This is the first post in what I hope will be a long-running weekly series about morality. I discussed my plans for this last Monday. Please remember that, while discussion and debate in the comments is more than welcome, I’m going to restrict the discussion to secular reasoning. “My religion told me so” is not a valid argument here, and comments or parts of comments may be deleted if they violate this rule.
The abortion debate is an incredibly complex one, made even more difficult by the pervasiveness of religious argumentation. Although there are legitimate arguments to be made on both sides, so many pro-life advocates believe their political stance to be mandated by their god that productive conversation is next to impossible. Here, I’d like to present my secular perspective on this controversy. The primary question I think needs addressing is whether abortion constitutes murder (which is essentially shorthand for “immoral killing”). If it is, abortion is clearly impermissible, and the debate would be over.
But what makes something “murder”? Shooting a stranger in cold blood is obviously murder. Taking a sledgehammer to your kitchen table is not murder. Eating vegetables is not murder. Stepping on an ant or killing a mouse with a trap are generally considered not to be murderous acts. Putting your old, frail pet to sleep isn’t exactly murder either. How can we draw a line between what sort of killing is morally permissible and what is not?
I don’t actually think there is a bright line. It’s more like a sliding scale of how morally reprehensible various kinds of destruction are. Smash your table to bits — we might think you’re a little unbalanced, but you haven’t committed a moral wrong against the table in any way. You didn’t even really “kill” it, in a conventional sense. You might want to try to avoid killing bugs, but it’s no big deal if they’re in your way and you want to get rid of them. It’s a bit worse than that to kill a cow or a goat (especially if you don’t eat it). We might be able to construct some sort of “hierarchy” of animals in terms of how grotesque it seems to kill them. Near the top of the pile would probably be various primates that use tools and have societal structures and show some ability to have and express ideas. Killing Koko the gorilla would be pretty monstrous.
Well, that describes my moral intuition, but it isn’t a reason yet. After some reflection I think I have a criterion, and while it’s not perfect, I think it does make a fair amount of sense: the cruelty of a destructive act is proportional to the object’s awareness of its own existence and its ability to experience pain. I don’t mean the ability to react to destructive stimuli; there are all sorts of instincts that could evolve (and have evolved in various life forms) requiring no consciousness, no self-awareness at all to execute. You can’t feel pain or otherwise be made unhappy by something unless you have awareness of your senses and feelings in the first place. Since my moral calculations are predicated in part on the idea that it is good to maximize happiness for others and minimize pain and suffering I cause to others (assuming reasonable costs to myself), this criterion would roughly replicate the hierarchy I described above. Mammals are more self-aware than bugs and therefore it is more morally reprehensible to kill a mammal than a bug. Inanimate objects don’t experience anything, so there is no moral cost to destroying them (assuming you didn’t steal them from someone who does have feelings, etc.).
Where, then, does a fetus fit in on this spectrum? My answer is, in different places at different times during its development. For some time after conception, it is little more than a lump of cells. Yes, a tremendously exciting lump of cells, if you wanted to get pregnant — but a lump of cells nonetheless. Killing that would have the moral quality of cooking bread with yeast, or having your appendix removed. These aren’t entities capable of self-awareness as individuals. Once it starts to develop differentiated body parts, it’s probably comparable to a small fish. Once it gains the ability to hear and kick, usually during the second trimester, it might be more on the level of a mouse or a squirrel. We wouldn’t kill these animals just for shits and giggles, but there are plenty of reasons having to do with personal convenience that we do tend to consider acceptable. In the third trimester, there’s a whole lot of brain development and the fetus gains the ability to open and close its eyes, so around this point I’m inclined to ascribe to it some level of self-awareness that would make it on balance morally impermissible to abort.
(I should say, it’s possible that self-awareness during human development doesn’t peak at the point of birth. Babies are still working on their grasp of object permanence and the nature of self vs. other for a while, and I could see the argument that they aren’t fully self-aware and deserving of consideration as completely human until they are a bit older. This is philosophically interesting, but really beside the point of this discussion.)
There are other criteria that people invoke, but I don’t find them as convincing as the self-awareness issue. One example is the viability of a fetus. Near birth, it might be strong enough on its own to survive outside the womb. My main hesitation about this argument is its contingency on the medical technology we have available in our ICUs, and that seems bizarre. While I do admit that the moral quality of our choices depends to some extent on the options we have available to us, I still think that if we developed the technology to grow people in jars from fertilized eggs, it would not be morally impermissible to abort a blastocyst, any more than it would be morally impermissible to pick off a scab or get a tummy tuck. At best, this criterion acts as a proxy for self-awareness. At worst, it’s overly restrictive.
Another common criterion used by pro-life advocates is potentiality — that, if there is a potential for something to become human life in the future, for moral purposes we should consider it human now and we should consider an act that eliminates this potentiality to be tantamount to murder. To my mind, this is a standard basically chosen to create the desired outcome, not because it makes any sort of real sense. If potential life has moral rights, it would seem to imply that we each have an obligation to conceive as many children as physically possible during our lifetime. Surely the rights of all those potential people to exist outweigh any inconvenience that might pose to us! But this is absurd. I find it all but self-evident that I would be doing more moral wrong by killing a chimpanzee than I would by killing a largely-undifferentiated mass of human cells.
