The argument that changed me from pro-life to pro-choice
| July 22nd, 2004In a discussion on this blog a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I used to be pro-life. Someone (Joe?) asked at that time:
Okay-dokey. Here’s the argument that changed my mind on abortion. (This isn’t the approach I’d necessarily take nowadays, however.)
In my youth - up to age 16 or so - I was abortion-agnostic. I didn’t really have an opinion one way or the other.
In late high school and early college, I was mildly pro-life. My argument was that it wasn’t possible for us to know for certain when “personhood” begins. Given that we are stuck with uncertainty, I thought it was logical and humane to err on the side of preserving life. Therefore, I argued, abortion should be illegal except when needed to preserve the mother’s life.
What changed my mind was reading an essay by some philosopher (alas, I no longer know the name of the author or the essay).
The author of the essay argued that, to judge abortion, we need to balance harm done to a woman forced to give birth, against harm suffered by an aborted fetus. However, in order to be harmed by the loss of its future, a fetus would need to have valued its potential future at some point in its existence. To value its potential future, it must have a history of
a) Awareness of itself as a being which exists across time, into the future.
b) Anticipating and preferring its own future existence.
If a fetus is not capable of both those things, then it is not harmed in any meaningful way by being aborted. All that it loses is a future it has never valued.
So that was the argument that switched me from being pro-life to pro-choice.
* * *
Now, I can anticipate three objections to this argument, none of which are very persuasive.
1) “What about the mentally disabled”?
Mentally disabled people, contrary to what is implied by this question, do have a sense of self extending into the future, and do anticipate their future.
2) “What about people in comas or asleep?”
First of all, it’s inaccurate to assume that people in comas have no brain activity; being in a coma is not the same thing as being brain-dead. They merely have no way of expressing brain activity, which is not the same thing.
More importantly, a fetus has never experienced a sense of self across time, or anticipated a future. A person in a coma has done both these things. Therefore, the person in a coma would be harmed by being killed in a way a fetus is not.
Consider, for instance, person “A,” who just loooooves chocolate pudding. A walks into a room where there is set out a dish of chocolate pudding for him to eat. A says “Oh boy! Chocolate pudding! I can’t wait to eat it!”
Just then, Stephen Sondheim walks into the room. Naturally, A is overwhelmed by the presence of the worlds greatest songwriter, and all thoughts of chocolate pudding escape A’s mind.. During this period, I enter the room and eat A’s chocolate pudding.
Have I done A harm? I think I have, because he was anticipating eating his chocolate pudding, and (once Mr. Sondheim wanders away) A will be hurt and disappointed to discover his puddingless state.
Now, contrast this with person B. Person B doesn’t like chocolate pudding - he hates the stuff, and always will. Furthermore, B didn’t even know that chocolate pudding was available.
Now suppose I again eat the chocolate pudding. Has B been just as harmed by this as A was? No. A and B are not in parallel situations; A is being deprived of something A values, whereas B isn’t being deprived of anything B values.
3) “Aren’t you providing a justification for infanticide?”
The third likely objection is that this logic may justify infanticide. This is a “woman? What woman?” argument, and considering how the woman is affected will clear it up.
Before birth, there is a conflict of rights between the fetus and the mother. The rights of the fetus to its future must be balanced against its mother’s right to control her own body. A fetus has only a weak interest in its future, since it doesn’t know or care if it has a future or not. Put against a woman’s strong interest in owning her own body, the interest of the fetus in continuing its life is easily overwhelmed, justifying an abortion.
However, the same thing is not true once an infant has been born. Since there is no longer a conflict between the infant’s right to life and the mother’s right to control her own body, infanticide cannot be justified by appealing to the mother’s interests in bodily autonomy. Therefore, once it’s born, the infant’s right to life takes precedence.
July 22nd, 2004 at 4:04 am
Ha! I love it! The “woman? what woman?” argument–what a great name. I’m gonna have to steal that from you.
This comment was written by Amanda.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 5:01 am
Well, the Amy Richards thing has made me do a double take. It is interesting to see how you came to where you are today.
1. How do we know that the unborn (fetus or baby, I hope unborn is neutral) does not anticipate or feel?
2. In the future; no one knows really what will occur. Couldn’t the same arguments for abortion also be used for wasting valuable resources? Not only are those future who will be affected people not born, they are probably not even a concept of a concept of a concept. We could be saving for a future that will never be (natural catastrophe etc. etc.)
3. The unborn may or may not feel pain. There is some indication that it does. While the needs of the mother (certainty that she is human) may (and do in my book) outweigh the needs of the unborn (uncertaintiy about it being a human), that doesn’t mean that the needs of the unborn should have no relevance. This is basically a wanton destruction argument in its essence. To destroy without reason; I find this morally wrong. While one person’s reason may not be another, arguments based on “want” do not seem to me to carry moral weight to allow destruction to take place.
Most likely a newborn can not anticipate and prefer much of anything; it reacts to a given situation. Anticipation doesn’t begin at birth although where the cut off point is I wouldn’t even begin to know.However, I don’t see how you can distinguish in this case, betweewn a newborn of a few minutes and a almost newborn.
Why does it necessarily create harm to the mother to force her to carry a baby to term if the physical harm is light, and the emotionally harm is light? I know, how does one measure? That is a problem, and one reason I haven’t taken out a pro-life sign. But a single normal birth generally doesn’t create life long difficulties; it can. But so can an abortion. (or for that matter, having one’s wisdom teeth pulled.)
This comment was written by Rachel Ann.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 6:20 am
Thanks, Amp. Glad you shared that. And interesting to see that at least a few people are indeed affected by philosophical arguments.
That said, I wonder if the argument really works. The whole linchpin of the argument seems to be that an entity isn’t really harmed if it loses out on some future experience that it didn’t value for some reason. In the fetus example, the future experience is . . . well, everything about life. That’s what is lost. But the reason that the fetus doesn’t value its entire future life is because it is relatively ignorant at that stage. (Your (a) and (b) are really just explanations for why the fetus doesn’t value the future; it’s the lack of valuing that does the real work.)
But doesn’t this argument do way too much? Are you really trying to imply that an entity doesn’t really “lose” anything if its “loss” merely affects some future experience that it hasn’t learned to value yet?
Consider:
1) The hypothetical assassination of Lincoln in 1859, and how that would have affected the ignorant slaves who would have been emancipated by him, but who instead remained in slavery under Stephen Douglas and his successors until their deaths. Did the assassination of Lincoln harm them or not? I’d say yes. Even if they were totally unaware of Lincoln. If the possibility of emancipation was taken away from them, they were harmed.
2) You buy a lottery ticket on a lark. Your ticket would have won, but someone at the lottery secretly switches the results before anyone knows. You’re ignorant of this, obviously, and you never expected to win anyway, so you never really “valued” the experience of winning the lottery that night. But you still lost out on that experience and money.
In both examples, I’d say that the person experienced a serious and significant loss, even if they never “valued” the alternative.
* * *
Your distinction with infanticide is also unconvincing. All of your reasoning about the fetus — awareness of self, valuing the future –absolutely applies to newborns too. It takes several months before babies even begin to recognize themselves in a mirror. And “preferring its own future existence” — well, I’m not sure that applies even to toddlers, who don’t really know what death is.
