An Argument That Abortion Is Wrong
by DON MARQUIS
Don Marquis was a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kansas. He defends the view that, except in unusual circumstances, abortion is seriously wrong.
Original article here; below is a shorted version.
The purpose of this essay is to set out an argument for the claim that abortion, except perhaps in instances, is seriously wrong. One reason for these exceptions is to eliminate from consideration cases whose ethical analysis should be controversial detailed for clear-headed opponents of abortion. Such cases include abortion after rape and abortion during the first fourteen days after conception when there is an argument that the fetus is not definitely an individual. Another reason for making these exceptions allow for those cases in which the permissibility of abortion is compatible with the argument of this essay. Such cases include abortion when continuation of a pregnancy endangers a woman's life and when the fetus is anencephalic. When I wrongness of abortion in this essay, a reader shall presume the above qualifications. I mean by an abortion an action intended to bring about the death of a fetus for the sake of the woman who carries it. (Thus, as is standard on the literature on this subject, I eliminate spontaneous abortions from consideration.) I mean by a fetus a developing human being from time of conception to the time of birth. (Thus, as is standard, I call embryos and zygotes, fetuses.)
The argument of this essay
will establish that abortion is wrong for the same reason as killing a reader
of this essay is wrong. I shall just assume, rather than establish, that
killing you is seriously wrong. I shall make no attempt to offer a complete
ethics of killing. Finally, I shall make no attempt to resolve some very
fundamental and difficult general philosophical issues into which this analysis
of the ethics of abortion might lead.
WHY THE DEBATE OVER ABORTION SEEMS INTRACTABLE
Symmetries that emerge
from the analysis of the major arguments on either side of the abortion debate
may explain why the abortion debate seems intractable. Consider the following
standard anti-abortion argument: Fetuses are both human and alive. Humans have
the right to life. Therefore, fetuses have the right to life. Of course, women
have the right to control their own bodies, but the right to life overrides the
right of a woman to control her own body. Therefore, abortion is wrong.
Thomson's View
Judith Thomson (1971) has
argued that even if one grants (for the sake of argument only) that fetuses
have the right to life, this argument fails. Thomson invites you to imagine
that you have been connected while sleeping, bloodstream to bloodstream, to a
famous violinist. The violinist, who suffers from a rare blood disease, will
die if disconnected. Thomson argues that you surely have the right to
disconnect yourself. She appeals to our intuition that having to lie in bed
with a violinist for an indefinite period is too much for morality to demand. She
supports this claim by noting that the body being used is your body, not the
violinist's body. She distinguishes the right to life, which the violinist
clearly has, from the right to use someone else's body when necessary to
preserve one's life, which it is not at all obvious the violinist has. Because
the case of pregnancy is like the case of the violinist, one is no more morally
obligated to remain attached to a fetus than to remain attached to the
violinist.
It is widely conceded that
one can generate from Thomson's vivid case the conclusion that abortion is
morally permissible when a pregnancy is due to rape (Warren, 1973, p. 49; and
Steinbock, 1992, p. 79). But this is hardly a general right to abortion. Do
Thomson's more general theses generate a more general right to an abortion? Thomson
draws our attention to the fact that in a pregnancy, although a fetus uses a
woman's body as a life-support system, a pregnant woman does not use a fetus's
body as a life-support system. However, an opponent of abortion might draw our
attention to the fact that in an abortion the life that is lost is the fetus's,
not the woman's. This symmetry seems to leave us with a stand-off.
Thomson points out that a
fetus's right to life does not entail its right to use someone else's body to
preserve its life. However, an opponent of abortion might point out that a
woman's right to use her own body does not entail her right to end someone
else's life in order to do what she wants with her body. In reply, one might
argue that a pregnant woman's right to control her own body doesn't come to
much if it is wrong for her to take any action that ends the life of the fetus
within her. However, an opponent of abortion can argue that the fetus's right
to life doesn't come to much if a pregnant woman can end it when she chooses. The
consequence of all of these symmetries seems to be a stand-off. But if we have
the stand-off, then one might argue that we are left with a conflict of rights:
a fetal right to life versus the right of a woman to control her own body. One
might then argue that the right to life seems to be a stronger right than the
right to control one's own body in the case of abortion because the loss of
one's life is a greater loss than the loss of the right to control one's own
body in one respect for nine months. Therefore, the right to life overrides the
right to control one's own body and abortion is wrong. Considerations like
these have suggested to both opponents of abortion and supporters of choice
that a Thomsonian strategy for de fending a general right to abortion will not
succeed (Tooley, 1972; Warren, 1973; and Steinbock, 1992). In fairness, one
must note that Thomson did not intend her strategy to generate a general moral
permissibility of abortion.