One relevant clarification I want to mention: a lot of this analysis goes out the window when self-defense is at stake. Even if killing a human being is something we normally place in the “murder” category, killing your violent kidnapper in order to escape to safety would be morally permissible and, I think, not worthy of being called murder. If you are being attacked by a rabid dog, or if Koko was about to crush your skull in her giant gorilla hands, it would be completely morally permissible to use violence to protect yourself. Now, probably we should have higher standards for what counts as self-defense and put more effort into attempting alternative methods of conflict resolution the further up on that hierarchy of self-awareness we go. If a mosquito’s biting you, it’s okay to just squash it. But it would be grotesque to shoot a kitten that scratched you if you are able to just pick it up off your knee and gently toss it over the arm of the couch. Also, if you put yourself directly into harm’s way, there is some decrease in the legitimacy of your claim of self-defense. Antagonizing people and other animals until they attack you does not provide a morally valid excuse to kill them.
So what does all this mean for abortion? It means that people should take real precautions to avoid pregnancy if they are not ready to raise a child — being abstinent if they are willing and able, or using reliable contraceptives if they are having what would otherwise be procreative sex. (This is the “not putting yourself in harm’s way” part.) If a person does have an unwanted pregnancy, they have a moral obligation to seek an abortion as soon as possible, while the moral implications are minimal at most. Waiting until later in the pregnancy and then aborting, or using even late-first-trimester abortion as a sort of “birth control,” seems to me to have a similar moral quality to drowning a cat or habitually torturing rodents to death. It might not be all the way to the side of murder, but it causes egregious and unnecessary suffering of something with a degree of self-awareness. I don’t know enough biology to say so definitively, but it seems completely plausible to me that third-trimester abortion is generally morally impermissible.
I say “generally” there because there is one circumstance in which I would grant an exception: if the pregnant woman had previously wanted to carry the pregnancy to term but complications developed to the extent that her health or even her life would be in danger. I do think that (for those who have the physical and financial ability) there is a moral obligation to monitor one’s health during pregnancy, and find out about these complications as early as possible. Insofar as I find it permissible to kill a chimpanzee if it was gnawing your foot off and you were unable to extricate yourself any other way, I don’t think it’s necessary that these health risks be maximally severe. Giving birth does not have to be 100% likely to be fatal to warrant a late-term abortion. If a live baby means a dead or injured mother, abortion is permissible. (Of course, if both mother and baby are likely to die in the process, abortion is equivalent to saving the mother’s life, which is arguably morally obligatory.)
You might have noticed that I haven’t talked about the other exceptions normally mentioned, “rape or incest.” I’m not sure why incest deserves a separate category, since all the cases where I could imagine this coming up involve statutory rape of a child by a parent. But a woman who was raped and becomes pregnant still has an obligation to find out about that pregnancy and (assuming it is unwanted) terminate it as soon as possible. Being raped is a terrible thing, but it’s not a free pass to kill a self-aware creature.
So, what did I get wrong? What do you agree with? Tell me your thoughts in the comments!
Jojo the hun on 
Keith
/ April 3, 2011 at 6:22 pmNFQ: Mostly, I agree with you – I think you’ve hit on a very good basic rationale for looking at abortion (and, indeed, any moral issue).
There is just one point, though, which I think falls slightly off my own line of thought, namely potentiality.
My idea of morality is to weigh the available options at hand (e.g. have an abortion, don’t have an abortion), and see which results in the greatest net well-being to all relevant people. By relevant people, I mean people who currently exist, and whose current or future well-being will be affected by at least one of the available options.
In other words, I don’t think it makes sense to look just at the immediate effect of an action on well-being: the integrated effect over time must be considered. By doing so, one reaches the conclusion that, for instance, children should occasionally undergo punishments of various kinds in order to ensure a better adjusted, happier adulthood than might otherwise be the case.
So, although a fetus below a certain age may not currently have the capacity to feel suffering, or to be aware of suffering, it certainly will have these capacities if it is brought to term. It won’t, obviously, if it is aborted. It seems to me, then, that the idea of looking at the integrated effects of an action over time requires us to consider what the well-being of the fetus would be in both the abortion and non-abortion cases. (I do not, however, advocate talking about potentiality of fetuses that do not yet exist.)
As I’m sure you’re thinking by now, how on earth can we know whether a fetus, if allowed to live, will live a happy and prosperous life, thereby making the “do not abort” action preferable? This, I think, is where the issue of the mother’s power of choice comes in.
The mother is the person most qualified to estimate what sort of life she would be able to provide for her (as yet unborn) child. If she is convinced that she will not be a good mother, perhaps, or if she knows she cannot provide for it financially (or otherwise), or even if she has been told by a doctor that the fetus has some sort of severe genetic condition that will either shorten the child’s life or make it miserable, then I think she has good reason to go ahead with the abortion. She has the authority to judge, as best she can, what the balance of well-being is, between letting the fetus live, or having an abortion. And she has the right to bring her decision into effect.
Of course, there may be situations in which the mother, for whatever reason, is not capable of making such a decision. If this is the case, then some other responsible, reasonable person is hopefully at hand to assist in the difficult thinking.
Aristarchus
/ April 3, 2011 at 7:13 pmKeith, I think there’s a different problem with the potentiality argument (which is I think the response NFQ was trying to give in her post). It seems like the argument you are making would apply just as well to using a condom during sex – you could have instead created a person and raised in a way that it will have positive net happiness. This logic could in fact apply to basically any non-pregnant adult female not currently having unprotected sex….