So you explain by pointing to the conflict of rights with the mother:
Well, now, who says? Bodily autonomy isn’t the only reason for having someone killed, after all. There are lots of other rights that might be impinged by someone else’s existence. Suppose the baby is the fifth in a poor family who is about to be evicted; they don’t have time to put the baby up for adoption because they’re about to run out of money this week. Why doesn’t their right to financial well-being, right to property, right to family autonomy, right to food, etc., all take precedence over the newborn’s barely-existent right to life?
Or are you saying that the right to bodily autonomy is the ONLY thing that could outweight someone’s right to life? But if that’s what you’re saying, that right to life must be awfully substantial after all, since it takes precedence over all other human rights.
This comment was written by Joe M.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 6:24 am
“If a fetus is not capable of both those things, then it is not harmed in any meaningful way by being aborted. All that it loses is a future it has never valued.”
This argument makes the assumption that the only reason to oppose abortion is because the baby doesn’t know what it is being deprived of. I posit that we as a society should hold life to a higher place and demonstrate through our action how precious we believe it to be. Just because the baby doesn’t have an idea of what is being terminated when it is aborted doesn’t mean it is excluded from the basic human right to life that we have said belons to all people who just happen to be outside of a womb.
This leads us to the question of just when a fertilized egg becomes a ‘person’. I would suggest that as soon as the baby could survive outside the mother we could consider it a person. That may not satisfy all who oppose abortion, but it is a place to start.
I would just like to add that I am not opposed to abortion, but would like to see some common sense restrictions placed on the procedure. I reject the notion that women have the ‘right’ to kill their unborn children whenever they want to. An accidental pregnancy or stupid behavior doesn’t exclude an unborn person from the right to life. All that is left for us as a society is to determine when personhood begins.
This comment was written by Jeremy Reinier.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 6:25 am
1. How do we know that the unborn (fetus or baby, I hope unborn is neutral) does not anticipate or feel?
Well,I suppose you could argue that very late-term abortions - those taking place in the third trimester - might be aware fo themselves existing through time and be anticipating a future. I don’t think that’s likely, because you can’t really be conscious of self over tmie before yo’ve had a variety of experiences. But you could make the argument.
Before 24 weeks, however, the unborn fetus doesn’t have a cerebral cortext with working connections to the brain. It is physically impossible for a human to think or feel any emotion without a cerebral cortext. Since the vast majority of abortions take place before the 24th week, we can be absolutely positive that the vast majority of abortions kill a creature who is physically incapable of thought or feeling.
2. An aborted fetus will never feel anything. That’s not speculative; that’s a fact. We know it for certain. In contrast, we don’t know for certain that the world has no future, and therefore our planning should include the possibility that it does.
3. Before it has a working cerebral cortext, the unborn might have reflex actions, but it does not feel pain in any emotionally meaningful sense. I do think that as the pregnancy nears its end, the fetus gathers much more moral weight. So while I don’t see anything necessarily wrong with aborting a late-term fetus, I do beleive that to deliberately cause it unnecessary pain would be wrong.
However, as we get later and later in teh pregnancy, fewer and fewer abortions are performed; and those that are performed are increasingly likely to represent cases where an abortion is more urgently needed. So it seems to me that the increasing moral weight of the fetus in the third trimester is, apparently, something that people are taking account of in real life.
While one person’s reason may not be another, arguments based on “want” do not seem to me to carry moral weight to allow destruction to take place.
Why not? What’s wrong with “wants”?
Reading the comments in various blogs about Amy Richards, it’s clear that many people find it unspeakably selfish of her to prefer to mix career and motherhood, and to prefer to bear & raise one child instead of three. I disagree; I don’t think having a career or not is a trivial concern (especially for a semi-single mother), nor do I think the difference between raising one child (or spacing out one’s children) and raising three is a trivial difference.
However, I don’t see how you can distinguish in this case, betweewn a newborn of a few minutes and a almost newborn.
First of all, in the real world there is no such thing as an elective abortion of an almost newborn. I’m not aware of a single documented case of an elective abortion being performed on someone who could just wait a couple of days and give natural birth.
Secondly, I think the difference is that a newborn is not part of it’s mothers body, so there is no conflict between the newborn’s right to life and the mother’s right to bodily autonomy.
Why does it necessarily create harm to the mother to force her to carry a baby to term if the physical harm is light, and the emotionally harm is light?
Loss of freedom is a harm, in and of itself. Being forced to give birth against one’s will is harmful, in and of itself.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 6:41 am
Joe:
Your emancipation example makes no sense. It’s based on the idea that there was no expectation that electing Lincoln instead of Douglas would bring about the end of slavery faster. But of course there was a wide expectation that electing Lincoln would do exactly that, which is why the South was so anti-Lincoln.
When I buy a lottery ticket, I certainly anticipate having a fair chance of winning. Taking that away from me is robbing me of something I anticipate having, so at some level is doing me harm.
* * *
Suppose the baby is the fifth in a poor family who is about to be evicted; they don’t have time to put the baby up for adoption because they’re about to run out of money this week. Why doesn’t their right to financial well-being, right to property, right to family autonomy, right to food, etc., all take precedence over the newborn’s barely-existent right to life?
Because they could regain all those rights (to the extent that the newborn infringes on those rights) just by giving the newborn up for adoption. So there’s no necessity at all of infringing on the newborn’s right to life. There is no genuine conflict of rights going on there.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 6:51 am
Jeremy wrote: I posit that we as a society should hold life to a higher place and demonstrate through our action how precious we believe it to be.
Why? I don’t see what’s so precious about non-sentient life, which is what virtually all abortions involve. When someone is utterly, completely, beyond-any-doubt braindead, we don’t insist on keeping the body alive forever. What I respect about life isn’t the ability to breathe, but the ability to think and feel.
This leads us to the question of just when a fertilized egg becomes a ‘person’. I would suggest that as soon as the baby could survive outside the mother we could consider it a person. That may not satisfy all who oppose abortion, but it is a place to start.
Okay. I’m suggesing that it can be considered a person once it’s been born. Unlike viability, this has the advantage of being a reasonably clear borderline. But I’d certainly be willing to compromise on viability, as long as the usual exceptions for preserving the life and health of the mother were included.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 7:01 am
1) The example did NOT concern Southerners in general, but illiterate and ignorant slaves who DIDN’T KNOW who Lincoln even was. Would they have been deprived of anything if Lincoln had been assassinated earlier, or if he had decided to let the South secede after all? Yes.
2) Forget what you normally do. Imagine someone who never buys a lottery ticket because he thinks they’re a scam, but one of his friends says, “Hey, let me give you this ticket. Just for fun! Lighten up!” He looks at the ticket with disgust and disdain (like the person in your chocolate pudding example), and never expects to win. Is he deprived of anything if the ticket would have won but for fraud at the lottery headquarters? Yes.
Anyway, if you didn’t like my examples, forget them. As I’ve said before, someone can always nit-pick at analogies, precisely because they’re analogies. That’s beside the point. Point is, you can imagine an infinite number of situations where someone is deprived of something that she didn’t value because (like the fetus) she had no idea. But she is still deprived.
