Ethics of Abortion

(I decided to post my draft for the blog on abortion. My cause for writing it was getting a bit stale anyway, plus I figured if I have big holes in my argument someone else can point them out.)

After viewing a pro-life demonstration on campus –or rather viewing what I thought was an art display then figuring it out from the diverse reactions—I decided to elucidate what I consider to be the major conflicts in the debate.

It seems the informed opinion is founded on faith that science will or has provided a clear distinction for qualifying humanity –the stage of development at which a fetus becomes a baby. The idea of a clear physical distinction seems to originate from our desire to qualify our judgment that it is ok to kill animals but not humans. There must be something that generates our special distinction. A pro-lifer will be ready to say that this is merely a semantic difference; a fetus just is a less developed baby. But to give both sides the best translation we need to assume that there is a difference. However, establishing a difference might not necessarily justify a classification as “non-human.” Classically we identify the major human feature as rationality. However, clearly a two year old child does not have developed rationality skills, but we don’t want to say that it is ok to kill one. Even baby-shakers can be sent to prison, so we must believe that they have the minimum level of humanness is present in the very smallest babies. Premature babies push the threshold even further; seems like we must include any fetus that could survive outside the womb, but after that it gets a bit foggier.

Starting from the other end, I wouldn’t expect people to include either a sperm or an egg, or even a joined sperm and egg as having this essential quality (some might, but they’re weird); this process can even occur outside the womb. So we must want to say that human-ness has not been achieved here. The problem is, though there is some stage at which the fetus acquires the essential quality, the characteristics meriting this distinction are very unclear. In fact, while science can name any number of essential properties to distinguish stages of development, which stage uniquely imbues the fetus with the special status of being human seems absolutely a matter of preference. Analogous to the old philosopher’s puzzle of when a pile becomes a heap, no stage seems clearly distinguishable from its precedent. Someone might be tempted to assert that failing rationality, the presence of life should be the determining factor. But unlike resuscitation after cardiac arrest, there is no magic spark or moment during the development of a baby. I know someone will probably want to say that when a fetus gets a beating heart it should qualify as living, but what about all the kinds of living things without hearts? –scientists even argue about whether to include viruses in this special distinction.

The debate thus far has been centered on what we could normally define as “the facts” of abortion. For obvious reasons, no matter how much we study human development we are not ever going to discover an obvious and clear distinction that could end the moral debate, but I think I’ve set the stage to reveal the true positions underlying the abortion debate. The pro-lifers are typically religious but it seems reasonable to take this side in the debate without appealing to any theological reasoning (although this is generally the source of their vehement reactions). The proper argument is that if we intrinsically value human life, since there is no (justified) way to distinguish when a fetus becomes a baby we must preserve the absolute right for the fetus to qualify as human. While religion often stimulates this moral reaction, it seems perfectly rational to object on these (secular humanist) grounds.

However, the pro-choice camp is not simple enough to argue with the “humanity distinction.” If they were, it would look like one side was arguing that abortion is murder while the other equated a fetus to trash. The debate would be simplistic, and I think the common person would err on the side of caution (i.e. save the fetus just to be safe). However, the strong pro-choice sentiments originate from feminism. Feminists want to eliminate outside influence on their life choices and a debate with a gender specific impact lends itself to their arena.
Forcing pregnant women to carry the fetus to term seems to place an unmerited restriction on the freedom of women; a restriction that does not exist for men. This kind of intrusion into their private life seems to require an objective morality, enforced by the state, since the scientific “facts” are insufficient for a conclusive distinction. How can we ask this of them when men, through biological fortune, escape all maternal responsibilities? It seems that we would be forcing them to perform “traditional” duties, consequently reducing them to a second-sex. A pro-lifer might try to compensate by placing more legal responsibility with the father, but part of the role is intrinsically female.

Some feminist groups claim that a baby is a part of a woman’s body. So an abortion is like a lizard choosing to cut off its tail. Clearly if this were the case, then clearly government control of abortions is a direct control on women themselves. However, I would contend that this is a prime exemplar of the condition of morality in the modern scientific rationality. Ethical debates can no longer be reference to a common collection of accepted ideas; the only common consensus in meta-ethics is that there is no such thing as objective morality. (Morality no longer seems able to compete with science for people’s heart and soul convictions –but, as pragmatism contends, if we acknowledge that “truth” is not the object of our inquiry, but admit that the true superlative cause is function, then scientific investigation must serve human interest and morality is a perfect method to evaluate how well science achieves this goal.) It should not be a surprising that the only way to resolve our applied-ethical concerns is to persuade people by making analogies to something they will intuitively agree with.

In the world of science, an abortion is only like—an abortion. But if someone can be persuaded to perceive it as a piece of some woman, then clearly removing it is up to her and only her. This method of persuasive analogies seems to be the only reliable method we have to convince people to take one side of the other. My personal conviction depends on a complicated epistemological program and therefore is of no importance to the current discussion. I think there are valid considerations from both sides, so to choose one stance must always come at the expense of some moral consideration. (I believe the most important factor in morality is to have a reason for any opinion you intend to share and to advocate that opinion only as far as your conviction allows. See the blog "Passion and Freedom" for the argument.)