This is actually one of the hardest things to figure out in philosophy for those of us (like myself) who subscribe to philosophies that somewhere deep down are essentially utilitarian. If we doubled the world population, I doubt the average happiness of each person would decrease by more than half – so that would imply we should do it. And I think that that logic would continue to require increasing the population to the point where most people were living in something close to poverty. I could (and have) write essays about this, but the short version is that you can’t just simply count all potential people in your utility calculation like that.
Seth R.
/ April 3, 2011 at 7:41 pmI find the whole quest to ontologically and legally define a fetus as “a person” to be misguided and misplaced. Therefore, such considerations have absolutely nothing to do with my view of whether abortion is good or bad, or permissible or not, or whatever else.
I think trying to classify abortion as “murder” is stupid. I think trying to say something that looks more like a tadpole has the same rights that Glen Beck has is ridiculous.
But I still generally oppose abortion except in cases where the need to protect the well being of others outweighs other considerations.
It’s just a matter of showing respect and care for “life.”
That’s it. No other reason.
Keith
/ April 3, 2011 at 8:12 pm@Aristarchus
My current thinking is that the collection of people considered in a given problem should be limited to those who exist at the time the problem is addressed. Part of my rationale for this is that my thoughts on morality have largely centered on how a person’s level of well- being changes depending on the choice considered (in other words it’s about the differential wellbeing between different actions rather than about some absolute quantity of wellbeing in the world) This change is not well-defined for a person who exists only for some choices but not for others.
Aristarchus
/ April 3, 2011 at 8:34 pm@Keith:
But then it’s not about “potentiality” at all. I mean, you’re now claiming they already exist… And then then it just becomes a question of whether the fetus deserves the same moral consideration as a full person.
@Seth:
You’re opposed to abortion out of general preference to life, regardless of whether it’s human life? Are you ok with killing animals (or plants, for that matter) for food? If you’re against abortion, you’re clearly giving this particular type of life some sort of preferential status. You can make arguments for that, but you can’t do it without making some sort of argument to “human-ness” or something of the sort.
NFQ
/ April 3, 2011 at 10:06 pm@Seth: The reason I began with the question of whether abortion is murder is that that assertion, if true, would be a conversation-ender. Murder is obviously wrong (though I do think I’ll pick this apart for some Sunday post in the future). I do think you’re right that it’s about weighing various considerations against each other. I think Aristarchus raised a good point when he asked you about whether you eat plants. Different forms of life merit different weights. That means that it’s morally permissible to pick a flower for your own pleasure, but morally impermissible to kill a puppy for your own pleasure. On the other hand, if taking care of your old, sick dog is too much of a hassle for your family to bear, it is morally permissible to take it to the vet and have it put down. Meanwhile it’s not okay to have Grandma put down when your family begins to find her a similar level of nuisance. I think this is the same logic you are applying when you talk about a tadpole vs. Glenn Beck, though you seem to dismiss it when you refer to “life” in general.
At any rate … just as a tadpole carries less moral weight than a person, I argue that a fetus carries less moral weight the earlier we look in its development. That means that abortion would be permissible for reasons like “I want to finish my degree” or “I can’t really afford it” or “I want to travel the world first” provided it was still early in the pregnancy. It sounds like you disagree, but I don’t understand why. (Maybe you just allow “the well being of others” to be more broadly defined than I am interpreting it…?)
@Keith: You wrote, “I do not, however, advocate talking about potentiality of fetuses that do not yet exist.” Why not? If the potentiality of two cells that have met is something that matters, why not the potentiality of those same two cells which are still in two separate human bodies?
L.Long
/ April 3, 2011 at 10:10 pmBack in the ‘old days’ when I was young and actually read Playboy, they had an excellent article that is summarized as …. A space ship lands in Central Park and this weird but roughly human shaped alien steps out, and John shots it with a rifle. What crime did John commit? …. and the answer is ‘shooting a firearm in city limits.’ Because ‘murder’ is defined as the willful killing of a HUMAN person, usually for no good reason.
By one definition a fetus is a parasite living for a short time in a woman. For abortion to be murder then this specific kind of parasite must be defined as human. This human definition needs to be carefully defined or us masterbaiters, women with no kids, or women with miscarriages could all be mass murderers. For me the 1st trimester of cells does NOT a human make.
Seth R.
/ April 4, 2011 at 1:02 amI tend to go by the rather unscientific gut-check of “does it look like a human?”
The more it looks like a human, the more unwilling I am to kill it. For this reason, I pretty much accept Roe v. Wade’s “trimester approach” as the best we can do as a practical matter.
It’s true enough that I view the human procreative process as distinct from other animal life cycles and give is special preference in my thinking. I just don’t like trying to slap rigid legal categories on it.
grizzlybaker
/ April 4, 2011 at 4:35 amWell, clearly early on in the pregnancy, the fetus is not a child. Nowhere close. No problem with an abortion.
Late on in the pregnancy, it’s much closer to being a child. However, at this stage, the game changes. At this point, an abortion is really just an induced labor.
The important bit is that this is almost never done except in life-or-death circumstances. If mother or fetus have a chance of dying by going through with the birth, this is done. Otherwise, it was just about never done, even when it was legal (I think late-term abortions are now illegal in many, if not all, places in the US).