* * *
On my other point, read it again. By my very example, the family is about to run out of money right now, and there is no time to consider going through all the rigmarole of adoption. No time at all. The only way they will have money to eat today is if they refuse to buy the newborn’s formula and instead buy food for themselves. So the real balance is their own right to live versus the newborn’s right to live. And by your own criteria, the newborn’s life doesn’t really count for much, since the newborn doesn’t value its future any more than a fetus. Newborns just can’t think in those terms yet.
Even better example: Eastern European country. Woman running an orphanage full of hungry newborns. There is NOWHERE to give up the newborns for adoption, because the orphanage is the last stop. Now suppose she runs out of money, and has to choose: Formula for the babies, or food for herself. Again, by your own criteria, the babies have very little interest here, because they are not capable of valuing anything, let alone contemplating matters of life and death. So is the woman justified in giving the newborns some anesthetic, and then killing them? They wouldn’t have any pain, and they wouldn’t lose anything that they are capable of valuing.
This comment was written by Joe M..Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 7:09 am
I consider myself generally a pro-Choice American, based on how abortion is practiced here, but I don’t know if I would feel the same if I lived elsewhere. I’d probably support a sufficiently tightly worded ban that only included 3rd trimester abortions with appropriate exceptions for the physical health of the mother, but nothing more, and I have opposed all of the Republican “partial birth” bans that have been attempted and passed. (When my older daughter was 8 months in utero, we would often play a “poke game” through her mother’s uterus. Sometimes she would instigate the game herself when she heard my voice, but never with other voices. That meets my “awareness of existence across time” standard.)
On the other hand, last week China announced that it was banning “sex selection” abortions, as there are now 119 boys for every 100 girls in China. The result will be about 30-40 million more Chinese men than Chinese women. I would never support a similar law here, but I can’t say that I oppose that law in China, even though it’s affecting lots of choices of lots of individuals in lots of trimesters.
This comment was written by Richard Bellamy.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 7:12 am
BTW, it took me hours to figure out why your site was not letting me post.
Turns out that I was using the word “Socailist” (spelled correctly), and that if you take off the first two and final letter, you get a particular drug that has been spamming ads and that your site blocks. Once I eliminated all references to left-wing political ideologies, the post went though.
This comment was written by Richard Bellamy.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 7:28 am
The preciousness of non-sentient life is evidenced in the rest of nature. Just because something is non-sentient doesn’t mean it’s not important. If you got rid of all the non-sentient life on this planet, we would cease to exist. The importance of an unborn child lies in its potential. Again I make the argument that either we consider the rights of the unborn as we apply them to other people.
Your argument about a woman being forced to give birth against her will disregards her will in the act which put the baby there in the first place. Excluding the instances during which a woman gives no consent to the act of intercourse, (which account for a very low percentage of pregnancies) the woman has taken the responsibility upon herself of the known consequence of having sex. I suggest here that the vast majority of women who are having sex also have the knowledge of what the act represents biologically. As I said before, a woman’s poor choices should not infringe upon the rights of an unborn person.
I am continually amazed at the lack of personal responsibility when it comes to dealing with an unwanted pregnancy. Using the ‘woman’s right’ argument just illustrates the lack of more thought out argument, in my opinion. If a woman (or man) didn’t want a baby, there are many decisions that could be taken before the fact to prevent impregnation. Using abortion as an after the fact contraceptive, aside from the pro-choice or pro-life points of view, is a collossal waste of resources. Furthurmore, the risks to a woman’s health during abortion as a medical procedure are assumed whether undertaken as a choice, or as a necessity. Assuming there is no risk to the mother’s health other than those normally associated with childbirth, the unborn person’s rights must be protected. When a woman engages in an activity which could cause her to become pregnant, she assumes the risks associated with that behavior.
This comment was written by Jeremy Reinier.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 7:28 am
My own hypothetical is misleading, of course, because almost zero abortions are done to literally save the mother’s life. A better analogy to the reasons for most abortions would be this:
Eastern European country. Woman running an orphanage full of hungry newborns. There is NOWHERE to give up the newborns for adoption, because the orphanage is the last stop. Now suppose she gets tired. She has to spend too much time on her feet. It is physically uncomfortable. Besides, she is trying to save money to go back to school, but the babies are requiring too many expenses. But there’s no one else she can call. The legislature is out of money for the year, and they hate orphanages anyway. The population is too poor; that’s why their babies are here in the first place. There is no way whatsoever for her to cut back on her physical obligations and expenses other than to let some of the babies die.
Again, by your own criteria, the babies have very little interest here, because they are not capable of valuing anything, let alone contemplating matters of life and death. So is the woman justified in giving some of the newborns some anesthetic, and then killing them? They wouldn’t have any pain, and they wouldn’t lose anything that they are capable of valuing.
This comment was written by Joe M..Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 7:28 am
I think there’s something problematic (although I’m not exactly sure what) in the fact that the argument only works for terminated futures. If, for example, you performed limb reductions or other harmful operations on a fetus and then allowed it to be born, it would eventually learn to value the thngs it didn’t have as a result of your actions, and hence would end up having suffered a loss. (This would be the chocolate-pudding-contains-essential-nutrients variant of the Sondheim example.)
The sharp cutoff at birth is also unconvincing (there must be a cutoff somewhere, but it seems to me that it depends on a combination of viability and the invasiveness of the operation required to terminate the pregnancy).
In my own evolution on this, I was ultimately far more swayed by arguments borrowed from first-amendment (and other constitutional) jurisprudence. If you can’t prohibit behavior you think is wrong without also prohibiting behavior you think is OK or having some panel of arbiters claiming to reach into someone’s head and decide what they should have been thinking, then you can’t prohibit the behavior. I don’t get to reach motive this way, which is also kinda unsatisfying.
(One of the things I find more than a little interesting about the Amy Richards flap is that a) if she had terminated all three we would never have heard word one b) everyone seems to assume that such triplets would have been successfully carried to term and born healthy and without complications.)
This comment was written by paul.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 7:52 am
In Watership down, in Woundwort’s warren, there was a great deal of overcrowding, and does (girl rabbits) were getting pregnant but not having the litters. Apparently, Frith (their God-figure) had made them a promise, as a race, that when there is little chance for a decent life for her offspring, that it is the does privilege to take them back into her body, to re-absorb them was the term I believe was used.
If only we had this option! If only we could get past the “christian” reich that insists that nothing is more important than the supposed sanctity of a ball of cells that does not yet have awareness.
We are not a society or culture that protects or takes care of children who lack money, therefore I cannot in good consience insist that a child MUST be brought into the world.
This comment was written by wookie.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 8:04 am
It’s fascinating to read that you were convinced by a philosophical argument; I’m impressed that you were receptive to it. I suppose college-age and college-context people are likely to be receptive to such arguments.
My own convincer was not philosophical but political; my mother told me that when considering abortion in or around 1969, she was reasonably well-off and well-connected, and it was clear that she could have a safe procedure only because she was well-off and well-connected. My belief in the legality of abortion is based on that; it would be, as it was before, a law restricting the actions of the poor but not the rich. I am also against what a comment above called ‘common sense restrictions’ as those would even more disproportionately be imposed on the poor, the ill-informed, and the rural.
