A simple argument against abortion anyone can understand
Posted on Wednesday, November 21, 2012 under proofs with the following tags: abortion, ethics.An almost painfully simple argument (just 3 parts, and 3 extra bits if you want them) showing unequivocally that abortion is morally (if not legally) equivalent to murder.
I’ve revised this article several times to strengthen it against new objections and criticisms. You may find quotes in the comments, or elsewhere on the web, that don’t match up with what is now written. Lo siento.
- It is wrong to kill another human being for personal reasons
- A human zygote or fetus is a human being
- Therefore, it is wrong to kill a human zygote or fetus for personal reasons
If [3] is a sound conclusion, then we can also strengthen the argument as follows:
- It is especially wrong to kill a human being (Harry) to the degree that [i] Harry is innocent; [ii] Harry is defenseless; [iii] Harry has more to lose; [iv] the killing is premeditated; [v] the killing is enabled by someone who is under a special duty to protect Harry
- A human zygote or fetus is [i] as innocent and [ii] as defenseless as a human being can be; a human zygote or fetus has [iii] the most to lose in terms of the life it could still live; [iv] abortion is always premeditated; [v] abortion is enabled by the mother, who has a special duty to protect her child at any early stage of development
- Therefore, it is especially wrong, to the greatest degree possible, to kill Harry if he is a human zygote or fetus
Obviously [5] would have to be built out for a complete and full defense, but I think it is pretty clear and unobjectionable as it stands.
You’ll notice the question of whether Harry is a person is irrelevant to the argument. Indeed, if he is not a person, then killing him is even worse, as per objection #4 below.
You’ll also notice the argument’s premises are very modest. They don’t require you to believe in God, or even in objective moral laws. Only that you have basic intuitions about murder, innocence, and familial duties which all people seem to share.
But you will object…
- “A human zygote or fetus is not a human being after all”
- “A blastocyst can twin, therefore it is not the same organism as the human being in its later stages of development”
- “It may be wrong to kill a more developed human being, but it’s not wrong to kill a zygote or a fetus”
- “The relevant distinction between myself now and myself as a zygote/fetus is that I am now a person, whereas I wasn’t back then”
- “40% of zygotes/fetuses spontaneously abort, so it can’t be wrong to abort them”
- “Although Harry is a human being, the mother is justified in killing him because he is using her body without consent or recourse”
- “The zygote/fetus isn’t properly alive because it can’t survive independently; therefore you cannot properly kill it”
- “But, but, rape, and, and, incest!“
- “There are lots of personal reasons to kill someone that aren’t wrong—self-defense for example”
- “Experiences are what make us human, or at least what comprise human life, so Harry isn’t really human, or perhaps isn’t alive, or at least his life has less value than his mother’s”
1. “A human zygote or fetus is not a human being after all”
But how can this be true? To call something a human being is to say that it’s an organism of the species homo sapiens. I, for example, am a human being, because I am an organism of the species homo sapiens. But obviously I have always been an organism of the species homo sapiens, regardless of my stage of development. And that stage of development included being a zygote and a fetus.
If you want to deny that, you’ll have to show that I never was a zygote or fetus—perhaps that I was created spontaneously out of a fetus, which was a different organism to me. But that’s obviously biologically mistaken—so this objection is a failure.
This is also why the popular butterfly objection fails (ie, if I’m right then killing a caterpillar is identical to killing a butterfly). The analogy breaks down exactly where it needs to hold up. A caterpillar is literally liquefied and destroyed, and then a new organism, the butterfly, takes its place out of the same material and genetic code. Obviously nothing like this happens for a zygote or fetus—these are not destroyed and then replaced by a baby.
The related frog objection—“well then, killing a tadpole is identical to killing a frog”—fails for a different reason: equivocation. The term frog is being used to describe both the organism, and its adult stage of development—and the objection trades on this confusion. But killing a baby is not identical to killing an adult either; yet both are identical to killing a human being.
2. “A blastocyst can twin, therefore it is not the same organism as the human being in its later stages of development”
But what relevance does the possibility of twinning have to whether I am the same organism as that blastocyst was? Even assuming that twinning involves the creation of a new organism (which is unclear, philosophically), I did not twin. Now, if you observe an amoeba for two hours and it doesn’t split in two, would you then conclude that the amoeba is a different organism than before, just because it could have split?
3. “It may be wrong to kill a more developed human being, but it’s not wrong to kill a zygote or a fetus”
This objection runs aground pretty quickly on premise [4], which seems to have a great deal of intuitive strength. And it’s obvious you can’t make a special exception for zygotes/fetuses, because I was once those things (as were you). If it is wrong to kill me or you now, then it was at least as wrong to kill us then, because the victims are the same. Unless you can come up with a relevant distinction between yourself as a victim of murder today, and yourself as a victim of murder at your earliest stages of development, there is just no reason to think it would have been morally permissible to kill you then, but not to kill you now.
4. “The relevant distinction between myself now and myself as a zygote/fetus is that I am now a person, whereas I wasn’t back then”
But this isn’t a relevant distinction. Indeed, if you really weren’t a person when you were a zygote and fetus, then premise [4-iii] is strengthened and the objection refutes itself—because not only would killing you have deprived you of the life you have lived, but also of the ability to develop into the person you now are.
5. “40% of zygotes/fetuses spontaneously abort, so it can’t be wrong to abort them”
Even if this figure it accurate, 100% of human beings die, so by this logic it can’t be wrong to kill them. It baffles me that anyone would raise this as a serious objection, yet I’ve seen it many times.
6. “Although Harry is a human being, his mother is justified in killing him because he is using her body without her consent”
I think this is the most staunchly-defended objection I’ve come across. The idea is that no one is entitled to make use of your body without your consent, and especially not for extended periods. Should someone violate your personal liberties and your bodily integrity in such a way, you’re entitled to take steps to prevent it, up to and including killing the other person.
I think this is quite plausible as far as it goes. An obvious example would be rape, which is a form of assault. It’s hard to imagine a woman being unjustified in killing a rapist in self-defense.
But how can we get from being justified in killing a rapist, to being justified in killing Harry? There seem to be several insurmountable hurdles along that path:
The first hurdle is that in nearly all cases, the woman gives implicit consent by having sex in the first place. She knows that sex is the means by which conception takes place. And she knows that contraceptives are not 100% effective. And even if she somehow doesn’t know these things, we don’t take ignorance to be an excuse for not accepting the consequences of your actions if you choose to engage in other kinds of risky activities. Rather, we think you should have educated yourself properly first. So it seems quite impossible for a woman to say that she consented to have sex, but she did not consent to the consequences of having sex—namely Harry. That is rather like saying that she consented to go joyriding, but not to spend 9 months doing community service after she accidentally drove through a fence. So we can see that except in fringe cases, the consent argument fails immediately.
The second hurdle is the idea of reasonable force. I’ve already said a woman is justified in killing a rapist. But what about a less extreme situation, such as being groped? Surely that does not justify lethal force against the perp—nasty as he may be. So clearly not every case of abuse or assault permits killing the perpetrator. Which raises the question: is it justified to kill someone who is in the process of causing you discomfort and inconvenience for nine months? Is that really a reasonable or proportional response? It isn’t at all clear to me that it is.
The third hurdle lets us go further in regards to reasonable force, by acknowledging the role of intent. In the examples I’ve suggested so far, the perp is intentionally imposing on another person’s body, while they have done nothing at all to bring on the imposition. But what if he were doing so unintentionally? What if it were her intentional action that had caused his unintentional imposition? What if, through no fault of his own, he was unaware of what he was doing and helpless to prevent it, while she had initiated it in the first place? Would we still feel justified in killing him? It seems very unlikely. Even in rare cases where the woman’s actions had not led to the perp’s imposition upon her, it still seems very difficult to justify killing him, and thus making him as much a victim as she is. As the old saying goes, two wrongs don’t make a right.
Yet some pro-abortionists are adamant, almost vindictive, about killing the perp. I wonder if, as with the prisoner’s dilemma on the ferries in The Dark Knight, they are all talk. If Harry were a child, would they really be willing to kill him themselves in order to defend their bodily autonomy and personal liberty? I think very few people really would—at least, I very much would like to believe that the pro-abortionists’ bark is worse than his bite here. If not, it would seem that pro-abortionists are largely sociopaths, or at least are inclined to act sociopathically toward human beings who are “out of sight, out of mind”.
