Abortion: A Secular ArgumentConservative Christians (Catholics and fundamentalists/evangelicals) assert that human life begins at conception and that taking the life of the fetus is the moral equivalent of murder. Thus the interest of the fetus, according to these people, is on par with that of the pregnant woman. This, as we have seen in the policies of the Roman Catholic Church and the fundamentalist administration of George W. Bush, has led to much suffering for women who for many reasons either could not, or would not, see through their pregnancy. Furthermore the very same argument against abortion is being recycled for use against embryonic stem cell research. The suffering caused to women in the anti-abortion movement and the blocking of potential benefits to humankind by the de facto ban on stem cell research mean that the theologically obscurantist arguments against abortion must be met head on. [a]The argument for the moral permissibility of abortion and on the proper ethical approach towards abortion presented below are mainly based on the work of moral philosophers, Peter Singer and R.M. Hare [2]. Basically the arguments can be presented in a few clear steps:
The Religious Conservative Argument Against AbortionThe Catholic and fundamentalist argument against abortion can be presented syllogistically as follows:
If we accept the premises then we have to accept the conclusion: that abortion is morally equivalent to murder. The crucial test of the validity of the above two premises is in the use of the term "human being". The meaning favored by Catholic and fundamentalists can be seen in this definition provided by (Roman Catholic) Judge John T. Noonan Jr.:
Thus the definition used by the Catholic and fundamentalist churches is that a "human being" is a living organism which has all 23 pairs of human chromosomes; i.e. a member of the species homo sapiens, regardless of its place in the "life cycle" or its physical condition. Using this definition, a zygote (a recently fused egg and sperm) is a human being. And destroying a zygote would be equivalent to killing a human being. With this definition, we can ask whether it is ever wrong to kill a living organism who has the full set of human DNA. We find that there are times when taking the lives of such beings, which certainly saddens us, are not considered immoral. We give two below.
Back to the top When is Taking a Life Considered Murder?Murder is wrong, but when is the taking of a life actually murder? Certainly we do not consider, say, taking the life of a rabbit (while regrettable) as murder. What are the qualities of a living thing that enables us to separate, in a moral sense, the taking of a life that is not murder (e.g. withholding life-saving treatment for anencephalic babies, shutting down the life support of the clinically dead) and one that is considered murder (e.g. a Christian fundamentalist bombing an abortion clinic - killing nurses and doctors - for the love of Yahweh, or a suicide bomber blowing himself or herself in a busy discotheque in Tel Aviv killing dozens for the love of Allah)?As a starting point of our analysis, we can review various ethical principles to see why murder is considered wrong: [7]
Certainly most human beings have these qualities. However it also clarifies the reasons why ending the lives of the brain dead and the (non)treatment of anencephalic babies are not considered equivalent to murder. In neither case is there an of ending a life which is self-conscious, which understands the difference between life and death and which (normally) desires to remain alive. Furthermore it is possible that some non-human animals may have these qualities as well. In particular, future research may well show that some higher primates (chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas) and cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) possess such qualities to an extent that we would extend the prohibition against murder to these species. [f] To avoid confusion between the term "human being" (which encompasses all members of the species homo sapiens) and those who possess the properties above, some moral philosophers and bioethicists - e.g. Peter Singer (in his book Practical Ethics [1993]), Michael Tooley (Abortion and Infanticide [1972]) and John Harris (The Value of Life [1994]) - have suggested the use of the term person. [8] Thus a person, in this sense, is a living being who has the capability to reason and to reflect and considers itself as an individual, as the same person who has existed in the past and may continue to exist in the immediate future. Thus we can reformulate the first premise of the syllogism above as:
Where the characteristics of the term person is as defined here. Note that this definition certainly includes members of the species homo sapiens (but not all - e.g. it excludes the anencephalic babies and the brain dead) but does not exclude members of other species who may have these characteristics. Thus formulated, it removes the arbitrariness of the first premise. We now look at the second premise: does this prohibition against the murdering of persons extend to taking the life of a fetus [g]?. In other words, is the fetus a person?