In addition, I am male, and can’t imagine being willing to go through childbirth; I am grateful but amazed that anybody is. Yes, I know many pregnancies and deliveries are fairly easy and painless, but as far as I can tell most are pretty brutal. I suppose I would, grudgingly, be willing to undergo that much pain for my parents or other close loves, but in all honesty if my mother were faced with the choice, today, of going through that much pain over that period, or having me die quickly, I would forgive her for choosing the easy (but morally wrong) way.
So, under the circumstances, I can’t support making abortion illegal, even though I think it’s almost always the morally inferior choice.
Anyway, just my thoughts,
This comment was written by Vardibidian.-Vardibidian.
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July 22nd, 2004 at 8:58 am
Why does it necessarily create harm to the mother to force her to carry a baby to term
Rachel Ann, I don’t mean this in an offensive way: have you ever carried a baby to term? The answer to your question would be self-evident, I’d think, if you had.
Jeremy, the pregnancy-as-punishment argument is silly because it values the life of the fetus only in relation to the mother’s (and, presumably, father’s) behavior that caused its conception. Why is it OK to kill a baby born of rape, but not one born of a night of too many shots of tequila? Either the fetus’s life has value or it does not, and I don’t think you can morally argue that a human life is of less value depending on the circumstances of its conception.
In all other cases where people suffer known risks, by the way, we allow them to mitigate their behavior. No doctor tells a downhill skiier “Sorry, I won’t fix your leg. You knew the risks. Maybe if you’d tripped and fallen accidentally, but you break it, you live with it.” No emergency room refuses to treat a patient who, driving drunk, ran into a tree and sustained injuries entirely due to his drunk driving.
The ONLY reason to treat abortion as different from a broken leg, or a drunk-driving injury, is because of the belief that a fetus is a human being. And it’s nonsense for humanity to be put on a sliding scale, just so you can have the moral satisfaction of treating pregnancy as a just punishment for careless sexual behavior.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 8:59 am
Wookie wrote: “We are not a society or culture that protects or takes care of children who lack money, therefore I cannot in good consience insist that a child MUST be brought into the world.”
That doesn’t address the question of whether abortion is the necessary preventative tool or not. I still say the choice exists BEFORE the unborn person is extant in the womb. Poor choices and lack of planning on the part of the man or woman don’t preclude the rights of the unborn person.
This comment was written by Jeremy Reinier.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 9:08 am
Mythago,
The broken leg analogy is not relevant because it doesn’t involve the rights of another person. I’m not speaking about pregnancy-as-punishment, rather as a logical consequence of a concious action. How about the death-as-punishment argument you seem to be making about the baby and its right to live?
Regarding the rape argument, I excluded it from my point, and therefore made no remarks regarding that situation. I didn’t say it was OK to kill the baby resulting from rape, I merely said that in cases other than that, the woman has accepted pregnancy as a logical risk associated with her behavior, and as such should regard the right of the unborn person to live as more important than her right to be comfortable. As I argued, she chose to assume the risks associated with that behavior, and it must be asserted that life is more important than comfort.
This comment was written by Jeremy Reinier.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 9:14 am
Jeremy, if my mother made “bad choices” and ended up pregnant with me, I’d much rather she get an abortion than be forced to birth me against her will. I’d rather be a wanted child than a punishment.
As a punishment, forced parenthood fails miserably. It led to unhappy marriages. It led to adoptions that tore the mother apart (since the father could and often did say, “You’re a slut and I’m not doing anything to help you” and got a way with it). It led to abused kids. It led to angry, resentful, and neglectful parents.
Instead of stopping abortion, criminalization led to unsafe back-alley abortions, which often killed the mother. That might be fine for those who think these immoral sluts deserved whatever they got, but let’s not fool ourselves into thinking it’s “pro-life”.
This comment was written by Sheelzebub.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 9:21 am
But the problem with that, Jeremey, is who becomes the judge of wether or not appropriate precautions were taken?
Who becomes the judge to say “well that woman was just an idiot, having too much to drink” or “that couple should have realized their condom broke” or “You were above the weight that birth control pills are designed for” (150lbs, if I remember correctly)?
Poor choices and lack of planning are easy to point fingers at, but impossible to prove, and utterly devestating to the person at the recieving end of the blame.
Sorry, I was taking your statement to imply that poor choices and lack of planning were elements in wether or not abortion should be allowed… that in a way, that an adult persons planning or precautions (or lack thereof), is what gives the parent-to-be rights (or no rights) compared to the fetus.
This comment was written by wookie.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 9:29 am
What’s to stop your mother from giving you up for adoption? You’re assuming that because I have the opinion that unborn persons have that right to life that I also believe the woman has the obligation to raise the child. That is not a logical conclusion to draw from my statements.
Another assumprion you made is that I think the poor choices that lead to unwanted pregnancies is immoral, another false assumption. I only believe in personal responsibility, meaning taking responsibility for one’s actions without infringing on other’s rights.
Finally, let me say that I am pro-choice. What I mean by that is although I am personally opposed to abortion, I realize that making it illegal is not going to solve the problems associated with it. I believe that we should work to reduce the number of abortions performed rather that banning the practice. I am only attempting to argue the ethics involved in taking the rights of an unborn person who cannot defend themselves. There is no punishment involved with taking responsibility for one’s actions, and to argue that there is reflects lack of any thoughtful argument at all.
This comment was written by Jeremy Reinier.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 9:33 am
The truth is, an arbitrary line needs to be drawn somewhere. It seems to me that birth is a sensible place to draw the line; I don’t know when an infant gains the ability to percieve itself as having a future, but I’m pretty sure it happens sometime after birth.
Furthermore, unlike “viability” or “able to percieve self over time,” we actually know when birth has happened, which makes it a much more practical arbitrary dividing line than any other line I’ve seen suggested.
* * *
Joe, being pregnant, and being a life-support system for a fetus, is fundimentally different, in both its intimacy and its consequences, from being an infant’s guardian. I’ll think about it further to see if I can articulate why in a way that you might understand.
Regarding desire, in your examples the slaves desired freedom, and the lottery ticket owner desired money. In both your examples, they are being deprived of something they want, even if they are unaware of the exact mechanism by which they are losing what they want.
I’m not saying that killing a fetus is acceptable because fetuses desire to live, but are unaware of the mechanism by which abortion deprives them of life - which is what I’d have to be saying for either of your examples to be relevant. I’m saying killing a fetus is acceptable because a fetus does not value being alive at all.
* * *
Jeremy, I’m not convinced at all that abortion involves the rights of another person, so I think the broken leg argument is relevant.
You seem to be saying that personhood can exist even without such things as the ability to think or to experience emotion; a body without a brain, if it were being kept alive by machines, would apparently be a person in your view. I disagree. I think the ability to think and to feel emotions is the very essence of being meaningfully alive.
Yes, trees and plants have some value, despite not being able to think. But they don’t have so much value that I’d sacrifice a women’s ability to control her own reproduction to spare a tree’s life.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 9:35 am
The broken leg analogy is not relevant because it doesn’t involve the rights of another person.
