A fertilised fetus is a collection of cells that will, if all goes well, and it doesn’t in a large percentage of cases, become a baby. As much as 70% of all pregnancies may abort in the first 20 weeks, due to genetic or developmental defects. But up until a certain stage in pregnancy, a fetus is just a mass of cells. And later, as it begins to resemble a human being as we ordinarily understand one, it is not a functional object.
Biologically, there is no reason to think of abortion as the killing of a person. It is not something based upon science. It is based upon a moral stance. Now, a moral stance can have a lot of reasons for coming to be: we might be led by sentimentality (aww, cute!), or by pareidolia (sure looks like a person to me!) or by some other largely subjective reason. Subjective reasons do not rule in a democracy. That one person likes things to be some way doesn’t mean that anyone else is required to, even if that person is the prime minister or president. Democracies allow people to have subjective preferences, but not to impose them. De gustibus non est disputandum, as the medieval scholastic said.
So, if we eliminate subjective preferences, and biology is no help to us, what is? What mandates that abortion should be prohibited in a democracy? I ask this because there is a concerted campaign to get abortion actively banned in my home state of Queensland, Australia right now. Usually this is based on appeals to human rights, women’s rights, or modernity, but I think this is the wrong way around. Do not ask why abortion should be legal, ask why not? What basis for prohibiting it exists?
There is only one basis for this that I can find. It is this: under Catholic doctrine, the life of a person begins at conception, at the fusion of sperm and egg. This is not Protestant doctrine. It is not Islamic doctrine. It is not Hindu doctrine, or humanist doctrine, or communist doctrine or any other source that I can find. What is more, it wasn’t even official Catholic doctrine until the 15th century, although it was regarded as a bad thing for much longer, only not as bad as homicide if the fetus wasn’t “quickened” (a view that relied on an older biology, which may be charitably interpreted as “moving”, at which point it was thought life had entered the fetus).
Now I have no objection to there being Catholic doctrine on this point, and this being enforced by the church upon its willing adherents with threats of excommunication. That is between the church and the faithful, and if anyone doesn’t like it they can either try to change the church or leave it, as they see fit. That is not what is at issue here. What is at issue is why the doctrine of a single religion, or even of many religions, ought to be taken to have some weight in a secular democracy? If a woman has no moral qualms here, why should a church they are not part of interfere with their actions? Maybe they will go to hell, but surely that is between them and God, not them and Parliament?
Australian politicians who cater to religious doctrines on behalf of a secular nation are cowards and toadies. There is no pleasant way to say it. They should most certainly not impose Catholic teaching upon non-Catholics, even if they think it is morally wrong themselves, any more than they should (to take a similar moral issue) think that because they believe homosexuality is a sin, it should be legislated against. Sins are not the business of governments and lawmakers. Social order is, and there are zero arguments against abortion or homosexuality or the other things churches object to being excluded on social order grounds without special pleading on the churches’ behalf.
So why are state governments unwilling to remove antiabortion legislation here? Obviously because they are catering to Catholic interests (and those Protestant churches who have decided to accept Pope Sixtus V’s initial, and Pope Pius IX’s final declaration, which is itself an odd phenomenon, given the nature of the Reformation in the first place). No other reason.
Given the political cowardice of the political classes, the only way to ensure that this does not happen is to make it clear that the Catholic lobby is a smaller part of the electorate than they are. Even many Catholics do not want this. So I exhort and beseech ye, brethren, join in the Get Up campaign in Australia, and similar ones in your nation, to lobby for secular democracy.
I’m still confused about the argument over personhood.
I can think of many cases where I would condone the killing of a real adult person so there can’t be a direct connection between being a person and having an absolute right to live under all circumstances.
There has to be more to it than that. Ian, haven’t you admitted that you would permit abortion of an innocent fetal person under some circumstances?
Furthermore, even assuming that a fetus is NOT a person doesn’t mean that you have to condone abortion. You could still be opposed to destroying “potential” persons. I bet most anti-abortion advocates would not change their minds even if it could be scientifically proven that a fetus is not a person.
The argument over whether the fetus is a person is mostly irrelevant, isn’t it?
I don’t think so, because we weigh the rights of the innocent more heavily than we weigh the rights of those might wish something for convenience’ sake. Consider the duty of care we owe to the innocent even if it places us in danger. That a fetus is a person (or not) is directly relevant as a first point of consideration; but it doesn’t necessarily resolve anything, as you say.
“I bet most anti-abortion advocates would not change their minds even if it could be scientifically proven that a fetus is not a person.”
And what objective scientific test could possibly verify that? After all is said and done, the truth value of a fetus as a person or not, is a subjective assessment. As far as I know, “person” is not a scientific concept, although it may be a philosophical one. The whole subject is legal and moral, although it may be informed by science.
It’s pretty simple, actually. To a first approximation, and probably even a second and third approximation, we only condone the involuntary killing of a real adult person in situations where that person is a direct and present threat to the life of other persons. E.g., self-defense, stopping a crazed gunner or terrorist, wars (well, just wars), etc.
The only semi-exceptions I can think of are carpet-bombing in times of war, and capital punishment — and these both remain highly controversial in Western society precisely because it is much more tenuous and debatable whether or not these killings do anything to protect the life of innocent persons…
For me, any legal ban on abortion that I would support would have to include exemptions on medical grounds, certainly if the mother’s life was at risk or if there was no prospect of the child being born alive.
