Abortion: Not a Moral Issue?
Oct 2nd, 2007 by Micah Tillman | 27 Comments |
We draw a distinction between moral/social issues and political issues in American politics. I find the distinction very helpful, but don’t think it would have made any sense to people before the American separation of Church and State. We say that the government has no business “legislating morality,” but I have to think that most people in history would respond to that with, “On what basis, then, does it make murder and theft illegal?”
In reality, what happened is that the American government decided there are certain things worth legislating about, and whatever is left over is called a “moral” or “social issue.” But the initial decision as to what issues should fall under government purview is a moral one, having to do as it does, with what is good or bad (for society?), worthwhile and waste.
I had a discussion with a friend last night who said that he agreed with Giuliani’s stance that government should not be legislating morality on the issue of abortion. Government, we all agreed, should stay out of moral issues.
I responded that while we can talk about whether abortion is morally wrong (we both thought it was) it fell under the initial range of issues which our government (following John Locke’s Second Treatise of Civil Government) had decided was worth legislating; namely, protecting people from each other.
Locke said the purpose of political power was to protect property (amongst which he included life) from being taken by others. The question then becomes whether a developing baby in the womb is alive (a person). If it is, then its protection is the job of government, and whether to protect it is not a moral issue (meaning, an extrapolitical issue). If it isn’t, then protecting it is an invasion of the woman’s privacy and a legislation of morality.
That’s an interesting line of argumentation. As you say, it pushes the argument back to the issue of the personhood of the unborn baby. I guess that’s more or less where we see the debate happening today.
Absolutely. And what’s strange is that we don’t seem to be able to come up with an answer to that question based on science (which is supposedly a-moral) alone.
So the question is whether it is a moral question, but we can’t seem to answer it in a way that the other side would say is non-moral.
Strange situation.
Yes. Also, when politicians (Republicans) say they strongly oppose abortion on moral grounds what they’re really saying is that they will look sternly at those who support abortion and that’s about it. We’ll know a politician takes life seriously when he or she claims that life is fundamental right necessary to all others (social justice). ~Fred
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“Personhood” is an arbitrary distinction. Blacks were once counted as 3/4 of a person. The question is not “are unborn children ‘persons’” but “should they be?” There is no scientific question about whether the child in the womb is alive. You can open up any biology textbook and learn that life begins at conception. That is not a philosophical matter, it’s just a matter of fact.
A person is the same being from conception on. Functioning develops only gradually, but a person has a sudden beginning. I was once a teenager, once a child, once a baby, and once a fetus. My beginning can be traced back to conception.
The question that must be answered by the government is whether or not life inside the womb is worthy of protection. In other words, are human beings that have not yet passed through the birth canal “persons”?
I think the question “are the unborn ‘persons’” gets so confused philosophically for one main reason: The answer is so obvious that if you think to hard you can’t see it.
Unborn babies are fully human and fully alive and individual from their mothers. They are “persons.” it was never valid when “slaves” were considered “not persons.” Never.
Human babies are human beings with the rights given to them by God.
:-)
ThirstyJon
freedomthirst.com
Though I do not believe in abortion I thinks it’s all a bit squishier than it appears.
I think the challenge is convincing a secular humanist (or whoever else) that there’s something special about the coming together of sperm and egg. Men lose hundreds of thousands of sperm with each ejaculation. Women lose one egg every 28 (or so) days. The argument that’s incumbent on us is why, when these two things are joined, that they are suddenly special.
An argument can be run that a highly developed fetus has a proportionately developed ability to experience suffering. If suffering works as a moral criteria there’s clear reasons available to both sides of the debate to oppose mid and late term abortions. But the early ball of rapidly developing cells?
I don’t even think it works to talk about the potential of the early fetus; the sperm and the egg have that potential too.
My anti-abortion position unfolds from my belief in the nature of God. I simply don’t think that we have much evidence that is going to be convincing to somebody who doesn’t believe in God or who disagrees with me about the nature of God. As a result, I don’t see much fruitful in going about a debate with somebody who is pro-choice about abortion as abortion; the real debate for me is about more basic issues.
