Are Fetuses "Innocent Human Beings"?

 An excellent discussion by Lane Taylor! See here for better formatting; the cut and paste didn't work so well here:

https://responsiblethinker.substack.com/p/are-fetuses-innocent-human-beings 

Responsible Thinker

Are Fetuses "Innocent Human Beings"?

“It is always wrong to kill an innocent human being. Abortion kills an innocent human being, therefore it is wrong.”

This is the premier ethical argument against abortion in mainstream discourse on the subject. To many pro-life people, the premises of this argument are stunningly obvious. So obvious, in fact, is the supposed truth of these premises, that many pro-life people believe that only the self-deceived or the vicious would deny them. Despite appearances, this argument is hopelessly flawed. It just takes a little bit to explain why.

1 - The Innocence Claim


The argument makes two claims about fetuses; it says they are

Innocent; and


Human Beings.

Let’s start with the claim that fetuses are innocent. The word “innocent” is polysemous; it has multiple meanings that are quite different from each other. I’ll list a few of the most common meanings here:

Adjective - not guilty of a crime or offense.


Adjective - not responsible for an event yet suffering it’s consequences.


Adjective - without experience or knowledge of.


Adjective - free from moral wrong or corruption.


Noun - A pure, guiless, or naive person.


Noun - A person involved by chance in a situation, especially a victim of crime or war.

Let’s go through, these one by one.

1- Fetuses are indeed innocent on this definition, but in a morally insignificant way. Rocks, trees, dirt, and e-coli are all not guilty of a crime or offense because they are not agents. There mere fact that a being is not guilty of a crime or offense is not morally significant.

2 - It is not obviously true that fetuses are innocent in this sense, and the argument comes dangerously close to question-begging if this sense is used. Fetuses are certainly not responsible agents, but whether they can “suffer” is another matter.

The word “suffer” itself has multiple meanings. One morally laden sense is that of suffering pain or intense discomfort. At least at a certain point in the fetus’s development, nothing like consciousness is online yet, and so many fetuses cannot suffer pain or discomfort - many fetuses do not literally feel pain or discomfort (though later fetuses may).

Another morally laden sense of the word suffer is that of suffering a loss. We might say - after my identity has been stolen - that I suffered a great loss. This implies that I had a right or moral claim to the thing I lost, however. To say that fetuses can suffer in this sense would be to claim that they have a right or moral claim to something (probably life, as abortion is a killing). If the fetus lost something it did not have a right or moral claim to, then the “suffering” would not be morally problematic.

While a use of this sense of the word “innocent” in the above argument is not strictly question begging, it is dangerously close to it. We are just loading in a premise that says that fetuses have moral rights or valid moral claims. Maybe they do, but you might as well just give a different argument for why you think they can suffer a moral loss rather than saying they’re innocent in the sense considered here. To call fetuses “innocent” in the sense just considered would be to - knowingly or unknowingly - hide a contentious moral claim behind a word that pumps our intuitions to think of babies and children.

3 - Fetuses are innocent on this definition, but in a morally insignificant way. Trees, rocks, dirt, and e-coli are all without experience or knowledge. If we change the definition to say an “innocent” is a person without experience or knowledge, then we are once again loading a wildly contentious moral premise into our argument and disguising it in language that makes it appear far less controversial than it actually is. The premise that fetuses are persons needs its own defense - if you have an argument for the position that fetuses are persons, just use that argument instead of this “innocent human being” argument, because the claim that fetuses are persons is what really needs a defense.

4 - The same explanation from 1 and 3 apply here - inanimate objects are free from moral corruption. If you change the definition (as I think some people unconsciously do) to mean a person that is free from moral corruption, you may as well just argue directly for the claim that fetuses are persons.

5 - Once again, our definition contains a personhood claim.

6 - Once again, our definition contains a personhood claim.

As you can see, definitions of the term “innocent” either make the fetus an innocent in a sense that is morally insignificant, or they claim the fetus is a person. Under these latter definitions, the contentious claim that fetuses are persons is hidden by language that primes us to think of beings that are undeniably persons but significantly different from fetuses (babies and children). I think many people use these personhood style definitions without even realizing it, and this causes lots of confusion. If you think fetuses are persons, just argue for that claim directly instead of claiming they’re persons in a roundabout, confusing way by calling them “innocent”.

2 - The Human Being Claim


Let’s move on to the claim that fetuses are human beings.

We might say that a human being just a being (an existing thing) that is biologically human. On this definition, the fetus is definitely a human being. It exists, and it’s not a dolphin fetus or a fetus of some non-human species. Another definition: a human being is a human organism. On this definition too, fetuses are human beings. Fetuses are alive and they are organisms.

Both of these senses are not morally significant. Imagine a being that looks and behaves exactly like a human, but that is not conscious. It has no thoughts, feelings, desires, experiences, or other mental states, or anything else like these things. It will also never have these things, ex hypothesi. Such a being would be an organism, but it would have no moral status. It would not be wrong to kill such a being, as it has no well-being level and lacks the properties which would endow it with rights or moral status

A third definition is: a human being is a human person. The concept of a person is different from the concept of an organism. For example, you can imagine a sentient robot with thoughts, feelings, and desires. Such a being would be a person, but not an organism. So not all persons are organisms. Similarly, not all organisms are persons. Imagine a being that looks and behaves exactly like a human, but that is not conscious. It has no thoughts, feelings, desires, experiences, or other mental states, or anything else like these things. It will also never have these things, ex hypothesi. Such a being would be an organism, but not a person.

