Not many
ethical issues are as vigorously fought over as abortion these days.
Unsurprisingly, the standpoint of the different sides—put simply, those who are
in favour of abortion and those that are against it—have not achieved much in
shifting the beliefs of their opponents. Abortion was illegal in almost all
western states until the late 1960s; in 1967 Britain (England, Scotland, and
Wales) changed its laws to permit abortion on broad social grounds. In
the Row v Wade 1973 case, the United States Supreme Court held
that women have a constitutional right to abortion in the first six months of
pregnancy. Many other western nations like France and Italy have subsequently
liberated their abortion laws.
Ireland
and Northern Ireland, however, have held out in opposition to this movement.
Abortion in Ireland remains illegal under the 1861 Offences against the Person
Act and in 1983 an amendment to Ireland's constitution states that an embryo,
from the point of conception, is an Irish citizen and, therefore, is entitled
to the full rights of every man, woman and child living in the state. Then in
1992, when a 14-year-old victim of rape attempted to travel to Britain to seek
an abortion, the government, on the recommendation of the attorney general,
tried to block her from travelling overseas. The victim—in what became
widely known as the X-case—after all was allowed to travel abroad given that
her legal team evoked legislation held within the European convention on human
rights. Ireland, at present, has one of the strictest abortion laws in Europe.
This means that more than 3,000 women a year, seeking terminations, have to
travel abroad from Ireland (mainly to Britain) to have an abortion. Subsequent
to a recent European Court of Human Rights case, the Irish government is now
looking at whether a law that would claim the life of an unborn child may be
terminated when there is a risk of suicide by the pregnant mother.
Along
with the heart breaking death of Savita Halappanavar in
late October 2012, controversy over the issue of legalised abortion in Ireland
has sparked emotive reaction, offensive insults, and ill-founded rhetoric
throughout newspapers columns, radio and television debates, and public
rallies, between those to want legalise abortion (in a limited sense, at least)
and those to want to sustain Ireland’s constitutional right to life of the
unborn. The media, lamentably, scarcely ever gave space for reflective
consideration or discussion on the issue where rational discourse could
develop. Numerous debates resulted in the voicing of arid legalese jargon or
else simple declarations of “right to life” or “right to choose”
that didn't do anything to explicate the matter.” How, then, do
you find a morally appropriate abortion law? The most understandable way is to
begin by working out the moral principles that will shape the basis of the law
and then seeing what their propositions are for practice. In this way, my
aim is to critically put forward some of the ethical arguments for and against
abortion, devoid of legal and, as best as possible, ideological constraints.
Many will not agree with some, if any, of the conclusions I have reached here,
but I hope, at least, to challenge certain views and assumptions of the reader,
and perhaps move some to buttress their current position on the issue, apart
from whether they agree with me here or not.
The main pro-life argument against abortion rests upon two main
premises: that it’s wrong to kill an innocent human being; a human foetus is an
innocent human being; so, therefore, it’s wrong to kill a human foetus.
Their pro-choice liberal opponents reject the second premise: they claim a
human foetus is not an innocent human being; so, therefore,
it’s not wrong to kill a human foetus. When human life begins,
in essence, is where a lot of the dispute surfaces. However, the pro-life
argument is not as easy to undermine as pro-choicers aver. The continuum
between the fertilised egg and the newborn dares pro-choicers to mark a period
in the process that point towards a morally relevant dividing line. Pro-choice
defenders have advanced a number of factors which they claim can determine a
morally relevant dividing line. I will now present some of these main
factors and show why none of them stand up as convincing arguments to morally
justify abortion.
Birth, some
pro-choicers affirm, is the most salient dividing line. In resistance we can
respond, credibly, by saying that the foetus or infant—whether inside or
outside the womb—is altogether the same substance. It’s possible to imagine a
situation where a premature infant could be developed in many ways less than
a viable foetus. It’s possible also for a viable foetus to be conceived at an
earlier stage than a premature infant; in this way, can we really say that we
may not kill the premature infant, but may kill the more developed foetus? This
would seem a rather odd position to hold. Put another way, the geographic
location of a being, whether inside or outside the womb, cannot, it seems,
point to a morally germane dividing line.
Why, at
the same time, should the point of viability make such a difference to our
concern for protecting life? Drawing the line at the point of viability is
shaky ground if you accept that a new-born child is also usually dependent on
his mother, and for some considerable time afterwards. Similarly, an elderly
parent may be totally reliant on her son looking after her; someone who has a
dire accident on a hiking tip in a remote area, is dependent on his companions
to help him, or else, if left stranded, may die. In these cases we do not
hold that total dependence on another person determines whether one lives or
not; from this perspective, it seems we cannot reasonably say that the
dependence of a non-viable foetus on its mother does not give her the right to
end its life.
III
Notwithstanding the problem of showing a morally relevant signifier,
some pro-choicers will entirely ignore the claim that a foetus is an innocent
human being, but contend that abortion is acceptable nonetheless. Here
are some of those main arguments put forward by its defenders.
Laws
preventing abortion doesn't stop abortion, pro-choicers attest, but
simply forces them underground—or in Ireland’s case, it just exports the
quandary to Britain. Women who are in a desperate situation may have no
alternative but to go to underground (in many cases, to unqualified)
abortionist, which can often result in serious medical complications or death.
We can point to a recent study which suggests that unsafe abortions worldwide
lead to the death of 47,000 women every year,[1] and
pregnant women in Ireland, with no recourse, may resort to purchasing
abortifacient drugs on the black market, which can also pose harmful health
risks. Abortions carried out in safe legal clinics, on the other hand, is as
reliable as any medical surgery. Banning abortion, advocates
say, doesn't really reduce the number of abortions performed; it
merely adds to the blockade and risks for women with unwanted pregnancies.
This
explanation, however, is an argument about abortion law and not about the
ethics of abortion per se. The argument still doesn't succeed in
meeting the pro-life claim that abortion is the intentional killing, the
murder, of an innocent human life. Pro-lifers can say that the current system
can improve—laws, for example, can be properly enforced, ways to make pregnancy
easier to accept for the women who become pregnant, and adoption opportunities
could operate more successfully. Hence, seeing that the
argument doesn't overcome the principal ethical issue, steps that
improve the system seem like a fair response.
Pro-choicers
may go further still and argue that abortion is a private issue and, to put it
bluntly, “is not the laws business.” The conception of liberty argument is
widely used by liberal thinkers and can be traced back to words uttered by John
Stuart Mill: in On Liberty (1859) Mill states “that the only
purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a
civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own
good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.”[2] Pro-choice
advocacy, in this way, claim that we’re all free to act in accordance to our
own private moral views on abortion, and society or the
state, shouldn't force us to comply with their own views. This
argument makes sense though only if we assume abortion to be a victimless
crime, and, like the previous argument, doesn't get the better of the
pro-life claim that a foetus is an innocent human being. Christopher Hitchens—who
seemed to remain ambivalent on the abortion issue—argued that the removal of an
appendix or a tumour from our own personal spaces “is nobody else’s goddamn
business,” but a foetus is not to be compared to an appendix or tumour.[3] Mill’s principle, pro-life defenders argue, is
defensible only if it’s restricted to acts that don’t harm others—but abortion,
they claim, does indeed harm others.
Another
argument, which has been variously expressed, to justify abortion, without
refusing to claim that a foetus is an innocent human being, is that a woman has
a right to choose what happens to her own body. This assertion is used by many
feminists as the trump card vindication in favour of abortion. An influential
essay, for instance, was put forward by Judith Jarvis Thompson in a novel way
over forty years ago.[4] For the sake of argument, Thomson, from the
outset, assumes that a foetus is a human being from the point of conception. By
way of analogy, she asks us to imagine that you wake up one morning with a
world-famous violinist plugged into your kidneys. The violinist has experienced
sudden kidney failure and the local music society obtained details of your
blood group, and discover it matches the violinist. So they decide to drug and
kidnap you, then hook you up to the violinist to supply him with dialysis. When
you wake up, the music society gives you the option to disconnect from the
violinist, but, as a result, he’ll certainly die. They tell you that if you
remain connected for about nine months or so, the violinist will have got
better and you can be unplugged without posing a threat to his life.
The
question Thomson puts forward is: “Are you morally obliged to stay hooked up
for the nine months it will take the violinist to recover?” To be sure “it
would be very nice of you,” she says, “a great kindness,” on your part, but “he
certainly has no right against you that you should give him
continued use of your kidneys. For nobody has any right to use your kidneys
unless you give him such a right.”[5] The
similarities with pregnancy that results from rape should seem clear.
Consequently, if we agree with Thomson that it wouldn't be wrong to
unplug oneself from the violinist, we must also agree that, whatever the
condition of the foetus, abortion is not wrong, at least in cases when the
pregnancy follows from rape.
Can
Thompson’s argument be extended to cases beyond rape? Suppose, for instance, a
woman who voluntarily has sex and, knowing the risks, becomes pregnant; is she
in some way responsible for the foetus inside her? Granted,
she didn't invite it in, but doesn't her partial responsibility
for its creation give it a right to use her body? Once more Thompson argues
that it would be awfully nice of the woman to let the foetus use her body, but
since nine months bearing another, against your will, is a costly price to pay
for ignorance or contraceptive failure, we must accept that
abortion isn't wrong in cases like this. Thompson, in sum, argues
that “nobody is morally required to make large sacrifices, of
health, of all other interests and concerns, of all other duties and
commitments ... for nine months in order to keep another person alive.”[6] Does Thompson’s argument support other cases where
abortion can be permissible? She doesn't give a direct answer to this
question, but nonetheless does suggest there are some cases in
which abortion is not permissible; for instance, it would be indecent, she
says, for a woman seven months pregnant demanding an abortion just to avoid the
inconvenience of postponing a trip abroad.
So can abortion
be supportable using Thompson’s argument? Should we, as she avows, favour the
right of the mother, in certain cases at least, over the foetus? Allowing the
foetus to use its mother’s body prevents it from dying, but not allowing the
mother from removing the foetus from her body (assuming there’s no
complications), on the other hand, won’t result in her death. Sure, the mother
in this situation may be forced into an unfavourable position, but it could be
reasonably argued that allowing her the choice of
abortion wouldn't outweigh the unfavourable position of the foetus;
in short, the foetus could have more to lose. Evidently there is a clash
of interests here. But why, we can ask, should we favour the mother’s corporal
autonomy—her choice—instead of giving equal and fair interest to the foetus?
