of factors ought to inform the boundaries of conscience protection. I argue that the limits on the right to conscientious objection to abortion should be determined by a few key considerations, including the imperative that conscientious refusals do not undermine the purpose of abortion regulation and the values and ideals furthered by it; the degree to which the contested activity implicates the objector in giving abortion treatment, and the cost to individual objectors of shouldering the burden of their objections themselves.

End Matter

https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198766780.001.0001/acprof-9780198766780


Arguments About Abortion: Personhood, Morality, and Law

Review by Jay Watts: 

Dr. Kate Greasley is an Associate Professor in Law at the Hertford College at Oxford University. I reread her book, Arguments About Abortion: Personhood, Morality, and Law1 every year. In my mind, it is one of the best books written by a pro-choice advocate. It is healthy to develop the habit of considering the best arguments made by the people who disagree with us. Most of my discussions are not with PhD’s or those deeply immersed in the literature on the abortion arguments, so most of my discussions are better understood as opportunities to teach the various positions held on this issue rather than as engaging powerful arguments on the moral nature of abortion. Greasley brings clarity and a sharp analytical mind to her evaluations and reading her better equips me to counter the arguments of people who agree with her on the permissibility of abortion.

She also brings something else. She understands the law better than many authors on this issue. It is a common mistake to conflate the moral arguments about abortion with the legal arguments, not understanding the differences between those two. I have tried over the years to clarify with audiences that when I show up and defend the position that abortion is objectively wrong, an intrinsically evil act that can never be properly ordered in human good, I am making a moral case against abortion. We must set aside how we address abortion under the law until we answer some more pressing initial questions; what are the unborn and what are our basic obligations to them? Greasley’s background in the law brings refreshing balance often missing from those arguers prone to jump to legal conclusions from philosophical premises.

Finally, Greasley offers devastating criticisms of some pro-choice arguments she finds unpersuasive. The power of those criticisms in our rhetorical quiver cannot be overstated. Nothing disarms a hostile Q&A like being able to say, “One of the best thinkers in the world on your side of this issue agrees this is a terrible argument.” Abortion advocates often believe that all pro-life advocates argue from a position of ignorance or deceit or both. On those occasions when we can demonstrate careful and respected thinkers on their own side find a point unpersuasive our job gets a little easier. The truth is the truth, but often people can’t hear the truth from certain sources when prejudices have sufficiently poisoned the well before a case is ever made. A little friendly fire from their side can be helpful.

One of the projects I want to undertake as I begin to answer submitted questions and ramp up our content production at this website is to engage important books. This practice benefits both me and our audience. Revisiting good arguers always teaches us new things. It deepens our understanding of areas we thought we knew well. It can break us out of a sense of complacency and remind us how much work there is to do. We can believe we are cleverer than we are, so we dive back into challenging material to remember how deep the pool can get.

I will not attempt to recreate her work here. That would be unethical and counterproductive. I want people to read her book, and there is so much good stuff it would be impossible to share it all. My goal in this and in all future blogged books will be to engage with the big ideas and encourage others to chase the details on their own.

Chapter 1: What Should Abortion Argument Be About?

Greasley begins her consideration of this issue with the broadest question possible, what should we be arguing about? Every dialogue must operate within a set of agreed upon ground rules. Otherwise, we are not engaging in a dialogue but offering competing monologues. Greg Koukl and Scott Klusendorf helped train a generation of pro-life advocates to focus like a laser on a very specific question, what is the unborn? The right or wrong of abortion will be determined by how we answer that question. If the unborn is valueless tissue, then Koukl says abortion is no different than a tooth extraction. The procedure requires no justification. If the unborn is one of us, a full member of the human family, then justifications offered to support abortion fall woefully short. The only way to resolve the moral question of abortion is to identify what exactly is being destroyed in the process of abortion. What is the unborn?

Greasley asks whether this is the proper question to focus on, the personhood of the human fetus. It seems intuitionally to be the clearest starting point, but not everyone agrees. She identifies two broad objections against centering our arguments on the personhood of the fetal human being:

The personhood or full humanity of the unborn will not establish anything critical in evaluating the moral and legal nature of abortion.The question of the personhood of the fetal human life is unanswerable.2

Judith Jarvis Thomson’s Good Samaritan Thesis falls into the first category. Women face no moral requirement to aid the fetal human life with the use of their organs to preserve the nascent human life. They have no duty to save. The Justifiable Homicide Thesis is another argument in the first category. Even if the unborn are one of us, killing them is justified based on the threat they pose to the freedom of the woman. Her freedom interests trump the life interests of the fetal human, and the destruction of that fetal life is justified. Neither of these cases requires the unborn to be something lesser. Both justifications operate the same even if the unborn is fully human. The humanity or personhood of the unborn simply does not matter when it comes to the right or wrong of abortion. Greasley tables the discussion on these points until a later chapter, so we will leave them behind as well. This leaves us to address whether the question of fetal personhood can be resolved at all.