The fourth hurdle is, I think the most significant, and that is the largely glossed-over social responsibility we are subject to in certain situations. Let me give an example: imagine you live in the arctic circle, and for several months of the year you are unable to contact the outside world due to weather conditions. One day, just as the weather is setting in, you discover a box outside. Upon opening the box, you find it contains a baby.
It seems extremely clear that although you have not consented to look after this baby—indeed, it is a significant imposition given your limited supplies and lack of preparation—you are nonetheless under a responsibility to do so, simply by being put into that situation. We would condemn someone who, rather than taking the baby inside to care for it, instead left it out on the doorstep to die of exposure or starvation. That is sociopathic behavior. And we would especially condemn someone who fetched a machete and hacked the baby to pieces, arguing that she was justified in doing so because she had not consented to look after the child (most abortions involve a similar method of destroying the fetus).
If even a stranger has an obligation to a child that cannot fend for itself, how much more does its own mother have such a responsibility when it is even less able to fend for itself? To deny this maternal duty seems plainly sociopathic—an ethical price so high that if you pay it to claim that abortion is “ethical”, your claim ends up saying nothing like what we take it to mean on face value.
There is a fifth and final hurdle: I can find no relevant distinction between modes of physical imposition. In other words, why is it unacceptable for a woman to be imposed on via direct physical means, such as a fetus living inside her (or Judith Jarvis Thompson’s violinist being grafted onto her), but not via indirect means, such as having to prepare meals for her child, work to provide for him, drive him from place to place, care for him when he is sick, and so on? Both are obvious impositions on her personal liberty and her bodily autonomy.
You may say the difference in the case of pregnancy is that she has no other recourse. Once Harry is born she can adopt him out, or have willing family members help her, etc. But my analogy of the remote arctic location seems to put paid to that idea. It’s not permissible to kill someone just because you can’t fob your responsibility off on another person.
You may say the difference in the case of post-partum children is that, by consenting to give birth, the mother implicitly consents to everything which follows—even things like terrible diseases where she will be forced to give up great personal liberties and bodily autonomy for Harry’s sake. But this response immediately backfires by conceding my argument about implicit consent: that by consenting to have sex, the woman implicitly consents to everything which follows, including Harry’s conception. You can’t eat your cake and still have it, too.
And in fringe cases where sex is nonconsensual, the arctic analogy comes into play again. If non-consent doesn’t justify killing a human being in a similar situation post-partum, why should it justify it in utero?
When you combine these hurdles, what you get is a cumulative case showing that, rather than justifying a woman in killing Harry, the consent argument actually condemns her. To kill him on the basis of this argument seems to qualify as sociopathic behavior. In all the analogies pro-abortionists give, the perp is acting maliciously toward a woman who did nothing to merit his actions against her. But even if this were accurate, killing the perp seems like a staggeringly disproportionate response—it isn’t reasonable force at all. Yet in the vast majority of pregnancies, the “perp” is in fact acting helplessly toward a woman precisely because she caused him to do so! And moreover, she is not simply “a woman” and he is not simply “a perp”—rather, she is his mother and he is her child—with all the duties and responsibilities that entails. Again, denying these maternal duties, far from being enlightened and freeing, seems sociopathic. And finally, since there’s no obvious moral difference between a fetus imposing on a woman’s autonomy and liberties, and a toddler doing so, it seems to imply that a woman is justified in killing her toddler for the same reasons as having an abortion.
7. “The zygote/fetus isn’t properly alive because it can’t survive independently; therefore you cannot properly kill it”
This is admittedly the most bizarre objection I’ve come across to date, and one that’s obviously just balderdash. As a matter of definition there isn’t a creature in existence that can survive independently of the environment it depends on for life. So why should we think that the womb is a unique kind of environment in this regard? Or, if the objection is that Harry can’t survive independently of the physical systems of another organism (his mother), then why think this is relevantly different from people who can’t survive independently of the life support systems in a hospital? It’s also hard to find a principled way to exclude infants, toddlers, small children and the infirm from this logic, because they also rely physically on other organisms for their survival. Why should a physical connection be relevant to distinguishing whether they are properly alive? But once you realize the logic extends this far, it obviously extends to every organism possible, since every organism survives by physically eating other organisms.
8. “But, but, rape, and, and, incest!“
While these are obviously awful things to happen to someone, I don’t see the connection between Harry being conceived in such situations, and there being a moral loophold to kill him. If my argument succeeds, then it succeeds regardless of the circumstances in which he is conceived, and regardless of how the mother feels.
This is obvious simply because I’ve shown there’s no relevant difference between killing Harry as a zygote/fetus, and killing him as baby, toddler, child, teenager or adult. And since it would be wrong for a mother to kill Harry at any of those stages of development—even if he was a constant reminder of a very traumatic event, or even if she hadn’t wanted him—it is also wrong for her to kill him before he is born.
9. “There are lots of personal reasons to kill someone that aren’t wrong—self-defense for example”
I don’t consider self-defense a personal reason, but a civil one, because it involves a duty to oneself or others to prevent injustice. The same applies to capital punishment. In fact, i think the “personal reasons” part of my argument is pretty robust precisely because we can see clear differences between the reasons for most abortions, and the reasons for killing axe-murderers or home invaders. The notion of personal reasons has a commonsense connotation which I think is quite clear to people who are willing to interact with the argument honestly.
But let’s say this objection goes through anyway. This would suggest that abortion is permissible in cases where the mother’s life is genuinely in peril from the pregnancy (assuming Harry can’t survive outside the body), or where justice demands that Harry be killed. Yet the first instance seems like an uncontroversial exception, since it is impossible to save Harry’s life here in any case, and it would be a greater wrong to let both him and his mother die. And the second instance seems plainly impossible, since Harry cannot yet be guilty of any significant wrongdoing.
What this objection does not show is that, because it is permissible to kill Harry in self-defense, it is therefore permissible to kill him for any other reason. And so it fails to refute my argument.
10. “Experiences are what make us human, or at least what comprise human life, so Harry isn’t really human, or perhaps isn’t alive, or at least his life has less value than his mother’s”
This objection is so incomprehensible to me I’m honestly not sure I can recreate it in my own words—so here’s how one pro-abortion advocate put it to me:
I believe that experiences make up life. Touch, sound, sight, taste, the sun hitting one’s face, making memories with another person, etc. A fetus has had none of those things…it is being removed before it has a chance to have any experiences that would make qualify as “life.” We put SO much significance on this fetus that we ignore the rights and well being of a fully formed, functioning woman who has already breached the canal and had the experiences that make her “human”.
Now, obviously it’s mad to think that someone is “less human”, or perhaps even not alive or not human at all just because they’ve had minimal experiences. Either you are human or you are not. Either you are alive or you are not. I already dealt with this under objections #1 & #7. But what about the idea that maybe Harry’s life is less valuable, or he has less of a right to life, because he hasn’t had the quantity or diversity of experiences his mother has had?
Well clearly that’s wonky too, because nearly all young humans—babies, children, teenagers, and even younger adults—have fewer and less diverse experiences than older adults. Therefore, if this objection succeeds, all these people should have less valuable lives, or less of a right to life, than those older adults. Yet I doubt many people will agree with this notion, since it’s plainly mental. We especially don’t believe this about babies and children: most of us, if push comes to shove, have a very strong intuition that not only does a child have just as much right to life as an adult does, but its right trumps the adult’s. For example, we think an adult ought to give up her life to save a child if only one of them can live, such as when having to deal with a lifeboat shortage on the Titanic.
This really comes back to premise [4-iii]. This objection is completely unresponsive to that premise. So if the premise is sound—and it seems very hard to find something wrong with it—then the objection is still-born.
Got any other objections? Feel free to share them in the comments.
If Roe V Wade is overturned regulation of abortion is returned to the states some states will be pro-choice and other will be pro-life, so what happens then when women go to pro-choice California to get an abortion from pro-life Nevada?
What rights does a woman have? Will you make a constitutional amendment that makes it illegal for a woman to have an abortion? If their is a federal law outlawing abortion then women can go to either Canada or Mexico. Will the TSA and border patrol start questioning pregnant women who leave the country. If Jane left the Canadian border 8 weeks pregnant and she comes back not pregnant is the border patrol going to arrest her for murder?