Do Fetuses Have the Right to Life?
The above considerations
suggest that whether abortion is morally permissible boils down to the question
of whether fetuses have the right to life. An argument that fetuses either have
or lack the right to life must be based upon some general criterion for having
or lacking the right to life. Opponents of abortion, on the one hand, look
around for the broadest possible plausible criterion, so that fetuses will fall
under it. This explains why classic arguments against abortion appeal to the
criterion of being human (Noonan, 1970; Beckwith, 1993). This criterion appears
plausible: The claim that all humans, whatever their race, gender, religion or
age, have the right to life seems evident enough. In addition, because the
fetuses we are concerned with do not, after all, belong to another species,
they are clearly human. Thus, the syllogism that generates the conclusion that
fetuses have the right to life is apparently sound.
On the other hand, those
who believe abortion is morally permissible wish to find a narrow, but
plausible, criterion for possession of the right to life so that fetuses will
fall outside of it. This explains, in part, why the standard pro-choice
arguments in the philosophical literature appeal to the criterion of being a
person (Feinberg, 1986; Tooley, 1972; Warren, 1973; Benn, 1973; Engelhardt,
1986). This criterion appears plausible: The claim that only persons have the
right to life seems evident enough. Furthermore, because fetuses neither are
rational nor possess the capacity to communicate in complex ways nor, possess a
concept of self that continues through time, no fetus is a person. Thus, the
syllogism needed to generate the conclusion that no fetus possesses the right
to life is apparently sound. Given that no fetus possesses the right to life, a
woman's right to control her own body easily generates the general right to
abortion. The existence of two apparently defensible syllogisms which support
contrary conclusions helps to explain why partisans on both sides of the
abortion dispute often regard their opponents as either morally depraved or
mentally deficient.
Which syllogism should we
reject? The anti-abortion syllogism is usually attacked by attacking its major
premise: the claim that whatever is biologically human has the right to life.
This premise is subject to scope problems because the class of the biologically
human includes too much: human cancer-cell cultures are biologically human, but
they do not have the right to life. Moreover, this premise also is subject to
moral-relevance problems: the connection between the biological and the moral
is merely assumed. It is hard to think of a good argument for such a
connection. If one wishes to consider the category of "human" a moral
category, as some people find it plausible to do in other contexts, then one is
left with no way of showing that the fetus is fully human without begging the
question. Thus, the classic anti-abortion argument appears subject to fatal
difficulties.
These difficulties with
the classic anti-abortion argument are well known and thought by many to be
conclusive. The symmetrical difficulties with the classic pro-choice syllogism
are not as well recognized. The pro-choice syllogism can be attacked by
attacking its major premise: Only persons have the right to life. This premise
is subject to scope problems because the class of persons includes too little:
infants, the severely retarded, and some of the mentally ill seem to fall
outside the class of persons as the supporter of choice understands the
concept. The premise is also subject to moral-relevance problems:
Being a person is
understood by the pro-choicer as having certain psychological attributes. If
the pro-choicer questions the connection between the biological and the moral,
the opponent of abortion can question the connection between the psychological
and the moral. If one wishes to consider "person" a moral category,
as is often done, then one is left with no way of showing that the fetus is not
a person without begging the question.
Pro-choicers appear to
have resources for dealing with their difficulties that opponents of abortion
lack. Consider their moral-relevance problem. A pro-choicer might argue that
morality rests on contractual foundations and that only those who have the
psychological attributes of persons are capable of entering into the moral
contract and, as a consequence, being a member of the moral community. (This is essentially Engelhardt's [1986]
view.) The great advantage of this contractarian approach to morality is that
it seems far more plausible than any approach the anti-abortionist can provide.
