Abortion

Conservative argument

• It is wrong to kill an innocent human being.

• A human fetus is an innocent human being.
• Therefore it is wrong to kill a human fetus.
There is a continuum between the fertilized egg and
child. At any stage in this gradual process there is no
morally significant dividing line.

Therefore we must either upgrade the status of the

earliest embryo to that of the child, or downgrade the
status of the child to that of the embryo.

But, nobody wants to kill the children on the request of

their parents. Therefore, we must extend that protection
to the fetus also.
 Dividing Lines
 Birth

 Viability
 Quickening
 Consciousness
 Birth
• critics of abortion: birth is the most visible dividing line. It is related to
human sympathy. We are less disturbed at the destruction of a human
fetus we have never seen than at the death of a being we can all see and
hear.

• Reply: But birth is not a sufficient ground to decide whether a being may
or may not be killed. The fetus is the same entity (whether inside or
outside the womb), with the same human features (whether we can see
them or not) and the same capacity of feeling pain. We do not kill a
premature infant, but may kill the more developed fetus. The location of a
being – inside or outside the womb – should not be considered as a
criterion of killing or protecting that being. Therefore, birth is not at all a
morally significant dividing line.
 Viability
• critics of abortion: the viability as the cut-off point.
• A viable fetus means the fetus capable of extra-
uterine survival. The United States Supreme Court
held that the state has a legitimate interest in
protecting potential life, and this interest becomes
‘compelling’ at viability because the fetus then has
the ‘capability of meaningful life outside the
mother’s womb.’ Therefore statutes prohibiting
abortion after viability would not be
unconstitutional.
 Viability : conservative reply

Why the mere capacity to exist outside the womb should make a
difference to the state’s interest in protecting potential life? The
nonviable fetus is as much a potential adult human as the viable
fetus.

The point at which the fetus can survive outside the mother’s
body varies according to the state of medical technology.

Metropolitan city and Remote village

 Viability : conservative reply
• The liberal might reply: since the fetus is totally dependent on
the mother for its survival it has no right to life independent
of her wishes.
• But in other cases we do not say that total dependence of
another person means that that person may decide whether
one lives or dies.
• An elderly woman may be totally dependent on her son. It
does not mean that the son may take the life of his aged
mother. Therefore the dependence of the nonviable fetus on
its mother does not give her any right to kill it.
 Quickening
• The time when the mother first feels the fetus move.
In some religious traditions this is thought to be the
moment at which the fetus gained its soul.
• But ultrasound studies have shown that fetuses do in
fact start moving as early as six weeks after
fertilization, long before they can be felt to move.
The capacity for physical motion or the lack of it (e.g.
paralysed people) has nothing to with the claim for
continued life.
 Consciousness
• Consciousness or the capacity to feel pleasure
or pain is a moral significance.
• Those who oppose abortion may show films
about the ‘silent scream’ of the when aborted.
• But the intention behind such films is merely
to stir the emotions of the uncommitted.
 Liberal arguments
• Some liberals do not challenge
the conservationist claim that the
fetus is an innocent human being,
but argue that abortion is
permissible.
 Consequences of restrictive laws
• The laws prohibiting abortion do not stop abortions, but
merely drive them underground. Women who want to have
abortions are often desperate. They will go to backyard
abortionists or try folk remedies. Abortion performed by a
qualified medical practitioner is as safe as any medical
operation, but any attempt by unqualified people may result
in serious medical complications and sometimes death.

• This is an argument against laws prohibiting abortion, and not

an argument against the view that abortion is wrong.
 Not the law’s business
• Private morality and immorality is not the law’s business. This
view is influenced by J.S. Mill’s On Liberty.
• There are certain ‘victimless crimes’: homosexual relations
between consenting adults, the use of marijuana and other
drugs, prostitution, gambling, and so on.
• The criminologist Edwin Schur in his book Crimes Without
Victims says: in a pluralist society, we should tolerate others
with different moral views and leave the decision to have an
abortion up to the woman concerned.
• Fallacy: here the dispute is about whether or not abortion
does have a ‘victim’. Opponents of abortion: victim of
abortion is the foetus. Supporters of abortion: foetus cannot
be counted as a victim because it has no interests of its own.
 Feminist arguments
• A woman has a right to choose
what happens to her body
• Judith Jarvis Thomson’s argument
 Two arguments