In other words, an abortion at this stage is life-saving. Ignore the lies spewed by the religious; you’d have trouble finding abortions for “convenience” at this stage.
In other words, I find myself unable to oppose abortion in the least, as much as, in the past, I’ve found support for it…difficult.
In any case, if Freakanomics is to be believed, the implementation of abortion after Roe v Wade was responsible for a multi-decade decrease in crime, the logic being that it was mothers unable to adequately raise a child were raising more kids who grew up to commit crimes. Supposing this is true, it would seem that abortion is moral in a utilitarian sense.
L.Long
/ April 4, 2011 at 6:59 amWith increasing medical abilities to do early detection of badly damaged fetuses the ‘only in case of death for the last trimesters’ starts to be a big problem. Personally I would prefer an abortion over a birth that will lead to some defined period of suffering (and I don’t mean normal life) then death. And any twits how think that women use late term abortion as birth control are so incredibly stupid they are incapable of normal conversation.
Yes the fetus does look more human but laws should not be made to CLOSE the option if needed.
My ultimate definition of the legal point is …It is HER body and her decision at any time. You don’t need laws to regulate this as there are 3billion too many people on the earth now. And have there been 6billion abortions in any generation to significantly drop the population? So we have plenty of potential killers born every year.
John Barron
/ April 4, 2011 at 8:57 am—The taking of human life without proper justification is morally wrong.
—Elective abortion takes a human life without proper justification.
—Therefore Abortion is morally wrong.
Biologically speaking it really is not up for debate that at the point of conception actual biological life begins. It is not up for debate that the thing which is alive is human. The entire issue boild down to “what is in the womb”
If the arguments for abortion do not work for justification to take the life of a human at any stage in their life, then the arguments for abortion fail. Human life is either valuable, or it is not. If human life is not valuable by virtue of being human, then what makes humans valuable?
The fact that what is in the womb at the early stages of pregnancy is not a “child” is irrelevant. What is in the womb is not an adult, or teenager, or todler either. “Child” is a designation of progression through development.
If we determine that one is worthy of protection based on level of development then you run the risk of declaring people with birth defects which have stunted development are not as human as a fully developed human.
What we also do not have is a potential life, or potential human. It is already fully human. What we do have is a potential infant, a potential todler, and a potential adult.
There is no biological magic that happens by passing through a birth canal.
—By the way, I never argue from religion when arguing abortion, or same-sex marriage. I have written quite a bit on the subject of abortion, and you will not find any religious appeal.
NFQ
/ April 4, 2011 at 10:23 am@John:
Why? Why do you classify a fetus at all points in its development as a human life? What constitutes “proper justification”? In this one premise you have asserted a detailed conclusion which you haven’t warranted.
Sure. Single-celled organisms are alive. Moss is alive. My entire argument above is that different forms of life merit different levels of consideration.
Why? My standard has to do with self-awareness and the ability to experience pain and other feelings. If someone has birth defects or other injuries to the extent that they are not, or are no longer, aware of their existence and not, or no longer, capable of feeling pain, I’m pretty sure we’d be talking about someone who’s basically in a persistent vegetative state. I have no moral problem “pulling the plug” in that case (a topic for a later Sunday as well, I’m sure). We’re not talking about people with any old learning disability here.
Keith
/ April 4, 2011 at 11:08 am@Aristarchus
“But then it’s not about “potentiality” at all. I mean, you’re now claiming they already exist… And then it just becomes a question of whether the fetus deserves the same moral consideration as a full person.”
Abortion is a moral problem that arises only if a fetus exists that may be aborted, so I don’t think the existence requirement is a problem.
As I suggested in my initial response, I don’t think it makes sense to look only at the immediate effects of an action on people’s well-being. Instead, we need to look at the integrated effects over time. And, over time, a particular individual may have varying status in terms of how much she deserves to be morally considered.
Keith
/ April 4, 2011 at 11:22 am@NFQ
“If the potentiality of two cells that have met is something that matters, why not the potentiality of those same two cells which are still in two separate human bodies?”
I suppose it depends on what moral problem is being posed here. I suppose we could ask something like “should I have a child or not?”. I’m sure you’ll agree that this is a valid, indeed quite common, question, and that it cannot really be answered without dwelling on potentiality. But this is also a question that has nothing to do with abortion, so I’m not sure it is relevant here.
NFQ
/ April 4, 2011 at 12:03 pmKeith, I think Aristarchus and I are making essentially the same point and you’re responding to us both in similar ways, so I’m going to respond to both your comments together.
Of course whether to have a child is a different question than whether to get an abortion. But they would seem, if one follows your logic, to rest on similar principles, and that’s why I brought it up. If you are arguing that the effects of a decision on all future people, integrated over time, should be considered (which does seem sensible to some degree) you should not have an abortion at any point, and you should always be having more children. I don’t think that people do have a moral obligation to have arbitrarily large numbers of children, so something is wrong in this reasoning. I think the error is in degree. A future person deserves some consideration, but not enough to make them equal to an already existent person. An undifferentiated mass of cells is an existent entity to my mind, but not yet a “person.”
L.Long
/ April 4, 2011 at 12:44 pmJohn Baron states…
—The taking of human life without proper justification is morally wrong.
—Elective abortion takes a human life without proper justification.
—Therefore Abortion is morally wrong.
I can agree to that being his belief and that’s OK.
SO John –DON’T ever get an abortion-and no one is forcing you too.
