Tuesday, January 30, 2007

A Philosophical Study of Abortion

The abortion controversy is just that- controversial. For some, lines have been drawn, slogans have been made, labels have been given, and heated arguments, or worse, have ensued. For others, the answer is intuitive and obvious. For still others, there is uncertainty. Arguments from both sides are reasonable, so how does one reconcile them?

In my study of abortion I have chosen two prominent philosophical arguments- one that argues for abortion, and one that argues against.

The first paper was written by John T. Noonan Jr., titled “An Almost Absolute Value in History.” He argues that a fetus is a person and his thesis is that if you are conceived by human parents, you are human. He tests the thesis by analyzing the major arguments against fetal personhood. Without fail, each argument collapses.

Noonan covers what he calls “the most popular” argument first: viability. Here’s how it goes. A fetus is not a person until it is viable; that is until it is no longer dependent upon its mother to survive.

Noonan shows how viability cannot be the criteria for personhood because as medicine progresses, the age that a fetus becomes viable gets lower and lower. Also, Noonan says, “there is considerable elasticity to the idea of viability. Mere length of life is not an exact measure.” Each fetus progresses at different rates. Even the racial group to which the fetus belongs affects when it is viable. According to Noonan, “If viability is the norm, the standard would vary with race and with many individual circumstances.”

However, the most important argument against using a viability test for personhood is based on what viability really means- that the fetus is dependent upon the mother for survival.
“Dependence is not ended by viability. The fetus is still absolutely dependent on someone’s care in order to continue existence; indeed a child of one or three or even five years of age is absolutely dependent on another’s care for existence; uncared for, the older fetus or the younger child will die as surely as the early fetus detached from the mother. The unsubstantial lessening in dependence at viability does not seem to signify any special acquisition of humanity.”
Therefore the “easy” argument of viability does not work. Viability cannot be the standard for the permissibility of abortion. The other common arguments are experience, the sentiments and sensations of parents, and social visibility. As Noonan puts it, “by force of the argument from the consequences,” these personhood distinctions are rejected.

I would like to try and briefly summarize Noonan’s coverage of the social visibility argument. I think it very instructive of the dangerous ground on which pro-abortionists tread as they try to rationalize abortion by denying the fetus personhood.

The argument goes like this: Since the fetus is not perceived socially by others, it is not human. It is not a member of society, and “excluded from the society of men, the fetus is excluded from the humanity of men.” What is the problem with this argument? In Noonan’s words,
“If humanity depends on social recognition, individuals or whole groups may be dehumanized by being denied any status in their society….the failure of society to recognize the prisoner, the alien, the heterodox as human has led to the destruction of human beings…Any attempt to limit humanity to exclude some groups runs the risk of furnishing authority and precedent for excluding other groups in the name of the consciousness or perception of the controlling group in the society.”

After reading Noonan’s arguments, the difficulty pro-abortionists face becomes obvious. By withholding personhood from a fetus, they inadvertently deny personhood to groups that are without a doubt human. Indeed, this dilemma has forced the hand of many abortion apologists, making them deny personhood to the elderly, the handicapped, and the newly born.

One apologist chose another route. This route allowed her to avoid the pitfalls of redefining personhood. In “A Defense of Abortion” Judith Jarvis Thomson allows for a fetus to be a person, even at the moment of conception. Not because she believes it- she obviously does not. No, she does it so that she can argue that it doesn’t matter. She challenges the traditional pro-life argument that since a fetus is a human, abortion is murder and therefore unallowable under any circumstance by using the following thought experiment:

“…..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, ad can safely be unplugged from you.”


This is a quite famous thought experiment, and Thomson is given much credit for abortion’s legalization. Most people would agree that the violinist has no valid claim to be “plugged” into you. Therefore, no crime is committed by unplugging him, even were it to result in his death. Now, astute readers will immediately point out that the violinist was forcibly plugged into you, which is certainly not the case in all pregnancies. Thomson of course knows this, and concedes that this example works best in the case of pregnancy due to rape. But this is just the beginning of her attack on the traditional “abortion is murder” argument. Thomson is arguing against the so called “extreme view” held by many pro-lifers. That is that abortion is murder in every case, even those pregnancies due to rape. This is Thomson’s “foot in the door” maneuver; she believes that proving the extreme view is unreasonable will open the floodgates in her favor.

As Thomson parries every conceivable attack on her violinist argument, she delineates three distinct definitions of “right to life”:

1. Right to be given at least the bare minimum one needs for continued life.
2. Right not to be killed by anybody
3. Right not to be killed unjustly.

Thomson fairly handily deflates the first two proposed definitions, and seems to rest her case on the third. Just what constitutes an “unjust killing?” By force of her violinist example, she makes it plain that rape victim abortions do not qualify as unjust. She then jumps on that crack in the pro-life armor by saying,
“this argument would give the unborn person a right to its mother’s body only if her pregnancy resulted from a voluntary act, undertaken in full knowledge of the chance of a pregnancy might result from it.”