Pro-life defenders say they’re standing up for the rights of the vulnerable and
voiceless unborn agent. They may accept the clash of interests, but yet claim
it’s not evident we should favour the rights of the mother over the foetus.
Isaiah Berlin reminds us that in society there can be a divergence of values
which often are conflicting and incompatible: “both liberty and equality are
among the primary goals pursued by human beings,” he states, “total liberty of
the powerful, the gifted, is not compatible with the rights to a decent
existence of the weak and the less gifted.”[7]
From this we can see that choice can indeed conflict with equality and perhaps
fairness; pro-lifers, in this way, can conceivably say they are justly and
necessarily defending the rights of the weak over the powerful.
There are
still further problems with Thompson’s argument: she welcomes a system of
rights and duty that allow us to gives grounds for our actions that are
independent of their consequences; for instance,
consequentialists—those who hold that whether an act is morally right
depends only on the consequences of that act or of something related to that
act—could oppose Thompson’s argument; they would say if we accept that the life
of a foetus is given the same moral weight as the life of an adult, it would be
wrong not to support one’s life for nine months, if that was the single way it
could remain alive; they could, at the same time, accept that the woman
has been put in an extremely tough position, and what’s the right decision
requires a major sacrifice; yet, they could still hold that to terminate is
wrong.[8]
Another
issue with Thompson’s argument is that it seems to defend abortion only in
certain circumstances, and it’s not entirely clear which cases abortion can and
cannot be justified. What’s more, Jeff McMahan indicates that in some cases
it’s possible to remove a viable foetus without ending its life; therefore,
assuming there’s the possibility of adoption, the woman, it seems, does not
have a right to abortion, but only a right to the removal of a foetus from her
body.[9] If there’s no obstruction to a woman’s
right to control the use of her body, using Thompson’s violin argument, then it
seems difficult to vindicate abortion in cases where the foetus can live
outside the womb. It doesn't follow, therefore, that we can justify
the killing of a foetus via abortion when the foetus can be removed without
being killed.[10]
We have
seen that the pro-choice arguments advanced here have not succeeded in
establishing a morally significant dividing line between a newborn infant and a
foetus. The arguments—with the possible exception of Thompson’s, in at least
certain cases anyway—also fail to give grounds for abortion in ways that stand
up against the pro-life claim that the foetus is an innocent human being.
IV
The
central arguments against abortion we have broached so far rest upon the
following premises: that it’s wrong to kill an innocent human being; a human
foetus is an innocent human being; therefore, it’s wrong to kill a human
foetus. Pro-choice thinkers sometimes reject the second premise—instead
they state that a human foetus is not an innocent being—or
else they protest against drawing a conclusion from these premises (e.g.
Thompson’s argument). Interestingly, as Peter Singer has pointed out, the
pro-choice side has never really considered challenging the first premise of
the argument; but the premise that it’s wrong to kill an innocent human being,
he claims, is not as secure as many people assume.
Singer
argues that “human” is a term that overlaps two specific concepts: being a
member of the species Homo sapiens, and being a person.[11] Whether a foetus is a member of the
species Homo sapiens is something that can be empirically
tested and easily determined. Clearly, in this way, the first moment an embryo
is conceived, it’s a human being. The second concept was borrowed from the
ethicist Joseph Fletcher’s “indicators of humanhood,” a list which includes:
self-awareness, self-control, a sense of the past and future, the capacity to
relate to others, the capacity to experience pleasure and pain, communication,
and curiosity. Singer defines the latter as “persons”, and the former as
“members of the species Homo sapiens.” This is an important
distinction, and accepting it may transform the abortion issue. In this sense,
and despite the obvious overlap, there could be members of the human species
who are not persons, and there could be persons who are not humans (mature
primates, for example).
What, we
may ask, is the difference between killing a being that is a person and a being
that is not a person? To take the life of a person without their consent,
Singer argues, is to thwart their desires for the future. An adult librarian,
for instance, has a conception of herself: she can look forward to her next
holiday abroad; she has memories of her graduation day; she has a loving family
and close friends that are a central part of her life; and she can look forward
to reading the closing volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.
Therefore, we can say she has an interest—or right, if you like—to continue
living. Denying her a right to continue living would prevent her having an
opportunity of experiencing a desired future; it would moreover inflict grave
wrongness upon her and her family. In contrast to the librarian, a being who is
not a person—that is, one who is incapable of conceiving itself as existing
over time, hasn't wishes or desires for the future, who cannot even
consider the likelihood of worrying about the prospect of its future existence
being cut short, or have the capacity to suffer—does not have an automatic
moral right to continue living. Ending the life of a foetus—for one cannot
plausibly argue that a foetus is either self-conscious or
rational— isn't denying it any desired future goals. Based on the
actual characteristics it possesses, ending the life of a foetus does not
impose wrongness on it. Only self-consciousness, aware, rational agents can
have a sense of the future; based on this, there seems to be an important
distinction between the killing of an adult human and a foetus. Ending the life
of a human that is self-conscious, aware, and has a sense of the future, would
result in causing a profound injustice to him; conversely, ending the life of a
foetus that isn't self aware and hasn't a sense of the
future, is much less significant—it cannot be worried about its loss of life,
for it has no comprehension of its own future.
Pro-lifers
may accept the view that a foetus is not self-conscious or self-aware, yet
withal maintain that it’s wrong to kill a foetus because it’s a member of our
species. But now that we have said that personhood is what is morally relevant
and not species membership, the pro-lifer will have to explain what
characteristics of the human foetus is in itself intrinsically important.
Nothing more than mere species membership, as we have
said, isn't synonymous with personhood, and, by definition, is based
on characteristics lacking moral significance. The view that nothing more than
membership of our species, regardless of the characteristics, makes a
significant difference—often referred to as the sanctity of human life—is a
heritage of our Christian doctrines that many pro-life supporters may be
reluctant to bring into the discussion. Remarkably, early Christian thinkers
like Thomas Aquinas maintained that human souls were implanted in foetuses at
40 days (for girls, it was 90 days). He supported the idea that in the early
stages there are only vegetative souls, and the termination of a foetus before
actual ensoulment does not constitute murder.[12] It’s
only since the 17th century that the Catholic Church declared that ensoulment
happens from the moment of conception. Nowadays, the doctrine is no
longer widely accepted within secular societies, but the speciesist view of
nature—of placing non-human animals outside the realm of moral significance
because they supposedly lack personal autonomy—can be traced back to
Judeo-Christian theology, and continues to endure in our secular world
today. Nevertheless Darwin reminded us that humans share a common lineage with
other species, and genetic testing has shown the near proximity of these evolutionary
links. Furthermore, in the past forty or fifty years science and philosophy,
according to the historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto, have combined to undermine
our conventional notion of humankind[13]. Consequently,
there can be no good reasons, from a purely non-religious perspective anyway,
for believing the human species is intrinsically special.
Now that we are questioning our speciesist view of nature, perhaps we
can now re-evaluate our belief in the sanctity of human life. If pro-life
supporters claim that the life of a foetus is morally significant, irrespective
of its characteristics, are the lives of non-human animals also morally
significant? Adult pigs, horses, and calves, it is fair to say, are more
self-aware and rational than a human foetus; why should we privilege the human
foetus over non-human animals? Membership of the species Homo sapiens is
not enough to bestow a right to life on a being; membership of a particular
racial group, in the same way, does not grant one a morally privileged right
over those from other racial groups. Self-awareness or rationality cannot
justify greater protection to the foetus over other beings either, since many
non-human animals, like a pig or a cow, has mental capacities superior to a
human foetus. Here is how Peter Singer puts it:
For any
fair comparison of morally relevant characteristics, like rationality,
self-consciousness, awareness, autonomy, pleasure and pain, and so on, the
calf, the pig, and the much derided chicken come out well ahead of the fetus at
any stage of pregnancy—while if we make the comparison with a fetus of less
than three months, a fish would show more signs of consciousness.[14]
Pro-life defenders rarely, if ever, remain morally consistent in the
abortion debate; if they did, they wouldn't regularly dine on the
flesh of calves, pigs, lambs, or chickens and would not show a biased concern
for human life. Youth Defence or Precious Life are certainly never seen
advocating vegetarianism, or demonstrating outside the premises of butchers in
the same way they demonstrate outside abortion clinics and family planning
centres. Pro-lifers might reply that it’s not justifiable to kill humans, but
okay to kill a non-human animal, because, unlike them, we have a higher moral
status, advanced mental capacities, the ability to morally reciprocate, use
language, and so forth. But this reply seems to appeal to a crude
generalisation: certain human beings, like foetuses and infants, also lack
these capacities, and certain non-human animals (like the adult chimpanzee), on
the other hand, possess a high degree of cognitive ability. Consequentially,
advanced psychological capacities cannot show us that a human foetus had a
higher moral capacity than a chimpanzee; and it seem to me, likely, that any
impartial (non-human-centric) criteria cannot be applied to suggest otherwise.
Pro-lifers
might assert what differentiates all humans morally from all other animals is
that we have souls. For this view to be creditable, though, it has to offer a
known and reasoned conception of the soul; it must put forward evidence for its
existence in all humans as its non existence in all non-human animals. More
importantly, it must also give a reason of why the existence of a soul is an
essential and satisfactory condition for being within the capacity of the
constraint against instrumental harm.[15]
We also
have to think about the point at which the foetus is likely to have a capacity
to experience pain. Many agree the time between 23 and 28 weeks is,
serendipitously, the point during which the foetus develops a capacity for
consciousness. Around this time a foetus becomes conscious (but not
self-conscious); hence abortion should be considered a more serious issue. Even
so, it seems reasonable to suggest that a self-conscious woman’s claim still
outweighs the basic claim of a conscious foetus. The conscious, sentient
foetus, to be sure, has more moral status than the early foetus, but it
still isn't a person. In short, the foetus has only a right not to
experience pain; the ending its life, accordingly, ought to be as pain-free as
possible.