The great disadvantage of this contractarian approach to morality is that it
adds to our earlier scope problems by leaving it unclear how we can have the
duty not to inflict pain and suffering on animals.
Contractarians have tried
to deal with their scope problems by arguing that duties to some individuals
who are not persons can be justified even though those individuals are not
contracting members of the moral community. For example, Kant argued that,
although we do not have direct duties to animals, we "must practice
kindness towards animals, for he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in
his dealings with men" (Kant, 1963, p. 240). Feinberg argues that
infanticide is wrong, not because infants have the right to life, but because
our society's protection of infants has social utility. If we do not treat
infants with tenderness and consideration, then when they are persons they will
be worse off and we will be worse off also (Feinberg, 1986, p. 271).
These moves only stave off
the difficulties with the pro-choice view; they do not resolve them. Consider
Kant's account of our obligations to animals. Kantians certainly know the
difference between persons and animals. Therefore, no true Kantian would treat
persons as she would treat animals. Thus, Kant's defense of our duties to
animals fails to show that Kantians have a duty not to be cruel to animals.
Consider Feinberg's attempt to show that infanticide is wrong even though no
infant is a person. All Feinerg really shows is that it is a good idea to treat
with care and consideration the infants we intend to keep. That is quite
compatible with killing the infants we intend to discard. This point can be
supported by an analogy with which any pro-choicer will agree. There are
plainly good reasons to treat with care and consideration the fetuses we intend
to keep. This is quite compatible with aborting those fetuses we intend to
discard. Thus, Feinberg's account of the wrongness of infanticide is
inadequate.
Accordingly, we can see
that a contractarian defense of the pro-choice personhood syllogism fails. The
problem arises because the contractarian cannot account for our duties to
individuals who are not persons, whether these individuals are animals or
infants. Because the pro-choicer wishes to adopt a narrow criterion for the
right to life so that fetuses will not be included, the scope of her major
premise is too narrow. Her problem is
the opposite of the problem the classic opponent of abortion faces.
The argument of this
section has attempted to establish, albeit briefly, that the classic
anti-abortion argument and the pro-choice argument favored by most philosophers
both face problems that are mirror images of one another. A stand-off results. The
abortion debate requires a different strategy.
THE "FUTURE LIKE OURS" ACCOUNT OF THE WRONGNESS
OF KILLING
Why do the standard
arguments in the abortion debate fail to resolve the issue? The general
principles to which partisans in the debate appeal are either truisms most
persons would affirm in the absence of much reflection, or very general moral
theories. All are subject to major problems. A different approach is needed.
Opponents of abortion
claim that abortion is wrong because abortion involves killing someone like us,
a human being who just happens to be very young. Supporters of choice claim
that ending the life of a fetus is not in the same moral category as ending the
life of an adult human being. Surely this controversy cannot be resolved in the
absence of an account of what it is about killing us that makes killing us
wrong. On the one hand, if we know what property we possess that makes killing
us wrong, then we can ask whether fetuses have the same property. On the other
hand, suppose that we do not know what it is about us that makes killing us
wrong. If this is so, we do not understand even easy cases in which killing is
wrong. Surely, we will not understand the ethics of killing fetuses, for if we
do not understand easy cases, then we will not understand hard cases. Both
pro-choicer and anti-abortionist agree that it is obvious that it is wrong to
kill us. Thus, a discussion of what it is about us that makes killing us not
only wrong, but seriously wrong, seems to be the right place to begin a
discussion of the abortion issue.
Who is primarily wronged
by a killing? The wrong of killing is not primarily explained in terms of the
loss to the family and friends of the victim. Perhaps the victim is a hermit. Perhaps
one's friends find it easy to make new friends. The wrong of killing is not
primarily explained in terms of the brutalization of the killer. The great
wrong to the victim explains the brutalization, not the other way around. The
wrongness of killing us is understood in terms of what killing does to us. Killing
us imposes on us the misfortune of premature death. That misfortune underlies
the wrongness.