What about illegal abortions in the country? Various medications can be used to terminate a pregnancy. Underground clinics will appear just like prior to Roe V. Wade, what then? Will you start jailing those pregnant woman based on behavior in to maternity prisons until they go full term and then just confiscate the baby because clearly she didn’t want the baby anyway.
How will you ban abortion illegally in the first place?
What kind of rights do women have if abortion and privacy is not one of them.
Speaktodragons:
1. As a New Zealander, I don’t have a working knowledge of the American legal and medical systems, so I’m not qualified to suggest answers to your questions.
2. Assuming I were qualified, and assuming I had difficulty giving satisfactory answers, what bearing would that have on my argument? Would my not having answers to difficult political questions in any way affect my clear answer to this simple moral question? If so, how?
3. Your question, “What kind of rights do women have if abortion and privacy is not one of them” is nonsensical. One cannot have a right to do something grossly unethical like killing one’s own child. If my argument is sound, then abortion is grossly unethical in exactly that sense. You phrase your question in such a way as to suggest that if women can’t have abortions, then they have no rights to autonomy or privacy whatsoever. But that’s just obviously false, and also obviously very underhanded, since you haven’t shown in any way where you think my argument goes wrong.
In other words, you are conceding that I’ve proved abortion to be grossly unethical, and yet you’re still talking as if suggesting women shouldn’t be allowed to do it is some kind of patriarchal plot.
If you allow rape/incest pregnancies, you will be favoring the genes of those who commit rape and incest.
If you think these things are “obviously awful” you shouldn’t favor methods that will lead to an increase of people inclined to commit them by allowing them to propagate their genes.
And although the “violinist analogy” fails in the case of consensual sex, it succeeds in cases like rape or incest. If you disagree, does that mean you think the person does not have the right to pull the plug on the violinist and walk away? What is the difference between that and pregnancy due to rape or incest. And for the moment forget about “women being as strong as men”. The case I keep thinking of (admittedly an extreme case) was that 11 year old girl raped by her father, resulting in an abortion that the Vatican excommunicated the abortionists for performing. Should that girl have been forced to go through with that?
Snodgrass:
1. Since rape and incest are fringe cases, I take it you are conceding that my argument succeeds, and you just think that women should be excused of their moral obligations in these extenuating circumstances. But there are some obvious problems with your appeal:
A. Allowing rape/incest pregnancies doesn’t favor the genes of rapists and incestuous men. Allowing a certain kind of pregnancy isn’t equivalent to favoring a certain kind of pregnancy.
B. What evidence do you have that rape or incest are genetically-programmed behaviors?
C. Even if they are genetically-programmed, what you seem to be implicitly advocating is eugenics. Ie, we should favor killing human beings who are related to people that don’t mean some standard, like criminals. Why should we accept your argument if it is predicated on the assumption that eugenics is an acceptable policy?
D. In that vein, abortion is frequently used as a way to practice femicide in countries like India and China (and even in the US, to my understanding). Wouldn’t you say that banning abortion to eliminate the widespread destruction of girls outweighs the occasional chance for a rapist or incestuous person to transmit his genes (again, assuming gene transmission is even relevant)?
E. Assuming that you subscribe to the theory of evolution, on what basis do you object to rape, specifically, as a means of transmitting genes. Isn’t that just survival of the fittest—what we are programmed to do?
2. The violinist analogy breaks down regardless of the circumstances of the conception, because the circumstances of the conception are not morally relevant to whether issues such as (i) whether the zygote/fetus is a human being, (ii) whether it is wrong to kill a human being for personal reasons, (iii) whether the mother has an automatic duty to protect her child. I explicitly answered your question about the difference between the violinist and a pregnancy due to rape or incest, in my article, under objection #6:
Concerning objection #6, the maternal relationship, I would like to point out that this relationship is an instinct present in all mammals and that anyone can observe it in the animal kingdom. In fact, we usually admire the way females go to great extents to protect their offspring. Obviously this instinct is not rational and not moral. Evolution has simply found a superior way to assure the survival of the species (superior to egg-laying because the fetus is better protected within the womb and less liable to be a victim of predators during this vulnerable period).
It is therefore easy to understand why an” unhappy to be pregnant” human mother who is offered an opportunity to abort her child will not be moved by the argument of “maternal relationship” because she has no maternal relationship with the fetus. She is a mammal and as with all mammals her maternal relationship with her offspring starts to kick in at the birth of the child.
Our present day technology has short circuited nature’s ways. We can’t wait another 5000 years for evolution to correct the maternal instinct in humans so that it kicks in at conception rather than birth so I propose the following solution to this dilemma:
The instinct can be coaxed into appearing at an earlier stage if the surrounding culture displays admiration, support, respect for the mother and the important role she plays in providing a safe place for this tiny human. Not just her immediate family but the entire community must be encouraged to acknowledge the importance of the mother.
This change in the culture will come about with a lot of education. Ultrasounds of the fetus can also help to strengthen the maternal instinct, allowing the mother to bond earlier with the image on the screen.
Speaktodragons:
Besides the points Bnonn has made, most objections including yours can be fairly easily addressed by imagining the foetus is a 3 year old child or even an adult – given you’ve effectively conceded that it counts as a human being. Plug your political and “it happens anyway” points into that and see what happens.
It should be obvious enough, but for those reading I’ll provide an example. Conneticut decides to legalise homicide of three year olds in cases where the child was causing psychological harm to the parent by the fact of their existence. You’re saying that all the other states should therefore legalise this too because everyone will just go to Conneticut to kill their kids. Sound ridiculous? Funny that.
The only pro choice argument that can work in theory is that the foetus is not human, or that human rights only apply to a “person”. Both of these approaches and their variants fail badly on a logical level. The only rational conclusion is that abortion is wrong.
I think this is a well laid out argument, and I agree with it.
However, there is one point you did not cover, which is the most difficult point to argue.
I am against abortion, because I am for life.
There are cases of women who are at risk of dying if they come to full term and give birth. Thinking about Savita Halappanavar’s premature death in Ireland recently as an example.
How do you choose which life to save?
If I was a pregnant woman and I knew that the birth of my child would result in my death, do I choose to live or die?
If it was my wife who was pregnant, and giving birth to her baby was likely to kill her, what would I do? I just don’t know.
Would I feel guilty if she decided to abort? maybe. Would I regret the death of my wife as she died in child birth. Certainly.
I am certainly anti-abortion, but I am also pro-life with regards to the mother keeping hers too.
What are your thoughts on this?
Joanne:
1. If the maternal duty to protect and care for her offspring is merely an evolved instinct, then presumably all moral duties are merely evolved instincts. But since, as you say, there is nothing actually moral or rational about an instinct, your objection seems to prove too much: namely that it is not wrong to kill a human being for personal reasons.
In other words, you are rejecting the premises outright on the basis of evolutionary theory, combined with a fully materialistic worldview. But this just seems to give us good evidence that evolution+materialism must be wrong, since it seems obvious that the intuitive support for premise [1] is far greater than whatever support we might think there is for evolution+materialism.
Of course, you’re free to disagree, but it doesn’t seem to be me who loses the debate by conceding that morality is an illusion.
Richard:
Very good point. I have revised the article to deal with the self-defense concern in objection #9, but I think the question of which life to save, if it’s an either/or decision, is a bit beyond the scope of this article.
I would tend to prefer the life of the child, at least partly on grounds of premise [4]. But you also have to weigh the odds. Ultimately it seems to me to be a matter of conscience and faith.
Here is a question for you: Do you support socialized medicine? It is shown that women that can easily visit the hospital and talk to doctors have significantly less abortions. It is statistically shown that abortions would significantly drop if we implemented socialized medicine.
Do you support this form of lowering abortions?
Many conservatives I come across do NOT support this form of lowering abortion rates. It baffles my mind that they rate their “freedom” over the specific ability to lower abortion rates.
Here is another option: free birth control. you don’t even have to include abortifacient ones. Free birth control is shown to lower abortion rates in poor communities up to 40 percent! FORTY percent!! Are you in support of this?