Murder has been defined for some time on most societies. Now we get to What Is Human?? The fetus may well be special but it is not human but POTENTIALLY human. People like John will never have to worry about the consequences of making abortion illegal or making it murder. Unless someone does something really stupid…For example.
All sperm are potentially human, so killing a sperm is murder. Even if John has sex continuously so that no sperm spills into his pants (making him a mass murderer) then he still is a mass murderer because only ONE of his sperm gets used at best. Yes it is a silly example but that point was tried to be a law, which would make all men mass murderers.
When any kind of strict law is tried to applied to abortion it is not too long before it become very VERY stupid. As when the spanish doctor was brought up on charge of murder when he tried to save a 9yr-old life from a bad pregnancy.
The ratio of abortions to population is no higher now then before (argument from authority-I don’t know the survey). And most women only do so from desperation that is usually caused by religion or culture.
So it is not a big social problem in any way, it is just a big problem of ass-hole males (not men) who NEED to have control over all women.
John Barron
/ April 4, 2011 at 12:45 pmNFQ, at the point of conception, biologically and genetically, a human life is initiated. It is scientifically unarguable. It has complete and fully unique human DNA. In every respect it is alive and human.
Of course Moss is alive, but I argue that Human beings carry value in virtue of being human. Moss and Humans are completely different beings. Honestly, to deny there is something ontologically different about humans from other life I believe is just rhetorical skepticism to hold onto abortion being morally permissable at any cost. Taking a human life would be justified for punishment for crimes committed, or in the case of self defense of yourself or another. The vast majority of abortions are performed for matters of personal convenience according to the Guttmacher Institute. [page 4, table 2]
“My standard has to do with self-awareness and the ability to experience pain and other feelings”
This is a dangerous designation. It implies, and you said explicitly stated, that it makes it ok to take human lives you do not feel are worthy to protect. When someone else gets to make the decision for you, you had better hope the people in charge don’t define your condition unprotected without your input.
“By with holding life support, nature is being allowed to take its course. The patient is dying from natural causes as a result of their medical condition. By allowing nature to take its course, you are not actively participating in the death of the patient.
On the other hand abortion is actively taking a life through a procedure which is designed specifically to take a life. Were we to allow nature to take its course in the case of pregnancy, the baby will mature and be born. Where with holding life support allows a patient to die–who would die if left to themselves by removing intervention; abortion caused the baby to die–who would otherwise live if left to themselves by imposing an intervention.”
Aristarchus
/ April 4, 2011 at 12:49 pmJohn, this is …. less than coherent reasoning. That’s like me saying, “If we determine whether you can have alcohol based on your age, then we run the risk of giving vodka to toddlers.” We only run that risk if we make such a determination idiotically. There are are actually relevant differences between toddlers and adults. If we don’t consider those differences, any alcohol law either leads to a bunch of dead toddlers or prohibition. If instead, we are willing to acknowledge the obvious differences, we can come up with a policy that’s somewhat reasonable.
Aristarchus
/ April 4, 2011 at 1:24 pmFirst, John, why did you put that all in quotes? Are you not writing your own comments?
More importantly, though, this action-inaction distinction doesn’t make sense. I think most people understand that removing resources keeping someone alive is the same as killing them. Failing to feed a baby is pretty clearly murder, even though you aren’t actively doing anything designed to kill them… Plus, a fetus in the womb is effectively on life support, so the only distinction here is whether the life support is removed by a surgeon or a nurse? I’m really confused…
You place a lot of weight on the fact that the fetus has human DNA, so my question is – why does that matter? After all, the fact that its DNA is human only means that the A, C, T, and G parts of its DNA are in a slightly different order than in, for example, a cat. What is it about this category of possible DNA codes that entitle them to increased moral weight?
NFQ
/ April 4, 2011 at 1:42 pmI think he’s quoting from his own post.
To the DNA issue, I’d add: all the cells in my body have a full set of human DNA. And they’re alive by the conventional biological meaning of the word. Am I murdering a human being if I trip and skin my knee? Your argumentation suggests that I am, but this is obviously absurd and wrong.
My point is that, in the early stages of pregnancy, killing the fetus is the same as killing the skin on my knee when I trip and fall. Or maybe, say, piercing my ears. I don’t need a reason better than “personal convenience” to do that.
John Barron
/ April 4, 2011 at 2:35 pmNFQ — you are confusing the parts with the whole. Skin cells are part of your body where the human in the womb, at whatever point in its development is a whole entity. Though not fully matured, from the fertilized egg to the birthed baby, it is a whole human being.
Aris — Removing resources keeping someone alive is not the same as killing them. The cause of death is not “life support removal” it is whatever the medical condition for which they were on life support. If the person required artificial lungs, for example, to remove the artificial breating apparatus is not the cause of death, it is suffocation.
Conversely, with abortion, the cause of death is mutilation and dismemberment, and or poisoning. Do you see a difference?
Aristarchus
/ April 4, 2011 at 2:54 pmNot for all forms of abortion, John. For many, the cause of death is no longer receiving nutrients, warmth, etc. from the woman’s body.
John Barron
/ April 4, 2011 at 2:58 pmWhich abortion clinics offer those kinds of abortion?