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@jeff
Why “when these two things are joined [are they] suddenly special?” Because that is when a new human being comes into existence. Innocent human life is worthy of protection no matter what stage of development.
Casey:
I don’t disagree with you that this is a special moment. But the reason I view it is a special flows out of my views about the nature of God.
On a biological level, within a secular world view, it’s hard to see what’s special about it. It’s certainly an important milestone. But there are lots of other milestones.
Why not focus on the formation of the sperm? Why not focus on the formation of the egg? Why not focus on some later point like the formation of a central nervous system?
I suppose it is the first time that stuff from both parents is joined. But I still don’t see any objective, secular reason to view this as particularly special. I don’t think that the claim “This is the first point at which it will turn into a human being” is particularly persuasive. Left alone, the zygote won’t turn into a human being. Under the right circumstance, sperm and ovum will turn into a human being.
I hope it seems like I’m just summing up, and not being a jerk, when I say I think it’s begging the question to progress in the way that most of us pro-life folks do: we claim we’re proving that all fetuses have equal moral value to fully formed life, but in fact we smuggle that assumption into our premises with the unjustified claim that fertilized egg is a human being.
@jeff
No, I don’t think you’re being a jerk at all. I think you’re wrong, but I don’t think you’re a jerk. :)
You said, “Left alone, the zygote won’t turn into a human being.” You’re right. The zygote is a human being. What’s special about fertilization is that it marks the beginning of a new human being. Sperm is not a distinct human being, and an unfertilized egg is not a distinct human being. A fertilized egg, on the other hand, is a distinct human individual with its own DNA.
I should note that the following investigations I am going to make are done purely from a rights-based perspective. I am not considering those moral views (like utilitarianism) which are not rights-based and which could come to very different conclusions.
We begin with the idea that human beings have rights (chiefly the right to life). We ask what is special about human beings that they should have rights? Various things come to mind – the capacity to reason, the capacity to appreciate music and literature and baseball, etc. If we stop there, then it’s clear that only fairly well-formed human beings should have any rights. Perhaps they are acquired at about two years of age or so.
This makes most people unhappy. Surely infants have rights. Most of us feel a sense of horror at the idea that it’s perfectly all right to expose infants on the mountainside. So, perhaps we should decide that the future capacity for human experience is enough to grant rights. So this grants rights to infants, but also to fetuses. A fetus, left alone without interruption, also has the capacity for future human experience. This is very different from a sperm or an unfertilized egg. Obviously, even in the most fertile of men, millions of sperms will never have any shot at fertilizing an egg. And even the most fecund of women will leave hundreds of unfertilized eggs (although if she stayed continually pregnant until menopause, this might be only because they never drop into her tubes). However, an unaborted zygote has an excellent chance of becoming a human being so long as the mother simply continues to do what she would ordinarily do to sustain her own life. In fact, a fetus has much more of a claim on rights than an infant. Infants require their parents to actually feed them, rather than just feed themselves. Some people attempt to deny fetuses rights because they are “parasitic.” Such a claim clearly denies rights to infants as well (and probably strips rights from my brother, who is a Type I diabetic).
This makes some people unhappy. They wish to deny fetuses rights while still continuing to grant them to infants. So how about the capacity for suffering? Infants clearly have this capacity and fetuses (especially in very early stages of development) almost certainly don’t. This appears to be a good solution except that it quite clearly grants rights to animals. At least the vertebrates and perhaps some invertebrates as well.
So, it seems to me that there are a few rights-based alternatives here: 1) Grant rights only to reasonably mature human beings. Animals, infants, and fetuses have no rights. 2) Grant rights to adults, infants, and fetuses and deny them to animals. 3) Grant rights to adults, infants, and animals and deny them to fetuses. What I really can’t seem to justify is one which grants rights to adults and infants, but denies them to fetuses and animals. Needless to say, this is almost certainly the most popular rights-based philosophy, but I’ve never seen a coherent rights-based justification for it.
I might be able to find a justification for it in a consequentialist philosophy, but ultimately I can’t imagine how such a philosophy would justify forbidding infanticide. (When committed by the parents, I mean. Clearly it can find a justification when the parents object to the infanticide, based on their happiness, not the infant’s.)