V
If we say
a foetus doesn't qualify as a person, so therefore it’s morally
permissible to end its life, the pro-lifer can object by saying that a newborn
baby, in the way invoked here, is also not a person. We have to admit, they
claim, that there is no intrinsic or moral characteristic differences between a
foetus (a viable one at least) and a newborn infant. The strength of the
pro-life position is found in the problem pro-choice defenders have in
signalling a morally relevant line of separation between a foetus and a newborn
baby. The usual pro-choice argument holds that it’s permissible to terminate a
foetus, but not a newborn baby. In the first half of the essay, most of—if not
all—the pro-choice arguments invoked can be feasibly repudiated; if we are unable
to mark a difference between a foetus and a baby, this would seem to seriously
weaken the pro-choice position.
However,
we could agree with pro-lifers and say a newborn baby has the same intrinsic
qualities as a foetus. We could, at the same time, disagree with them and say a
foetus and newborn baby have different qualities to, say, an adult person. If
put like this, we would have to say it is morally permissible to end the life
of both a foetus and newborn infant, but not an adult person. Like the foetus,
the newborn baby is not a rational, self-conscious agent; it does not have a
wish to continue living. Killing a newborn baby, if we follow from this, is not
any different from killing a foetus.
Even most
pro-choicers will be very troubled with this idea; but this, I claim, seems to
demonstrate the inconsistency of the regular pro-choice argument. According to
Stephen Mulhall, even to consider the possibility that infanticide could be
tolerable is to bear “evil thoughts”; the clear solution is to reject a theory
that comes to such conclusions.[16]However, if we look
closely we can see that the status of a foetus is not fundamentally different
from a newborn infant. It’s possible, for example, for a viable foetus to be
more psychological complex than a premature infant. Seeing that birth is
sometimes delayed for more than nine months and that premature births occur
regularly, there’s now a time of approximately four months during which time a
being could either be a foetus or an infant. Based on the logic of the
pro-choice position, the former has more right to life than the latter.
But why should we defend the life of a being on something as arbitrary as
location, but discard its other qualities?
Jeff McMahan argues the inconsistency between the general views about
abortion and general beliefs about infanticide will become even more
conspicuous as the point of viability occurs increasingly earlier in pregnancy
due to progress in medical technology. Using a thought experiment, he
illustrates these tensions.[17] Suppose in the
future it becomes feasible to support the life of a 20-week old foetus outside
the womb. The foetus would be still several weeks (or possible even more) away
from having the capacity for consciousness. If medical staff realised it had
some serious defect, many people (pro-choice advocates anyway) would agree it
would be acceptable for the woman carrying it to have an abortion. But say the
same foetus were delivered prematurely at 20 weeks and kept alive in an
intensive care unit; in this case it would be an infant, but most people would
reject the notion that it’s morally permissible to end its life. This lack of
cohesion, McMahan argues, suggests that most see the life of a newborn body as
sacred as that of an adult human:
This
inconsistency between common views about abortion and common beliefs about
infanticide will become even more pronounced as the point of viability occurs
progressively earlier in pregnancy as a result of medical technology. There
will, in consequence, be increasing pressure to revise either certain common
beliefs about abortion or certain common beliefs about infanticide.[18]
Suppose, however, we did say the premature infant had more right to life
than the unborn foetus, most people would still be holding an inconsistent
position. They would have to explain why a newborn baby has a right to life,
but why a non-human animal hasn't Many non-human animals, like
dolphins and gorillas, have higher mental capacities than newborn infants.
Hence it seems inconsistence to privilege the right to life of the newborn
infant over the non-human animals mentioned. Again, as McMahan put it:
[S]uch
challenges may force people to confront an obscure sense that their compliancy
about harms inflicted on animals and their intuitive horror of infanticide may
be considerably more difficult to justify than they would like to believe.[19]
One could
reject the killing of the newborn infant, however, and yet remain consistent:
they could deny the killing of a non-human animal with a higher, or equal,
cognitive capacity to the child. This measure would require those who reject
killing the baby, if they want to stay logically accordant, to adopt a vegan—or
at least a vegetarian—philosophy. To the best of my knowledge, most people who
reject the idea of killing an infant don’t adjust their position in this
way.
Without
doubt it’s widely accepted in society that we favour human beings, regardless
of their level of consciousness, over other species; but it seems to me that
this is not a valid argument; perhaps all it does is reflect our speciest view
of nature, and, like other forms of prejudice, can be challenged. There
was a time when many people didn't consider the interest of blacks
and gays as equal to the rest of society. Similar to our current view of
non-human animals, our current outlook can be challenged. While we are at
it, maybe we can re-evaluate the sacrosanct nature we attribute to newborn
infants as well.
Another
objection to infanticide, but not abortion, could be that we are personally
acquainted with infants, but not foetuses. In the presence of a defenceless,
but adorable, infant, we become attached and fond pretty quickly—we have an
instinct to protect its well being. It’s probably true, by way of natural
selection, that we have acquired innate tendencies to nurture and care for our
young ones. The notion of ending the life of an innocent baby engenders morally
repulsive reactions. However, the reality that our moral intuitions are part of
human nature still doesn't imply that they are right or that we ought
to blindly follow them. On the contrary, these conclusions should make us
suspicious about depending on our intuitions. Human inclinations and intuitions
in many cases, evidence suggests, are full of error and fall short of logical
consistency.[20] The hard-wiring in our brains of
moral intuitions are most likely the product of natural selection and would
seem to indicate a Darwinian survival mechanism. Just because the killing of an
infant over a foetus triggers stronger emotions, does not mean there really is
an intrinsic difference between a foetus and newborn; or the way we intuitively
feel that the death of a newborn infant is as bad (or worse) as the death of an
adult, does not mean it actually is as bad. As a result, we
should be sceptical about listening to our intuitions as the best way to point
us in the right direction. If we remain impartial (ignoring our personal
intuitions towards the ending the life of a infant), we can see that the basis
for not killing an adult person don’t pertain to newborns.
VI
It is
sometimes claimed that what distinguishes infants from foetuses or non-human
animals is that they have the potential to develop higher cognitive capacities.
This explains why infants have a higher moral status than animals, even if
their present stage of development is lower than those of animals. One problem
with this argument—for those who defend abortion, but not infanticide—is that
if we say a infant has the potential to be a developed being, we can also say
the same about a foetus, no matter what stage of development it is at. The
pro-life advocate could go further and claim that life from the moment of
conception has the potential to have various complex psychological capacities.
It seems hard to dispute this claim: life from the moment from conception,
indeed, has the potential for future complex cognitive abilities. If we accept
this notion, it seems difficult to defend abortion and not infanticide using
the potential argument.
Even if
we agree that potential characteristics only apply to infants, and not
foetuses, we cannot say that all infants have this potential. Babies that are
congenitally cognitively impaired also lack the potential to develop higher
cognitive capacities—infants, for example, that have anencephalic. Can we say,
then, that only those who have the potential to have their capacities realised
have equal moral weight to those who already have their capacities? A healthy
infant, to be sure, has the potential for rationality and self-consciousness,
which exceed that of a non-human animal or a severely impaired child, and will
eventually match that of an adult person. However, it does not follow from this
that the infant has a stronger claim to life; if an infant has the potential
for personhood, it does not follow therefore that an infant has the same right
of a person.[21] Leo Varadkar, some might say, is
a potential government leader, but it doesn't follow from this that
he automatically deserves the same rights as the Taoiseach.
It is
questionable whether most people really think potential for advanced
psychological capacities alone is morally significant. Suppose, for instance,
we were to learn that dogs have always had the potential to develop cognitive
capacities similar to those of a regular five-year-old child; this potential
has never been realised until now, and it would still require subjecting the
dogs to a daily schedule of training and development for the first five years
of its life. It is doubtful whether most people would conclude from this that
all dogs are and always have been inside the moral compass against adverse use.
Instead, most would say that just those dogs in which this potential has been
realised would have that superior moral status.[22] This
again shows that when the subject is a non-human animal, most
people wouldn't regard the potential argument as sufficient. If we
say the potential argument only applies to an infant, and not a dog, we would
still have to explain why the potential capacities of the baby and the super
intelligent dog differ; and, as argued earlier, using mere species membership
as an answer is not adequate.
Another
argument in disagreement could say we would be harmed if our mothers had chosen
to have an abortion, or had ended our lives as soon as we were born. Preventing
one from becoming a person, capable of a joyous and fulfilling life would
inflict terrible harm on her. Albeit true that she would benefit if
brought into existence, it makes no sense to say she is harmed by being
prevented from becoming an actual person. In other words, a potential person is
not the same as an actual person: an actual person is harmed, if not permitted
from achieving her goals by being killed; a newborn infant, on the other hand,
can scarcely be said to have goals or future plans. Alberto Giubilini and
Francesca Minerva said it like this: “If a potential person, like a foetus and
a newborn, does not become an actual person ... then there is neither an actual
nor a future person who can be harmed, which means that there is no harm at
all.”[23] In short, preventing a potential person
from being brought into existence cannot be harmed.
This doesn't imply we have no moral obligation to consider the
interests of future generations, say, to disregard the future risks of climate
change. This instance differs because we assume such people will actually exist
in the future, so therefore we must regard them as actual persons. This
argument doesn't apply to a particular newborn baby, since we are not
assuming she will exist as a person in the future.[24]
From this
analysis, it seems that mere potential alone is not a sufficient reason to say
a being has the right to life. If one is still convinced by the potential
argument, they might have to think about condemning other practices other than
abortion or infanticide: contraception (by artificial or natural means),
abstinence, and celibacy are also practices that would deny a potential person
from coming into existence.[25] Surely it would
absurd to condemn all acts that prevent potential life from coming into
existence. If this is not the case, one will have to explain why acts like
abortion and infanticide are different to other practices that thwart potential
life.