Yes, that was the point in my last paragraph. You are conflating two arguments: the fetus’s right to life, and the risk assumed by the mother. The latter does not change the former.
If a fetus is a human life, then the mother’s risk is irrelevant. If I throw my six-month-old baby out the window, it is murder. I am not excused from infanticide if the conception was the result of nonconsensual conception. The life of the baby is the ONLY difference between a drunk driver’s head injuries and a pregnancy, as far as “logical consequences” and “do we allow you to mitigate those consequences” go.
There are only two reasons to forbid mitigation of those consequences in the case of pregnancy. Reason #1 is that the baby is a human life. That’s a trump card; we need look no further into what the mother did or didn’t do. From the baby’s POV, it is irrelevant whether it got here because Mom lovingly planned a conception with her husband, or whether Mom was gang-raped by the Hell’s Angels.
Reason #2 is that Mom has to suck it up because she took a risk and yes, if you argue that, you are arguing for punishment. When you start throwing around minimizing terms like “comfort” or “convenience” to discuss pregnancy, it seems pretty clear to me what the mindset is here.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 9:35 am
Where I wrote “meaningfully alive” above, I should have said “meaningfully a person.”
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 9:37 am
Mythago, although I agree with your post, I think it would make things less confusing if you’d say “person” instead of “human life.”
The fetus is a human life; it’s biologically human, and it’s alive. So if you’re saying that abortion can’t be justified if the fetus is a human life, then that means abortion can’t be justified.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 9:50 am
I only believe in personal responsibility, meaning taking responsibility for one’s actions without infringing on other’s rights.
Absolutely. Which is why, if a fetus is a person, abortion is impermissible and the mother’s responsibility is irrelevant. I don’t see how logical consequences or responsibility in any way diminish personhood.
If all we’re discussing is responsibility, then the mother is taking responsibility by making the choice to abort. Irresponsibility would be carrying to term, taking no care whatsoever about the health of the fetus, and then throwing it in a Dumpster after the birth. Abortion is a method of dealing with the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 9:57 am
What’s to stop your mother from giving you up for adoption?
Gosh, I don’t know. Maybe the idea of putting heself through a pregnancy and then giving up the resulting baby doesn’t appeal. And frankly, why on earth should she have to even be pregnant if she doesn’t want to be? Sorry, but I’d rather not have her look at me and think about going through all of that.
Adoption is not like giving away a pair of shoes. I know someone who had to do it, and it ripped her apart. You carry a pregnancy–with all of the physical issues–to term, and then have the kid taken away. You have people come up to you when you’re visibly pregnant and ask you if you’re choosing names for the baby or if you’ve decorated the nursery yet, and see how well you deal with it. If it’s a choice between that or getting an abortion in my first trimester, option B wins hands down.
So many pro-lifers claim that abortion is painted as the “easy” alternative when it’s not–yet they do the same with adoption.
This comment was written by Sheelzebub.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 10:15 am
Amp: You dismissed my Eastern European example by saying this: Joe, being pregnant, and being a life-support system for a fetus, is fundimentally different, in both its intimacy and its consequences, from being an infant’s guardian.
Yes, that’s true. But your argument didn’t say that pregnant women have fundamentally unique rights that are higher than all other conceivable human rights. No, your argument was entirely based on saying that the fetus’s right to life is uniquely lower (or non-existent) than all (or most?) other rights, because the fetus can’t value that right.
In other words, your whole point was how the fetus’s right is so low, not about how the pregnant mother’s right is so uniquely great.
And if the fetus’s right to life is uniquely low, so is the newborn’s right to life. They are both identical in their complete inability to envision the future, place values on things, etc.
So if the fetus’s right to life is so low that it can be outweighed by the mother’s right to save money and to an education and avoid physical discomfort, why isn’t the newborn’s right to life also outweighed by the orphanage worker’s right (even if it’s less than the pregnant woman’s right) to save money and get an education and avoid physical discomfort?
In logical terms, you’re saying that A (fetal rights) is so negligible that it is less than B (pregnant woman’s rights). My response was that A should encompass newborn rights too, and that A might then be less than C (other adults’ rights). Your response is illogical: It merely consists of saying that “C is less than B.” Well, OK. C is less than B. But that’s not the question. The question is whether C (adults’ rights) can still be greater than A (fetal/newborn rights).
This comment was written by Joe M..Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 10:24 am
Mythago,
As I said before, I am not referring to pregnancy resulting from rape, only as a consequence of a concious choice. Since I assert the unborn person has rights, the fact that the woman doesn’t want the consequenses of the pregnancy are irrelevant. I am not speaking about anything else, just pregnancy resulting from concentual activity.
Taking responsibility for one’s actions is not punishment. Aborting a fetus is not taking responsibility, it is avoiding it.
The brain of an unborn person is well developed by week 19, and although they have no sense of anything outside themselves, to say they can’t experience emotion is not supportable. Although they may not have a definition for what they experience, we cannot say they do not experience it. Point of reference doesn’t make emotion more valuable. Since we cannot know what the unborn person is experiencing, we should err on the side of that person’s right to exist. The fact that emotion may exist is reason enough to assume it does.
This comment was written by Jeremy Reinier.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 10:44 am
Since I assert the unborn person has rights
Then why the other arguments about responsibility? Those are irrelevant if the unborn person is, in fact, a person. You don’t need to go on about sex or responsibility at all. Unborn = person with rights, therefore abortion = murder.
I am not speaking about anything else, just pregnancy resulting from concentual activity.
Then you’re refusing to really discuss the ramifications of your argument. Why is that?
You are saying is pregnancy is a known risk of sex, therefore a woman who chooses to engage in sex is assuming the risk of pregnancy. That raises some pretty obvious questions:
–What if the woman did not choose to engage in sex?
–What if the woman did not know that pregnancy was a likely risk of the sexual activity? (And then we get into degrees of “did not know”. If the woman truly believed that it was impossible for her to get pregnant, is she really assuming the risk?)
There are two answers to those questions. One is that the fetus is a person, so the questions are irrelevant–and thus your whole argument about responsibility is superflous. The other is that since assumption of risk = responsibility, no assumption of risk = no responsibility.
Aborting a fetus is not taking responsibility, it is avoiding it.
So by “responsibility,” you mean “having the baby.”
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 10:47 am
Jeremy, the brain is only “well developed” by week 19 if you consider a brain without a functioning cerebral cortex “well delveloped.”
This link is the very first result that came up when I googled “fetus develop cerebral cortex”; the site doesn’t appear to have a dog in the abortion fight one way or the other. Note they place the development of the cerebral cortex in the seventh month, which is to say at week 25 or thereafter.
This page gives a more detailed account (and, again, doesn’t seem to have a dog in the abortion fight). The cerebral cortex continues to develop for some time after birth - but it starts functioning before birth. It is not, however, functioning at six months, let alone at 19 weeks!
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 10:49 am
Being required by law to take responsibility–the kind of “responsibility” someone else comes up with–for an action is wrong. You might think abortion is a bad decision, but we don’t outlaw anything based only on the fact that it’s a bad decision.