Ok, since we have jumped to Savita, She didn’t die becasue she was denied an abortion she died from an infection. I did some research on septicemia while pregnant and found that it increases your chance of miscarriage, however the first line of treatment is antibiotics. You treat both patients. Even if the baby doesn’t survive the mother must be treated first before they remove the deceased child. removing the body of the child puts the mother at greater risk. She would have died sooner if she “had an abortion.” She would have died anyway ,pregnant or not. I was informed by an OB/GYN that treating a pregnancy complication is not the same as abortion, becasue in an abortion it is premeditated. The intention is to kill the child. IN treatments, the intention is to save both patients but sadly there are times the baby dies. There is a significant difference. A “medically necessary abortion” is just something the pro-choice movement threw out there to slander the pro-life doctrine. Treating a pregnancy complication to save a mother’s life makes up less than 1% of abortions performed. A large majority of them are out of convenience, or to protect the criminal. Abolishing abortion does not mean pregnant women will be refused care, it means abortions will no longer be performed out of convenience. Sorry this wasn’t a question, just thought I would throw that out there. OH! and another answer to the abortion to prevent the spread of rapist genes, if you think about it, All the years we have been here on earth, all the wars fought and all the rapes committed, how many of us have the genes from a rapist? I am sure every single one of us does.
Ed, I don’t have a thoroughly considered opinion, but as a general rule I believe socialized medicine is worth the trade-offs, yes. That could include free birth control.
That said, I don’t see why it should be baffling if someone values his freedom more than giving it up for an institution that would coincidentally lower rates of abortion. I don’t see that it is incumbent on anyone to make sacrifices just because it would lead more women to would avoid an obviously immoral choice. That seems to suggest they would be implicated in the immoral decisions of women, should they choose not to make that sacrifice, which I don’t think makes sense.
Please feel free to show me where the bible ever deals with abortion.
Ray:
1. Since my argument has nothing to do with the Bible, I’m not sure why you raise the question. Do you think one of my premises is wrong according to the Bible?
2. Exodus 21:22-25 is the only passage that deals directly with abortion. Others deal with it indirectly.
@Dominic Bnonn Tennant
I found this site through Reddit “http://www.reddit.com/r/prolife/comments/13k80i/a_simple_argument_against_abortion/”
You Said>>> As a New Zealander, I don’t have a working knowledge of the American legal and medical systems, so I’m not qualified to suggest answers to your questions.
I am not going to assume your qualified, because your not, the same I am not qualified in regards to New Zealand law or what civil liberties women have in your country.
Abortion is a legal issue and each country has their own methodology in how to balance a woman’s right of privacy and protecting potential life.
The history of NZ and the US are quite different as well as the internal struggles both countries have faced throughout the centuries.
So thanks for replying…but I am going back to Reddit.
speaktodragons:
1. Abortion is not merely a legal issue, as my argument shows. It is also an ethical issue. Indeed, to say that something is a legal issue is to implicitly acknowledge that it is an important enough ethical issue to make laws about it.
2. Abortion laws are not a case of balancing a woman’s right of privacy against protecting potential life. You speak as if you have already forgotten what I have proven in this very article: that a zygote/fetus is not potentially alive, but in fact is alive, and as such is a living human being; and that this is not a privacy issue, just as whether mothers should be allowed to kill their toddlers is not a privacy issue.
@Rob
Your analogy is incorrect. The only true analogy to abortion is miscarriage and stillbirths. If a woman’s body miscarries no one claims they her body murdered her child, but the result is the same a dead fetus. The only difference between a miscarriage and a abortion is choice, the woman made a choice to abort her fetus, then this becomes a issue.
Rob instead of giving me unfounded hypothetical examples why don’t we work with a framework under the laws of Roe V. Wade and make your case against that supreme court case. Lets work with the facts, not the fantasy.
I am more than happy to reply here!
http://www.reddit.com/r/prolife/comments/13k80i/a_simple_argument_against_abortion/
In my opinion, the main problem about your argument is that you make a very simple universal claim that many people would immediately agree with when hearing it (“It is wrong to kill a human being for personal reasons”) when reality is often much more complicated than this.
This becomes especially clear on #8. You say your argument, if right, suceeds regardless how the mother feels (e.g. in case of a rape or incest or AIDS or whatever). This is actually the refutation of the argument! If the argument would be sound, it would be able to solve the rape case solidly, but it doesn’t: The solution “the feelings of the mother don’t change a thing” is not a good one in many people’s eyes (mine included). So the logical conclusion is that the premise was either wrong, too vague or doesn’t really apply to this case.
In my humble opinion there are no easy one-liners for complex problems like this one. And my personal motto from what I learned from history and life is that giving people as much personal freedom as possible is always the best choice.
I’ve now written “in my opinion” and “personal” a lot. You didn’t at all. I think that is the main problem behind this: You are searching for absolute universal answers for quite personal problems. But there aren’t any.
speaktodragons: Actually it is your analogy of miscarriage and stillbirth that is “incorrect,” that is, irrelevant. Every analogy has some points of non-comparison, but in order to be relevant must be comparable at the essential points. You acknowledge that your analogy is not comparable at the point of choice, and seem to treat that point as trivial, when it is, of course, essential to the debate. In fact, it would be senseless to speak of a woman’s body, operating involuntarily, as “murdering” her child.
As for Rob’s argument, you neglect to articulate why you consider it “incorrect.”
And as for Roe vs. Wade, among its many noted flaws is the fact that it contains the (already by then, i.e. 1973) desparately ignorant statement that it is uncertain when life begins — a statement which is, in fact, a fantasy.
Christian:
1. You seem to not have noticed that if my argument goes through, there is no relevant difference between killing Harry as a zygote/fetus, and killing him as baby, toddler, child, teenager or adult. And since it would be wrong for a mother to kill Harry at any of those stages of development—even if he was a constant reminder of a very traumatic event, or even if she hadn’t wanted him—it is also wrong for her to kill him before he is born.
2. It may be your personal motto that giving people as much personal freedom as possible is always the best choice, but the very fact we have laws rather than choosing anarchy suggests your motto is fundamentally mistaken.
3. The fact that you personally don’t believe absolutes exist doesn’t in any sense indicate that they don’t. However, since my argument doesn’t require any absolutes, but merely basic agreement on some very modest moral positions, that’s quite irrelevant.
Hi Dominic,
I find your argument quite solid but I’d like to play devil’s advocate since I am always open to new ideas. I enjoy hearing both sides of the argument so since your side is pro-choice I’d like to ask a few typical pro-life questions. Really I’m the fence with the whole thing and I don’t feel that there is an elegant solution in our day and age but I have changed my viewpoint to more pro-life recently. However I do have a few lingering questions that keep me from switching completely. Thanks in advance for your time. Here are my questions:
1. What is your view on euthanasia? I feel that this is a personal reason to kill oneself but is entirely justified when death is near and suffering is great. The reason I ask is that your first (1) assertion is that killing for personal reasons is wrong. I feel that this argument is bordering on being subjective due to euthanasia being lumped into the ‘personal’ reasons for killing.
2. Along the same lines as (1), what about suicide? I don’t have a very strong belief on this topic though I feel it is a tragedy in essentially every way. However I could see how it may be justified as the lesser of two evils as in the case of long-term kidnapping or torture situations.
3. Do you think that humans need to stop having sex unless it is to procreate? Does sex for enjoyment have a place in society? If so, what solutions do you propose to keep pregnancies from happening?
4. If you are working at an in-vitro fertilization clinic and somehow accidentally destroy an embryo, should you be prosecuted for manslaughter?
5. Whenever abortion is outlawed, people suffer and die. What do you propose we do to end it if abortion is outlawed?
I think sweeping changes in our way of thinking about human life are necessary before any move to outlaw abortion is made. Reality and our nature dictates that we will have sex as much as possible, and that means babies will be close behind.
When people blindly want to ban abortion, I feel it shows that they haven’t taken into consideration the issues that will arise because of it. Yes, unborn children won’t die but most likely crime will go up as will child abuse and depression. Again in a perfect world we would have the resources both financially and emotionally to deal with the creation of a child each time we had sex, but we are not living in that world right now and people ignore it.
It’s interesting that you address the twinning issue, but I’d like to pose a further objection.
What if you split the organism? Both parts COULD develop into twins. But what have you done? Have you taken a cell sample from the organism that you could legitimately do destructive testing on, in the same way you could give a skin sample to your doctor? Or is ANY destruction of even a single cell of the organism immoral, because even a single cell could keep splitting and become a twin?