It might
be objected that if the painless killing of a foetus or infant can be
justified, we could also justify the intentional killing of an adult human,
provided it was carried out in a pain-free way. A bullet to the back of one’s
head, with no prior warning, would not cause any suffering, or if they were
poisoned in their sleep. If we use this line of argument to kill a foetus or
infant, does the argument also apply to adult beings? The two cases are not
similar though. In ending the life of an adult human, instantaneously and
painlessly, we would still be causing him harm: in virtue of his sophisticated
mental facilities, we would be denying him his realised desired future; he
would have goals and plans, as a self-conscious rational agent; it would also cause
ache and suffering to his family and those who knew him. In addition, we would
have to account for the imaginable anxiety and paranoia it would create within
society, as many people would feel their lives are at risk without any legal
protection. A foetus or newborn infant, on the other hand, does not have a
realised future plan like an adult human being, it cannot be fearful of the
threat of its own mortality, and, provided the parents can choose to terminate
the foetus or baby, it’s not inflicting harm on them, the foetus or baby, or
anybody else.
VII
Based on
what I have said so far: what stage would infanticide not be permitted? I do
not claim any specific point here; it’s not easy to say precisely at what age
an infant begins to see themselves as an individual existing over time. But a
problem in drawing the line, as Peter Singer argues, is not a reason for
drawing it where it’s undeniably wrong. One suggestion cites no more than a few
days after birth.[26] In fact, it’s questionable
whether infanticide should be legalised by a state at all, and if it can be
permitted, without doubt we should draw very stringent circumstances on its
permissibility. Seeing as birth presents the clearest salient dividing line,
homicide could continue to apply directly after the moment of birth. From the
moment of birth on, perhaps, each child should legally count as if they are a
person, regardless of whether they actually are a person. These restrictions
don’t clash with what I said earlier about infanticide: it might owe more to
the harm infanticide has on others (the parents) than to the intrinsic
wrongness of ending the life of an infant. However, we can still say, on purely
ethical grounds, that it’s in line with the belief that the killing of a
newborn child is not akin to the killing of an older child or a mature adult.
From our
analysis here, we have, at least, weakened the assumption that infanticide is
intrinsically wrong. For example, if we are to say infanticide is wrong
because, if justified, could create potential slippery slopes to justify other
forms of intentional killing that would actually be harmful to
agents, this, I believe, is a much diluted argument against infanticide. Put
simply, infanticide now seems to be no longer intrinsically wrong, but merely
objectionable because there is a chance—a further unconfirmed postulation—that
it could lead to something else inherently wrong occurring. Perhaps reasons
against infanticide can be justified for this reason; however, that discussion
is beyond the scope of my analysis
here.
That’s
not to say all instances of infanticide cannot be defended.
Perinatal asphyxia, for instance, may bring about severe brain damage and result
in serious mental and physical impairments; abnormalities cannot, in all
occasions, be diagnosed though prenatal screening; Treacher-Collins syndrome
(TCS), a disorder that affects 1 in every 10,000 births, causes facial
deformity and other physiological failures—markedly potential life-threatening
respiratory problems. Feasibly, in cases like these, many people would find it
entirely reasonable for a woman to choose to have an abortion if she knew her
foetus had either of these conditions. Sometimes, however, genetic prenatal
tests can be unreliable, expensive, or it can take several weeks to receive
test results.[27] If these abnormalities are not
realised until after birth, can we validate the possibility of infanticide? If
we say we cannot justify the latter, but can only justify the former, we then
need to affirm why it’s okay to kill a foetus for these reasons, but not an
infant for the same reasons. Yet, if I'm right in my earlier
assertion that there cannot be a general intrinsic difference between a foetus
and a newborn infant, I believe there is no way to morally defend one and not
the other. There may be further reasons, aside from rare and severe
pathologies, why women decide to have abortions that are likely to be discerned
until after delivery—like Down syndrome. If we accept it would be reasonable
for a woman to abort a foetus if she discovered it had Down syndrome, then it
seems to follow that we should also accept it would be reasonable for her
terminate the baby’s life for the same reason, if remained undetected until
after birth.
Even
after this, if one still though it is plausible to hold on to the idea that
there is a fundamental difference between abortion and infanticide, there
appears to be added problems. Many people in societies still accept that it is
permissible to allow infants with a certain severe mental or physiological
conditions to die rather than saving them using medical treatment. In cases of
Down syndrome or other treatable, but in other ways fatal, conditions parents
and doctors agree to only give palliative care rather than treating the
physical condition, in so doing letting the baby die naturally. Sometimes the
grounds given for denying the infant life sustaining care is that the parents
and doctors want to free the infant of the pain and suffering that would be
involved, or that the infant’s life would be not worth living. Someone with a
strong pro-life stance may well support this position. But is it any more
virtues to allow a helpless infant die naturally than to actively terminate its
life, in a way that is done as humanely and painlessly as possible? We
could say the former case does not intend on killing the infant but the latter
case does, and consequently it’s morally wrong to intentionally kill the
infant, but not morally wrong to refrain from treating the infant. There is
distinction here to be sure, but it seems to me there is no real moral
difference between killing and letting die. There are only surface moral
differences between the case of pushing a child into a pond where he ends up
drowning, and the case where you witness a child drowning but refrain from
doing anything because you are running late for an appointment and don’t want
to be delayed. In light of the same outcome occurring in both cases,
surely we should regard the latter person to also be morally responsible for
the child’s death.
Letting
die instead of ending the life in the instance of a disabled child are not
radically different, I believe. To actively end a life, in actual fact, could
be a more ethically respectable decision. Choosing to allow the infant to die
naturally could be a prolonged distressing experience and it seems difficult to
see value in sustaining her life. (If parents and doctors really did see value
in keeping her alive, surely they wouldn't refrain from life
sustaining treatment in the first place.) On the other hand, deciding to end an
infant’s life as quickly and painlessly as possible, in light of the fact that
a sustained life of endless suffering is of no real value, is the morally
better option; in the interest of the child’s suffering, the option to end its
his as humanely as possible is preferable than allowing him to die naturally.
When incessant suffering is present, the option of letting die seems crueler in
comparison. Some moral philosophers and medical professionals also recognise
this reality and the possibility of a more morally compassionate alternative.
In the Netherlands, for instance, The Groningen Protocol (2002) set out
guidelines that, in certain instances, allow medical professionals, with the
permission of the parents, to actively terminate the life of suffering infants
with a fatal prognosis.[28]
In
addition, and in the final analysis, it’s questionable whether most people
really do believe there is a difference in moral status between infants and
older children. McMahan argues that most of our intuitions are actually
confused. If we accept, for example, that it can be okay to let a newborn
infant die for certain reasons but not acceptable to allow the same individual
to die for the same reason as an older child. As McMahan conveyed it: “no one
would think it acceptable to forgo the surgery if the infant ... requiring
surgery were not diagnosed until the child was a year or two old.”[29]
VIII
From my
analysis I have shown that the general pro-choice arguments in favour of
abortion—with the possible exception of Thompson’s violin argument–can be
plausibly refuted. If we use the criteria of personhood, instead of mere
species membership, though, we can explain how the status of a foetus is not
the moral equivalent of an adult human being, an older child, or even various
adult non-human animals. For this reason, I claim, abortion can be morally
justified. However, I also maintain that there is no real difference of moral
status between the foetus and the newborn infant (as many pro-lifer opponents
of abortion have been arguing for several years). Unlike the trajectory of the
pro-life argument though, I state that simply existing as an human being is not
enough to give a being a right to life; and if it’s reasonable to justify abortion
(as I have argued for), then it seems reasonable to challenge the moral status
we ascribe to newborn infants, and to propose possible conditions where
infanticide can be permissible. The moral status of newborn infants is a
genuine concern, and should be properly discussed in a well-reasoned manner.
Those who wish to refute the conclusions arrive at here can respond to the
arguments offered rather than by threats and abuse.
Notes
[1] G. Sedgh, S. Singh, I. H. Shah, E. Åhman, S. K. Henshaw, and A.
Bankole (2012) “Induced abortion: incidence and trends worldwide from 1995 to
2008,” The Lancet, Vol. 379 (9816), pp. 625-32.
Not many ethical issues are as vigorously fought over as abortion these days. Unsurprisingly, the standpoint of the different sides—put simply, those who are in favour of abortion and those that are against it—have not achieved much in shifting the beliefs of their opponents. Abortion was illegal in almost all western states until the late 1960s; in 1967 Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales) changed its laws to permit abortion on broad social grounds. In the Row v Wade 1973 case, the United States Supreme Court held that women have a constitutional right to abortion in the first six months of pregnancy. Many other western nations like France and Italy have subsequently liberated their abortion laws.
Ireland
and Northern Ireland, however, have held out in opposition to this movement.
Abortion in Ireland remains illegal under the 1861 Offences against the Person
Act and in 1983 an amendment to Ireland's constitution states that an embryo,
from the point of conception, is an Irish citizen and, therefore, is entitled
to the full rights of every man, woman and child living in the state. Then in
1992, when a 14-year-old victim of rape attempted to travel to Britain to seek
an abortion, the government, on the recommendation of the attorney general,
tried to block her from travelling overseas. The victim—in what became
widely known as the X-case—after all was allowed to travel abroad given that
her legal team evoked legislation held within the European convention on human
rights. Ireland, at present, has one of the strictest abortion laws in Europe.
This means that more than 3,000 women a year, seeking terminations, have to
travel abroad from Ireland (mainly to Britain) to have an abortion. Subsequent
to a recent European Court of Human Rights case, the Irish government is now
looking at whether a law that would claim the life of an unborn child may be
terminated when there is a risk of suicide by the pregnant mother.
Along
with the heart breaking death of Savita Halappanavar in
late October 2012, controversy over the issue of legalised abortion in Ireland
has sparked emotive reaction, offensive insults, and ill-founded rhetoric
throughout newspapers columns, radio and television debates, and public
rallies, between those to want legalise abortion (in a limited sense, at least)
and those to want to sustain Ireland’s constitutional right to life of the
unborn. The media, lamentably, scarcely ever gave space for reflective
consideration or discussion on the issue where rational discourse could
develop. Numerous debates resulted in the voicing of arid legalese jargon or
else simple declarations of “right to life” or “right to choose”
that didn't do anything to explicate the matter.” How, then, do
you find a morally appropriate abortion law? The most understandable way is to
begin by working out the moral principles that will shape the basis of the law
and then seeing what their propositions are for practice. In this way, my
aim is to critically put forward some of the ethical arguments for and against
abortion, devoid of legal and, as best as possible, ideological constraints.