To this point in her paper , I find myself warily nodding my head in agreement, a little unsettled by the rationalizations in Thomson’s arguments, and a little unsure of the relevance of some her thought experiments, but overall everything seems quite rational.

However, until now Thomson is playing coy. She has attacked the weakest links in the pro-life “extreme view” argument: Rape and the mother’s own life at risk. But those two very rare circumstances are not the end of her argument. Rather, they are merely a means to an end.

Thomson’s view of abortion is heavily influenced by her perspective of procreation and conception. The flaw in her reasoning is revealed in the following paragraph, written just after Thomson makes her point about unjust killing:

“I suppose we may take it as a datum that in a case of pregnancy due to rape the mother has not given the unborn person a right to the use of her body for food and shelter. Indeed, in what pregnancy could it be supposed that the mother has given the unborn person such a right? It is not as if there were unborn persons drifting about the world, to whom a woman who wants a child says, “I invite you in.”


Hmmm….In what pregnancy? That’s a very good question. In fact, it may well be that Ms. Thomson has stumbled upon the key to the abortion controversy. Interestingly, though she may not have realized it, Thomson has already answered.

Recall that after settling on “the right not to be killed unjustly” as the only acceptable definition for a “right to life,” Thomson explained that unjust killing in the case of abortion occurs if the pregnancy “resulted from a voluntary act, undertaken in full knowledge of the chance a pregnancy might result from it. That would label as “unjust” every abortion for pregnancies not the result of rape, because certainly consensual sex is a voluntary act. But Thomson is not satisfied with her victory over the “extreme view.” She now attempts to show that an “unwanted” pregnancy is grounds for an abortion-that it is not unjust killing to obtain one- because the mother has not expressly given the baby permission to be there. However, she fails to show how killing a person goes from unjust to just simply because the mother of the person doesn’t want her. Thomson argues that if every precaution is taken to prevent conception, but that a baby is formed anyway, it is no longer unjust to kill her. But Thomson’s’ earlier definition still applies. It is still a “voluntary act undertaken in full knowledge of the chance a pregnancy might result from it.”

Thomson’s efforts to bridge the gap between “voluntary” and “unwanted” fall far short. She variously compares the person created, a person brought into very existence by her mother and father, to “people pollen” and burglars circumventing the very best home-security systems. But the fact that the pregnancy may not have been “voluntary” does not negate the fact that the act of conception irrevocably is.

So what are we left with then? A study of two highly influential scholars on opposite sides of the abortion debate has shown the great difficulty facing all who attempt to deny a fetus personhood. For in so doing living, breathing humans are denied their humanity as well. One scholar tried to show that abortion is acceptable despite granting the fetus full personhood, but only partially succeeded. It is clear, then, that abortion amounts to killing a living human being. With very rare exceptions, these killings are unjust, and therefore should be illegal.

13 comments:

Ashlee said...

Wow, that was a big one! You know my viewpoints on this one already. SO, I won't go into long details, but good job!

aus blog said...

The Unborn Victims of Violence Act is a United States law which defines violent assault committed against pregnant women as being a crime against two persons: the woman and the fetus she carries.

This law was passed in 2004 after the murder of the then pregnant Laci Peterson and her fetus, Connor Peterson.



If it is right for a man (or woman) to be charged for homicide and sentenced to prison (or worse) for killing the unborn (and rightfully so)

then shouldn't the unborn have equil consideration in relation to abortion..?

Is a fetus earmarked for abortion of any less value to a fetus killed by violence...?

Is not abortion a violent attack on an inocent life just the same...?

I think it's not ethical to protect one without the other.....

they're one and the same........

libhom said...

This is an odd debate on abortion, since it ignores the rights and lives of women who are the ones who actually get pregnant.

Jessica said...

Can your last statement be reconciled with the Church's stance? Hasn't the Church stated that abortion is not equal to murder?

Bubblehead said...

Off topic: Hey, Cameron, would you like to get involved in this over at Right Mind?

C-Hayes said...

I just stumbled upon your website, and thought it was great. In fact, I linked to your Kyoto Protocol piece, I thought it was so good.

Check it out if you like - I'll be sure to be back to this site often.

http://c-hayes.blogspot.com/index.html

Thanks for doing what you do...

Cameron said...

This is an odd debate on abortion, since it ignores the rights and lives of women who are the ones who actually get pregnant.

It is also odd that no one talks much about the father's role in pregnancy and abortion. But that's a topic for another day.

Whatever rights the mother has are inseperabley connected to the life of the fetus she helped create. The broader point exemplified by these two scholars' opposing arguments is that the fetus is a human being. Our society does not take lightly the ending of human life, and rightly so. Many have attempted to show that a fetus is not a human yet, but all those definitions defining humanity have the unintended consequence of also denying humanity to people that have been born. The only definition I am aware of that does not result in also taking away humanity from newborns, the elderly, those with down syndrome, etc, is the one Noonan proposes in his paper: If you are conceived by human parents, you are human.

So yes, it may seem that the abortion debate dwells on the fetus. But that's because if the fetus is indeed human, the mother's excuses for killing her don't hold much weight. Those that favor abortion, including Judith Thomson, recognize this just as those that are in opposition do.