What is meant by personhood?

We aren’t done setting the stage quite yet. Greasley acknowledges for the sake of the terms of engagement that biological human life begins at conception. This isn’t much of a concession. Steve Jacobs research at University of Chicago demonstrated that 96% of academic biologists affirm human life begins at conception.3 When else could human life begin? Which brings us to our next delineation of clear categories of argument. Science (life begins at fertilization) vs. Philosophy (early human life ought to be treated in a certain way). Conceding life begins at fertilization, (a scientific acknowledgement) doesn’t handcuff Greasley or anyone else to a view that embryonic human life matters. There are humans and there are human persons, and what makes a human a human person is precisely what Greasley thinks this discussion seeks to resolve.

What exactly does she mean by person? In her words:

“(A) category of beings which possess a certain kind of moral status, typically elaborated in terms of interests or rights, and yielding a cluster of normative implications concerning how it is morally acceptable to treat such beings.”4

Persons are the kind of beings we owe duties and to whom we are obligated. Not all persons are humans. Christians believe that God is a person, and yet not a human being. Angels would appear to be persons. Intelligent and moral alien life forms could be persons. The point is that being a person is not identical to being a human being. Non-human persons are easily imaginable and for many assumed to exist. It may be that all human beings are personal beings, then again it may not be the case.

I am always surprised how some people begin their reasoning from the position that the idea of a non-personal human is easily intelligible. I am not saying that it is entirely unreasonable. It just creates levels of complication I personally find difficult to accept without compelling reason to do so.

At first glance, I can understand why it makes sense to someone looking to justify actions like abortion or embryo destructive research. These are people who actively WANT early human life to have no value. There are too many benefits to enjoy and exploit by their destruction, freedom from parental responsibility, medical research breakthroughs, financial benefits from research grants and biological breakthroughs. If someone begins their reasoning on these issues from the starting point, “I want to be able to destroy this life” then it is easier to understand why they would look for immediately practicable capacities or biological formations that are absent in early development in order to define nascent human life out of the category of meaningful human life.

Their cavalier attitude notwithstanding, they fail to appreciate the weird reality this view creates. Philosopher Alexander Pruss addressed this weirdness where he identified the basic animal life which comes into existence at fertilization and the personal being who supervenes upon this animal at some later point such that both endure in a strange, shared existence.5 It is possible that the personal being could cease to exist at a future time and leave behind only the biological animal. It means our identity cannot extend back to the biological beginning of the organism we now inhabit. Our mothers did not carry us for nine months, but they carried that psychologically and emotionally void kind of an animal being that would eventually house the person now reading this. And this union we all experience could give way at any moment under sufficiently catastrophic medical conditions leaving behind the valueless animal life. When people tell me they find it bizarre that anyone could believe an embryo ought to be treated as a full human being, I usually point out that the position that I should treat every human life I encounter with the same basic respect, starting with refraining from killing them, is far less strange to me than the idea of what they think their mother carried around in her body for nine months. I am more comfortable with what has been termed the inclusive view of human value than I am with the idea that some group of humans feel entitled to define another group of humans out of existence in order to treat them horribly.

Greasley, to her credit, emphasizes the importance of this point later in the chapter. In wording similar to an observation by pro-life philosopher Christopher Kaczor, Greasley writes:

“In all other contexts, many now historical, in which the categories ‘human being’ and ‘person’ have been distinguished, and where legal systems and social orders have engaged themselves in separating out who is human in the simple biological sense, and who in the moral, rights-holding sense, those applying the distinction have fallen into grave moral error.”6

That is putting the situation rather mildly. That is exactly why it is so vital all parties address the question “What is the unborn?” The costs of being wrong on this issue is too high. If they are one of us, then call it what you will under the law, but abortion is deeply immoral. It is the unnecessary intentional destruction of our fellow human beings. If they are one of us, abortion is the willful destruction of the next generation before they are born to prevent them from being in our way. It is a ghastly act, made no less terrible by the frequency with which it occurs. Those who claim they are not one of us have a responsibility to articulate why. On this point, we have some agreement with Dr. Kate Greasley.

 Next post, Greasley v Dworkin, or is the question of fetal personhood unanswerable?

1 Kate Greasley, Arguments About Abortion: Personhood Morality and Law, (Oxford :Oxford University Press 2017)
2 Greasley 11-12
3 https://quillette.com/2019/10/16/i-asked-thousands-of-biologists-when-life-begins-the-answer-wasnt-popular/
4 Greasley, 13
5 Alexander Pruss, “I Was Once a Fetus: That Is Why Abortion Is Wrong”, Philosophy & Medicine 111: Persons, Moral Worth, and Embryos: A Critical Analysis of Pro-Choice Arguments, (New York: Springer 2011) 19-29
6 Greasley 23

https://merelyhumanministries.org/arguments-about-abortion-personhood-morality-and-law/ 

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