Many will not agree with some, if any, of the conclusions I have reached here,
but I hope, at least, to challenge certain views and assumptions of the reader,
and perhaps move some to buttress their current position on the issue, apart
from whether they agree with me here or not.
II
The main pro-life argument against abortion rests upon two main
premises: that it’s wrong to kill an innocent human being; a human foetus is an
innocent human being; so, therefore, it’s wrong to kill a human foetus.
Their pro-choice liberal opponents reject the second premise: they claim a
human foetus is not an innocent human being; so, therefore,
it’s not wrong to kill a human foetus. When human life begins,
in essence, is where a lot of the dispute surfaces. However, the pro-life
argument is not as easy to undermine as pro-choicers aver. The continuum
between the fertilised egg and the newborn dares pro-choicers to mark a period
in the process that point towards a morally relevant dividing line. Pro-choice
defenders have advanced a number of factors which they claim can determine a
morally relevant dividing line. I will now present some of these main
factors and show why none of them stand up as convincing arguments to morally
justify abortion.
Birth, some
pro-choicers affirm, is the most salient dividing line. In resistance we can
respond, credibly, by saying that the foetus or infant—whether inside or
outside the womb—is altogether the same substance. It’s possible to imagine a
situation where a premature infant could be developed in many ways less than
a viable foetus. It’s possible also for a viable foetus to be conceived at an
earlier stage than a premature infant; in this way, can we really say that we
may not kill the premature infant, but may kill the more developed foetus? This
would seem a rather odd position to hold. Put another way, the geographic
location of a being, whether inside or outside the womb, cannot, it seems,
point to a morally germane dividing line.
If
birth doesn't mark a morally relevant mark, perhaps we can push the
line back to the time of viability, that is, at which time the foetus could
survive outside the womb. Pro-choicers, if they accept this view, may have to
concede that late terminations are not morally defensible;
abortion, from this position, is only plausible if the foetus
is unable to exist, independent of the mother, outside the womb. No doubt this
distinction gets around the possibility of taking birth as the determining
point, since it considers the viable foetus on equal par with the newborn
infant. If we do grant the viability of a foetus as the morally relevant
mark, the permissibility of abortion will still have to respond to further
problems. The point at which the foetus can stay alive outside the mother’s
body, for instance, diverges in accordance with the state of medical
technology. In times gone by, a baby born more than two months premature couldn't survive,
but nowadays, as a result of medical and technological advances, a three-month
premature foetus can survive. Do we therefore say that abortion was defensible
forty years ago, but not today? Assuming that medical technology will continue
to progress, foetus viability will inevitably begin at earlier instances in the
future; does this imply that cases of abortion that are acceptable today, won’t
be in, say, twenty years time? The same comparison can be made between
different geographic areas: for example, can abortion be morally justifiable in
a remote village in central Africa (where the technological
resources aren't available) but not in a technologically resourceful
western city?
Why, at
the same time, should the point of viability make such a difference to our
concern for protecting life? Drawing the line at the point of viability is
shaky ground if you accept that a new-born child is also usually dependent on
his mother, and for some considerable time afterwards. Similarly, an elderly
parent may be totally reliant on her son looking after her; someone who has a
dire accident on a hiking tip in a remote area, is dependent on his companions
to help him, or else, if left stranded, may die. In these cases we do not
hold that total dependence on another person determines whether one lives or
not; from this perspective, it seems we cannot reasonably say that the
dependence of a non-viable foetus on its mother does not give her the right to
end its life.
III
Notwithstanding the problem of showing a morally relevant signifier,
some pro-choicers will entirely ignore the claim that a foetus is an innocent
human being, but contend that abortion is acceptable nonetheless. Here
are some of those main arguments put forward by its defenders.
Laws
preventing abortion doesn't stop abortion, pro-choicers attest, but
simply forces them underground—or in Ireland’s case, it just exports the
quandary to Britain. Women who are in a desperate situation may have no
alternative but to go to underground (in many cases, to unqualified)
abortionist, which can often result in serious medical complications or death.
We can point to a recent study which suggests that unsafe abortions worldwide
lead to the death of 47,000 women every year,[1] and
pregnant women in Ireland, with no recourse, may resort to purchasing
abortifacient drugs on the black market, which can also pose harmful health
risks. Abortions carried out in safe legal clinics, on the other hand, is as
reliable as any medical surgery. Banning abortion, advocates
say, doesn't really reduce the number of abortions performed; it
merely adds to the blockade and risks for women with unwanted pregnancies.
This
explanation, however, is an argument about abortion law and not about the
ethics of abortion per se. The argument still doesn't succeed in
meeting the pro-life claim that abortion is the intentional killing, the
murder, of an innocent human life. Pro-lifers can say that the current system
can improve—laws, for example, can be properly enforced, ways to make pregnancy
easier to accept for the women who become pregnant, and adoption opportunities
could operate more successfully. Hence, seeing that the
argument doesn't overcome the principal ethical issue, steps that
improve the system seem like a fair response.
Pro-choicers
may go further still and argue that abortion is a private issue and, to put it
bluntly, “is not the laws business.” The conception of liberty argument is
widely used by liberal thinkers and can be traced back to words uttered by John
Stuart Mill: in On Liberty (1859) Mill states “that the only
purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a
civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own
good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.”[2] Pro-choice
advocacy, in this way, claim that we’re all free to act in accordance to our
own private moral views on abortion, and society or the
state, shouldn't force us to comply with their own views. This
argument makes sense though only if we assume abortion to be a victimless
crime, and, like the previous argument, doesn't get the better of the
pro-life claim that a foetus is an innocent human being. Christopher Hitchens—who
seemed to remain ambivalent on the abortion issue—argued that the removal of an
appendix or a tumour from our own personal spaces “is nobody else’s goddamn
business,” but a foetus is not to be compared to an appendix or tumour.[3] Mill’s principle, pro-life defenders argue, is
defensible only if it’s restricted to acts that don’t harm others—but abortion,
they claim, does indeed harm others.
Another
argument, which has been variously expressed, to justify abortion, without
refusing to claim that a foetus is an innocent human being, is that a woman has
a right to choose what happens to her own body. This assertion is used by many
feminists as the trump card vindication in favour of abortion. An influential
essay, for instance, was put forward by Judith Jarvis Thompson in a novel way
over forty years ago.[4] For the sake of argument, Thomson, from the
outset, assumes that a foetus is a human being from the point of conception. By
way of analogy, she asks us to imagine that you wake up one morning with a
world-famous violinist plugged into your kidneys. The violinist has experienced
sudden kidney failure and the local music society obtained details of your
blood group, and discover it matches the violinist. So they decide to drug and
kidnap you, then hook you up to the violinist to supply him with dialysis. When
you wake up, the music society gives you the option to disconnect from the
violinist, but, as a result, he’ll certainly die. They tell you that if you
remain connected for about nine months or so, the violinist will have got
better and you can be unplugged without posing a threat to his life.
The
question Thomson puts forward is: “Are you morally obliged to stay hooked up
for the nine months it will take the violinist to recover?” To be sure “it
would be very nice of you,” she says, “a great kindness,” on your part, but “he
certainly has no right against you that you should give him
continued use of your kidneys. For nobody has any right to use your kidneys
unless you give him such a right.”[5] The
similarities with pregnancy that results from rape should seem clear.
Consequently, if we agree with Thomson that it wouldn't be wrong to
unplug oneself from the violinist, we must also agree that, whatever the
condition of the foetus, abortion is not wrong, at least in cases when the
pregnancy follows from rape.
Can
Thompson’s argument be extended to cases beyond rape? Suppose, for instance, a
woman who voluntarily has sex and, knowing the risks, becomes pregnant; is she
in some way responsible for the foetus inside her? Granted,
she didn't invite it in, but doesn't her partial responsibility
for its creation give it a right to use her body? Once more Thompson argues
that it would be awfully nice of the woman to let the foetus use her body, but
since nine months bearing another, against your will, is a costly price to pay
for ignorance or contraceptive failure, we must accept that
abortion isn't wrong in cases like this. Thompson, in sum, argues
that “nobody is morally required to make large sacrifices, of
health, of all other interests and concerns, of all other duties and
commitments ... for nine months in order to keep another person alive.”[6] Does Thompson’s argument support other cases where
abortion can be permissible? She doesn't give a direct answer to this
question, but nonetheless does suggest there are some cases in
which abortion is not permissible; for instance, it would be indecent, she
says, for a woman seven months pregnant demanding an abortion just to avoid the
inconvenience of postponing a trip abroad.
So can abortion
be supportable using Thompson’s argument? Should we, as she avows, favour the
right of the mother, in certain cases at least, over the foetus? Allowing the
foetus to use its mother’s body prevents it from dying, but not allowing the
mother from removing the foetus from her body (assuming there’s no
complications), on the other hand, won’t result in her death. Sure, the mother
in this situation may be forced into an unfavourable position, but it could be
reasonably argued that allowing her the choice of
abortion wouldn't outweigh the unfavourable position of the foetus;
in short, the foetus could have more to lose. Evidently there is a clash
of interests here. But why, we can ask, should we favour the mother’s corporal
autonomy—her choice—instead of giving equal and fair interest to the foetus?
Pro-life defenders say they’re standing up for the rights of the vulnerable and
voiceless unborn agent. They may accept the clash of interests, but yet claim
it’s not evident we should favour the rights of the mother over the foetus.
Isaiah Berlin reminds us that in society there can be a divergence of values
which often are conflicting and incompatible: “both liberty and equality are
among the primary goals pursued by human beings,” he states, “total liberty of
the powerful, the gifted, is not compatible with the rights to a decent
existence of the weak and the less gifted.”[7]
From this we can see that choice can indeed conflict with equality and perhaps
fairness; pro-lifers, in this way, can conceivably say they are justly and
necessarily defending the rights of the weak over the powerful.