Casey:
That’s an interesting observation, that the zygote has it’s own unique DNA. That’s a qaulitative difference from the egg or sperm, which only have half the parents DNA. I wonder if possessing DNA can be cashed out to mean something in terms of personhood? However this explanation works, it seems like you’d want to be mindful of the idea that some “disabled” people have defects around DNA and its arrangement on chromosomes. (In other words, I don’t think you’d want to construct a theory which somehow counted people sufferering from downs syndrome as sub-human.)
Andrew:
I agree with some of what you’re saying. There’s an absurdity in the position that the day before a fetus is delivered it doesn’t have any moral worth or standing… but at the moment of birth suddenly the infant inherits all sorts of worth, rights, whatever.
However, I don’t see much that would be persuasive to somebody outside a theistic world view to indicate precisely when the magical moment is. I see that you’re trying to establish this in your line of argument. The pivotal portion, I think is:
“A fetus, left alone without interruption, also has the capacity for future human experience. This is very different from a sperm or an unfertilized egg. Obviously, even in the most fertile of men, millions of sperms will never have any shot at fertilizing an egg.”
To be a little picky, I think it would be slightly more accurate to say that a fetus left without direct human intervertion, has the capacity for future human experience. I’ll leave aside the question of how healthy a fetus would be if the mother did not alter diet and lifestyle and focus on the fact that the reason I make this distinction:
A fertilized fetus is far from uninterrupted. There’s all sorts of crazy stuff going on. Some is caused by the mother’s biology. Some is stirred from within the fetus itself. A lot we have no real clue how and why it works.
The reason I think it’s important to notice this distinction– between human intervention and interuption– is that it brings us back to my positon which is that fertizilation is a fairly arbitrary point in development to pick, biologically speaking.
Life began millions (billions?) of years ago. It didn’t stop. The sperm and eggs within all our ancestors were alive. The only reason that a viable sperm makes it to a viable egg is that a long string of biology leads to this… I don’t see that this long string of biology is qualitatively different than the developing fetus.
I am far outside the theistic worldview. I’ve been an atheist since I was ten, and possibly earlier. The debate about abortion has nothing to do with theism; I have always been at a loss why both sides seem to assume it does.
What I was trying to point out is that fertilization is far from arbitrary; it’s the only logical point. Before fertilization, eggs and sperm (particularly the latter) have practically zero chance of becoming a human being. Afterwards, they have an excellent chance. The logic of this argument has almost always been granted by intellectually honest atheist philosophers. Even Peter Singer acknowledges this, though he is still pro-abortion (and also pro-infanticide). I love Singer, by the way, since he follows utilitarianism to its logical conclusion. It is a perfectly valid moral philosophy to approve of both abortion and infanticide as Singer does. I think the argument that you are making entails this philosophy (or, alternately, granting rights to animals, which Singer also does).
I hope you’ll accept my apologies for assumptions around your world view. I suppose the reason that most folks (including myself) assume that your views are connected with one is that Judeo-Christian theists, at least, hold the belief that humans are uniquely created in God’s image… As you indicate, there are other reasons for holding the belief that there is something significant about conception. I suppose the question where debating here is just what this something is and what is significant about it.
It’s an interesting point that the specific sperm that fertilized an egg has a much higher chance of becoming a human than a sperm we might point out at random. I’m not trying to be obtuse when I ask how this probablity is related to morality. It seems like based on your argument, a fetus within a pro-choice woman has fewer rights than a fetus within a pro-life woman, because the fetus within the pro-life woman has a much higher chance of becoming a human being (because the pro-life women is unlikely to terminate the pregnancy.)
Andrew is right. Fertilization is the only point in development that is not arbitrary. The only point on which I would disagree is that I believe that human beings have intrinsic worth. Otherwise, if we throw that out, I’d probably have to agree that we need to grant rights to animals as well.
Jeff, you still are trying to call a fetus a non-human being. The fetus (and embryo) meet all requirements for being classified as “alive.” These are separate beings, so if they are not human beings, what kind of beings are they? In scientific terms, these are human beings. I think you are mixing up the legal definition of “personhood” with the term “human being.” There is no debate about whether unborn children are human beings. That is an established scientific fact.