Back to the top The Fetus is Not a PersonHowever we look at the situation, one thing is clear: in the way that we have defined a person above, the fetus is not a person. Looking back at the arguments from various secular ethical principles adumbrated above, we can clearly see that none of them apply to the fetus. From both classical and preference utilitarianism, we can see that the fetus can neither feel happiness not is it able to have preferences. And clearly it has no capacity to understand life, let alone desire to continue living. Finally a fetus is not autonomous in the sense that it cannot make any decisions. Thus by the various ethical principles we have examined, taking the life of a fetus is not the same as taking the life of a rational and self-conscious person. A fetus therefore does not have the same claim to life as a person.Some anti-abortionists may admit the fact that fetus are not persons but argue nevertheless that abortion is wrong. Normally the defense goes along the lines that the fetus is on is way to becoming a person or that it has the potential to be a person. That the fetus already have rudiments of personhood, does not change the basis of its moral status, as noted Andrew Johnson (who lectured on bio-ethics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill):
That the capacity to feel pain should be a consideration in the issue of abortion [see below] is not denied. But the point is that if capacity to feel pain or pleasure is to be used to absolutely prohibit abortion, then it should apply to the slaughter all animals - such as chickens, pigs etc - that have such capacities. In other words, to be consistent, anti-abortionists should all be vegetarians! [h] That the fetus has the potential to be a person is also not denied; but potentiality is not the same as actuality. A couple of examples should suffice. A thirteen year old is a potential 21-year-old, but any liquor store owner that sells alcohol to such a "potential adult" would be put in jail. For a while towards the end of 2004, John Kerry had the potential to become president of the United States - but that potential did not give him any rights or powers of a president. There is simply no principle which allows the potential acquisition of a right to be equal to the actual attainment of it. [10] That most anti-abortionists have an instinctive understanding of the basic difference between a fetus and a person can be seen from the examples below:
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On Lines of Demarcation and InfanticideThere are two possible objections to our formulation of the problem of abortion and its resolution. Firstly it could be noted that there is no firm line dividing personhood and non-personhood. Secondly it might be objected that the line can be drawn after birth - justifying infanticide.The first objection, if made by anti-abortionists, is made presumably to push back the line of personhood to the fertilized egg. But many things in nature are fuzzy in the middle without being fuzzy at the opposite ends. For example we see clearly when a man is bald and when he has a full head of hair. Yet at what point baldness starts - following the gradual loss of hair - is hard to draw. Thus the argument that because we cannot draw a firm line of personhood therefore we must bring it all the way back to the zygote is no different from refusing to call a man without a single hair on his head "bald" simply because we cannot determine exactly at what point baldness starts. [13] Even without a clear demarcation, we can say that the fetus is definitely not a person and that know that children and adults certainly are. In view of the uncertainty though, it would be prudent to draw the line between person and non-person as conservatively as possible. This will be discussed below. The second objection needs a little more discussion. It must be admitted that given our definition of persons above, the newborn infant is not a person. I agree with the formulation of Peter Singer that, given our careful consideration above, on ethical grounds taking the life of an infant is not comparable with the killing of an older child or adult. Since infanticide, like euthanasia, is a crime in almost every country in the world, we must be careful to differentiate two issues here: the ethical and the legal. Let us look at the ethical issue first. The issue of infanticide, like abortion and perhaps even more so because the infant can be seen, is one which evokes a strong emotional response. This is exactly the type of emotional response anti-abortionists tries to encourage among their ilk. Take this statement by Leon R. Kass, the president of the U.S. President's Council on Bioethics (discussing cloning):