The view that fetuses are persons is morally significant - “person” is a moral category. Persons are beings that we owe at least some moral duties to - they are the sorts of beings for whom life can go better or worse. They are the sorts of beings who have rights and valid moral claims. On this definition, it is controversial whether fetuses are human beings, because it is controversial whether fetuses are persons. My personal answer is no, but there is room for disagreement.

Crucially, however, on this definition of “human being”, to claim that a fetus is a human being is just to claim that it is a person. It is poor form to simply assert this in your argument against abortion - this is precisely the claim that needs a defense! The view that fetuses are the sorts of beings whom it is seriously wrong to kill is precisely what stands in need of a defense - you can’t just assert that in the first premise of you argument (not if you hope to give a good argument, anyways).

It’s not just pro-choice people like me who think this. The foremost pro-life philosopher - the eminent Don Marquis - makes the same point in his article “Why Abortion is Immoral”:


“It is prima facie seriously wrong to kill a human being," or one of its variants, can be objected to on the grounds of ambiguity. If 'human being' is taken to be a biological category, then the anti-abortionist is left with the problem of explaining why a merely biological category should make a moral difference. Why, it is asked, is it any more reasonable to base a moral conclusion on the number of chromosomes in one's cells than on the color of one's skin? If 'human being', on the other hand, is taken to be a moral category, then the claim that a fetus is a human being cannot be taken to be a premise in the anti-abortion argument, for it is precisely what needs to be established. Hence, either the anti-abortionist's main category is a morally irrelevant, merely biological category, or it is of no use to the anti-abortionist in establishing (noncircularly, of course) that abortion is wrong.”

Either “human being” refers to a mere biological category, in which case the fact that the fetus is a “human being” is not morally significant, or “human being” refers to a substantive moral category (persons), in which case claiming that fetuses are “human beings” is just to assert the very point at issue - that fetuses belong to a class of beings whom it is seriously wrong to kill. We want to know why fetuses belong to one of these substantive moral categories. You can’t just assert that they so belong in the first premise of your argument. This is the fundamental problem with the “innocent human being” argument against abortion.


Finally, the first premise of the argument - that it’s always wrong to kill an innocent human being - is false. Imagine that a villain mind controls a random person on the street to kill me. Let’s suppose the only way to save my own life against this battery is to kill the mind-controlled person. It would not be wrong for me to kill this mind-controlled person even though they would certainly be an innocent human being.

This is why Don Marquis presented the “anti-abortionist’s” principle as the claim that that it’s always prima facie wrong to to kill a human being. The word prima-facie has been used in many different ways by philosophers in a variety of fields, but in the domain of ethics, an action is usually taken to be “prima facie wrong” if it’s wrong unless a countervailing moral reason is present. For example - stealing is prima facie wrong. If I steal your cash for fun, that’s wrong. If I steal some of your cash to save my family from a life of slavery, I haven’t acted wrongly because in that case a strong countervailing moral reason is present.

Sometimes people get confused and interpret the word “prima facie” as meaning “typically” or “most of the time”. On this sense of “prima facie”, a prima facie wrong action would just be an action that is wrong most of the time. These people will revise the argument under consideration to something like this:

P1: It is prima facie (usually) wrong to kill innocent human beings.

P2: Abortion kills an innocent human being.

C: Therefore, abortion is prima facie (usually) wrong.

This is invalid. To see why, look at this argument:

P1: Stealing is prima facie (usually) wrong.

P2: Stealing a small amount of money in order to save your family from being tortured is an instance of stealing.

C: Therefore, stealing a small amount of money in order to save your family from being tortured is prima facie (usually) wrong.

Obviously, stealing a small amount of money to prevent your family from being tortured is not usually wrong just because stealing is usually wrong. The same thing can be said of the innocent human being argument. You’ll want to replace this “typically” version of prima facie with the “countervailing” version I mentioned above. That version fails for the reasons discussed earlier, however.

3 - Why Is This Argument So Popular?


Whenever a polysemous term is introduced into ethical discussions, it is all too easy to unknowingly slide between the different meanings assigned to that term in ordinary discussions, and to confuse the substantive moral uses of that term with the merely descriptive ones. The contentious moral use of the term is thereby disguised by an appeal to the uncontroversial descriptive use, subverting our attempts to discuss the heart of the issue. The terms “innocent” and “human being” prime us to think of beings like babies and children. This, taken, together with the polysemous nature of these terms, make a poor and controversial argument appear to be impenetrable and self-evident.

What’s more, it takes inordinately more time and effort to explain where the argument goes wrong than it does to spout the argument in the first place. In my experience talking with pro-life folks, most of them notice this and assume that because the explanation of why the argument is unsound is longer and more complicated than the argument itself, the pro-choice person must be desperate to find something wrong with this argument and is just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks instead of developing a principled objection. That mindset itself is quite naive; it usually takes longer to explain why an argument fails than to actually recite that same argument verbally, but that’s just how some people think.

Hopefully, this argument will one day outlive its popularity, and the mainstream abortion debate will move closer to the questions we really care about.