Also, to answer your question, Jeff, disabled persons have separate DNA from their parents, too. I brought up DNA because that is what makes us individuals. Having defects in one’s DNA does not make one any less an individual.
Andrew is right. Fertilization is the only point in development that is not arbitrary. The only point on which I would disagree is that I believe that human beings have intrinsic worth. Otherwise, if we throw that out, I’d probably have to agree that we need to grant rights to animals as well.
You’re not even disagreeing with me there. (In fact, I purposely refrained from giving my own view on the matter.) The start of my investigation was asking why humans have this intrinsic worth (and not animals) with the assumption that they did possess it. However, I probably missed your own reason why since I also purposely avoided assuming theism. Presumably, your belief is based on ensoulment or something of the sort, while I used the capacity to reason or something similar. I think the only time we have to grant rights to animals is if we decide that rights come about due to capacity to suffer, a capacity animals clearly possess. Or, perhaps, if you believe the human capacity to reason is a difference of degree only and not of kind between humans and animals. (Or, alternately, if animals too are ensouled, if we’re assuming a theistic framework.)
It’s an interesting point that the specific sperm that fertilized an egg has a much higher chance of becoming a human than a sperm we might point out at random. I’m not trying to be obtuse when I ask how this probablity is related to morality. It seems like based on your argument, a fetus within a pro-choice woman has fewer rights than a fetus within a pro-life woman, because the fetus within the pro-life woman has a much higher chance of becoming a human being (because the pro-life women is unlikely to terminate the pregnancy.)
Well, my point was that a sperm pointed to at random has a zero chance of becoming human, unless a positive action is made to allow it to fertilize an egg (and it’s still very close to zero even if that positive action is made). A fetus, though, will eventually become an adult human unless it is prevented from becoming one, either through accident or direct human intervention. (However, I too could stop being a human either through an accident or direct human intervention.) I’m not sure I’m following your argument against this.
You say, Life began millions (billions?) of years ago. It didn’t stop. The sperm and eggs within all our ancestors were alive. The only reason that a viable sperm makes it to a viable egg is that a long string of biology leads to this… I don’t see that this long string of biology is qualitatively different than the developing fetus.
This argument, I believe, leads to one of two conclusions: 1) All life has rights, presumably including plants or 2) nothing has rights. Both of these views are defensible. In the case of (1), we would only be allowed to eat things which had already died and the human population would perforce have to shrink considerably. (Voluntary Human Extinction Movement anyone? Although it’s not clear who would try to protect the rights of all those plants and animals being killed via predation.) In the case of (2), we are now outside the rights-based framework which I was assuming.
Andrew,
Yeah, sorry, I wasn’t specific. I wasn’t disagreeing with your logic, I was just noting (somewhat clumsily) that my belief that humans have intrinsic worth is based on my belief that humans have souls and were created in God’s image (similar, probably, to what you would refer to as “reasoning”). I don’t know how to discuss worth and value outside of a theistic framework. If everything happened by chance and there’s no purpose to anything, then I don’t know how to argue that we should value life, human or animal. I’ll leave that up to you. :)
Casey:
I think you are right. The fetus clearly is alive. But I’m still stuck on the fact that by any definition that I know, the sperm is alive and the egg is alive. They clearly aren’t likely to live as long as the fetus, and they clearly are not as developed as the fetus. But if you admit longevity or level of sophistication as criteria I think you’re embarking on a slippery slope that ends with early term abortions being o.k.
I think that there is a difference between something which is currently a human being and something which will someday become a human being… It seems to me that most definitions of human being don’t incorporate a rapidly developing ball of cells the size of a pinhead. I think if we start the whole debate with such a wide view of personhood we don’t actually accomplish much, I think we’ve simply begged the question. I think our arguments still won’t be persuasive to people who support abortion because we’ve begun with premises they won’t buy into. I will politely beg to differ with you about whether or not there is debate as to whether unborn children are human beings. I happen to believe that they are on theological grounds. But I don’t think it helps our cause to say “It’s an established scientific fact that at the moment of fertilization this counts as a human being.” Because the other side will just as easily say “It’s an established scientific fact that it doesn’t count as a human being until it can live outside with the womb without scientific intervention.” To the best of my knowledge, both sides could produce well-respected experts to back these claims, so I think they just end us up where we started.