Premature death is a
misfortune because when one is dead, one has been deprived of life. This
misfortune can be more precisely specified. Premature death cannot deprive me
of my past life. That part of my life is already gone. If I die tomorrow or if
I live thirty more years my past life will be no different. It has occurred on
either alternative. Rather than my past, my death deprives me of my future, of
the life that I would have lived if I had lived out my natural life span.
The loss of a future
biological life does not explain the misfortune of death. Compare two
scenarios: In the former I now fall into a coma from which I do not recover
until my death in thirty years. In the latter I die now. The latter scenario
does not seem to describe a greater misfortune than the former.
The loss of our future
conscious life is what underlies the misfortune of premature death. Not any
future conscious life qualifies, however. Suppose that I am terminally ill with
cancer. Suppose also that pain and suffering would dominate my future conscious
life. If so, then death would not be a misfortune for me.
Thus, the misfortune of
premature death consists of the loss to us of the future goods of
consciousness.
What are these goods? Much
can be said about this issue, but a simple answer will do for the purposes of
this essay. The goods of life are whatever we get out of life. The goods of
life are those items toward which we take a "pro" attitude. They are
completed projects of which we are proud, the pursuit of our goals, aesthetic
enjoyments, friendships, intellectual pursuits, and physical pleasures of
various sorts. The goods of life are what makes life worth living. In general,
what makes life worth living for one person will not be the same as what makes
life worth living for another. Nevertheless, the list of goods in each of our
lives will overlap. The lists are usually different in different stages of our
lives.
What makes the goods of my
future good for me? One possible, but wrong, answer is my desire for those
goods now. This answer does not account for those aspects of my future life
that I now believe I will later value, but about which I am wrong. Neither does
it account for those aspects of my future that I will come to value, but which
I don't value now. What is valuable to the young may not be valuable to the
middle-aged. What is valuable to the middle-aged may not be valuable to the
old. Some of life's values for the elderly are best appreciated by the elderly.
Thus it is wrong to say that the value of my future to me is just what I value
now. What makes my future valuable to me are those aspects of my future that I
will (or would) value when I will (or would) experience them, whether I value
them now or not.
It follows that a person
can believe that she will have a valuable future and be wrong. Furthermore, a
person can believe that he will not have a valuable future and also be wrong. This
is confirmed by our attitude toward many of the suicidal. We attempt to save
the lives of the suicidal and to convince them that they have made an error in
judgment. This does not mean that the future of an individual obtains value
from the value that others confer on it. It means that, in some cases, others
can make a clearer judgment of the value of a person's future to that person
than the person herself. This often happens when one's judgment concerning the
value of one's own future is clouded by personal tragedy. (Compare the views of
McInerney, 1990, and Shirley, 1995.)
Thus, what is sufficient
to make killing us wrong, in general, is that it causes premature death. Premature
death is a misfortune. Premature death is a misfortune, in general, because it
deprives an individual of a future of value. An individual's future will be
valuable to that individual if that individual will come, or would come, to
value it. We know that killing us is wrong. What makes killing us wrong, in
general, is that it deprives us of a future of value. Thus, killing someone is
wrong, in general, when it deprives her of a future like ours. I shall call
this "an FLO."
ARGUMENTS IN FAVOR OF THE FLO THEORY
At least four arguments
support this FLO account of the wrongness of killing.
The Considered Judgment Argument
The FLO account of the
wrongness of killing is correct because it fits with our considered judgment
concerning the nature of the misfortune of death. The analysis of the previous
section is an exposition of the nature of this considered judgment. This
judgment can be confirmed. If one were to ask individuals with AIDS or with
incurable cancer about the nature of their misfortune, I believe that they
would say or imply that their impending loss of an FLO makes their premature
death a misfortune. If they would not, then the FLO account would plainly be
wrong.
The Worst of Crimes Argument
The FLO account of the
wrongness of killing is correct because it explains why we believe that killing
is one of the worst of crimes. My being killed deprives me of more than does my
being robbed or beaten or harmed in some other way because my being killed
deprives me of all of the value of my future, not merely part of it. This
explains why we make the penalty for murder greater than the penalty for other
crimes.