Cameron said...

Can your last statement be reconciled with the Church's stance? Hasn't the Church stated that abortion is not equal to murder?

Here's my last few statements from the post:

It is clear, then, that abortion amounts to killing a living human being. With very rare exceptions, these killings are unjust, and therefore should be illegal.

Here is the Church's stance:

Human life is a sacred gift from God. Elective abortion for personal or social convenience is contrary to the will and the commandments of God. Church members who submit to, perform, encourage, pay for, or arrange for such abortions may lose their membership in the Church.

There is also this statement from Elder Russell M. Nelson:

Now, is there hope for those who have so sinned without full understanding, who now suffer heartbreak? Yes. So far as is known, the Lord does not regard this transgression as murder. And “as far as has been revealed, a person may repent and be forgiven for the sin of abortion.” Gratefully, we know the Lord will help all who are truly repentant.

Abortion and murder are not equal sins. I don't think that what I wrote equates them either.

Cameron said...

Shannon posted this on the Small Sins comment string, so I brought it over here:

In my opinion, both these debates are have been beaten to the ground over and over and over...
Yet the same conclusion, for both, still remains:

There is no scientific proof that yet that proves the fetus is born an actual being or with a spirit/personality/soul. Even religions, such as the Mormon one, treat abortion as a forgiveable sin...not as an unforgiveable one such as murder, which puts the two in completely different categories.

The down side to abortion is that it keeps people from the responsibility of their actions. But on the up side, it keeps women who DON'T want to be mothers from raising unwanted children.

Having children is a huge price to pay for a bit of fooling around. Having kids when one is unfit and unwilling makes even less sense than this.

The world is not black and white. What should be considered when contemplating you're stance on abortion is the individual person and individual circumstance. Why are we so anxious to define our thoughts by absolutes? Is it because it takes more effort to take each story into consideration? Do we feel safer with a definate yes or no?
Well, my vote is for maybe so...


Some religions do teach that "ensoulment" occurs at conseption, and the spirit or soul discussion would seem to be a strictly religious one. However, science can help in a few areas, like DNA. A fetus possesses a genetic code, which certainly supports Noonan's definition of humanity: If you are conceived by human parents you are human. Also, a new ultrasound technology has shown twins in the womb hugging and kissing. Alternately, I am not aware of any scientific "proof" denying humanity to the fetus.

The "unwanted pregnancy" argument is often used. It is certainly compelling. I think it goes something like this: A child born into a home where she is unloved, unwanted, and uncared for is tragic. Even a child born to a mother that simply cannot care for her- maybe because of financial reasons- is tragic as well. It is tragic not only for the child, but also for her parents. But is that reason to end the child's life? There are countless stories of people born in crummy circumstances that go on to lead exemplary lives. One in particular is Gianna Jessen, who was born with cerebral palsy and told she would never walk but who is now running marathons and singing the national anthem to the Colorado legislature.

There are alos countless examples of unwed, poor women who have found themselves pregnant from a bit of fooling around and chose to carry the baby to term and changed for the better because of it. I personally know of a few. Often, the consequences of our actions, if faced, can actually be a blessing.

There very well may be circumstances where a pregnant mother just cannot or should not have a baby, both for the baby's benefit and the mother's. But in those cases why not just adopt? There are waiting lists full of couples that can provide the lvoe and support the baby needs. I think Mother Teresa sums it up best:

Please don't kill the child. I want the child. Please give me the child. I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted and to give that child to a married couple who will love the child and be loved by the child.

Finally Shan, I don't think everything is black and white. But some things are. Either you speed or you don't. But if you do, you can get a ticket. Stealing is wrong, and against the law. Abusing your children is wrong, and against the law. I think abortion is wrong, and it should be against the law. This rather long winded post and subsequent comments are my attempt to show why.

Cameron said...

C-Hayes-

Thanks for stopping by. I found where you had linked to me, and the Kyoto post has seen a few hits since then. Thanks for the link, and the kind words. Feel free to comment as often as you'd like.

Kelly said...

Wow, you have a very thoughtful blog.

I'm not sure where I stand on abortion. I can see points to both sides. One side that is overlooked is the fathers. I recently had a friend who's girlfriend got pregnant and wanted an abortion, he did not and it wasn't his choice to make. She had one and it broke his heart. Do you think we will see more rights given to the father of the unborn baby when it comes to a decision on abortion?

Cameron said...

That's a great question about fathers' rights, and I don't have an answer. So far, the abortion debate has been dominated by discussion of the fetus and the mother, and the father really doesn't have any say in what happens to his child. I don't know if that is going to change any time soon, but I doubt it.

Anonymous said...

Having children is a huge price to pay for a bit of fooling around.

Perhaps this logic is the reason behind so many people's confusion. They see having children as a very large consequence for a very small indiscretion.

But that "fooling around" process is how it works naturally. The consequence is proper because the indiscretion is large. Increased sexual promiscuity has led many to believe that fooling around is not that big a deal.

Our bodies are sacred, and as such, there are serious consequences when ignore that sacredness.