Aristarchus
/ April 4, 2011 at 3:33 pmAlmost all of them, John. Early abortions are usually done through a pill. One option is mifepristone, which lowers progesterone levels, causing the uterine lining to disintigrate. Since that’s where the embryo gets nutrients from, the pregnancy ends. There’s also misoprostol, which causes uterine contractions and expels the embryo from the body. (Info available on dozens of websites with 5 seconds of googling.)
I should say, I think refusing to feed a baby would be every bit as much murder as cutting one up with a knife. This distinction you’re making is dumb. But even if you insist on it, it doesn’t get you where you want to go.
Dave
/ April 4, 2011 at 3:39 pmNFQ – one problem that you’ll get into with “self awareness and ability to feel pain” as the deciding factors is animals and infants. Adult animals (say, livestock) are more self aware than a newborn infant. Even more so compared to a premature baby. But I think most people will agree that strangling a newborn or premie is morally reprehensible, whereas slaughtering a pig is not.
NFQ
/ April 4, 2011 at 5:55 pmAgreed, Dave! I mentioned this issue in a parenthetical tangent in the middle of my post. I realize this is a problem for how well my standard matches up with our moral intuition, but I haven’t come up with a better one. (Suggestions are welcome!)
Pigs are indeed pretty smart. I would be willing to accept the implication that we shouldn’t eat pigs, or other livestock that have comparable self-awareness to that of babies. I don’t have enough background in the right sort of sciences to draw those lines, but I could imagine finding evidence that, with this as our moral standard, we ought to be vegetarians.
Keith
/ April 4, 2011 at 10:30 pm@NFQ
“If you are arguing that the effects of a decision on all future people, integrated over time, should be considered (which does seem sensible to some degree) you should not have an abortion at any point, and you should always be having more children.”
Ah, there’s a misunderstanding here. I do not advocate that all people, let alone all future people, be considered in any particular moral problem. If Jane Doe is considering having an abortion, the only people whose well-being should be considered are those whose well-being is likely to be changed by at least one of the possible actions being considered. So this would include Jane, the fetus inside her, family members, etc. It would not include, say, someone living halfway around the world who has never heard of Jane Doe, and it certainly wouldn’t include nonexistent people.
While it’s certainly possible to come up with useful general rules or heuristics, like “late term abortions should generally be avoided”, each case ultimately needs to be decided on its own merits.
Of course, an obvious exception to this approach is when it must be decided, for practical purposes, whether an action should be made legal or illegal. In this case, it must be determined whether a particular act is sufficiently (and reliably) morally reprehensible as to make it worth prohibiting.
Keith
/ April 4, 2011 at 10:42 pm@John
You seem to be arguing that once a new, unique human genome is formed, it is our moral duty to ensure that it gets carried into the world in a human body. Can you tell us why you think this is true?
AZMarie
/ April 5, 2011 at 1:33 pmOne of the questions raised with abortion being permissible early in the pregnancy is “what about actions that harm, rather than destroy, the fetus?”
An example of this would be fetal alcohol syndrome. When we hear of a child born with FAS, there is a sense that this child was wronged. Drinking even during the first trimester can cause FAS, but it seems strange to say that the child was harmed, “but it was harmed when it was a non-person, so, oh well”.
If a woman chooses to drink (or is an alcoholic) while pregnant, but not seek abortion, then most likely an injured human organism (fetus, baby, whatever) will result. Does an alcoholic woman have an obligation to seek abortion (thus violating her reproductive choice)? Does she have an obligation to stop drinking immediately (thus violating her right to do what she wants with her body)?
Another situation–though even rarer–is for fetuses/babies that survive attempted abortions, and have injuries as a result (e.g., Gianna Jessen). It just seems really strange to me to say that it is not OK to injure a fetus but it’s OK to destroy it (or to deny that any wrongdoing or injury even took place).
Keith
/ April 5, 2011 at 2:25 pm@AZMarie
I think that’s why it’s important to consider the integrated consequences of an action over time. Drinking while pregnant is morally wrong not because it causes immediate suffering to the fetus (it doesn’t) but because it is liable to cause suffering down the road (to a being that is already in existence, and therefore is going to have a future life of *some* overall quality anyway).
If the situation were serious enough, i.e. damage to the fetus was severe and likely to result in a painful, reduced existence, then yes, I can see how aborting the fetus would be the humane thing to do. And the mother would need to be strongly discouraged from falling pregnant again, unless she was willing to give up drinking.
Aristarchus
/ April 5, 2011 at 2:26 pm@AZMarie:
Imagine I shoot a a nuclear missile into space on a trajectory that will result in it hitting the earth and exploding in 150 years. There’s a good chance that it will kill someone at that time. I think that makes it obviously an immoral thing to do. Yet none of those people are currently alive. Does that mean I’m not hurting anyone by doing it? Obviously not – I might not be hurting anyone at the moment, but I’m initiating a chain of events that will hurt someone in the future, which is just as bad.
I think the same thing applies here. At the earliest stages, where an embryo is a couple undifferentiated cells, it’s perfectly fine to do anything you want to it – injure, kill, etc. A pregnant woman (who is actually having the child) has a moral obligation not to drink. That’s not because of a moral obligation towards the embryo. That’s because of a moral obligation to the future child, the same way my obligation not to fire the missile comes from an obligation to people that don’t yet exist. (If for some reason I knew there would not be people on the earth at that time, there’s probably nothing wrong with firing the missile.)
azmarie
/ April 6, 2011 at 7:28 pm@Aristarchus – That is an interesting example you bring up; however, I’m not sure that I would agree that it is analogous to the situation of fetal alcohol syndrome. In your example, there is a large time delay between the action of firing off the nuclear missile and when people are exposed to (and killed by) the exploded missile.