As a corollary the FLO
account of the wrongness of killing also explains why killing an adult human
being is justified only in the most extreme circumstances, only in
circumstances in which the loss of life to an individual is outweighed by a
worse outcome if that life is not taken. Thus, we are willing to justify
killing in self-defense, killing in order to save one's own life, because one's
loss if one does not kill in that situation is so very great. We justify
killing in a just war for similar reasons. We believe that capital punishment
would be justified if, by having such an institution, fewer premature deaths
would occur. The FLO account of the wrongness of killing does not entail that
killing is always wrong. Nevertheless, the FLO account explains both why
killing is one of the worst of crimes and, as a corollary, why the exceptions
to the wrongness of killing are so very rare. A correct theory of the wrongness
of killing should have these features.
The Appeal to Cases Argument
The FLO account of the
wrongness of killing is correct because it yields the correct answers in many
life-any-death cases that arise in medicine and have interested philosophers.
Consider medicine first. Most
people believe that it is not wrong to deliberately to end the life of a person
who is permanently unconscious. Thus we believe that it is not wrong to remove
a feeding tube or a ventilator from a permanently comatose patient, knowing
that such a removal will cause death. The FLO account of the wrongness of
killing explains why this is so. A patient who is permanently unconscious
cannot have a future that she would come to value, whatever her values. Therefore,
according to the FLO theory of the wrongness of killing, death could not,
ceteris paribus, be a misfortune to her. Therefore, removing the feeding tube
or ventilator does not wrong her.
By contrast, almost all
people believe that it is wrong, ceteris paribus, to withdraw medical treatment
from patients who are temporarily unconscious. The FLO account of the wrongness
of killing also explains why this is so. Furthermore, these two unconsciousness
cases explain why the FLO account of the wrongness of killing does not include
present consciousness as a necessary condition for the wrongness of killing.
Consider now the issue of
the morality of legalizing active euthanasia. Proponents of active euthanasia
argue that if a patient faces a future of intractable pain and wants to die,
then, ceteris paribus, it would not be wrong for a physician to give him
medicine that she knows would result in his death. This view is so universally
accepted that even the strongest opponents of active euthanasia hold it. The
official Vatican view (Sacred Congregation, 1980) is that it is permissible for
a physician to administer to a patient morphine sufficient (although no more
than sufficient) to control his pain even if she foresees that the morphine
will result in his death. Notice how nicely the FLO account of the wrongness of
killing explains this unanimity of opinion. A patient known to be in severe
intractable pain is presumed to have a future without positive value. Accordingly,
death would not be a misfortune for him and an action that would (foreseeably)
end his life would not be wrong.
Contrast this with the
standard emergency medical treatment of the suicidal. Even though the suicidal
have indicated that they want to die, medical personnel will act to save their
lives. This supports the view that it is not the mere desire to enjoy an FLO
which is crucial to our understanding of the wrongness of killing. Having an
FLO is what is crucial to the account, although one would, of course, want to
make an exception in the case of fully autonomous people who refuse life-saving
medical treatment. Opponents of abortion can, of course, be willing to make an
exception for fully autonomous people who refuse life support.
The FLO theory of the
wrongness of killing also deals correctly with issues that have concerned
philosophers. It implies that it would be wrong to kill (peaceful) persons from
outer space who come to visit our planet even though they are biologically
utterly unlike us. Presumably, if they are persons, then they will have futures
that are sufficiently like ours so that it would be wrong to kill them. The FLO
account of the wrongness of killing shares this feature with the personhood
views of the supporters of choice. Classical opponents of abortion who locate
the wrongness of abortion somehow in the biological humanity of a fetus cannot
explain this.
The FLO account does not
entail that there is another species of animals whose members ought not to be
killed. Neither does it entail that it is permissible to kill any non-human
animal. On the one hand, a supporter of animals' rights might argue that since
some non-human animals have a future of value, it is wrong to kill them also,
or at least it is wrong to kill them without a far better reason than we
usually have for killing non-human animals. On the other hand, one might argue
that the futures of non-human animals are not sufficiently like ours for the
FLO account to entail that it is wrong to kill them. Since the FLO account does
not specify which properties a future of another individual must possess so
that killing that individual is wrong, the FLO account is indeterminate with
respect to this issue. The fact that the FLO account of the wrongness of
killing does not give a determinate answer to this question is not a flaw in
the theory. A sound ethical account should yield the right answers in the
obvious cases; it should not be required to resolve every disputed question.