This is what George Orwell referred to as a "moral nose" - in the sense that one could detect wickedness just by sniffing. But nasal reasoning [John Harris' delicious phrase!], the feeling of "outrage" without critical reflection, is extremely unreliable for critical moral evaluation. The idea of one's racial supremacy, something which at one time many would have - in the words of Leon Kass - "rightfully held dear", is one such example. It was not too long ago that many people would consider it an outrage to see a black person refusing to give up her seat in the bus for a white man or to see interracial marriage as a affront to one's racial purity and dignity. [15] It must be remembered that the idea that infanticide is absolutely wrong is, like the idea that abortion is absolutely wrong, comes from Christianity and was not universally recognized as murder. Great moral philosophers of the past such Plato, Aristotle and Seneca, all of which evidenced strong compassionate moral sense in their writings, do not consider infanticide, per se as a crime. Indeed they thought it as a humane solution to the suffering of sick and deformed babies. Jeremy Bentham, the utilitarian philosopher, wrote that infanticide is "of a nature not to give the slightest inquietude to the most timid imagination." [16] There are cases from modern medicine where infanticide would be, if legal, the most humane solution. We have already given one example above: that of anencephaly. The modern "treatment" is to withhold treatment and allow the child to die - which could take up to a few days. While it is unlikely that the anencephalic baby can be said to suffer in any sense, in view of the suffering caused to its parents by this experience, where the few days of watching the baby die could be an agonizingly long time, it would have been better to administer active euthanasia to end the life of the baby. Another example is that of spina bifida [i] - a birth defect involving a malformation of the spinal cord. Sometimes infants born with a milder form of this condition - spina bifida occulta - can be treated and are able to lead a somewhat normal life. However in severe cases - spina bifida cystica - the result can be paralysis, incontinence and intellectual disabilities. It has been documented that some children with this had to undergo up to forty operations before the age of thirteen. Some doctors with experience treating severe cases of spina bifida have indicated that the quality of life for these children are so miserable that it would be wrong to resort to surgery during infancy just to keep them alive. Here is an other case where a reconsideration of the general attitude towards infanticide may be required. [17] In these cases, where infanticide may be the most humane option, it would not take very long after birth to decide on this. Thus some moral philosophers have suggested the time limit of one week (Michael Tooley) to one month (Peter Singer) after birth as the permissible period for infanticide. [18] Although from a critical ethical perspective infanticide may not be wrong, it is obvious that more considerations come into play after the birth of the baby. It should be noted that the examples given above are rare cases where infanticide may be desirable. Unlike in pregnancy - where considerations of the fetus (non)viability outside the womb is important, once the baby is born, the parents or parent (if she happens to be a single mother), can choose to give the baby for adoption immediately if she cannot or do not want to raise it. [19] Taking into mind the uncertainty of when personhood is achieved, erring on the side of caution, and given the reasons for demarcating it in the first place, there is absolutely no necessity to draw the line of personhood beyond a month after birth.