If you say, you can’t destroy even a single cell, why is a single cell sacrosanct, when a single cell of my body is not? How can that be consistent, if you want to equate a mature human with a human consisting of only a few cells? How can you be said to have killed a human in this case when no (other) human could be said to exist prior to taking the sample? If you take the sample for legitimate medical diagnosis, does it still deserve protection, even though there is no natural way for it to now develop into a separate human? Or does the mere existence of advanced technology and/or freezing mean you have to use such technology?
If you say it is ok to kill the sample, then what if I split the organism, which half is the definitive half? If I split the ownership of the two halves, which owner is under moral obligation to protect it, and which is free to do destructive testing?
One further objection: if I split the organism such that it could develop into twins, if now left for nature to take its course. But then I push both halves back together again, such that they develop into only one human, have I killed anyone?
If you say, yes I have, then I ask how can I kill without even a single cell encountering death?
If you say, no I haven’t, then where was the harm in killing half, since killing half results in the same number of people developing as pushing them back together.
Then if you say, killing half is OK, which half is the sacrosanct one that ought not be killed? Then, what if I split ownership, who has the moral obligation?
Speaktodragons has asserted my analogy to be incorrect without showing how it is, and then given his/her own analogy which is self refuting – given that if true it would mean that all murder is ok because people die horribly anyway and the only difference is a “choice”.
Otherwise Jim seems to have addressed the same points I would.
Christian makes a bold attempt but still fails to apply the adult argument. If you accept that the foetus is human, you admit that it is equivalent to any other human to kill it. Therefore it should only be ok to kill it in the same situations in which it would be ok to kill a grown human. Do rape, incest and AIDS justify killing an adult? I’d think not. If intuition doesn’t agree with this it’s probably because an unformed foetus lacks the empathic impact at least in the very early stages.
Again as before the only way around this is to disprove premise #2, which Bnonn has supported well.
Dave I might as well have a go.
1: At least in this case the person has a choice, but otherwise this is a big issue that needs its own article.
2: Since someone who commits suicide is effectively punishing themselves, it’s not an issue that really affects us in terms of policy. I do find it ironic that we’ll do abortions almost at the drop of a hat while trying to talk people off ledges without knowing why they’re jumping.
3: This is a separate issue given that no human organism exists prior to being procreated. The casual approach our society takes to sex does cause all sorts of problems, but these aren’t really in the same ballpark given we’re not talking about killing existing people. I personally have no issues with contraception.
4: Technically, yes. IVF is essentially a selfish thing in any case, and so the thought of people farming and eugenics (only using the best zygotes, or choosing eye colour etc.) to achieve it is pretty distasteful.
5: Do more people suffer and die than babies are aborted? In any case it’s debatable – Ireland has no abortion, but still manages a lower teenage birth rate than we have in NZ. The USA have some of the most relaxed abortion laws and yet also one of the highest teenage birth rates in the world. It’s therefore hard to argue that abortion fixes more problems than it creates, especially when one considers every abortion to be morally identical to murder.
James:
We say that destroying any cell that “could become” a human = killing. *Could* is the wrong word however – it already *is* human.
A single cell of your body is not a human in it’s own right given that it is only a part of a complete organism. A cell from a zygote can function as a complete organism and naturally grow into an adult, a skin cell cannot and is not designed to. This seems fairly straightforward.
Regarding splitting then putting back together, this is more complex. It would be much the same morally as fusing two adults or adult twins into one, like “Tuvix” (Neelix + Tovok) if you ever watched Voyager back in the day. Perhaps you’ve effectively killed both and ended up with an entirely new organism? It’s an interesting problem, maybe Bnonn has a better answer than I do. At very least that would belong in the “moral minefield” basket. Also, go watch Voyager :D
In reply to #20
1. No, I have noticed that, that’s my point! Your logic completely disregards the personal feelings of the mother, saying it just plays no role in the “right or wrong” decision. So you’re effectively saying that a raped 15y/o who became pregnant (to choose an extreme example) just “has to deal with it” although technically there is a way for her to stop the severe consequences of the rape. She has to give birth to the child she never wanted because that is “right”. I find this thought sickening. It does no good to force people to become parents if they don’t want to. The alternative is killing the fetus. While that is a hard decision, the fetus won’t complain about it, the awkward situation can be put to an end and the poor girl can try to get over it. It is not a perfect solution, but the world where that rape happened wasn’t perfect to begin with, so this seems like a plausible solution to me. Whether or not you consider a fetus a human being is just a question of definition. Whether or not the poor girl above gets a second chance or will be stuck in that situation forever is a political question. I’d prefer a world where she has a choice, you obviously don’t.
2. The laws are put up to protect personal freedom as much as possible (at least in democracies). I guess you’re from the U.S., your declaration of independence starts with “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”as the unalienable rights it wants to protect. Maximising liberty and anarchy are vastly different things.
3. The fact that you believe in absolutes also does not indicate they do exist. And it is not irrelevant as it seems to be the basis of your whole argument. “Killing a human being for personal reasons is bad.” Aftterwards you extent “human being” to “human being including unborn fetusses” and declare that this absolute just holds. And that’s where I disagree: If it comes to fetusses, it does not hold. As you see, there are no absolutes – The sentence is true for you and false for me. Who are you to force a rape victim to stick to your view?
“A single cell of your body is not a human in it’s own right given that it is only a part of a complete organism. A cell from a zygote can function as a complete organism and naturally grow into an adult, a skin cell cannot and is not designed to. This seems fairly straightforward.”
Yes, but a single cell of a zygote is also not a complete organism in its own right.
There is a potentiality once you split it off, but what exactly gives that potentiality enough substance to give it our attention? I mean, lost of things are potential. Potentially I could inject the DNA from my skin into an egg and it could become a person. A cell split off a zygote is closer to that potential, but still lacks a womb to grow in, and a whole lot of things have to happen before there mere potentiality can be realised. In other words you say that a single cell “can” grow into an adult. But that word “can” hides a lot “ifs”, “buts” and “maybes”.
Let me pose another scenario. Our multi-celled zygote seems to develop an abnormality in some of its cells. The doctor decides to destroy some of its cells, in the same way an adult would have cancer cut out of them. Is it wrong to destroy some of its cells in this way? According to your previous statement, the answer would be it’s wrong, because those cells, in theory, could be cut out and grow into a new separate human being. But is that really a rational position, when an adult can have cells cut out of it, if it helps the overall organism? Not doing the procedure might result in the death of the organism. So how can it be wrong to treat it?
Dave:
Thanks for your thoughtful critique. I think your point about euthanasia, combined with your point about suicide, highlighted a flaw in the argument as I had originally worded it. I’ve updated premise [1] to read, “It is wrong to kill another human being for personal reasons.”
I think that closes the loophole, since euthanasia performed by another is not killing another human being for personal reasons, but for moral ones (ie, it would be a greater evil to allow that person to suffer needlessly than to kill them), and euthanasia performed by oneself—or even suicide in general—no longer falls under the argument.
This isn’t to say I believe euthanasia or suicide are morally justified in any particular instances, although I do think that is possible. But I want to be sure this argument is as robust even when it comes under the scrutiny of people with quite different moral views to my own.
I don’t hold that sex is purely intended for procreation; indeed, I think sex is largely intended for enjoyment. However, I believe that enjoyment is designed to be a physical expression of the marriage covenant. Biblically speaking, casual sex, or any kind of extra-marital sex, is morally impermissible.
That said, I don’t think humans need to stop having sex, assuming “need” denotes a broad pragmatic necessity.
That seems like a logical conclusion of my argument. Naturally it seems more intuitive to think of this as a property crime—but our intuitions are often mistaken.
Assuming this is true, I’m not sure why I need to have an answer to this practical question in order to show that morally speaking we ought to outlaw abortion. I’m not a utilitarian, so I reject the idea that we should not outlaw something obviously wrong just because it may have consequences we don’t like. I think we have an obligation to protect the weak and innocent, and an obligation not to take human life, which far outweighs those kinds of pragmatic concerns.
Thanks again for your thoughtful questions.
I’ll try to reply to everyone else later—I’m currently on holiday :)
James:
It is not that any particular cell of a human being is sacrosanct. It is simply that if the cell you currently have in front of you actually is a human being, then it is sacrosanct.