There are
still further problems with Thompson’s argument: she welcomes a system of
rights and duty that allow us to gives grounds for our actions that are
independent of their consequences; for instance,
consequentialists—those who hold that whether an act is morally right
depends only on the consequences of that act or of something related to that
act—could oppose Thompson’s argument; they would say if we accept that the life
of a foetus is given the same moral weight as the life of an adult, it would be
wrong not to support one’s life for nine months, if that was the single way it
could remain alive; they could, at the same time, accept that the woman
has been put in an extremely tough position, and what’s the right decision
requires a major sacrifice; yet, they could still hold that to terminate is
wrong.[8]
Another
issue with Thompson’s argument is that it seems to defend abortion only in
certain circumstances, and it’s not entirely clear which cases abortion can and
cannot be justified. What’s more, Jeff McMahan indicates that in some cases
it’s possible to remove a viable foetus without ending its life; therefore,
assuming there’s the possibility of adoption, the woman, it seems, does not
have a right to abortion, but only a right to the removal of a foetus from her
body.[9] If there’s no obstruction to a woman’s
right to control the use of her body, using Thompson’s violin argument, then it
seems difficult to vindicate abortion in cases where the foetus can live
outside the womb. It doesn't follow, therefore, that we can justify
the killing of a foetus via abortion when the foetus can be removed without
being killed.[10]
We have
seen that the pro-choice arguments advanced here have not succeeded in
establishing a morally significant dividing line between a newborn infant and a
foetus. The arguments—with the possible exception of Thompson’s, in at least
certain cases anyway—also fail to give grounds for abortion in ways that stand
up against the pro-life claim that the foetus is an innocent human being.
IV
The
central arguments against abortion we have broached so far rest upon the
following premises: that it’s wrong to kill an innocent human being; a human
foetus is an innocent human being; therefore, it’s wrong to kill a human
foetus. Pro-choice thinkers sometimes reject the second premise—instead
they state that a human foetus is not an innocent being—or
else they protest against drawing a conclusion from these premises (e.g.
Thompson’s argument). Interestingly, as Peter Singer has pointed out, the
pro-choice side has never really considered challenging the first premise of
the argument; but the premise that it’s wrong to kill an innocent human being,
he claims, is not as secure as many people assume.
Singer
argues that “human” is a term that overlaps two specific concepts: being a
member of the species Homo sapiens, and being a person.[11] Whether a foetus is a member of the
species Homo sapiens is something that can be empirically
tested and easily determined. Clearly, in this way, the first moment an embryo
is conceived, it’s a human being. The second concept was borrowed from the
ethicist Joseph Fletcher’s “indicators of humanhood,” a list which includes:
self-awareness, self-control, a sense of the past and future, the capacity to
relate to others, the capacity to experience pleasure and pain, communication,
and curiosity. Singer defines the latter as “persons”, and the former as
“members of the species Homo sapiens.” This is an important
distinction, and accepting it may transform the abortion issue. In this sense,
and despite the obvious overlap, there could be members of the human species
who are not persons, and there could be persons who are not humans (mature
primates, for example).
What, we
may ask, is the difference between killing a being that is a person and a being
that is not a person? To take the life of a person without their consent,
Singer argues, is to thwart their desires for the future. An adult librarian,
for instance, has a conception of herself: she can look forward to her next
holiday abroad; she has memories of her graduation day; she has a loving family
and close friends that are a central part of her life; and she can look forward
to reading the closing volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.
Therefore, we can say she has an interest—or right, if you like—to continue
living. Denying her a right to continue living would prevent her having an
opportunity of experiencing a desired future; it would moreover inflict grave
wrongness upon her and her family. In contrast to the librarian, a being who is
not a person—that is, one who is incapable of conceiving itself as existing
over time, hasn't wishes or desires for the future, who cannot even
consider the likelihood of worrying about the prospect of its future existence
being cut short, or have the capacity to suffer—does not have an automatic
moral right to continue living. Ending the life of a foetus—for one cannot
plausibly argue that a foetus is either self-conscious or
rational— isn't denying it any desired future goals. Based on the
actual characteristics it possesses, ending the life of a foetus does not
impose wrongness on it. Only self-consciousness, aware, rational agents can
have a sense of the future; based on this, there seems to be an important
distinction between the killing of an adult human and a foetus. Ending the life
of a human that is self-conscious, aware, and has a sense of the future, would
result in causing a profound injustice to him; conversely, ending the life of a
foetus that isn't self aware and hasn't a sense of the
future, is much less significant—it cannot be worried about its loss of life,
for it has no comprehension of its own future.
Pro-lifers
may accept the view that a foetus is not self-conscious or self-aware, yet
withal maintain that it’s wrong to kill a foetus because it’s a member of our
species. But now that we have said that personhood is what is morally relevant
and not species membership, the pro-lifer will have to explain what
characteristics of the human foetus is in itself intrinsically important.
Nothing more than mere species membership, as we have
said, isn't synonymous with personhood, and, by definition, is based
on characteristics lacking moral significance. The view that nothing more than
membership of our species, regardless of the characteristics, makes a
significant difference—often referred to as the sanctity of human life—is a
heritage of our Christian doctrines that many pro-life supporters may be
reluctant to bring into the discussion. Remarkably, early Christian thinkers
like Thomas Aquinas maintained that human souls were implanted in foetuses at
40 days (for girls, it was 90 days). He supported the idea that in the early
stages there are only vegetative souls, and the termination of a foetus before
actual ensoulment does not constitute murder.[12] It’s
only since the 17th century that the Catholic Church declared that ensoulment
happens from the moment of conception. Nowadays, the doctrine is no
longer widely accepted within secular societies, but the speciesist view of
nature—of placing non-human animals outside the realm of moral significance
because they supposedly lack personal autonomy—can be traced back to
Judeo-Christian theology, and continues to endure in our secular world
today. Nevertheless Darwin reminded us that humans share a common lineage with
other species, and genetic testing has shown the near proximity of these evolutionary
links. Furthermore, in the past forty or fifty years science and philosophy,
according to the historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto, have combined to undermine
our conventional notion of humankind[13]. Consequently,
there can be no good reasons, from a purely non-religious perspective anyway,
for believing the human species is intrinsically special.
Now that we are questioning our speciesist view of nature, perhaps we
can now re-evaluate our belief in the sanctity of human life. If pro-life
supporters claim that the life of a foetus is morally significant, irrespective
of its characteristics, are the lives of non-human animals also morally
significant? Adult pigs, horses, and calves, it is fair to say, are more
self-aware and rational than a human foetus; why should we privilege the human
foetus over non-human animals? Membership of the species Homo sapiens is
not enough to bestow a right to life on a being; membership of a particular
racial group, in the same way, does not grant one a morally privileged right
over those from other racial groups. Self-awareness or rationality cannot
justify greater protection to the foetus over other beings either, since many
non-human animals, like a pig or a cow, has mental capacities superior to a
human foetus. Here is how Peter Singer puts it:
For any fair comparison of morally relevant characteristics, like rationality, self-consciousness, awareness, autonomy, pleasure and pain, and so on, the calf, the pig, and the much derided chicken come out well ahead of the fetus at any stage of pregnancy—while if we make the comparison with a fetus of less than three months, a fish would show more signs of consciousness.[14]
Pro-life defenders rarely, if ever, remain morally consistent in the
abortion debate; if they did, they wouldn't regularly dine on the
flesh of calves, pigs, lambs, or chickens and would not show a biased concern
for human life. Youth Defence or Precious Life are certainly never seen
advocating vegetarianism, or demonstrating outside the premises of butchers in
the same way they demonstrate outside abortion clinics and family planning
centres. Pro-lifers might reply that it’s not justifiable to kill humans, but
okay to kill a non-human animal, because, unlike them, we have a higher moral
status, advanced mental capacities, the ability to morally reciprocate, use
language, and so forth. But this reply seems to appeal to a crude
generalisation: certain human beings, like foetuses and infants, also lack
these capacities, and certain non-human animals (like the adult chimpanzee), on
the other hand, possess a high degree of cognitive ability. Consequentially,
advanced psychological capacities cannot show us that a human foetus had a
higher moral capacity than a chimpanzee; and it seem to me, likely, that any
impartial (non-human-centric) criteria cannot be applied to suggest otherwise.
Pro-lifers
might assert what differentiates all humans morally from all other animals is
that we have souls. For this view to be creditable, though, it has to offer a
known and reasoned conception of the soul; it must put forward evidence for its
existence in all humans as its non existence in all non-human animals. More
importantly, it must also give a reason of why the existence of a soul is an
essential and satisfactory condition for being within the capacity of the
constraint against instrumental harm.[15]
We also
have to think about the point at which the foetus is likely to have a capacity
to experience pain. Many agree the time between 23 and 28 weeks is,
serendipitously, the point during which the foetus develops a capacity for
consciousness. Around this time a foetus becomes conscious (but not
self-conscious); hence abortion should be considered a more serious issue. Even
so, it seems reasonable to suggest that a self-conscious woman’s claim still
outweighs the basic claim of a conscious foetus. The conscious, sentient
foetus, to be sure, has more moral status than the early foetus, but it
still isn't a person. In short, the foetus has only a right not to
experience pain; the ending its life, accordingly, ought to be as pain-free as
possible.
V
If we say
a foetus doesn't qualify as a person, so therefore it’s morally
permissible to end its life, the pro-lifer can object by saying that a newborn
baby, in the way invoked here, is also not a person. We have to admit, they
claim, that there is no intrinsic or moral characteristic differences between a
foetus (a viable one at least) and a newborn infant. The strength of the
pro-life position is found in the problem pro-choice defenders have in
signalling a morally relevant line of separation between a foetus and a newborn
baby. The usual pro-choice argument holds that it’s permissible to terminate a
foetus, but not a newborn baby. In the first half of the essay, most of—if not
all—the pro-choice arguments invoked can be feasibly repudiated; if we are unable
to mark a difference between a foetus and a baby, this would seem to seriously
weaken the pro-choice position.