Also, I hope it didn’t appear that I was denying that people with disabalities don’t inherit stuff from their parents or that I believe they are only half-human. You implied that having a unique genetic code might be part of what gives an embryo it’s special moral status. I was responding to this implication — which might not have even been your intent– by saying that if this turns out to be the defining characteristic that those disabalities which are genetic might pose a problem for this explanation.
Andrew:
To some extent it’s rather perverse for me to continue this line of argumentation. I agree with your conclusions but don’t understand how your worldview could support them. It’d be rather strange for me to want to take you out of them.
However, if I can figure out if I understand how and why you’re argument makes sense, how abortion can be construed as wrong from a non-theistic or atheistic point of view, this would be a profound thing for me, it would give me a way to dialogue with people on the abortion issue that would be relevant to them. I think one of the reasons the abortion debate doesn’t go anywhere is because many of the participants don’t recognize that they are rooting their arguments on entirely different assumptions about the nature of the world.
In the end, I think your right. The consideration that life began bazillions of years ago and that there’s no reasonable criteria to count any portion of this process as special outside of a theistic world view leads to all sorts of messy consequences.
Jeff, sperm and eggs are alive. You are right. So are all the other cells in the body. The fertilized egg, however, has its own unique set of DNA. It is its own being. I’m not arguing based on longevity or sophistication. I’m arguing that the only non-arbitrary point at which to define personhood is when the human being comes into existence, and that, by definition, is at conception.
Jeff, let’s put it this way:
1) Is the fertilized egg alive?
2) Is the fertilized egg a distinct being (i.e., a distinct individual with its own DNA and not simply part of an individual)?
3) Is the DNA of the fertilized egg human DNA?
If the answer to those questions is yes, then how can you possibly come to any other conclusion than that the fertilized egg is a human being? If the answer to any of those questions is no, please explain. I would be interested to see a biologist who argued that the unborn child is anything other than a human being in the scientific sense.
Jeff and Casey: of course, as I’ve pointed out before elsewhere in these comments, God does not solve the question of morality. Any mind-dependent morality is subject to the Euthyphro Dilemma, even if the mind is God’s. Nevertheless, moral law exists and, if God exists, he is as subject to it as we are.
I should also comment that I have not actually given my own opinion on a rights-based morality. I have given six options:
1) Nothing has rights.
2) All life has rights.
3) Only well-formed humans have rights.
4) Adults, infants, and fetuses have rights.
5) Adults, infants, and animals have rights.
6) It’s almost certainly possible to construct a rights-based theory in which adults, infants, fetuses, and animals all have rights, but we can still deny them to plants, viruses, bacteria, etc.
You pays yer money, you takes yer choice. The only real point I was making is that it’s just about impossible to justify the view that adults and infants have rights, but fetuses and animals don’t. This is, of course, the law of the land in just about every Western nation.
If I were to try to convince a non-theist of whatever stripe (atheist, agnostic, or anti-theist) about why abortion is wrong, I would argue that the Bald Eagle Protection Act makes it a Federal crime to destroy an American Bald Eagle’s egg, because we value bald eagles so much. To favor that law and approve of abortion ranks humans below bald eagles.
My point is a sub-view of Andrew Stephenson’s #2– the preciousness of all life–but it avoids getting bent out of shape over stepping on spiders. From a logic point of view, my view is an attempt to point out that most folks who are pro-abortion on principle are inconsistent.
The broader point of view that I hold is that any view that does not take into account the reality of the Judeo-Christian God must have a place of inconsistency in it. On that I was tutored by Francis Schaeffer (see his The God Who Is There). Of course this stronger view is impossible to prove, since it requires examining an infinite number of cases. But aborting bald eagle fetuses versus aborting human fetuses is certainly one case that can be discussed.
Miriam-Webster definition: A fetus is “an unborn or unhatched vertebrate” in case you wonder whether bird eggs are fetuses.
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