A major respect in which
the FLO account is superior to accounts that appeal to the concept of person is
the explanation the FLO account provides of the wrongness of killing infants. There
was a class of infants who had futures that included a class of events that
were identical to the futures of the readers of this essay. Thus, reader, the
FLO account explains why it was as wrong to kill you when you were an infant as
it is to kill you now. This account can be generalized to almost all infants. Notice
that the wrongness of killing infants can be explained in the absence of an
account of what makes the future of an individual sufficiently valuable so that
it is wrong to kill that individual. The absence of such an account explains
why the FLO account is indeterminate with respect to the wrongness of killing
non-human animals.
If the FLO account is the
correct theory of the wrongness of killing, then because abortion involves
killing fetuses and fetuses have FLOs for exactly the same reasons that infants
have FLOs, abortion is presumptively seriously immoral. This inference lays the
necessary groundwork for a fourth argument in favor of the FLO account that
shows that abortion IS wrong.
The Analogy with Animals Argument
Why do we believe it is
wrong to cause animals suffering? We believe that, in our own case and in the
case of other adults and children, suffering is a misfortune. It would be as
morally arbitrary to refuse to acknowledge that animal suffering is wrong as it
would be to refuse to acknowledge that the suffering of persons of another race
is wrong. It is, on reflection, suffering that is a misfortune, not the
suffering of white males or the suffering of humans. Therefore, infliction of
suffering is presumptively wrong no matter on whom it is inflicted and whether
it is inflicted on persons or nonpersons. Arbitrary restrictions on the
wrongness of suffering count as racism or speciesism. Not only is this argument
convincing on its own, but it is the only way of justifying the wrongness of
animal cruelty. Cruelty toward animals is clearly wrong. (This famous argument
is due to Singer, 1979.)
The FLO account of the
wrongness of abortion is analogous. We believe that, in our own case and the
cases of other adults and children, the loss of a future of value is a
misfortune. It would be as morally arbitrary to refuse to acknowledge that the
loss of a future of value to a fetus is wrong as to refuse to acknowledge that
the loss of a future of value to Jews (to take a relevant twentieth-century
example) is wrong. It is, on reflection, the loss of a future of value that is
a misfortune; not the loss of a future of value to adults or Joss of a future
of value to non-Jews. To deprive someone of a future of value is wrong no
matter on whom the deprivation is inflicted and no matter whether the
deprivation is inflicted on persons or nonpersons. Arbitrary restrictions on
the wrongness of this deprivation count as racism, genocide or ageism. Therefore,
abortion is wrong. This argument that abortion is wrong should be convincing
because it has the same form as the argument for the claim that causing pain
and suffering to non-human animals is wrong. Since the latter argument is
convincing, the former argument should be also. Thus, an analogy with animals
supports the thesis that abortion is wrong.
REPLIES TO OBJECTIONS
The four arguments in the
previous section establish that abortion is, except in rare cases, seriously
immoral. Not surprisingly, there are objections to this view. There are replies
to the four most important objections to the FLO argument for the immorality of
abortion.
The Potentiality Objection
The FLO account of the
wrongness of abortion is a potentiality argument. To claim that a fetus has an
FLO is to claim that a fetus now has the potential to be in a state of a
certain kind in the future. It is not to claim that all ordinary fetuses will
have FLOs. Fetuses who are aborted, of course, will not. To say that a standard
fetus has an FLO is to say that a standard fetus either will have or would have
a life it will or would value. To say that a standard fetus would have a life
it would value is to say that it will have a life it will value if it does not
die prematurely. The truth of this conditional is based upon the nature of
fetuses (including the fact that they naturally age) and this nature concerns
their potential.
Some appeals to
potentiality in the abortion debate rest on unsound inferences. For example,
one may try to generate an argument against abortion by arguing that because
persons have the right to life, potential persons also have the right to life. Such
an argument is plainly invalid as it stands. The premise one needs to add to
make it valid would have to be something like: "If Xs have the right to Y,
then potential Xs have the right to Y." This premise is plainly false. Potential
presidents don't have the rights of the presidency; potential voters don't have
the right to vote.