• 1. Human life arguments

• 2.The Personhood arguments

– 1. Mary Anne Warren’s version
– 2. Michael Tooley’s desire version
 Two arguments
• Both of these arguments are based on an understanding of
why killing is wrong in cases where a consensus exists.
Proponents of each argument argue that their understanding
implies a conclusion concerning abortion.
• When the argument is conducted within the human life
framework those opposed to abortion choice easily win the
argument. Like this, When the argument is conducted within
the personhood framework, those in favor of abortion choice
easily win the argument.
• The human life account makes too much killing wrong;
personhood account makes too little killing wrong.
The classical personhood account

• 1. Mary Anne Warren’s version

• 2. Michael Tooley’s desire version
The classical personhood account
 Mary Anne Warren’s account
• ‘most central to the concept of
personhood’ are
• (1) consciousness and, in particular, the capacity to
feel pain,
• (2) reasoning,
• (3) self-motivated activity,
• (4) the capacity to communicate in a reasonably
sophisticated way, and
• (5) the presence of selfconcepts
 Mary Anne Warren’s account
• An individual need not have all of these traits to be
considered a person, or even any particular one of them. But,
an individual with none of these traits is plainly not a person.
What makes a killing wrong is that the victim is a person.
Since foetuses clearly are not persons, abortion is morally
permissible.

• Criticism: Neither the mere assertion by Warren that there is

such a connection nor the general belief that there is such a
connection is enough to establish an actual connection.
 A pregnant woman’s moral right
A fetus is not a person. All and only persons have full
moral rights.
Therefore, a fetus does not have full moral rights.
". . . a woman's right to protect her health, happiness,
freedom, and even her life, by terminating an
unwanted pregnancy, will always override whatever
right to life it may be appropriate to ascribe to a fetus,
even a fully developed one".
So a pregnant woman has a moral right to an
abortion.
 Michael Tooley’s desire version
• ‘X is a person if and only if X has a serious moral right to life’
• He then claims that ‘An organism possesses a serious right to life
only if it possesses the concept of a self as a continuing subject of
experiences and other mental states, and believes that it is itself a
continuing entity’.
• Tooley defends this claim by arguing that an organism possesses a
serious right to life only if she desires to live and she desires to live
only if she possesses a concept of herself as a continuing subject of
experience.
• Thus, the desire to live is basic to Tooley’s account of the right to
life. This ‘desire account’ characterize and distinguish Tooley’s
version from Warren’s version.
 Moral importance of desires
• “The basic intuition is that ... in general, to violate an
individual’s right to something is to frustrate the
corresponding desire. Suppose, for example, that you
own a car. Then I am under a prima facie obligation
not to take it from you. However, the obligation is
not unconditional: it depends in part upon the
existence of a corresponding desire in you. If you do
not care whether I take your car, then I generally do
not violate your right by doing so.”
 Tooley’s argument
• To have the right to life is to have the right to continue
to exist.
• The right to continue to exist presupposes the desire
to continue to exist.
• One has the desire to continue to exist only if one has
a concept of oneself as a continuing subject of
experience.
• No foetus has a concept of herself as a continuing
subject of experience.
• Therefore, no foetus has a right to life; so abortion is
morally permissible.
 Three Modifications

1. The Future of Value Account

2. Warren’s Moral Status Account

3. David Boonin’s Improved Desire Account

Don Marquis
 The Future of Value argument
 Killing deprives us of our futures of value.
 Our futures of value consist of all of the
goods of life we would have experienced had
we not been killed.
 Foetuses have futures like ours, for their
futures contain all that ours contain and
more.
 Therefore abortion is always morally wrong.
 Don Marquis
 The crucial moral category in Marquis' argument is not that
of a person or a potential person. It is rather the category
of "having a valuable future like ours"