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Applying Hare's Intuitive Ethics to AbortionWe have established that abortion is not murder and that it is morally permissible. In all cases the interest of the mothers take precedence over that of the fetus. We have also seen that possible objections to this conclusion - the difficulty of drawing the line demarcating personhood and the linkage with infanticide - can be met without too much difficulty. This conclusion is enough for us to condemn any acts of anti-abortion that leads the deaths and suffering of women (real persons).However saying that abortion is not murder and is morally permissible does not mean that it is a decision to be taken in a cavalier fashion. Anyone who has a late term abortion because it interferes with their holiday plans is morally equivalent to a person who would kill his pet golden retriever because he got bored with having a dog around the house! To discover the preferred ethical position with respect to abortion, we need to bring practical considerations into the picture. The most appropriate way to do this, in my opinion, is the two levels of moral reasoning approach introduced by moral philosopher, R.M. Hare. These two levels, the intuitive and the critical, have different but important roles to play. The intuitive level plays a major role in our everyday life. The reader can see that if we are to consider the ethical implications of all our actions every second of the day, we will not be able to make decisions at all. Thus on a day-to-day level we rely on ethical principles we have learnt (e.g. it is always wrong to lie, to kill etc) in order to decide what to do. However the intuitive level is more than just a "short cut" to handle practical moral issues - they have an important role to play in our overall morality. As Hare commented:
What Hare is saying is that having principles to guide our day to day moral decision making actually ensures that we make the right moral decisions most of the time. For we are all familiar with the temptation to "special plead" our case in normal day to day situations (e.g. "I know it was a 'white lie' to say that I had 2 years experience in corporate finance when I only had one, but hey I really needed the job!"). By having principles that we follow automatically we would avoid cases like these most of the time. However it must be remembered that wrong principles can be learned - such as the revulsion against interracial marriage - and this is where the critical level of moral reasoning comes in. Critical level ethics is even more important when we consider situations which are out of the ordinary (such as infanticide, embryo experimentation and stem cell research) - thus the call of Leon Kass to "untuit and feel, immediately and without argument" for just such cases is irresponsible in the extreme. The critical level of reasoning is where we select, compare and, if necessary, re-evaluate general moral principles for the use at the intuitive level. How is this to be done? One can get a good idea of how this is done by reading works of moral philosophers. [j] In summary such critical reasoning requires clarity in formulating and understanding of the ethical terms used and a consistent logical analysis of the principles in order to ensure that no contradiction exists between them. The principles and prescriptions that arise out of these should be universally applicable to all persons - everything else being equal. [21] Our above example of the status of the fetus vis-à-vis the mother is an example of such critical level ethics. For this section, we will not go through the critical level analysis again but we will use what I think should be a relatively uncontroversial principle: that it is wrong to inflict pain on sentient beings. We certainly utilize this principle in our treatment of animals and it is certainly applicable to the fetus - when it has reached the stage of development where it can sense pain. This happens when synaptic connections develop within the cerebral cortex - which does not begin until 18 weeks after gestation. Prior to that point it cannot be said that the fetus is able to feel any pain. After 18 weeks, it can. Thus just as we do not, as a rule, inflict harm on sentient, but non self-conscious, animals, we should not, everything else being equal, inflict harm on the fetus beyond this point. [22] Since we have exposed the "sanctity of human life" as the theological fiction that it is, we can use the consideration above to come up with a useful rule of thumb: that abortion prior to 18 weeks after gestation harms no one. The fetus cannot be said to be harmed if it cannot feel pain. Saying that it harms no one does not mean that it would not be a sad occasion for the expectant mother - if she was looking forward to the baby and had to abort for unavoidable reasons. However no one should be prevented from having an abortion, if she wants it, without giving any reasons. This is also not to say that abortion post 18 weeks is absolutely prohibited, it only means that more serious consideration to the fetus must be given; all the time recognizing that the interests of the mother supercedes it. However any culture which allows the cavalier disposal of sentient beings that can feel pain will probably not be the kind of culture that any self-conscious homo sapiens, evolved as we are with moral sentiments, will feel comfortable in. Thus at the intuitive level we should say that anyone who has an abortion for cavalier reasons (say the need to take a holiday which may fall on dates close to the estimated date of birth of the baby) after this point is morally deficient, and we would condemn her in the same way that we would censure a person who inflicts harm or tortures animals for fun. Finally, with respect to infanticide, we can suggest that, at most, it should be allowed only for the very rare cases mentioned above. The practical reasoning again is similar to that of abortion 18 weeks post gestation - that a society that would allow the killing of infants, even when they are not persons will be the type of society that may inculcate the wrong type of moral principles to follow. Remember that the intuitive level is relatively unreflective. While the infant is not self-conscious (i.e. not persons) it does look a lot like a self-conscious person. Thus allowing infanticide at an intuitive ethical level could mean that the wrong critical principle (it is okay to kill all human beings) may become inculcated in society. [23] Thus a good set of intuitive ethical principles with respect to abortion and infanticide would be these:
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Notes
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