Where the Abortion Debate Stands
by Raymond Hain
A new book provides the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and even-handed presentation of the abortion argument.
No serious national debate about abortion preceded the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. Instead, most of the cultural and philosophical battles have come afterwards. Since then, two general strategies have been developed by those who believe that abortion is at least sometimes morally acceptable. First, some argue that not all human beings are persons. While it is uncontroversial that what is present from the moment of conception is a human being, some argue that until certain characteristics necessary for personhood are present, we do not have a person and so we do not have anything that possesses serious moral status. This has been the strategy of philosophers Peter Singer, Michael Tooley, and Mary Anne Warren, among others, and if successful, abortion is morally unproblematic. Second, others argue (most famously Judith Jarvis Thomson) that even if all human beings are persons, sometimes (or even all the time) the rights of the mother outweigh the rights of the unborn person, and therefore the choice to abort is morally acceptable.
Professor Christopher Kaczor’s The Ethics of Abortion: Women’s Rights, Human Life, and the Question of Justice is now the most current and comprehensive philosophical defense available of the claim that both these strategies fail, and that therefore abortion is morally unacceptable. Happily, Kaczor’s clear and even-handed writing makes it an excellent resource for anyone who wishes to think carefully about the significant arguments on either side. The bulk of The Ethics of Abortion takes on these two types of argument and their many permutations, and Kaczor then concludes with a chapter on difficult cases and a chapter on the possibility that artificial wombs might end the abortion debate.
For those who claim that some human beings are not persons and therefore have no significant moral status, the central philosophical challenge is to identify non-arbitrary criteria for personhood that manage to include all those human beings that are undoubtedly persons and exclude only those that might plausibly fail to be persons. Many potential criteria, as Kaczor carefully shows, fail because they are arbitrary: birth (there is surely no good reason to think a fetus is a non-person one minute before birth but a person one minute after birth, or, for that matter, that merely the location of a being can determine whether or not it is a person), viability (besides being relative to the state of technology, why should dependence on another human being make one a non-person; after all, we do not think this is true of severely conjoined twins), human appearance (looks can be deceiving; a burn victim charred beyond recognition is nevertheless a person), implantation (were we to develop artificial wombs, the absence of implantation would certainly not result in the absence of personhood–why should mere attachment to someone make such a difference?).
The danger of arbitrariness forces a move toward criteria chosen because of their obvious connection to the powers and abilities of mature human persons. But the threat here is that we will include too many things as persons, or exclude beings that are obviously persons. We therefore cannot look, for example, to sentience (the ability to feel pain and pleasure), because this would include leeches and wasps, but exclude rational but unfeeling aliens and angels, as well as human beings suffering from a rare but very real condition that makes one insensitive to pain. The most promising and powerful strategy here is to focus on those characteristics that are obviously connected to personhood, and the most plausible of these is “consciousness.” Consciousness lies at the foundation of a Lockean conception of personhood, for example, and it would be difficult to imagine any creature (animal, alien, or angel) that had no connection to consciousness and was nevertheless a person.
But now we face a different set of difficulties. If we take the criterion as it stands, that one must be conscious to qualify as a person, all sleeping and sedated human beings will fail to be persons, a reductio ad absurdum. And if we instead claim that you are a person only if you have an immediately exercisable capacity for self-awareness, we will include sleeping adults, but exclude those in temporary comas (who might take years to recover, and who at any rate almost never have an “immediately exercisable capacity” for consciousness). Though philosophers like Peter Singer and Michael Tooley do not consider this a reason to reject this strategy, whatever interpretation we give the criterion will justify not just abortion at any point during pregnancy but also infanticide (at least for days or weeks after birth, and for some philosophers, even months).
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I think the abortion debate stands at: it’s legal, and if you want to get one, you can. If you think it’s a bad thing, don’t get one.
There are 143 million orphans in the world, yes that’s 143,000,000. And yet TRI and NOM are selling a population crisis. Where is the Mom and Dad that every child must have? Why is so much money, time and effort diverted from these children that most will die in poverty?
Sean’s analysis reduces the rights of the unborn to zero. But even in America after Roe, not all abortions are legal. Would Sean favor making late-term abortions legal for no reason other than “the mother wanted to abort?” And if so, how about the mother who wants to destroy the child the minute after giving birth? How about: “if you want to destroy your new born, do so. If you think it would be a bad thing, then don’t?”
@Sean Slavery used to be legal; if you wanted to own one you could. If you thought it was a bad thing, you didn’t.
What is legal isn’t necessarily right. Abortion kills a child.
@Bob
If there are 145 million orphans and 6.8 billion people, that is a bit over 2% of the world’s population, a large, but hardly overwhelming number compared to the total population. In cultures with a strong network of extended families, relatives generally provide for orphans, except in times of mass casualties such as war or famine. In other cultures religious groups take the lead in providing for orphans. In America we have a culture of adoption though various agencies, public and private.
Are you proposing that money spent on abortions be spent on adoptions? If so, we are in agreement.
Are you proposing that America import orphans in lieu of reproducing or merely advocating importing orphans in addition to reproducing? I think the former would be a bad idea, but I am open to the latter idea. I have a friend who is a prominent physician very much involved in the latter idea, so that every child will have a mother and a father if reasonably possible. He is also opposed to abortion.
Again, should we abort American babies in order to make room for foreign orphans? I think not. I also note that a combination of high abortion rates and open borders will produce similar results.
Fertility rates in the developed world are well below replacement levels. If the population in the developed world shrinks, that does not automatically help the world’s orphans, and arguably deprives the world of the children best equipped to solve the world’s problems.
“Slavery used to be legal; if you wanted to own one you could. If you thought it was a bad thing, you didn’t. What is legal isn’t necessarily right. Abortion kills a child.”
Slavery involved a sentient person, against his or her will. Abortion involves not a sentient person. Lots of things are legal that aren’t “right.” Divorce, for example. But like abortion, we leave it up to the adults involved, not the children, or the pre-children.
@Sean Abortion does kill a sentient person! I suppose if an old person has Alzheimer’s and no longer thinking properly, we should kill them? It is certainly against the will of the child to be aborted.
Tell me why divorce isn’t right? Do you think a woman should be forced to stay married to a man who has sex with other women? Do you think a man should be forced to stay married to a woman who has sex with other men? Do you think a woman should be forced to stay married to a man who beats the hell out of her?
Abortion isn’t just about the adult – it’s about the child who is being killed.
The unborn and those with reduced mental capacity still should have some basic human rights. But it goes beyond that. Trees have no rights that will stand up in court. The environment has no rights that will stand up in court. But to destroy the environment is wrong and certain environmental protections are rightly given the force of law as well as of culture and tradition. If we view everything through a narrow lens of individual legal rights as defined by the courts, we can still engineer great wrongs. It might be helpful to think of the world as one connected whole. No man is an island. The unborn are part of the world. We destroy them and tear the fabric of creation at a cost to all of society.
So if you’re unconscious, it’s OK to do whatever we want to you? If a young woman drinks herself into a stupor, does that make date-rape OK? Would it be alright for hospitals to raise badly needed funds by quickly selling off the organs of anyone who has the misfortune to enter a coma? How about by offering pervs the opportunity to take a turn with a young woman in a persistently vegetative state – for an adequate ‘donation’ to the hospital, of course? Where do you draw the line, Sean?