This comment was written by Hestia.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 10:52 am
(Actually, it depends on the action; we fine people for all kinds of things. I rescind my comment in the name of nuance.)
This comment was written by Hestia.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 10:57 am
We don’t, for example, tell people they can’t marry again because they’ve made stupid choices the last five times they married. Even though such stupid choices clearly affect other people (perhaps even children born of those marriages). There is no law that says “Look, bozo, you married the guy, you’re stuck with him.”
The only reason for preventing mitigation of consequence through abortion is if the fetus is a person. And if that’s so, talking about bad choices is muddying the waters.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 12:34 pm
Ampersand says:
The truth is, an arbitrary line needs to be drawn somewhere. It seems to me that birth is a sensible place to draw the line; I don’t know when an infant gains the ability to percieve itself as having a future, but I’m pretty sure it happens sometime after birth.
I understood your argument earlier to be that the appropriate dividing line is when an entity can value its future experiences.
I imagine that there is some way to assess when this happens, so I don’t see why you have to have reference to birth as an arbitary dividing line.
Bioethicists have suggested ways to measure when this capacity kicks in. Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer thinks it is around six months.
This comment was written by Emily.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 12:37 pm
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe Singer’s conclusions are not based on current thinking in neonatology, but lean more heavily on the notion of the greater good (i.e. that infanticide is justified under certain circumstances).
What’s clear is that the baby is no longer inside another human being’s body after birth. Any consideration of the mother’s autonomy–the interest Amp is balancing against potential personhood here–ends at that point.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 1:22 pm
Mythago,
I’ve carried five babies to term, and I have not suffered harm. I should have written, great harm in there…Yes, there are mild problems possibly associated with my having five babies jump on my bladder for instance. But real harm? It is not a given that one will be harmed by a birth. Most women do just fine.
But my point is this; the fact that she would have to carry the babies to term despite her desire to have only one, does not necessarily result in harm. The pregnancy could, it could result in feeling upset, but if abortion weren’t an option outside of the health of the mother, or because of rape or incest, if this was just the state, then i’m not sure the mother would be harmed by the lack of access to abortion.
i guess what I am saying is I am no longer comfortable with the concept of abortion on demand; abortion for physical and health concerns yes (and in Amy’s case that may have ended up in the same place) but abortion because i just don’t want it? I don’t think i am comfortable with that any more; and almost all of the arguments in favor of maintining the status quo are turning me further away from a completely pro-choice stance.
This comment was written by Rachel Ann.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 1:29 pm
Mythago: Well, actually, I do believe his conclusions are based on current thinking in neonatology at least when it comes to sentience and ‘personhood’, though admittedly he also leans heavily on ‘greater good’…
Interestingly I went from a pro-choice Mormon to a pro-life progressive over the last decade (so much for neat categories!).
Not to say that I’m not conflicted about that switch and my stance. I constantly question.
I am though, unconvinced by the argument against the last objection (’personhood’ leading to infanticide). Even birth is only a step towards independence, not independence, from the mother (given our legal system), the infant is still dependent on the mother’s body and care, wholly. One can (and Singer does) argue that the lack of ‘personhood’ and the sole dependence on another is argument for infanticide.
He puts ‘personhood’ at 6 months, as a biologist I would put it closer to 12-18 months, but even then its not fully formed ‘personhood’. The difference between a 8 month term fetus and a 1 month after birth child in the sense of personhood is not very great, nor between 1 month and 3 month…. etc.
I just don’t see birth as a good cut off point, an easily observable difference (inside/outside), but not a really good cut off point (dependence is still absolute, autonomy isn’t completely returned). I’m not even so sure about 8, 7, 6 months pregnancy (theoretically a fetus of this age can survive outside the womb, the woman’s autonomy isn’t completely the issue)
but then, I don’t know where the cut off is either.
not sure what I’m making an argument for. Just I’m a conflicted, pro-life progressive.
This comment was written by Trey.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 1:37 pm
the infant is still dependent on the mother’s body and care, wholly
No, it is not. An infant breathes on its own and can be kept alive by somebody other than the mother. It’s dependent on other people for its survival, but unlike a fetus in the womb, there are people other than the mother who can provide that.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 2:37 pm
he infant is still dependent on the mother’s body and care, wholly
No, it is not. An infant breathes on its own and can be kept alive by somebody other than the mother. It’s dependent on other people for its survival, but unlike a fetus in the womb, there are people other than the mother who can provide that.
granted, i overspoke. The child can now breath on its own (still needs warmth, norishment, protection, everything else, etc). And the mother can place the infant in another’s care (I well know, I’m an adoptive parent), still the infant is dependent on that mother making those decisions and dependent on the other person they are placed with (parent, state, guardian). The argument of personhood still holds (they are not yet a ‘person’) and autonomy (whether now its the woman’s autonomy or the new care giver). So the autonomy/personhood argument still holds in my view, only changed somewhat in degree (not kind) and perhaps transfered to another adult.
And, one could make the argument (and do) that at 35 weeks the child isn’t solely dependent on the mother or controlling the mother’s autonomy as it did when a 3 month fetus (it could, in practice we know, survive if labor was induced). (I guess that is why we have the abortion laws we do about third trimester abortions).
Anyway, just a caveat. I rarely get into the abortion discussion any more. Every past one always seemed to be acrimonious and personal and jump out as soon as it does. Got enough on my plate to have to deal with another controversial topic. Please take my statements in the way they are meant: questioning, not ‘authorative’ (no matter the tone I
This comment was written by Trey.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 2:45 pm
it could, in practice we know, survive if labor was induced
But you have to induce the labor. Honestly, one can disagree about personhood and so forth, but when a child is born its existence no longer must directly affect the mother’s control over her body, and so in my opinion the autonomy argument is over at that point. Legally speaking, the child does not have *zero* autonomy.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 3:13 pm
I’m too busy lately to really respond to such posts, so I’ll just make this one comment, hoping I’m not repeating anything anyone else said, and stay out.
A few people here have basically told a convoluted version of the “but what if the fetus was a potential Beethoven or cancer curer (or Abraham Lincoln, as indirectly implied in some of the above cases)?” argument. This one never flies for me, since, to put it flippantly, for every potential Lincoln aborted there are plenty of potential Hitlers aborted as well. The extreme unpredictability of a fetus’s eventual worth to society is a foolish basis from which to decide to abort or keep it.
This comment was written by Deep River Appartment.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 3:48 pm
Mythago wrote:
What’s clear is that the baby is no longer inside another human being’s body after birth. Any consideration of the mother’s autonomy–the interest Amp is balancing against potential personhood here–ends at that point.
Maybe I misunderstood Amp’s argument. I thought he was saying that Entity X is not entitled to (although it may be granted) a continued existence if Entity X isn’t aware of and doesn’t value its future.
If that’s his position, what’s there to balance? Why would there be any consideration other than the mother’s preferences, whatever they may be?
This comment was written by Emily.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 4:32 pm
(Don’t have time to read through all the comments; apologies if I repeat what someone else said).