With fetal alcohol exposure, the action of the woman drinking and the exposure of the fetus to the alcohol all occur during pregnancy. When the mother gives birth, the newborn child is no longer being exposed to alcohol (hopefully…). Yes, our ability to perceive that this exposure took place–i.e., the diagnosis of FAS–won’t happen until after birth, but the harm to that human organism still took place during pregnancy.
It’s the same specific human organism before birth and after birth, even though changes in development occur throughout pregnancy (and onward through childhood and adolescence, for that matter).
NFQ
/ April 7, 2011 at 3:43 amHmm. AZMarie, I was under the impression that your initial comment was to express something along the lines of: “How can one reconcile the badness of drinking while pregnant with the willingness to abort a fetus? If it’s okay to kill a fetus, surely it would be okay to injure it. And if it’s not okay to injure it, it shouldn’t be okay to kill it.”
Keith and Aristarchus responded by saying that they object to women drinking alcohol during their pregnancy because of its later effects on the baby when it is born, the child as it grows up, etc. As long as the expectation is that it is going to be a person later (i.e. the woman is not headed to get an abortion tomorrow, or something) then drinking is analogous to Aristarchus’ missile launch example. A pro-choice individual could still reasonably be against alcohol consumption during pregnancy.
Your most recent comment, though, just brings us back to the initial question. Your argument is a reasonable way to look at fetal alcohol syndrome, provided that you see the fetus as equivalent to a person already. But Aristarchus’s argument you’re responding to is a reasonable way to look at it from the other side. Both approaches lead to the conclusion that drinking while pregnant is morally bad, so the FAS example doesn’t lead me to prefer one over the other.
Keith Harrison
/ April 7, 2011 at 12:42 pm@azmarie
“…the harm to that human organism still took place during pregnancy”
I think this is where the difference in viewpoint is found (and maybe it’s just a matter of how we define the word “harm”).
From what I can tell (and I think NFQ and Aristarchus would agree), no harm is actually done to fetus at the time the mother is drinking, in the sense that the fetus is not made to suffer at this time (it is not even capable of experiencing suffering).
Certainly, the normal development of the fetus is knocked off track at this point, but this will only lead to suffering (harm) at a much later time. Similarly, the launch of the missile sets in course a different timeline from the one that would unfold if no launch had taken place, but no harm is done immediately.
azmarie
/ April 7, 2011 at 6:39 pm@Keith: Yes, there does seem to be a difference in the way we define “harm”. In my view at least, whether harm is inflicted doesn’t seem to depend on a being’s awareness that harm was done.
For example, let’s say there is a man in a coma named Tom. Someone chops off Tom’s finger while he is still in a coma. I would say that Tom was harmed at the time his finger was cut off, even though he is not aware of it. Not until/if Tom awakes will he perceive this harm, but the harm was still inflicted on Tom before he awoke.
A similar case is that of Ana Rosa Rodriguez, who as a result of a botched abortion is missing one arm. Yes, the abortion itself was illegal due to the stage of pregnancy, but “a jury also found [the doctor] guilty of assaulting the fetus”. (How can a non-person be assaulted? Or was the jury just ridiculous in that finding?) It seems strange (and cruel) to say that what should have happened in this case is that the abortion should have been “successful”–i.e., no live baby resulted.
Also, what to do we say to someone like Gianna Jessen, who has cerebral palsy as a result of a failed abortion attempt? “Sorry about the cerbral palsy, but you mother was just excercising her right to choose when and whether to have children. Unfortunately, you survived.”?
@all…: What are your guys’ (/gals’) thoughts on the issue of those who are born following attempted abortion?
@NFQ: I agree that most people feel that drinking while pregnant is bad, even if their underlying reasons may differ. I brought up FAS just as an example of harm that can be done to the fetus; there are of course other ways that harm can be inflicted.
There is something in your post that I have a question about:
Maybe I’m not understanding you here, but if destroying the early embryo has the moral quality of an appendectomy, then why would we even call it “killing”? I’ve never heard someone say they killed their appendix; organs are not considered to have a life which is uniquely their own.
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Anyway, I appreciate that the commenters (and author) are able to dialogue civiliy on this post … so often, controversial issues like this turn into name-calling or demonizing those “on the other side” instead of a reasoned discussion. Maybe because I’ve “switched sides” (I used to consider myself pro-choice), I tend to be less fond of the bad agruments or attacks that people (on both sides) use.
Aristarchus
/ April 7, 2011 at 8:49 pm@azmarie: (I’m splitting this up into parts to try to keep the conversation straight.)
On delayed harm: (I’m responding to what you aimed at Keith, since we’ve been arguing on the same side here, but he can disagree with me if he wants.)
I think there’s a semantic ambiguity here that doesn’t really affect the underlying issue. Say I fire my missile. When do I “do” the harm? When I fire it, or when it hits? Our language isn’t very precise about it. Maybe I “do” the harm when I launch the missile, but the harm “happens” when it hits. Or something. What we really should do is just be more clear about our language. “At one point I take an action that will inevitably cause harm, and then at a later point that harmful effect actually occurs” would be a more clear description. And that description applies equally well to the missile and to cutting off Tom’s finger (since Tom doesn’t suffer from the lack of his finger until he wakes up from his coma). I would in fact argue that cutting off Tom’s finger wouldn’t actually be morally wrong if Tom was completely brain dead and had no chance of ever waking up from the coma. In that instance no harm is done.