However,
we could agree with pro-lifers and say a newborn baby has the same intrinsic
qualities as a foetus. We could, at the same time, disagree with them and say a
foetus and newborn baby have different qualities to, say, an adult person. If
put like this, we would have to say it is morally permissible to end the life
of both a foetus and newborn infant, but not an adult person. Like the foetus,
the newborn baby is not a rational, self-conscious agent; it does not have a
wish to continue living. Killing a newborn baby, if we follow from this, is not
any different from killing a foetus.
Even most
pro-choicers will be very troubled with this idea; but this, I claim, seems to
demonstrate the inconsistency of the regular pro-choice argument. According to
Stephen Mulhall, even to consider the possibility that infanticide could be
tolerable is to bear “evil thoughts”; the clear solution is to reject a theory
that comes to such conclusions.[16]However, if we look
closely we can see that the status of a foetus is not fundamentally different
from a newborn infant. It’s possible, for example, for a viable foetus to be
more psychological complex than a premature infant. Seeing that birth is
sometimes delayed for more than nine months and that premature births occur
regularly, there’s now a time of approximately four months during which time a
being could either be a foetus or an infant. Based on the logic of the
pro-choice position, the former has more right to life than the latter.
But why should we defend the life of a being on something as arbitrary as
location, but discard its other qualities?
Jeff McMahan argues the inconsistency between the general views about
abortion and general beliefs about infanticide will become even more
conspicuous as the point of viability occurs increasingly earlier in pregnancy
due to progress in medical technology. Using a thought experiment, he
illustrates these tensions.[17] Suppose in the
future it becomes feasible to support the life of a 20-week old foetus outside
the womb. The foetus would be still several weeks (or possible even more) away
from having the capacity for consciousness. If medical staff realised it had
some serious defect, many people (pro-choice advocates anyway) would agree it
would be acceptable for the woman carrying it to have an abortion. But say the
same foetus were delivered prematurely at 20 weeks and kept alive in an
intensive care unit; in this case it would be an infant, but most people would
reject the notion that it’s morally permissible to end its life. This lack of
cohesion, McMahan argues, suggests that most see the life of a newborn body as
sacred as that of an adult human:
This inconsistency between common views about abortion and common beliefs about infanticide will become even more pronounced as the point of viability occurs progressively earlier in pregnancy as a result of medical technology. There will, in consequence, be increasing pressure to revise either certain common beliefs about abortion or certain common beliefs about infanticide.[18]
Suppose, however, we did say the premature infant had more right to life
than the unborn foetus, most people would still be holding an inconsistent
position. They would have to explain why a newborn baby has a right to life,
but why a non-human animal hasn't Many non-human animals, like
dolphins and gorillas, have higher mental capacities than newborn infants.
Hence it seems inconsistence to privilege the right to life of the newborn
infant over the non-human animals mentioned. Again, as McMahan put it:
[S]uch challenges may force people to confront an obscure sense that their compliancy about harms inflicted on animals and their intuitive horror of infanticide may be considerably more difficult to justify than they would like to believe.[19]
One could
reject the killing of the newborn infant, however, and yet remain consistent:
they could deny the killing of a non-human animal with a higher, or equal,
cognitive capacity to the child. This measure would require those who reject
killing the baby, if they want to stay logically accordant, to adopt a vegan—or
at least a vegetarian—philosophy. To the best of my knowledge, most people who
reject the idea of killing an infant don’t adjust their position in this
way.
Without
doubt it’s widely accepted in society that we favour human beings, regardless
of their level of consciousness, over other species; but it seems to me that
this is not a valid argument; perhaps all it does is reflect our speciest view
of nature, and, like other forms of prejudice, can be challenged. There
was a time when many people didn't consider the interest of blacks
and gays as equal to the rest of society. Similar to our current view of
non-human animals, our current outlook can be challenged. While we are at
it, maybe we can re-evaluate the sacrosanct nature we attribute to newborn
infants as well.
Another
objection to infanticide, but not abortion, could be that we are personally
acquainted with infants, but not foetuses. In the presence of a defenceless,
but adorable, infant, we become attached and fond pretty quickly—we have an
instinct to protect its well being. It’s probably true, by way of natural
selection, that we have acquired innate tendencies to nurture and care for our
young ones. The notion of ending the life of an innocent baby engenders morally
repulsive reactions. However, the reality that our moral intuitions are part of
human nature still doesn't imply that they are right or that we ought
to blindly follow them. On the contrary, these conclusions should make us
suspicious about depending on our intuitions. Human inclinations and intuitions
in many cases, evidence suggests, are full of error and fall short of logical
consistency.[20] The hard-wiring in our brains of
moral intuitions are most likely the product of natural selection and would
seem to indicate a Darwinian survival mechanism. Just because the killing of an
infant over a foetus triggers stronger emotions, does not mean there really is
an intrinsic difference between a foetus and newborn; or the way we intuitively
feel that the death of a newborn infant is as bad (or worse) as the death of an
adult, does not mean it actually is as bad. As a result, we
should be sceptical about listening to our intuitions as the best way to point
us in the right direction. If we remain impartial (ignoring our personal
intuitions towards the ending the life of a infant), we can see that the basis
for not killing an adult person don’t pertain to newborns.
VI
It is
sometimes claimed that what distinguishes infants from foetuses or non-human
animals is that they have the potential to develop higher cognitive capacities.
This explains why infants have a higher moral status than animals, even if
their present stage of development is lower than those of animals. One problem
with this argument—for those who defend abortion, but not infanticide—is that
if we say a infant has the potential to be a developed being, we can also say
the same about a foetus, no matter what stage of development it is at. The
pro-life advocate could go further and claim that life from the moment of
conception has the potential to have various complex psychological capacities.
It seems hard to dispute this claim: life from the moment from conception,
indeed, has the potential for future complex cognitive abilities. If we accept
this notion, it seems difficult to defend abortion and not infanticide using
the potential argument.
Even if
we agree that potential characteristics only apply to infants, and not
foetuses, we cannot say that all infants have this potential. Babies that are
congenitally cognitively impaired also lack the potential to develop higher
cognitive capacities—infants, for example, that have anencephalic. Can we say,
then, that only those who have the potential to have their capacities realised
have equal moral weight to those who already have their capacities? A healthy
infant, to be sure, has the potential for rationality and self-consciousness,
which exceed that of a non-human animal or a severely impaired child, and will
eventually match that of an adult person. However, it does not follow from this
that the infant has a stronger claim to life; if an infant has the potential
for personhood, it does not follow therefore that an infant has the same right
of a person.[21] Leo Varadkar, some might say, is
a potential government leader, but it doesn't follow from this that
he automatically deserves the same rights as the Taoiseach.
It is
questionable whether most people really think potential for advanced
psychological capacities alone is morally significant. Suppose, for instance,
we were to learn that dogs have always had the potential to develop cognitive
capacities similar to those of a regular five-year-old child; this potential
has never been realised until now, and it would still require subjecting the
dogs to a daily schedule of training and development for the first five years
of its life. It is doubtful whether most people would conclude from this that
all dogs are and always have been inside the moral compass against adverse use.
Instead, most would say that just those dogs in which this potential has been
realised would have that superior moral status.[22] This
again shows that when the subject is a non-human animal, most
people wouldn't regard the potential argument as sufficient. If we
say the potential argument only applies to an infant, and not a dog, we would
still have to explain why the potential capacities of the baby and the super
intelligent dog differ; and, as argued earlier, using mere species membership
as an answer is not adequate.
Another
argument in disagreement could say we would be harmed if our mothers had chosen
to have an abortion, or had ended our lives as soon as we were born. Preventing
one from becoming a person, capable of a joyous and fulfilling life would
inflict terrible harm on her. Albeit true that she would benefit if
brought into existence, it makes no sense to say she is harmed by being
prevented from becoming an actual person. In other words, a potential person is
not the same as an actual person: an actual person is harmed, if not permitted
from achieving her goals by being killed; a newborn infant, on the other hand,
can scarcely be said to have goals or future plans. Alberto Giubilini and
Francesca Minerva said it like this: “If a potential person, like a foetus and
a newborn, does not become an actual person ... then there is neither an actual
nor a future person who can be harmed, which means that there is no harm at
all.”[23] In short, preventing a potential person
from being brought into existence cannot be harmed.
This doesn't imply we have no moral obligation to consider the
interests of future generations, say, to disregard the future risks of climate
change. This instance differs because we assume such people will actually exist
in the future, so therefore we must regard them as actual persons. This
argument doesn't apply to a particular newborn baby, since we are not
assuming she will exist as a person in the future.[24]
From this
analysis, it seems that mere potential alone is not a sufficient reason to say
a being has the right to life. If one is still convinced by the potential
argument, they might have to think about condemning other practices other than
abortion or infanticide: contraception (by artificial or natural means),
abstinence, and celibacy are also practices that would deny a potential person
from coming into existence.[25] Surely it would
absurd to condemn all acts that prevent potential life from coming into
existence. If this is not the case, one will have to explain why acts like
abortion and infanticide are different to other practices that thwart potential
life.
It might
be objected that if the painless killing of a foetus or infant can be
justified, we could also justify the intentional killing of an adult human,
provided it was carried out in a pain-free way. A bullet to the back of one’s
head, with no prior warning, would not cause any suffering, or if they were
poisoned in their sleep. If we use this line of argument to kill a foetus or
infant, does the argument also apply to adult beings? The two cases are not
similar though. In ending the life of an adult human, instantaneously and
painlessly, we would still be causing him harm: in virtue of his sophisticated
mental facilities, we would be denying him his realised desired future; he
would have goals and plans, as a self-conscious rational agent; it would also cause
ache and suffering to his family and those who knew him. In addition, we would
have to account for the imaginable anxiety and paranoia it would create within
society, as many people would feel their lives are at risk without any legal
protection. A foetus or newborn infant, on the other hand, does not have a
realised future plan like an adult human being, it cannot be fearful of the
threat of its own mortality, and, provided the parents can choose to terminate
the foetus or baby, it’s not inflicting harm on them, the foetus or baby, or
anybody else.
