Abortion:
Thomson – “A Defense of Abortion”
It is arbitrary to say when a fetus is or isn’t a person.
We are not required to say that acorns are oak trees, so are we required to say that a fetus is human?
Even if a fetus is a person, would this make abortion wrong?
The case of the violinist. You have a right to life. The violinist has a right to life. Does this mean that you MUST remain attached?
The extreme anti-abortion view: Abortion is killing. But what of danger to the mother? Must she sit by and be passively killed? The mother and fetus aren’t renters. The mother owns the house.
Right to life view: This is not an unproblematic concept. That the violinist needs your kidneys does not imply that he has a right to them.
Right to the use of the mother’s body: It is not unjust to the violinist to take from him what he had no right to have.
Voluntary intercourse: to abort would be denying the fetus what is has a right to have. But fetuses are dependent. So, they have rights against their mothers. The problem here is that they have a right only in the case of voluntary intercourse. THE WINDOW AND SCREENS AND FERTILE CARPET EXAMPLE.
Limits to Rights: What it is nice to do, or indecent not to do, is irrelevant to what is just.
Samaritans and Parents: You have no right to kill the violinist if he happens to survive without you.
There is a way to argue that a fetus is not a person/human.
Human = genetic
= person/moral
A fetus is not a person and does not have full moral rights.
What are the conditions for personhood?
a. Consciousness – ability to feel pain
b. Rationality
c. Self-motivated activity
d. Ability to communicate
e. Self-concept and awareness
It is not necessary to possess all these characteristics. But if a being has none of them, it is not a person in the full moral sense. There may be people who are not human and humans who are not people.
Do the rights of a potential person override the rights of an actual person, or the reverse?
Suppose that a person is careless and puts himself in a horrible situation. Suppose that he knows that if he does X, he might suffer consequence Y. But he takes the chance and does X, and Y in fact does happen. Now, if we have the capacity to save him from a horrible fate, or something very unpleasant, must he remain in the unpleasant condition, even if he got himself into it? We might not have an obligation to get him out of the problem, but why should we stand in the way of his chance to get himself out of it?
The consequences of abortion are irrelevant if murder is wrong regardless of how inconvenient it may be to be stopped from killing someone.
Is a woman’s body her property? It is an odd phrase. A broken leg, for example, is not damaged property, it is injury to a self.
Don Marquis: An Argument that Abortion is Wrong
Abortion is wrong for the same reason that it is wrong to kill a person reading a book or looking at this website.
Do fetuses have a right to life?
The FLO (Future Like Ours) Argument:
Why is killing wrong?
Not loss to family and friends – may be a hermit
Brutalization of the killer – how about the brutalization of the one killed?
Premature death = deprived of life
Loss of future conscious life
People can, of course, be wrong about what their future will be.
Premature death deprives a person of a valuable future.
Considered Judgment Argument – losing a future is a misfortune
Worse of Crimes Argument – deprivation of all future value
Appeal to cases argument –
a. medical – permanent unconsciousness and pulling the plug is not a misfortune. Temporary unconsciousness and pulling the plug would be a misfortune.
b. Active euthanasia – interminable pain and morphine dosing – not wrong
c. There were infants who had a future (us)
d. Analogy to animals argument – if harming animals is wrong due to speciesism, then it is wrong (ageist, sexist, racist) to abort humans.
Objections:
Susan Sherwin, Feminism and Abortion
Takes place in women and has a profound effect on their lives.
The Fetus
Women are considered secondary, if at all. Mechanical life support systems.
Women may be seen as passive hosts whose only role is to refrain from aborting or harming.
Physicians may specialize in fetuses and essentially ignore the mother.
Feminist View of the Fetus
Status is relational
Personhood is a social category, not an isolated state
Politics of Abortion
Ready access to abortion supports women’s independence from men.
Much more than the lives of fetuses is at stake in the abortion debate.
Most who oppose abortion also favor male dominance in home and church.
Also oppose birth control and non-heterosexual sex. They also tend to oppose women being in positions of authority. Most are conservatives.
Pregnancy is not merely a nine-month commitment. Develop an intimate and intense bond.
Adoption is not that simple.
Abortion is not always readily available to the poor. Hyde Amendment – can’t use public funds.
Women must have control over reproduction if patriarchal dominance is to end.