In the FLO argument
potentiality is not used in order to bridge the gap between adults and fetuses
as is done in the argument in the above paragraph. The FLO theory of the
wrongness of killing adults is based upon the adult's potentiality to have a
future of value. Potentiality is in the argument from the very beginning. Thus,
the plainly false premise is not required. Accordingly, the use of potentiality
in the FLO theory is not a sign of an illegitimate inference.
The Argument from Interests
A second objection to the
FLO account of the immorality of abortion involves arguing that even though
fetuses have FLOs, non-sentient fetuses do not meet the minimum conditions for
having any moral standing at all because they lack interests. Steinbock (1992,
p. 5) has presented this argument clearly:
Beings that have moral
status must be capable of caring about what is done to them. They must be
capable of being made, if only in a rudimentary sense, happy or miserable,
comfortable or distressed. Whatever reasons we may have for preserving or
protecting non sentient beings, these reasons do not refer to their own
interests. For without conscious awareness, beings cannot have interests. Without
interests, they cannot have a welfare of their own. Without a welfare of their
own, nothing can be done for their sake. Hence, they lack moral standing or
status.
Medical researchers have
argued that fetuses do not become sentient until after 22 weeks of gestation
(Steinbock, 1992, p. 50). If they are correct, and if Steinbock's argument is
sound, then we have both an objection to the FLO account of the wrongness of
abortion and a basis for a view on abortion minimally acceptable to most
supporters of choice.
Steinbock's conclusion
conflicts with our settled moral beliefs. Temporarily unconscious human beings
are nonsentient, yet no one believes that they lack either interests or moral
standing. Accordingly, neither conscious awareness nor the capacity for
conscious awareness is a necessary condition for having interests.
The counter-example of the
temporarily unconscious human being shows that there is something internally
wrong with Steinbock's argument. The difficulty stems from an ambiguity. One
cannot take an interest in something without being capable of caring about what
is done to it. However, something can be in someone's interest without that
individual being capable of caring about it, or about anything. Thus, life
support can be in the interests of a temporarily unconscious patient even
though the temporarily unconscious patient is incapable of taking an interest
in that life support. If this can be so for the temporarily unconscious
patient, then it is hard to see why it cannot be so for the temporarily
unconscious (that is, non sentient) fetus who requires placental life support. Thus
the objection based on interests fails.
The Problem of Equality
The FLO account of the
wrongness of killing seems to imply that the degree of wrongness associated
with each killing varies inversely with the victim's age. Thus, the FLO account
of the wrongness of killing seems to suggest that it is far worse to kill a five-year
old than an 89-year-old because the former is deprived of far more than the
latter. However, we believe that all persons have an equal right to life. Thus,
it appears that the FLO account of the wrongness of killing entails an
obviously false view (Paske, 1994).
However, the FLO account
of the wrongness of killing does not, strictly speaking, imply that it is worse
to kill younger people than older people. The FLO account provides an
explanation of the wrongness of killing that is sufficient to account for the
serious presumptive wrongness of killing. It does not follow that killings
cannot be wrong in other ways. For example, one might hold, as does Feldman
(1992, p. 184), that in addition to the wrongness of killing that has its basis
in the future life of which the victim is deprived, killing an individual is
also made wrong by the admirability of an individual's past behavior. Now the
amount of admirability will presumably vary directly with age, whereas the
amount of deprivation will vary inversely with age. This tends to equalize the
wrongness of murder.
However, even if, ceteris
paribus, it is worse to kill younger persons than older persons, there are good
reasons for adopting a doctrine of the equality of murder. Suppose that we
tried to estimate the seriousness of a crime of murder by appraising the value
of the FLO of which the victim had been deprived. How would one go about doing
this? In they first place, one would be confronted by the old problem of
interpersonal comparisons of utility. Second place, estimation of the value of
a would involve putting oneself, not into the shoes of the victim at the time
she was killed, but rather into the shoes the victim would have worn had the
victim survived, and then estimating from that perspective the worth of that
person's future. This task difficult, if not impossible. Accordingly, there are
reasons to adopt a convention that murders equally wrong.