I think this adequately deals with your thought-experiments. I don’t need to have all the answers here, and I’m willing to concede both your superior biological knowledge, and the lack of clarity in this area. However, if the governing principle shows us that even a zygote is a human being (at least under certain circumstances), then the huntsman analogy holds. Ie, you don’t shoot something moving in the forest if it might be a human being, even if it also might be a bear. You err on the side of caution.
Christian:
I find it chilling that you think the ethics of killing another human being changes depending on how you feel about them or define them. Do you think that if you hate someone enough, then killing them is permissible? Or, at the risk of invoking Godwin’s Law, do you believe the Nazis were justified in exterminating the Jews, since by their definition the Jews were sub-human?
It’s very strange to me that you find this sickening. Since you haven’t refuted my conclusion, that Harry is a human regardless of his stage of development, look what happens when we alter the scenario a little:
So you’re effectively saying that a raped 15y/o who became pregnant (to choose an extreme example), chose to have the baby, but then started getting PTSD when the child was three years old, just “has to deal with it” even though she could kill her child. She has to raise the child she no longer wants because that is “right”. I find this thought sickening.
I think any well-adjusted person will think that killing your child to avoid your own suffering is “sickening”. So what you need to do is show me what the relevant difference is between a 3 year old and Harry the Zygote. Otherwise it would seem that it is your position that is sickening—not mine.
I’m not from the US. However, why would you invoke the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness when it is your position which denies these exact rights to millions of unborn human beings?
You are quite welcome to disagree, but you need to provide a better reason than your opinion. My argument doesn’t leave room for opinion. If it is wrong to kill human beings at the stages of development outside the womb, then it is wrong to kill zygotes and fetuses also, unless there is a morally relevant distinction between these different stages of development. What you need to do is provide us with that morally relevant distinction, instead of just claiming that your personal feelings trump the argument.
“It does no good to force people to become parents if they don’t want to.”
Absolutely true, but in the case of a pregnant woman, that ship has sailed. She’s a parent already. The issue is not one of being a mother vs not being a mother; it’s an issue of being a mother who lets her child live, vs being a mother who kills her child.
The rapist forced the girl to become a parent. No-one else. Forced parenthood is a rape issue, not a pro-life issue.
It might seem like a minor point, but I’ve seen similar statements by pro-choicers often: they seem to define motherhood according to some fuzzy-wuzzy greeting-card sense, as if one only becomes a mother when one chooses to keep/raise/love one’s child. But that’s scientifically absurd. A woman carrying her own fetus is a mother; the fetus inside said mother is her child. (Not a “potential” child, either – nor some kind of Schroedinger’s baby – an actual, existant, fact-of-the-matter child.)
It’s for the same reason that applying the term “reproductive rights” to abortion irks me. The right to reproduce or to refrain from reproducing is indeed worth championing, but once a woman is pregnant, reproduction has already occured – again, that ship has sailed. Killing the “reproduction” is a very different kettle of fish, as evidenced by the fact that doing it after birth is generally considered murder (and the comments section is still waiting on a valid moral distinction between pre- and post-birth killing).
If people began campaigning for infanticide as a “reproductive right” it would no doubt be considered grossly euphemistic; I feel that calling abortion a “reproductive right” is similarly inappropriate.
I have a question that stems from the response to objection #1 about the caterpillar and the butterfly. I’m assuming that someone has used this argument to say that killing a zygote/fetus is the same as killing the caterpillar while killing a human is the same as killing the butterfly.
Are they suggesting that killing the caterpillar is okay while killing the butterfly is not? Or vice versa? That seems to me to be pretty shaky ground.
I get your response and pointing out that it is a different kind of creature. But it seems to me that the argument they make is somewhat self-defeating. If the butterfly has a right to life, then so does the caterpillar even if it is a completely different creature. The fact that someone might try to make a distinction causes me to ask what is the distinction. Is it just that we can’t imagine killing such a beautiful creature as a butterfly but the ugly caterpillar is fair game? Is that really going to be a basis for why killing a zygote/fetus is okay? Are they truly suggesting the human is a beautiful creature that we love but the zygote/fetus is an ugly creature we can dispense with?
In response to Sarah Tennant, who refers to a pregnant woman thusly: “She’s a parent already. The issue is not one of being a mother vs not being a mother; it’s an issue of being a mother who lets her child live, vs being a mother who kills her child.”
I’m of the opinion that gestation precedes the human’s life, not that conception equals birth and the remainder of gestation is some sort of biological afterthought. You criticize as “scientifically absurd” the notion that a fetus only constitutes potential life. However, this seems to minimize the changes that occur to the developing human in the months following conception. At conception, the zygote is merely a fertilized egg, and yet you appear to believe that the arbitrarily-chosen moment of conception is significant in creating a human being.
I’m certainly not saying there’s a magic instant where a developing fetus “becomes human.” I have no problem saying that a baby just prior to being delivered by a mother in labor is human, but it’s my opinion that a zygote is not. I have no idea where we should draw the line, but I choose to err on the side of caution and allow women to choose what’s best for themselves and their families.
Steve:
1. The fact you’re of that opinion doesn’t have any force against my argument, which shows that you are wrong. If you think the argument is flawed, you need to provide reasons why we should doubt its conclusion. Your opinion isn’t such a reason.
2. Let’s say it is unclear whether the zygote. Nonetheless, to allow women to “choose what’s best for themselves and their families” is not to err on the side of caution at all, since it is also to allow them to kill something that is possibly their child! Again, the huntsman analogy holds here: if you are hunting in the forest and see something moving, you don’t shoot it if there’s the possibility that it’s a human being, even if there is also the possibility that it’s a bear.
3.
Well, the only other possible implication of your position is that “becoming human” is a gradual process. Yet it seems equally absurd to say a fetus instantly becomes human at some point as to say it gradually becomes human over time.
“The fact you’re of that opinion doesn’t have any force against my argument, which shows that you are wrong. ”
Oh, I see. Your opinion that a zygote is a human being isn’t open to question, only my opinion that conception doesn’t equal birth.
“it seems equally absurd to say a fetus instantly becomes human at some point as to say it gradually becomes human over time.”
No, there’s nothing absurd about saying that the entire process of sex, conception, and gestation is the gradual development of a human being. Perhaps you’re uncomfortable with such ambiguity, but there are very few clear divisions in nature.
Steve:
You may have free reign on Live Action News, but you don’t here. If you continue to misrepresent the facts, your comments won’t be approved.
I have argued for why a zygote must be considered human. I have given a clear defense of this under objection #1. You have said nothing that is responsive to my argument; you have simply asserted that a zygote shouldn’t be considered human despite the evidence I’ve presented that it should.
If you want to pretend that an argument enjoys no more intellectual weight than an opinion, then you can go pretend elsewhere. This isn’t Neverland, and I’m not playing make-believe.
the opening, stating that abortion can be shown the be equivilent to murder by these arguments is falce. this is simply because of what murder is.
the legal defenition of murder from the uk (the US system is built on the UK system, but i havnt studyed american law) is “the intentional killing of a reasonable creature in being without lawfull excuse under the queens peace”
The second part is irrelevent, but the first part is, as “reasonable creature” means that it must be capable of indapendant life. (feel free to examine the case law yourself). therefore it cannot be equivilent to murder, as it is not capable of surviving independantly, regardless of if it is a human being or not. The UK has a fair ammount of case law on this matter, so you will have to refute hundereds of years of legal precedent to make your point of equivilency to be valid.
with regards to a moral argument rather than a legal one, it is important to know that while interesting, ethical discussions have no meaning when one is discussing politics (as you seem to be doing by adressing liberals) as the political question is “should we make abortion illegal” not “is abortion moraly wrong or undesirable”. many thigns are moraly wrong that are not unlawfull, such as binge drinking, gambing and declaring wars on foreign soil.
finaly if you wish to draw an equivilency between murder and abortion you must realise that all the points mentioned in 4 points 4 and 5 are irrelevent as to establishing murder, except for point 4 (iv) which could go to intention, while they are agravating factors once murder has been established, they are irrelevent when discussing if a murder has occured or not. as such they do not belong in this discussion at all, prehapse in the next one once you have proven beyond doubt that abortion and murder are one and the same when you wish to discuss what the punishment should be. however this would be permissable if this were a soley moral discussion, however if so it should be mentioned that it is politicaly irrelevent.