Just goes to show that philosophy is not “pointless word-games”, as so many people keep telling me and my friends. For me, the tipping point was when I realized that legal or not, women are going to have abortions anyway. If they’re illegal, they’ll use coat-hangers; and they’ll die. And then I realized that it’s completely unacceptable, to force a woman to give birth *against her will*, as if she were nothing more than a brood mare, a baby-making machine. Those two realizations were the start for me. I want one of those bumper stickers that say “I’m Pro-Choice and I Vote!”
This comment was written by Anne.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 5:38 pm
A completely different argument for me is looking at it from outside our own emotionally-charged perspective, which assigns a value to the fetus which it simply does not have, but is only a product of our biases and biology.
Sarah Hrdy wrote something very interesting about this in her book, Mother Nature. She describes Rick Santorum from a primatologist’s perspective:
That’s what the anti-choice side of the debate is all about, to me: primates trying to regulate how other members of the troop reproduce. Pro-lifers always remind me of baboons compulsively sniffing butts.
This comment was written by PZ Myers.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 5:52 pm
excuse me, but a woman’s will is not at all involved when a pregnancy occurs. even if she wants it to happen, that mere wanting does not MAKE it happen.
and whether or not she wants the pregnancy is immaterial. she still has an absolute right to bodily autonomy. if she changes her mind later for ANY reason at all, it’s her body and she has the right to decide whether she will sustain another life with it.
viability really has nothing to do with it. whether a fetus is human has nothing to do with it. whether someone else feels good about the woman’s decision has nothing to do with it. until anti-choicers legalize rape and remove the consent requirements for blood and organ donation and surgery, until NOBODY in this country has the right to bodily autonomy, abortion on demand should remain legal.
This comment was written by dana.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 6:04 pm
which assigns a value to the fetus which it simply does not have
I’m not sure I follow the meaning here. A fetus has no value? It doesn’t have a value we assigned it? (and what value have we assigned it?), what value doesn’t it have (at 36 weeks say) that a one week old infant has?
This comment was written by Trey.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 7:15 pm
I don’t think the argument is that a living being that has not reached full sentience has zero value and zero rights (which leads to the pro-infanticide position), but rather that it has partial value and partial rights. This value and these rights must be weighed against the rights of others. While the exact fractional rights of a pre-sentient is obvously subject to argument (as is the question of whether pre-sentients should have more rights than non-sentients) the set of weights that produce current abortion law appear to be:
pre-sentient (1st or 2nd trimester) fetus’s right to life versus right to mother’s bodily autonomy: mother’s bodily autonomy wins absolutely
sub-sentient (3rd trimester) fetus’s right to life versus mother’s right to bodily autonomy: debatable, abortion can be restricted and is in some places
sub-sentient (3rd trimester) fetus’s right to life versus mother’s right to health and life: mother’s health and life wins absolutely, restrictions on 3rd trimester abortions must include health exception
sub/pre-sentient (first 6 month or year) infant’s right to life versus unspecified adult’s right to not have to be bothered by taking care of an infant: infant’s right to life wins
sub-sentient (and non-human) cat’s right to life versus unspecified adult’s right to not have to be bothered by taking care of a cat: adult’s right to not be bothered wins
While one could reasonably argue that a 1 month old infant has had a massively larger exposure to complex environments and is therefore significantly more sentient than a 9 month fetus, obviously this doesn’t hold for a 10 minute newborn and a 9 month fetus, so the major change in status is not the sentience of the infant. Instead, birth is the appropriate dividing line because it represents the point at which the right that is infringed by forbidding killing the sub-sentient being drops from being bodily autonomy to convenience.
Furthermore, birth represents a useful dividing line because it is a dividing line. A fetus is a very different creature from a baby: it engages in very different physical processes and, more importantly, it engages in very different social processes. The social interactions of a baby (even if they are ones in which the newborn is largely passive) grant it a far higher status within the human/social universe, and therefore lead to it being granted much greater human/social rights.
One can certainly argue that this system of weighting of rights is not correctly balanced, or one could argue that certain variables within this system (e.g. being a human versus being pre-sentient) should be given an infinite weight, and that therefore abortion should not be allowed, but the basic system and sets of statuses seem fairly clear and inarguable to me.
It seems to me the question of motive for the abortion matters to many people because they don’t set the weighting on a pure right to bodily autonomy high enough to out-weigh the right to life of a sub-sentient. Therefore, they need to measure the additional rights that are being invoked before they can decide the justice of the situation.
This comment was written by Charles.Report this comment to the moderators
July 23rd, 2004 at 6:36 am
Charles–A vague “sentience” isn’t the psychological characteristic Ampersand has advanced as being the appropriate dividing line between those humans who have a right to continued existence and those who don’t.
It could be that you disagree with Ampersand about what psychological characteristic we should look at when we try to decide who has the right to a continued existence.
I wanted to explore, and I hope Ampersand will want to explore, the merits of his specific proposal.
It is that if Entity X:
a) Has awareness of itself as a being which exists across time, into the future.
b) Anticipates and prefers its own future existence
then Entity X has the right to a continued existence.
If this is the right dividing line?
Is it the only relevant characteristic to consider?
Ampersand seems to say “yes” to both, because once he has advanced it, he concludes that “the fetus is not harmed in any meaningful way by being aborted”.
I take it that this means that Ampersand believes that entities who do not possess characteristics A and B are not harmed in any meaningful way if they are destroyed.
I’m trying to find out if that is what Ampersand believes. If he does, I wonder why he thinks that any balancing of the interests of the mother and the fetus have to occur at all.
I would have thought that his position implies that entities who do not possess A & B simply don’t have any interests to balance against the interests of others.
But Ampersand may think that other factors do matter and bring about a need for balancing of interests.
I’m hoping he’ll tell us what he thinks.
This comment was written by Emily.Report this comment to the moderators
July 23rd, 2004 at 6:50 am
That’s what the anti-choice side of the debate is all about, to me: primates trying to regulate how other members of the troop reproduce. Pro-lifers always remind me of baboons compulsively sniffing butts.
Way to go. Let me see if I can think of something equally ignorant and dismissive towards the pro-choice side: “Pro-choicers always remind me of primitive cannibals satisfying their blood-lust, because they think that killing innocent babies will somehow make them stronger.” Nice, huh? It totally misses the motivations of the people on that side of the debate.
And even if your characterization of pro-lifers’ motives is true, what’s wrong with that anyway? Nobody goes around claiming that baboons or bonobos have the wrong system of government. They do what they do, and that’s that. If we’re to be judged as primates, the only real principle is this: If pro-lifers are stronger than you, you lose.
This comment was written by Joe M..Report this comment to the moderators
July 23rd, 2004 at 11:07 am
Emily,
Sorry, I was intending sentience as a stand in for Amp’s proposed criteria.
However, my vagueness is related to the fact that those criteria are not a simple binary. There is a continuum from things that absolutely don’t meet the criteria, e.g. rocks, to things that almost completely don’t meet it, e.g. 8 week fetuses and flatworms, to things that mostly don’t meet it, e.g. 27 week fetuses, to things that somewhat meet it, e.g. 9 month fetuses and newborns, to things that mostly meet it, e.g. 6 month olds and cats.
This is where the question of balancing arises (to my mind).