Furthermore, the FLO
theory, in a way, explains why we do adopt the doctrine of the legal equity of
murder. The FLO theory explains why we murder as one of the worst of crimes,
since depriving someone of a future like ours deprives more than depriving her
of anything else. This gives us a reason for making the punishment for younger
victims very harsh, as harsh as is compatible with civilized society. One
should not make the punishment younger victims harsher than that. Thus, the
doctrine of the equal legal right to life does not seem incompatible with the
FLO theory.
The Contraception Objection
The strongest objection to
the FLO argument immorality of abortion is based on the claim that, because
contraception results in one less FLO, the FLO argument entails that
contraception, indeed, abstention from sex when conception is possible, is
immoral. Because neither contraception nor abstention from sex when conception
is possible is immoral, the FLO account is flawed.
There is a cogent reply to
this objection. If argument of the early part of this essay is correct, then
the central issue concerning the morality of abortion is the problem of whether
fetuses are individuals who are members of the class of individuals whom it is
seriously presumptively wrong to kill. The properties of being human and alive,
of being a person, and of having an FLO are criteria that participants in the
abortion debate have offered to mark off the relevant class of individuals. The
central claim of this essay is that having an FLO marks off the relevant class
of individuals. A defender of the FLO view could, therefore, reply that since,
at the time of contraception, there is no individual to have an FLO, the FLO
account does not entail that contraception is wrong. The wrong of killing is
primarily a wrong to the individual who is killed; at the time of contraception
there is no individual to be wronged.
However, someone who
presses the contraception objection might have an answer to this reply. She
might say that the sperm and egg are the individuals deprived of an FLO at the
time of contraception. Thus, there are individuals whom contraception deprives
of an FLO and if depriving an individual of an FLO is what makes killing wrong,
then the FLO theory entails that contraception is wrong.
There is also a reply to
this move. In the case of abortion, an objectively determinate individual is
the subject of harm caused by the loss of an FLO. This individual is a fetus. In
the case of contraception, there are far more candidates (see Norcross, 1990). Let
us consider some possible candidates in order of the increasing number of
individuals harmed: (1) The single harmed individual might be the combination
of the particular sperm and the particular egg that would have united to form a
zygote if contraception had not been used. (2) The two harmed individuals might
be the particular sperm itself, and, in addition, the ovum itself that would
have physically combined to form the zygote. (This is modeled on the double
homicide of two persons who would otherwise in a short time fuse. (1) is
modeled on harm to a single entity some of whose parts are not physically
contiguous, such as a university. (3) The many harmed individuals might be the
millions of combinations of sperm and the released ovum whose (small) chances
of having an FLO were reduced by the successful contraception. (4) The even
larger class of harmed individuals (larger by one) might be the class
consisting of all of the individual sperm in an ejaculate and, in addition, the
individual ovum released at the time of the successful contraception. (1)
through (4) are all candidates for being the subject(s) of harm in the case of
successful contraception or abstinence from sex. Which should be chosen? Should
we hold a lottery? There seems to be no non-arbitrarily determinate subject of
harm in the case of successful contraception. But if there is no such subject
of harm, then no determinate thing was harmed. If no determinate thing was
harmed, then (in the case of contraception) no wrong has been done. Thus, the
FLO account of the wrongness of abortion does not entail that contraception is
wrong.
CONCLUSION
This essay contains an
argument for the view that, except in unusual circumstances, abortion is
seriously wrong. Deprivation of an FLO explains why killing adults and children
is wrong. Abortion deprives fetuses of FLOs. Therefore, abortion is wrong. This
argument is based on an account of the wrongness of killing that is a result of
our considered judgment of the nature of the misfortune of premature death. It
accounts for why we regard killing as one of the worst of crimes. It is
superior to alternative accounts of the wrongness of killing that are intended
to provide insight into the ethics of abortion. This account of the wrongness
of killing is supported by the way it handles cases in which our moral
judgments are settled. This account has an analogue in the most plausible
account of the wrongness of causing animals to suffer. This account makes no
appeal to religion. Therefore, the FLO account shows that abortion, except in
rare instances, is seriously wrong.
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