Obviously this is only analogous to abortion if you don’t believe the embryo is rights-bearing at that time. The point me and Keith were making was just that there’s nothing weird about thinking an action is wrong when the person it harms doesn’t yet exist. (Or isn’t yet of relevant status for the moral calculation.)
On failed abortions: Obviously someone born with a serious disability because of a failed attempt at an abortion is greatly harmed by it. However, all medical procedures have some chance of side effects. Every day people are seriously harmed when get an appendectomy or a face lift or any other procedure done. Abortion is no different. We have standards for this – surgery can’t be performed until a safety-regulating agency is convinced that the chance of serious complications is very small compared to the potential good that the procedure does. (I.e., we accept a bigger risk of harm when we’re trying to remove a tumor than when we’re trying to do a face lift.) Abortion clearly is done for reasons much less trivial than a face lift, but it’s probably much closer to the “voluntary” end of the spectrum than the “necessary” end. Given that, I’d be totally fine with banning it if such failed abortions were common. Fortunately, they’re not. They’re extremely rare overall, and almost non-existent in abortions that are performed early (which is what most of us I think are defending here).
On use of “killing”: I’ll let NFQ answer about her use of the word in this particular context, but it’s worth pointing out two things. The first is that you could make this point on both sides. We definitely treat the end of a pregnancy culturally as something of significant sadness. Sometimes this is clearly just because it’s the lack of a pregnancy people were looking forward to. Sometimes words for death are used (or more frequently, euphemisms that are somewhat ambiguous but hint at death). But we definitely don’t treat it the same way we do an actual death. There are no funerals, for example. I think all you can really say this shows is that people in our culture are conflicted/unsure about how to think about it. It doesn’t say anything about what is actually correct.
The second point, though, is that there has been an active campaign by the pro-life movement in the US to encourage that sort of language. They actively try to rename laws and things of that sort to create the impression that everyone thinks of embryos as people. So many of these things don’t reflect the natural progression of language, but rather are just a sign of current political fights.
NFQ
/ April 7, 2011 at 10:04 pmWell, first I want to second azmarie’s appreciation of the civil discussion. This has been really interesting for me, and it was exactly what I was hoping for in starting this series. So thanks, everyone.
I agree with Aristarchus’ answer about failed abortions. This is really exceptionally rare, and that’s why these stories are so shocking and attention-grabbing. I do want to add some statistics: Even this pro-life site says that only 1% of abortions in the US happen after the 20th week of pregnancy (after the fifth month). Apparently the CDC doesn’t keep stats on gestational age after that point, but in 1997 the Guttmacher Institute estimated that 0.08% of abortions were after the 24th week (i.e. in the third trimester) and of those 3/4ths were in the 25th or 26th weeks. Here’s a pretty vivid histogram based on 2004 CDC data. (Note that the >20 weeks bar is wide not because there is an equal rate throughout that time period, but because there is only one “bin” in the data collection. One should focus on the height of the bars as the real indicator of amount, rather than area.)
So, I think it’s sad, and horrible to imagine, but it is rare enough that I think it is acceptable to solve via regulation of late-term abortion rather than by giving up the many benefits of legal abortion earlier during a pregnancy.
On the use of the word “killing,” perhaps I’ve been tricked into using the abortion equivalent of the term “death tax” (instead of inheritance tax). But I do readily acknowledge that living cells die, and in that basic sense, something dies when an abortion is performed. That’s why I make analogies to vegetables being picked, or scraping your knee, etc. Organisms die in those cases too. If you take an action that causes death, it seems reasonable to say that you “killed” something. But azmarie, the sentences you quoted were my attempt to point out that you do kill yeast when you bake bread, and so forth. It’s just that no one gets all that upset about it.
Edited to add: I also wanted to link to Keith’s interesting post about how these sorts of considerations play into his moral calculus. I’m still digesting it so I don’t have much to say yet, but I will point out that his abbreviation LOD stands for “level of discontentment.” See his previous essays for more explanation.
Keith Harrison
/ April 8, 2011 at 12:09 pmI don’t really have anything to add beyond what NFQ and Aristarchus have said regarding azmarie’s latest questions.
It is our current discussion that has led me to modify my moral system as described in the link kindly posted by NFQ in the above post. It’s this sort of discussion that helps us get at the meat of some of these issues, and develop our ideas, so thanks all!
Christian Schiffer
/ March 25, 2012 at 12:42 amMurdering innocent children is wrong, yes God forbids it and so should we. Those who kill an innocent child must themselves be put to death. There is nothing more to be said about it.
Ubi Dubium
/ March 25, 2012 at 10:39 pmYour bible is full of examples of god murdering innocent children, and god ordering people to murder innocent children. Argument fail.
John B
/ March 26, 2012 at 1:56 pmNot knowing the difference between murder and killing fail.
Seth R.
/ March 27, 2012 at 1:24 pmContinuing to get email updates on a thread I finished with over a year ago – fail.
Ogre
/ March 28, 2012 at 7:32 amSo god killed the first born of Egypt therefore he should be put to death ? OK, works for me.