 In order to establish the conclusion that the vast majority

of abortions are wrong, Marquis does not need to show
that a necessary condition of the wrongness of killing some
being is that it deprive it of the value of a future like ours.
He needs merely to show that a sufficient condition of the
wrongness of killing some being is that it deprive it of this
value.
 Criticisms to Marquis
1. A necessary condition for the wrongness of killing a being is
that doing so interfere with the fulfillment of the being's
desire to go on living. But fetuses don't have a desire to go
on living. So killing them is not wrong.
2. Only victims can be wronged. A victim must have
sentience. But embryos don't have sentience. An embryo is
thus not a victim and can't be wronged. So it does not
wrong an embryo to have an abortion.
3. Contrary to what Marquis contends, it's not the case that
depriving a being of the value of a future like ours is wrong.
For if Marquis' contention were true, then contraception
would be wrong. And that's absurd.
 Warren’s Moral Status Account
 No criteria in particular is individually necessary.
 Although she thinks sentience is the best candidate
 The more criteria an entity satisfies the more confident we
can be that it is a person.
 The fewer criteria satisfied the less confident we can be that
it is a person.
 If an entity satisfies none of the 6 criteria it isn’t a person.
 Warren claims that at least early on in the pregnancy, a fetus
satisfies none of the 6 criteria of personhood and thus isn’t a
person.
 Why moral agents have moral rights?
Even if a fetus isn’t a moral agent might it not have moral rights
still?
So Warren argues that only moral agents have moral rights.
This is because:
Only moral agents invent moral rights
Only moral agents can be obliged to respect moral rights
Only moral agents can ascribe rights to other entities
Only moral agents can participate directly in the shaping and
enforcement of moral rights.
Moral agents justly resent being treated as anything less than
having full fledged moral rights.
 Ascribing moral rights to fetus
Moral agents can ascribe moral rights to entities that aren’t moral agents.
“…we have self-interested as well as altruistic reasons for extending basic
moral rights to infants and other sentient human beings who have already
been born, but who currently lack some of these other mental capacities.”
But in ascribing rights to entities that aren’t members of the moral
community we must be careful not to unduly infringe upon the rights of any
member of the moral community.
Thus, abortion is permissible when bringing the fetus to term is an
unacceptably great cost to the well-being of the mother or to those she cares
about.
We can’t ask a woman to complete an unwanted pregnancy at the risk of
intolerable mental, physical and economic cost to the mother and her family.
 Fetuses are not persons
“If fetuses were persons, then they would have rights that must be respected, even at
great social or personal cost.”
So fetuses lack full fledged moral rights“
But given that early fetuses, at least, are unlike persons in the morally relevant
respects, it is unreasonable to insist that they be accorded exactly the same moral and
legal status.”
Thus abortion is permissible.
“Because women are persons, and fetuses are not, women’s rights to life, liberty, and
physical integrity morally override whatever right to life it may be appropriate to
ascribe to a fetus.”
“Consequently, laws that deny women the right to obtain abortions, or that make safe
early abortions difficult or impossible for some women to obtain, are unjustified
violations of basic moral and constitutional rights.”
 Warren on an objection
If fetuses aren’t persons, might they not have strong rights based upon the
degree to which they resemble persons?
The more like a person something is, the stronger the case for according it a
right to life.
A 7 month fetus:
Can feel pain and can respond to stimuli-the fetus has sentience...
Can it feel emotion? Can it reason? Can it communicate?
Is it self aware?
But aren’t some animals more like a person than a fetus?
But we can’t reason with animals and nor so with fetuses. And this is what
makes their rights weaker than persons.
 Warren on another objection
If nurtured and allowed to develop, a fetus may eventually become a person?
Thus, doesn’t a fetus have a right to life?
Warren’s response:
The fact that something is a potential person may be a reason for not
destroying it but this doesn’t entail that potential people have a strong right
to life.
Thus, even if a potential person does have some right to life, that right could
not outweigh the right of a woman to obtain an abortion…
“A woman’s rights to liberty and the control of her own body outweigh
whatever right to life a fetus may have merely by virtue of its potential
personhood.”
 Infanticide
 Objection: Doesn’t Warren’s argument justify not only abortion but
infanticide also?
 Since late term fetuses aren’t persons and so late term abortions are
sometimes justified.
 And since a newborn infant isn’t much more person-like than a late term
fetus.
 Doesn’t it follow that infanticide is permissible in some cases
 Warren’s response:
 there are many reasons why infanticide is more difficult to justify than abortion.
 Consider adoption.
 Even if a child is un-adoptable infanticide isn’t permisslbe because there are still other
means of taking care of it. For example, state institutions.
But then why don’t these same considerations show abortion impermissible:
The fetus still poses a threat to the life and health of the mother but the infant doesn’.
 Improved Desire Account
 Michael Tooley’s desire based abortion choice view
has been updated by David Boonin.

 Boonin has recently developed a sophisticated

version of a desire account of the wrongness of
killing that, he claims,
 (1) deals in a satisfactory way with the difficulties
to which Tooley’s desire account is subject and
 (2) is superior to the future of value account
 Improved Desire Account
Boonin calls the desire account a present desire account. He
characterizes the future of value account as a present or
future desire account, as follows:

If an individual P has a future-like-ours F and if

either (a) P now desires that F be preserved, or (b) P
will later desire to continue having the experiences
contained in F (if P is not killed), then P is an
individual with the same right to life as you or I.