in addition i object to points 5 (i) and 5(v), point 5(v) is irrelevent as a person cannot legaly or moraly be placed under a burden to protect anothers interests without agreeing to it, and legaly this sort of agreement cannot be enforced by common contract law, as it is presumed there is no intention to form legaly binding agreements between family members. also innocence as raised in 5(i) is irrelevent, as murder is murder, even if you kill a crime boss. while it may be emotionaly unpleasant to think one has killed an innocent, this has no moral or legal value.
i also object to the first premise. my personal moral rule states that it is not permitted to deliberatly kill a person without medical or other lawfull justifcation. i use the word person deliberatly, as i would extend this beyond human beings, to anything which meets my criteria for personhood (for something at one point in the past, or be able to in the present pass the turing test) this could include ailiens or artifical inteligences if they ever exist or are shown to exist. i would be interested to hear your stance on the killing of a sentient alien or artifical inteligence, as you seem to arbitrarily restrict your morals based on an arbitrary genetic distinction. So i object to the first premise, as it uses human rather than person, thus unessesarily restricting it as an ethical rule, thus making it invalid and immoral. morality should not be based on genetics,it makes no sence. i suspect that you arbitrarily restict this rule deliberatly, to avoid using the word person, as your argument would fail if it was used. (as all of point 5 are irrelevent except as agravating factors, which have nothing to do with establishing murder)
i would be verry interested in having a discussion on this, and would be interested to see what (if any) changes are made to attempt to meet these objections.
Megan:
Thanks for your comment. Some thoughts in response:
1. I’m not trying to establish an argument that abortion is legally equivalent to murder. As you’ve noted, that would run aground on the legal definition of murder itself. What I’m doing is showing that abortion is morally equivalent to murder. But I realize perhaps that was not clear, especially in my blurb for this post—I’ve now corrected that.
2. There are a few problems with your comment that ethical discussions have no meaning when one is discussing politics:
A. There is no clear distinction between ethical and political questions in many cases. If abortion is wrong in the same kind of way murder is wrong, then it follows that abortion should be illegal in the same kind of way murder is illegal. Now of course that raises other political questions, like how will we make it illegal, what penalties will be prescribe, and so on, but the underlying question is very much a question of ethics.
B. Even in cases where a political view is clearly distinct from an ethical question, you seem to be implying that this views is not subject to moral scrutiny. But that seems both mistaken and even dangerous. Imagine if we didn’t subject political views like Neo-Nazism to ethical scrutiny.
C. Sure, some immoral activities are not illegal (though I question your choice of examples). Nonetheless, the whole point of the law is to codify ethical conduct and prescribe reasonable penalties for violations. And one of the big reasons this is important is to protect the innocent. So it seems to me that if abortion is morally equivalent to murder, then abortion clearly should be outlawed. I think that follows necessarily, unless you can show some principled distinction between abortion and murder, morally speaking.
3. You claim that premise [5-v] is mistaken: that a person cannot legally and morally be placed under a burden to protect another’s interests without agreeing to it. But it seems very plain to me—and I think most people—that:
A. The mother in nearly all cases does give implicit informed consent by having sex in the first place (anyone who doesn’t know that sex produces babies and that contraceptives are not 100% effective probably has a reduced mental capacity).
B. Parental duty seems obviously to transcend any kind of “agreement”. We would question the moral character of someone who, upon discovering a baby had been left on their doorstep, then proceeded to close the door and ignore its cries until it died. Even though that person never agreed to protect that baby’s interests, it is very clear that they were nonetheless placed under that burden simply by becoming aware of it. Their lack of consent to shoulder that burden does not excuse them, but rather condemns them. And if that is so for a stranger and a baby, how much more so for a mother and her unborn child?
4. You claim that premise [5-i] is mistaken, but again this seems wrong. If the law disagrees, then it seems the law does not track accurately with our moral intuitions, because we can obviously see that if I am forced to choose to kill either a mob boss or a baby, I would be quite unjustified to choose the baby, all other things being equal.
5. You object to the first premise, that it is wrong to kill another human being for personal reasons. You say you accept medical or other lawful justification for killing others. But at this point I’m finding your reliance on what is legal rather than what is right to be equivalent to abdicating your moral duty, deferring it instead to the state. No doubt many Germans felt the same way when they disclosed their Jewish neighbors to the SS. Yet I doubt even you would agree they were right to do so. Please try to keep in view that I’m discussing what is right, and not what is legal.
6. You say I artificially restrict the argument to human beings, rather than human persons. But I explicitly covered this under objection #4 (and the argument of objection #1 also applies). If it is wrong to kill me now because I am a human being, then it was at least as wrong to kill me when I was a zygote (and plausibly far more wrong). I didn’t use the term “person” in my argument because I explicitly wanted to make as simple and as broad an argument as possible, and I know that some people disagree that a fetus is a person. Since it is irrelevant whether a fetus is a person, why weaken the argument by including that consideration?
Of course, this doesn’t mean I don’t think we could extend the argument to cover other species, or that I don’t think human fetuses are persons, or anything like that. I am simply choosing premises that are as agreeable as possible, to capture the broadest possible audience in my conclusion.
7. As regards my stance on killing an alien or AI, I don’t think that’s relevant to my argument at all. My argument is specifically about killing human beings, because that is the issue I am concerned about. Now, if we were aborting alien babies left, right, and center, I would develop my argument along similar lines, assuming those aliens grew up to be self-aware and intelligent people like us. Mind you, I ultimately ground the right to life in the Imago Dei; but from a Christian perspective, a self-aware and intelligent person would have the image of God.
That doesn’t extend to AI for at least two reasons: Firstly, from a biblical perspective, the image of God is immaterial; it is captured in what you would call the soul, and not in the body. Since we cannot create souls, it seems implausible to think a machine will ever have one. Secondly, and following on from this, since an AI by definition merely simulates the appearance of consciousness, and cannot in principle be conscious, it makes no sense to assign moral status to one. (If you’re interested in that topic you might like my novella, The Ash and the Air, which you can download free under the Books link).
“I’m of the opinion that gestation precedes the human’s life, not that conception equals birth and the remainder of gestation is some sort of biological afterthought.”
Well, science disagrees with you. A gestating human is not dead; it is demonstrably alive; so how can its gestation precede its life? How would the fetus develop and grow during gestation without being alive? I mean… say what?!
Conception does not equal birth, and I never said it did. That’s a strange red herring. Birth isn’t relevant to the argument at hand, at all; it would be *very* strange to claim that a human being is only created at the moment of birth, and I’ve never heard such a claim.
“You criticize as “scientifically absurd” the notion that a fetus only constitutes potential life. However, this seems to minimize the changes that occur to the developing human in the months following conception.”
I don’t think you’re grasping my point. A fetus will continue to develop throughout gestation, yes; but how does that make the life it has *as a fetus* “potential” rather than “actual”? Show any scientist a living fetus under a microscope (assuming that were possible!) and say “Is this alive?”, and assuming his powers of observation are intact, he will say “yes”… not “potentially”. Show the same scientist a dead fetus, and he will describe it as dead. Neither one is “potentially” alive; that makes no sense. Even a frozen embryo awaiting IVF implantation is actually, genuinely, truly alive; if it were dead, scientists wouldn’t bother trying to implant it.
“At conception, the zygote is merely a fertilized egg, and yet you appear to believe that the arbitrarily-chosen moment of conception is significant in creating a human being.”
For one thing, I don’t hold to materialism, so I don’t believe any human being is “merely” the sum of his cells. Saying that a zygote is “merely” a fertilised egg is akin to saying a human is “merely” trillions of cells; it is a philosophical statement, outside the purview of science. And my comment was specifically addressing the *scientific* inaccuracy of referring to fetuses as potentially alive, etc, so I’d rather keep the discussion on those lines.
For another, it’s hardly arbitrary to define conception as the creation of a human being! Once again, science is decidedly not on your side. Before fertilisation, there is no one “being”, but two cells belonging to two different individuals. After fertilisation, a unique being is created. It is human, it has its own DNA, and while it is at a very early stage of development, it is a complete entity (not, say, a body part, or a part of either parent’s body).