Also, although I’m sure Amp will answer for himself, I would point out that I don’t think this is intended to be a complete description of all possible rights potentially involved. There are certainly other rights of any number of parties that might be involved. It is merely that the right to life of the fetus and the right to bodily autonomy of the pregnant woman are suggested to be far and away the dominant conflicting rights in this situation, and that probably the potential right to life of the fetus is the only involved right likely to outway the right to bodily autonomy.
Also, as I suggested with the cat example, society as a whole (and Amp as well, who is not a vegetarian) certainly counts other criteria besides the 2 he listed as being extremely important in determining access to rights: being human is also a huge factor. I think that that criteria was probably left unstated because it is a factor that is constant throughout the question of abortion and infanticide and murder.
It is possible that Amp believes that his criteria are binary (Singer seems to). However, what I was trying to point out is that the current legal status of abortion and infanticide can be reasonably well described if we assume that it is not a binary criteria. The alternative legal status of abortion and infanticide, i.e. abortion being illegal but not equivalent to murder, also seems to be best described by treating Amp’s criteria as non-binary and relevant, although it also obviously involves weighting other factors, such as humanness, more heavily.
However, as you have pointed out, if the criteria are binary, and the cutoff point is not magically set to correspond very closely with birth, then other criteria would need to be invoked to explain why late term abortion is permissable, and infanticide is not.
Actually, if the criteria is set to the start of 3rd trimester, no other criteria are needed to explain the most restrictive abortion laws permitted in the US. Once the criteria is met, only self-defense justifies killing. However, other criteria would need to be invoked to explain why abortion is still punished less harshly than infanticide.
This comment was written by Charles.Report this comment to the moderators
July 23rd, 2004 at 1:56 pm
Let me see if I can think of something equally ignorant and dismissive towards the pro-choice side
You’ve posted dismissive and insulting comments about pro-choicers before, Joe, so the shocked umbrage rings a little hollow.
Nobody goes around claiming that baboons or bonobos have the wrong system of government.
I should hope not. Bonobos have an extended social network maintained by lots of casual sex. Who in their right mind would criticize that?
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
July 23rd, 2004 at 2:52 pm
Charles writes:
If the criteria are binary, and the cutoff point is not magically set to correspond very closely with birth, then other criteria would need to be invoked to explain why late term abortion is permissable, and infanticide is not.
I think you’re saying that Ampersand’s proposal standing alone implies that infanticide is morally permissible.
That is, if a two-day-old baby is not aware of itself as a being which exists across time, into the future, and if this baby does not anticipate and prefer its own future, then it is not harmed in any meaningful way by the elimination of its future. (I suppose it isn’t relevant how its future is eliminated–through withholding nutrition or through an act of violence.)
But that’s only if Ampersand’s criteria is taken by him to be binary and not something that emerges rather quickly right around the time of birth.
Ampersand himself wrote that “A fetus has only a weak interest in its future, since it doesn’t know or care if it has a future or not. (As I’ve said, I’m confused about this, because I would have thought that his proposal translates into the fetus having no interest in its future, rather than a weak interest.)
Ampersand doesn’t believe that infanticide is morally permissible, so the questions we have for him so far are:
1) Does he think the characteristic he has advanced as the important one develops slowly over time in utero (this is what you, Charles, believe, right?)
2) Does he think the characteristic emerges rather suddenly or becomes full-blown quickly right around birth?
3) Based on his criteria, why does he think the fetus has any interest in a future?
4) Depending on how he answers those questions, are there factors (other than its subjective orientation toward the future) that would govern our thinking about whether it is permissible to terminate a two-day old baby? What are they?
This comment was written by Emily.Report this comment to the moderators
July 23rd, 2004 at 3:03 pm
P.S. Peter Singer writes that:
…the liberal search for a morally crucial dividing line between the newborn baby and the fetus has failed to yield any event or stage of development that can bear the weight of separating those with a right to life from those who lack such a right…the conservative is on solid ground in insisting that the development from the embryo to the infant is a gradual process. (Singer, Practical Ethics, p. 195)
These considerations come into play when conservatives say that an entity with levels of development isn’t usually denied basic rights when it is at a less mature stage of its development.
This comment was written by Emily.Report this comment to the moderators
July 23rd, 2004 at 3:11 pm
P.P.S.
Peter Singer also writes:
To have a right to life, one must have, or at least one time have had, the concept of having a continued existence. (Singer, Practical Ethics, p. 189)
I wonder if this essay is the one that struck Ampersand with such force when he was in college.
This comment was written by Emily.Report this comment to the moderators
July 23rd, 2004 at 3:12 pm
I can’t speak for Amp, but I think birth is a pretty bright line at which a ‘right to life’ should attach. I’m not sure that Singer’s analysis considers the mother’s competing interest, though.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
July 23rd, 2004 at 3:38 pm
Emily:
These considerations come into play when conservatives say that an entity with levels of development isn’t usually denied basic rights when it is at a less mature stage of its development.
Well, that’s true after birth. We generally attribute to newborn babies the same rights of personhood that we attribute to children and to adults. But we have never held that fetuses have the rights of a person in our legal and cultural tradition, except in rare and isolated circumstances.
We have to draw a line somewhere, and for various reasons we have decided that birth is the most appropriate place to do it. That doesn’t mean that fetuses have no rights or interests at all, just that they don’t have the rights of a person.
This comment was written by Don P.Report this comment to the moderators
July 23rd, 2004 at 4:40 pm
Emily,
I greatly appreciate your summation/clarification of what I was saying, and you are right about my position.
I’m not sure I agree though that enities that develop gradually are not denied rights that would be granted to them at a later stage of development. It seems to me that this is routinely done, frequently with a relatively arbitrary dividing line that may or may not be perfectly related to the gradual progression of development.
New born infants are routinely denied rights that are granted to adults, and those rights are incrementally granted to them over the course of their first 18, 21, or 35 years.
A romantic pairing is progressively granted rights based on the participants choosing to declare various dividing lines to have been crossed in the gradual development of their relationship (engagement entails certain limited rights, and obviously marriage entails a larger package of rights, earlier/alternative dividing lines confer moral rights, even if they don’t confer legal rights).
Also, under current law, develping fetuses are granted progressive rights during gestation (at the arbitrary dividing line of 2nd/3rd trimester when the right to life of the fetus is permitted to outway anything except the right to life and health of the pregnant woman), with a much larger set of rights being added at the arbitrary dividing line of birth.
I still think that the critical distinction at birth is not the rights accorded the infant versus the rights accord the fetus, but the drop in importance of the rights that are typically competing with the rights of the infant/fetus after birth.
This comment was written by Charles.Report this comment to the moderators
July 23rd, 2004 at 4:58 pm
I’m with Dana: women deserve the same body autonomy as men, period. Don’t want something happening to your body, don’t have to put up with it. A couple of others pointed out that women will have abortions anyway, legal or not, and those of us who remember the hospital wards full of mutilated women who preferred mutilation to pregnancy realize that this decision should never be made by anyone except the one undergoing it. Rachel said that 5 pregnancies hadn’t hurt her; I think that’s great, but her experience is not normative for all other women forever. Pregnancy can be literal slavery — and that’s not my own experience, but I recognize that my own experience isn’t normative either. When my (alas, only)