VII
Based on
what I have said so far: what stage would infanticide not be permitted? I do
not claim any specific point here; it’s not easy to say precisely at what age
an infant begins to see themselves as an individual existing over time. But a
problem in drawing the line, as Peter Singer argues, is not a reason for
drawing it where it’s undeniably wrong. One suggestion cites no more than a few
days after birth.[26] In fact, it’s questionable
whether infanticide should be legalised by a state at all, and if it can be
permitted, without doubt we should draw very stringent circumstances on its
permissibility. Seeing as birth presents the clearest salient dividing line,
homicide could continue to apply directly after the moment of birth. From the
moment of birth on, perhaps, each child should legally count as if they are a
person, regardless of whether they actually are a person. These restrictions
don’t clash with what I said earlier about infanticide: it might owe more to
the harm infanticide has on others (the parents) than to the intrinsic
wrongness of ending the life of an infant. However, we can still say, on purely
ethical grounds, that it’s in line with the belief that the killing of a
newborn child is not akin to the killing of an older child or a mature adult.
From our
analysis here, we have, at least, weakened the assumption that infanticide is
intrinsically wrong. For example, if we are to say infanticide is wrong
because, if justified, could create potential slippery slopes to justify other
forms of intentional killing that would actually be harmful to
agents, this, I believe, is a much diluted argument against infanticide. Put
simply, infanticide now seems to be no longer intrinsically wrong, but merely
objectionable because there is a chance—a further unconfirmed postulation—that
it could lead to something else inherently wrong occurring. Perhaps reasons
against infanticide can be justified for this reason; however, that discussion
is beyond the scope of my analysis
here.
That’s
not to say all instances of infanticide cannot be defended.
Perinatal asphyxia, for instance, may bring about severe brain damage and result
in serious mental and physical impairments; abnormalities cannot, in all
occasions, be diagnosed though prenatal screening; Treacher-Collins syndrome
(TCS), a disorder that affects 1 in every 10,000 births, causes facial
deformity and other physiological failures—markedly potential life-threatening
respiratory problems. Feasibly, in cases like these, many people would find it
entirely reasonable for a woman to choose to have an abortion if she knew her
foetus had either of these conditions. Sometimes, however, genetic prenatal
tests can be unreliable, expensive, or it can take several weeks to receive
test results.[27] If these abnormalities are not
realised until after birth, can we validate the possibility of infanticide? If
we say we cannot justify the latter, but can only justify the former, we then
need to affirm why it’s okay to kill a foetus for these reasons, but not an
infant for the same reasons. Yet, if I'm right in my earlier
assertion that there cannot be a general intrinsic difference between a foetus
and a newborn infant, I believe there is no way to morally defend one and not
the other. There may be further reasons, aside from rare and severe
pathologies, why women decide to have abortions that are likely to be discerned
until after delivery—like Down syndrome. If we accept it would be reasonable
for a woman to abort a foetus if she discovered it had Down syndrome, then it
seems to follow that we should also accept it would be reasonable for her
terminate the baby’s life for the same reason, if remained undetected until
after birth.
Even
after this, if one still though it is plausible to hold on to the idea that
there is a fundamental difference between abortion and infanticide, there
appears to be added problems. Many people in societies still accept that it is
permissible to allow infants with a certain severe mental or physiological
conditions to die rather than saving them using medical treatment. In cases of
Down syndrome or other treatable, but in other ways fatal, conditions parents
and doctors agree to only give palliative care rather than treating the
physical condition, in so doing letting the baby die naturally. Sometimes the
grounds given for denying the infant life sustaining care is that the parents
and doctors want to free the infant of the pain and suffering that would be
involved, or that the infant’s life would be not worth living. Someone with a
strong pro-life stance may well support this position. But is it any more
virtues to allow a helpless infant die naturally than to actively terminate its
life, in a way that is done as humanely and painlessly as possible? We
could say the former case does not intend on killing the infant but the latter
case does, and consequently it’s morally wrong to intentionally kill the
infant, but not morally wrong to refrain from treating the infant. There is
distinction here to be sure, but it seems to me there is no real moral
difference between killing and letting die. There are only surface moral
differences between the case of pushing a child into a pond where he ends up
drowning, and the case where you witness a child drowning but refrain from
doing anything because you are running late for an appointment and don’t want
to be delayed. In light of the same outcome occurring in both cases,
surely we should regard the latter person to also be morally responsible for
the child’s death.
Letting
die instead of ending the life in the instance of a disabled child are not
radically different, I believe. To actively end a life, in actual fact, could
be a more ethically respectable decision. Choosing to allow the infant to die
naturally could be a prolonged distressing experience and it seems difficult to
see value in sustaining her life. (If parents and doctors really did see value
in keeping her alive, surely they wouldn't refrain from life
sustaining treatment in the first place.) On the other hand, deciding to end an
infant’s life as quickly and painlessly as possible, in light of the fact that
a sustained life of endless suffering is of no real value, is the morally
better option; in the interest of the child’s suffering, the option to end its
his as humanely as possible is preferable than allowing him to die naturally.
When incessant suffering is present, the option of letting die seems crueler in
comparison. Some moral philosophers and medical professionals also recognise
this reality and the possibility of a more morally compassionate alternative.
In the Netherlands, for instance, The Groningen Protocol (2002) set out
guidelines that, in certain instances, allow medical professionals, with the
permission of the parents, to actively terminate the life of suffering infants
with a fatal prognosis.[28]
In
addition, and in the final analysis, it’s questionable whether most people
really do believe there is a difference in moral status between infants and
older children. McMahan argues that most of our intuitions are actually
confused. If we accept, for example, that it can be okay to let a newborn
infant die for certain reasons but not acceptable to allow the same individual
to die for the same reason as an older child. As McMahan conveyed it: “no one
would think it acceptable to forgo the surgery if the infant ... requiring
surgery were not diagnosed until the child was a year or two old.”[29]
VIII
From my
analysis I have shown that the general pro-choice arguments in favour of
abortion—with the possible exception of Thompson’s violin argument–can be
plausibly refuted. If we use the criteria of personhood, instead of mere
species membership, though, we can explain how the status of a foetus is not
the moral equivalent of an adult human being, an older child, or even various
adult non-human animals. For this reason, I claim, abortion can be morally
justified. However, I also maintain that there is no real difference of moral
status between the foetus and the newborn infant (as many pro-lifer opponents
of abortion have been arguing for several years). Unlike the trajectory of the
pro-life argument though, I state that simply existing as an human being is not
enough to give a being a right to life; and if it’s reasonable to justify abortion
(as I have argued for), then it seems reasonable to challenge the moral status
we ascribe to newborn infants, and to propose possible conditions where
infanticide can be permissible. The moral status of newborn infants is a
genuine concern, and should be properly discussed in a well-reasoned manner.
Those who wish to refute the conclusions arrive at here can respond to the
arguments offered rather than by threats and abuse.
Notes
[1] G. Sedgh, S. Singh, I. H. Shah, E. Åhman, S. K. Henshaw, and A.
Bankole (2012) “Induced abortion: incidence and trends worldwide from 1995 to
2008,” The Lancet, Vol. 379 (9816), pp. 625-32.
[2] J. S.
Mill (2008) On Liberty in J. Gray (ed) On Liberty and
Other Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 14.
[3] C.
Hitchens (2003) “Fetal Distraction,” in Vanity Fair, February 2003.
Available online: <http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2003/02/hitchens200302>
[4] J. J. Thompson (2005) “In Defence of
Abortion,” in N. Warburton (ed) Philosophy: Basic Readings, Second
Edition (Routledge: Oxon), pp. 187-202; article was published originally in
1972 in Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 1 (1), pp.
47-66.
[5] Ibid., p. 193.
[7] I. Berlin (2003) “The Pursuit of the Ideal,”
in H. Hardy (ed) The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the
History of Ideas (London: Pimlico), p. 12; essay was originally
published in The New York Review of Books, 17 March
1988.
[8] P. Singer (1993) Practical Ethics,
Second Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), see Chapter 4.
[9] J. McMahan (2007) “Infanticide,” in Utilitas,
Vol. 19 (2), pp. 131-59.
[10] In
the future it is possible, with the advent of technological advancement, to
imagine the point of viability occurring at a much earlier stage of fetal
development. If we can conceive of this, it would seem to reduce the case for
abortion, using Thompson’s argument, as science advances; in most cases it
would increasingly only justify the removal, but not killing, of the
fetus.
[12] P. Vardy and P. Grosch (1999) The
Puzzle of Ethics (London: Fount), p. 149.
[13] F. Fernández-Armesto (2004) Humankind:
A Brief History (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press).
[17] J. McMahan (2013) “Infanticide and Moral
Consistency,” Journal of Medical Ethics, forthcoming; a draft of
this paper can be viewed at: <http://jeffersonmcmahan.com/publications/>
[20] See, for example, D. Kahneman (2012) Thinking,
Fast and Slow (New York; London: Penguin); S. Pinker (2008) “The Moral
Instinct,” New York Times Sunday Magazine, January 13; N. Bostrom
and T. Ord (2006) “The Reversal Test: Eliminating Status Quo Bias in Applied
Ethics”, Ethics, Vol. 116 (4), pp. 656-80. P. Singer (2005) “Ethics
and Intuition,” The Journal of Ethics, Vol. 9 (3-4), pp. 331-52; J.
Greene and J. Haidt (2002) “How (and where) does moral judgment work?”, Trends
in Cognitive Sciences, Vol. 6 (12), pp. 517-23; and J. Haidt (2001) “The
Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral
Judgment,”Psychological Review, Vol. 108 (4), pp. 814-34.
[21] Singer, Practical Ethics, p. 153;
also see, I. Persson (2003) “Two Claims about Potential Human Beings,” Bioethics,
Vol. 17 (5-6), pp. 503-16.
[23] A. Giubilini and F. Minerva (2012)
“After-birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?”Journal of Medical Ethics,
first published online on 23 February. Available from: <http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2012/03/01/medethics-2011-100411.full>
[28] E. Verhagen and P. Sauer (2005) “The
Groningen Protocol—Euthanasia in Severely Ill Newborns,” New England
Journal of Medicine, Vol. 352 (10), pp. 959-62.
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