Both the “human” and “being” parts of the equation are scientifically uncontroversial. I suspect you are actually arguing again the personhood of the fetus, not the “human being-ness”.
“I’m certainly not saying there’s a magic instant where a developing fetus “becomes human.” I have no problem saying that a baby just prior to being delivered by a mother in labor is human, but it’s my opinion that a zygote is not.”
What is it, then? A goldfish? If a zygote *becomes* human at some point during gestation, it must be something *non*-human before that; I’d be fascinated to hear what species you think that is.
“I have no idea where we should draw the line, but I choose to err on the side of caution and allow women to choose what’s best for themselves and their families.”
Again, scientifically speaking, a pregnant woman’s family *includes* her unborn child. I suppose you could argue that sometimes it’s best for the whole family to kill one of its members – I read once of a starving Third World family in which it was decided that the toddler should no longer be fed, because there wasn’t enough food to go around. Is that the line of thinking you’re going with?
Also, given that your position on the humanity of a fetus goes against all mainstream scientific evidence, I wouldn’t say plumping for abortion is erring on the side of *caution*. Surely someone cautious would make *very* sure that their moral stance did not condone the killing of innocent human beings? But your “caution” hasn’t extended further than scientifically unsupported assertions.
Dominic Bnonn Tennant
thank you for your responce to my coment, i do take issue with some of the things you said however.
with regards to ethics and poltics in the law i belive you are in error. the law does not exist to codify ethics, rather it exists to law down a series of bare minimum rules for conduct to avoid infringing the rights or dignity of others. there is a verry wide gap between this and codifying ethical conduct. the main reason for this is that it is difficult to agree on what is ethical. for example some find being homosexual to be moraly objectionable, others dont. we dont criminalise it, regardless of what some poeples ethical views are.
so we have the issue of “whos morality do we use?” remember, the majority is not always correct, not on issues of fact, or ethics., and your morality may not be in the majority.
i personaly use two kinds of ethical analysis, one for me personaly, and one for the law. the legal standard is much much lower, reflecting its status as the minimum. the analysis i use for laws has more to do with respecting minimum rights rather than any ethical maxims. so in a sence there is a form of ethical consideration, but its at a for more legalistic, dispassionate level than normal ethics.
with regards tot he points raised with regards premise 5(v)
consent to sex is not nessesarily consent to protect the interests of the child, i agree, that almost everyone knows one results from the other, but there have been cases where a man had lies about being sterile and gotten a woman pregnant. also the issue of mental capacity is interesting, what do you think of cases where a woman has reduced mental capacity, do you think she has a duty to protect the intrests of the child then?
if , as you seem to claim, to have sex was to agree to protect the interest of the child, then no one would want an abortion, as everyone would have already considdered and agreed that they wanted to protect any potentual child. i doubt anyone in such a situation thinks the situation out carefully enough to make such an agreement.
any agreement to proect the interests of the child would need to be made with the child, who obviously cannot agree to such a binding contract.
your second point is also interesting, that the parental connection is more important than any agreement requirment. your “baby on the doorstep” argument seems strange to me, as the doorstep baby is a stranger, there is no parental connection there. i would not condem a person for not caring for such a child, as they are under no obligation to do so. if the agreed to take care of the child it would be a different matter entirly. i dont totaly see the point of this illistration, i dont think it demonstrates what you want it to demonstrate. becoming aware of such a situation does not place a person under any burden, infact there are many cases that demonstrate it to be the case that such a burden does not exist. i honestly dont understand the point you were trying to make with this, it rings untrue given mu understanding of what is ethical and what is legal.
with regard to point number 4. you you feel as moral intuition isnt realy relvant. in the eyes of the law they, if the baby has been born are equal when determining guilt. i understand emotionaly we want to protect the baby, and punish the unpleasant mob boss, buti belive that all people are of equal value, this is true both in the law, and in any ethical consideration. the point where we start saying “it is more ok to kill one person than another” is an incredibly slippery slope. i belive no one deserves to die, regardless of mob affiliation or age.
with regard to your 5th point. firstly please do not invoke godwins law, it turns conversations sour quickly. secondly, i was discussing moral understanding, my personal moral understanding to be spesific. my moral understanding does incorporate some exceptions found in the law, but thats only because i understand and agree with them, due to having studyed them for several years. there are some i do not agree with, such as the legal defence of mistake, because as interpreted recently by the courts it is too borad, however i didnt want to fill the page with legal analysis and what i agree with. for the most part i agree with the lawfull exceptions. so i am discussing what is moraly correct, i onlyincorporate legal ideas because i understand them and belive that they reflect what i belive to be correct.
with regards to the final point. if the rule is against killing persons, and a zygote is not a person, then the killing of zygotes is permitted, it is not an irrelevant issue. i know that you claim it is, because a zygote can become a person, and to deprive it of that chance is a greater moral wrong. i would like to ask a question. given that you belive that it is less wrong to kill a baby than a mob boss, would it be just as wrong if we knew that baby would become that mob boss?
it is also worth noting, that preventing a person from being born, is not the same as killing a person, so the equivilency fails there. so personhood is not irrelevent, as it changes the nature of what happens (killing of a person vs preventing a person from being born), because the things are different, there can be no equivilency. (neither a factual or ethical equivilency)
the issue of killing ailiens and AIs is relvent, because it shows that the statement about killing humans, its too narrow to cover a total ethical understanding of the issue of ending life, thus any statement about when it is wrong to kill also has to include consideration of when it may be wrong to kill non humans, unless you considerit could never be wrong to kill a non human (which i see you dont from your statement
with regards to AI’s its an interesting side issue, but i find it strange that you would not find killing one wrong as it would lack a soul, when we have no test for a soul. there is no way to tell who has a soul and who dosnt, or what dosnt for that matter. so how can an ethical understanding be based on something that we cannot even identify.
thankyou for reading my comment and responding to it, it would have been nicerif you haddnt added the nazi reference, it tends to antagonise people and make unpleasant reading, not to mention the issue of godwins law.
Megan:
1. Your statement that the law “exists to law [sic] down a series of bare minimum rules for conduct to avoid infringing the rights or dignity of others” doesn’t seem in any way to contradict what I’ve said. I didn’t suggest the law is intended to codify all moral norms. But saying we should avoid infringing the rights or dignity of others is automatically to be making a moral pronouncement. I don’t understand your confusion in this area. For example:
But sodomy laws were commonplace not even a century ago precisely because people viewed it as an extreme moral perversion. I’m not sure what to say to the notion that laws don’t reflect the prevailing moral standards of society. They just obviously do.
2. With regard to consensual sex, I’m not suggesting that consent to have sex is equivalent to consent to protect the child. I am saying that if the sex is consensual and informed, then that removes one excuse for not protecting the child, should the woman become pregnant. I don’t really want to get bogged down in side-issues like mental capacity and so on; I don’t see how that’s directly relevant to my argument.
3. The baby on the doorstep is an a fortiori arugment. It shows that if even a stranger has the moral obligation to care for a child without consent in certain circumstances, then how much more does the mother have such an obligation under analagous circumstances.
I find it chilling that you would not condemn someone who left a baby to die of starvation or thirst after discovering it. I don’t think there is any kind of agreement we will come to if your moral outlook is so depraved.
4.
I assume then you agree that we should not kill unborn children, regardless of their age.
5.
Since my argument doesn’t rely on the zygote being a person—indeed, it is only relevant to my argument in the sense that if the zygote is not a person then my argument is stronger—I don’t know why you bring this up.
6.
How is this relevant to the soundness of my argument? Since this kind of foreknowledge doesn’t exist it’s a pointless diversion.
7.
This is just disingenuous. The only way to prevent the fetus’s birth is to kill it. It’s not as if the mother continues to carry the fetus indefinitely. You’re trying to eliminate death from abortion. That’s a pretty desperate ploy, if you don’t mind my saying so.
8. I have no idea why you continue to think the issue of aliens or AI is relevant. Do you believe I am trying to canvass a total ethical understanding of the issue of ending life? Why would you think that when my argument is specifically targeted to the abortion of human beings?
I think another supporting argument to add to number (5) is that natural abortions aren’t pre-meditated. It’s like saying “40% of all deaths occurring because of a car crash happen ‘naturally’ (accidently), so it’s okay if I purposly run over someone who’s an annoyance to me.”