So under such laws, the State would have the final say regarding the legitimacy of the abortion and may override the judgement of the woman and her doctor after the fact. Good luck with that.
Granted the possibility of miscarriages of justice but the fact remains that, in a court, the decision can be reviewed and the case for the foetus argued in a way that is unlikely to happen if the decision is left to the mother and/or her doctor.
So your argument is that women, with or without their doctors’ advice, cannot be trusted to adequately make those serious decisions for themselves, but judges are better able to do so. How very paternalistic of you.
As I wrote before, quite obviously, if we grant the foetus the right to life from conception, there is the risk of a conflict between that right and those of the mother which demand equal consideration.
In cases where the mother’s life is at risk, the decision is made easier on lesser-of-two-evils grounds. The mother may have a husband, other children, family and friends and a career. The loss of her life would be far more detrimental in terms of the harm it might cause. Even if she were a single mother and an orphan, she still has an awareness of her own life and the potential of her own death which the fetus lacks. Her right to her life – and the others to which she is entitled as an adult – should be defended just as vigorously as that of the foetus.
I would also have no problem at all with the judge and attorneys in abortion hearings being all women. All I would ask is that, since the foetus is unable to speak for itself or retain an attorney to act for it, the state or court should appoint someone to represent it.
Of course, there’s the issue of due process (such as it is) but nonetheless, the outcome of any law is dependant on the vagaries of the legal system and the certainty of ‘miscarriages’ of justice.
To elaborate, I derive my view of rights and freedoms from Mill’s On Liberty. His basic principle was that individuals in a society should be free to do whatever they like up to the point at which their behaviour began to restrict the rights of others to do likewise. Society only has a right to intervene to protect others from the consequences of an individual’s actions not the individuals themselves.
Moreover, as Chris Schoen pointed out, rights are not ‘use them or lose them’ privileges. You do not lose your right to free speech, for example, if you do not exercise it within 90 days of becoming eligible for it. In other words, what is being a guaranteed is the option to speak freely at any point in the future. And that guarantee subsists in rules that seek to regulate the behavior of any others who might be inclined to deprive individuals those options.
Another point is that the right to life stands in a different relationship to the individual than other specified rights in much the same way that existence is not a predicate property of an object in the same way as mass or height or colour. For example, individuals might find their right to free speech abridged, say under wartime emergency regulations, but the full freedom can be restored once peace is declared and the emergency lifted. Once an individual is dead, however, all bets are off. Killing someone denies them all future options and, if done without adequate justification, arguably constitutes the worst offense one individual can commit against another on those grounds alone.
Quite obviously, the foetus is unable to exercise the rights and freedoms of a mature adult but then so is the newborn or the toddler or the young child yet we do not deprive the latter of the right to life.
It seems to me that personhood is more like a legal fiction or, as Bob Koepp put it a ‘moral category” but, either way, is altogether too fuzzy a concept on which to ground a decision about whether to end the existence of a human individual which has already begun to develop, even if it is far from being fully-formed.
The real world is under no obligation to provide us with convenient, nice, neat, categories. As several have noted, biology shows that “personhood” develops gradually, and it is *somewhat* arbitrary where exactly you cross the line from personhood to non-personhood.
But this doesn’t mean the distinction is meaningless, just that there is a grey area. IMHO the right position is to acknowledge the fuzziness and thus be highly cautious before making permanent and violent life-ending decisions.
Thus, OK, newborns might not have all of the personhood qualities that an adult does, but it’s pretty close. Ditto for babies that are viable outside of the womb, basically the last trimester. They deserve lots of protection (excepting extreme cases like life of the mother).
But if you go back far enough into the pregnancy you are beyond any gray area about personhood, and you have something with no significant conscious activity, etc. And then, IMHO, giving such things the full rights of persons is anachronistic, leads to lots of self-contradictions and incoherancies (e.g. rights for skin cells), etc.
Is ‘personhood’ an observable biological property or is it more something that, like beauty, exists only in the eye of the beholder?
If we equate it with awareness, with being a conscious and autonomous moral agent, how does that help? My understanding is that if an adult individual’s consciousness is impaired or lost for a period, we do not also assume that their rights are suspended for the duration. Yet without conscious awareness what are we but a mass of cells? Granted that, in an adult, that mass is far greater and more differentiated than that of a foetus but is the difference in scale alone significant?
One thing that I should have perhaps said in the post is that a Sorites problem exists in many useful categories, both inside moral and legal cases and out. But to argue that everything is a slippery slope is to commit the slippery slope fallacy. I can say that a single celled zygote is not a person and is owed no moral duty and that a neonate is and should be. There is no contradiction here just because there is no sharp boundary between the two. In my view, we err on the side of caution by extending some personhood rights to third trimester fetuses, and this is right, but even there; if the choice is between the life of an actualised developed person and something that might become one, I am going to prefer the mother’s life. What the mother chooses to do as a person capable of making moral decisions is up to her – some may chose to sacrifice their present for a potential future child. That’s fine, but it cannot be mandated by law.
I once quoted this on this blog; I do so again: