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Lousy Arguments for Abortion
Some arguments for the moral permissibility of abortion are pretty lousy. I’m talking about the interesting arguments from analogy that purport to establish the moral permissibility of all abortions even if an unborn baby really is a human being. Arguments from analogy employ a certain form, or pattern of reasoning along the following lines:
- A is like B in that both have property X;
- A has property Y; so
- B also has property Y.
There are various ways to evaluate an argument from analogy, but here are the three big ones:
- What are the relevant known similarities (i.e., X) of A and B?
- How relevant are the similarities?
- What are the relevant dissimilarities?
(For more on this, I recommend you consult my own sources: The Power of Logic and Introduction to Logic. Hint: You can buy older editions on Amazon for a zillionth of the price, and the older editions are about 99% as good.)
The Violinist Analogy: Argument
You may already be familiar with the infamous violinist argument from Judith Jarvis Thomson:
You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist’s circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, “Look, we’re sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you–we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it’s only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.”
To cut to the chase, the argument from analogy is this:
- Unplugging yourself from the violinist is like abortion in that both lead to the death of an innocent person;
- Unplugging yourself from the violinist is morally permissible;
- Therefore, abortion is also morally permissible.
The Violinist Analogy: Evaluation
What are the relevant known similarities?
- Both liberate an innocent person from the encumbering life-support system of another innocent person;
- The encumbering life-support system encumbers the first innocent person for about nine months; and
- Both lead to the death of that other innocent person.
How relevant are the similarities?
- They’re pretty relevant.
What are the relevant dissimilarities?
- Abortion terminates a natural process, not a radical medical procedure.
- In almost all cases, pregnant women are not nearly as as encumbered as the person in the violinist story.
- Unplugging yourself from the violinist does not kill an innocent human being; it only allows him to die. But the act of abortion kills an innocent human being.
- The violinist story presumes kidnapping, but most pregnancies are the result of free choice, if not free choice to become pregnant then at least free choice to engage in the sort of behavior that has the same result. (This difference doesn’t work in the minority of pregnancies resulting from rape.)
And the verdict is: As an argument for the permissibility of all abortions, this argument is terrible. (It might have some strength for abortion in the case of rape, mitigated somewhat by the other differences.)
The Zombie Analogy: Argument
One of my students who is involved with debating told me that the argument won a big debating competition. (I think it was the student debating competition: the big international one.) Here’s my attempt to reconstruct the argument based on what what he told me:
Killing a brain-eating zombie is like abortion in that both acts involve the killing of a parasitic human being.
Killing a zombie is morally permissible.
So abortion is also morally permissible
The Zombie Analogy: Evaluation
What are the relevant similarities?
- In both cases, a human is killed.
- In both cases, the human lives off of another human being’s body.
- In both cases, the behavior of the human is morally innocent, acting on biological necessity rather than free choice.
How relevant are the similarities?
- Very!
What are the relevant dissimilarities?
- A zombie is not a normal human being. It’s probably not actually a human being at all. Assuming it’s even a living thing, it might be better thought of as a different species.
- A zombie, even if we consider it to be human, is an unnatural and severely malfunctioning one. But an unborn baby behaves in the way natural and proper for a human infant at that stage of life.
- An unborn baby lives off its mother without hurting her. Zombies kill you and eat your brains. (A difference not applicable to situations where the life of the mother is threatened, such as ectopic pregnancies.)
And the verdict is: This argument is terrible! It might have some strength with respect to abortions to save the life of the mother. (And if you replace the zombie with a blood-sucking but non-lethal vampire, the argument might have some strength with respect to abortions to preserve the health of the mother.)
But as an argument for the moral permissibility of all abortions, the argument depends on ignoring enormous relevant differences between babies and zombies.
Published in General
To me, permissible means you haven’t wronged someone in such a way that requires physical compensation in an ideal Platonic sense.
I believe there’s an (difficult to determine) objective moral truth that you can use to judge all actions. “Morally impermissible” is the most dire category of immoral acts. They are the things that everyone knows should never happen, even given human fallibility.
If I’m understanding you correctly, then, you believe abortion is morally impermissible because it is in the dire category of intentionally killing an innocent person, which everyone knows should never happen. However, you withhold such judgment on a mother who “disconnects” by inducing labor, even if the outcome for the baby is dire?
Just trying to understand.
I think intentionally killing an unborn child is almost certainly morally impermissible. I’m not sure what to think about things like the Plan B pill, though even things like that turn my stomach. The problem is, I’m not sure if there’s a permissible way to stop abortion from happening.
I kind of doubt that our criminal justice system of generally locking people up is often the correct form of punishment. In an abortion, the aggrieved party likely no longer exists, and I’m not sure how one properly compensates the “truth” when one violates it.
This falls down the rabbit hole rather quickly. It’s all really to say that I understand why abortion is such a tough subject to get right.
Understood, but we’re not addressing that in this conversation yet. We’re just trying to narrow in on questions of moral reasoning (logic).
Oh, good! Yay! Gee, this parallels the ectopic pregnancy scenario. In that scenario (if memory serves and my friend knew what she was talking about) even the Pope (John Paul II at the time) says you should remove the child and let the poor thing die.
Again, good! Yay!
You and I, WC. Mike H. might not think these are separate questions. He appears to think that what is morally wrong is not a bigger category than what should be punishable by law (reaffirmed in # 31).
“Impermissible” is what is not “permissible.” Your use of “impermissible” goes with the second sense of “permissible,” and in # 31 you stick with the second definition of “permissible.”
I thought it was very different from what you wrote earlier, but maybe not: You use “permissible” to refer to what should be legal, “impermissible” to refer to what should not. You think the category of legal things is broader than the category of permissible things, but the category of what should be legal is not any bigger at all.
And you think adultery is permissible, i.e. should be legal even in an ideal set of laws, right? But you’d be prepared to call it foolish, inadvisable, even blameworthy, right?
It seems pretty obvious to me that it’s morally impermissible. I’m not sure if we have different moral views or if this is just a linguistic confusion because you’re defining permissibility in terms of law. Maybe we should talk about that. If we can find fault with an act that’s “permissible” in that an ideal set of laws wouldn’t punish it, isn’t it still morally wrong?
That category of moral wrongness is my primary interest.
I can’t imagine anyone being convinced by any of the arguments. The moral argument is unambiguous, but then we assume there is such a thing as morality, human worth and dignity and that what we think about these things matters. The radical pro abortion folks strike me as nihilists so they don’t care. The legal argument is different. Do we want to extend full citizenship to the fetus so that causing a miscarriage because of a skiing or bike accident leads to a charge of reckless endangerment. Our government is and will always overreach and become corrupt in it’s abuse of its natural monopolies. There would also have to be due process appeal for an abortion and I can see that getting really corrupt and enshrining a form of eugenics. I think it is like so many things, once we overturn R v W, states will have to sort it out and it will always be full of tragedy and flaws like all things human and over time, if we are free to do so, some states and communities will get it about right in ways we may not envision now.
I Walton, thanks for the comments!
The best I can say about that view is that a good many of them probably do believe in something like human rights. Not human rights–only something like it. What they believe in is persons’ rights, and they define a person in some clever way that excludes unborn babies but includes born ones.
It’s one of life’s ironies that they’re the ones letting abstract philosophizing rather than science determine the shape of things. SoCons like me go along with the biological definition of a human being; we think that will determine the shape of things just fine.
In which ways are adultery and abortion similar? In which ways are they dissimilar? How do we evaluate them? What is the verdict?
Without getting too far into the weeds, my stated position is and remains that we ought to be careful what we wish for in terms of the powers we wish to grant governments. The intrusions we would have to justify in order to stop all abortions (if we assume fetuses are the equivalent of fully-developed persons) would be intolerable to conservatives in any other aspect of life.
There are limits to knowledge just as there should be limits to government power. We Conservatives frequently assert that people would be best left to their own devices and need to carry the freight of their choices outside of the influence of a panopticon government. For that reason alone, there is always going to be a hazy and indistinct boundary on this topic for the body politic, even if individuals have radically different interpretations of where the line lies. Peter Singer and Jerry Falwell, Jr. have opinions as far at the opposite ends of this topic as could be imagined, and neither of them are (in my estimation) displaying fidelity to the principle that matters as far as public policy goes – the Constitution.
Are fetuses genetically distinct individuals (outside of twinning?) Yes. Are they alive? Yes. Is it morally permissible to kill such a creature, particularly in the earliest stages of its development? Unambiguously, yes. Nature does this of its own accord quite frequently for a variety of reasons.
That the introduction of man’s will into that situation is somehow a fell influence and not considered a part of Nature baffles me.
A separate question from the question of moral permissibility.
First, I disagree. Second, where are you getting this view? If I were to say there were any lack of ambiguity I’d say it goes the other way.
How this premise is meant to support the conclusion that abortion is morally permissible is a mystery to me.
Rocks kill people naturally. If we introduce the will of Al, who kills Bob with a rock, are you baffled by my estimation that Al’s act is morally impermissible?
But the only germane question in terms of public policy.
As far as the morality of the situation goes, do you propose that your moral standard ought to be the one that dominates each other person’s thinking – or do you better think that the best way of expressing your moral position on the topic is to “live your values”?
If a woman therapeutically clones herself using her own ovum in order to harvest stem cells from that ovum to treat some illness or even to, say, grow herself a new, functioning organ that she needs, this seems completely permissible to me. What could the objection possibly be?
There are plenty of birth defects which are incompatible with life. Our own iWe has even held forth that Judaic teaching on this permits abortion in such cases.
I see nothing morally troubling about aborting fetuses with anencephaly, microcephaly or other severe birth defects for instance. Some people might be troubled by this, but only because the fetus has superficial characteristics that appear human – the thing that makes us human in my opinion is much deeper than “appearances.” There is function that accompanies the form.
No. If Al kills Bob with a rock, people are going to complain about that because Bob is a person who has rights; a person with relationships – a name: “Bob.”
If Al smashes a test tube with a rock that has a fertilized ovum inside it, who is the aggrieved party? Bob? Jane? Society (whatever that is)?
There is a moral difference between RU-486 and Kermit Gosnell.
It seems obtuse to equate the two.
What you treat as one is, I think, really two germane questions: Is it morally impermissible and, if so, is it the sort of moral impermissibility that should be curtailed by law?
Anyway, I wasn’t trying to talk about public policy. Just ethics. This here is Ricochet. We can talk about anything.
Actually, I don’t understand the question.
If my moral standard dominated others’ thinking, it would be their standard also. Then I would be delighted for them to live their values!
Perhaps you mean to ask whether my moral standard ought to dominate each person’s behavior? Since my moral standard here affects human lives and since I happen to think those humans have rights, I’d say yes.
Or are you asking whether the most moral thing for me to do with my values is to live them? To that question: Yes!
An objection with two premises: That she is killing a human being, and that human beings ought not to be killed.
How the bolded premise was meant to support the bolded conclusion is still a mystery to me.
Ah, that’s metaphysics!
If you want to talk metaphysics you’ve come to the right guy.
On this point (as on various others, though I think you missed it before), my metaphysics is entirely down to earth. I consider humanity to be a biological category. From conception, the embryo is an organism of the human species.
You may, if you so believe, suggest that not all humans have rights. But you may not plausibly suggest that the embryo is not a human–unless there are organisms of the human species which are not humans, or unless you define the human in some abstruse and non-biological way.
Then your remark about the introduction of a will into an otherwise natural scenario was completely irrelevant. The only relevant question is the humanity of the embryo.
There is such a thing as justifiable homicide.
I can think of plenty of categories of abortion that fall under that heading.
Man is but a piker on the field of abortion. Nature is cruel and life is frequently a choice between tragedies.
Would metaphysics suggest that only the most superficial characteristics define humanity?
Genetic uniqueness is not the only test for personhood – if it is, we have been neglecting the personhood of an infinite number of spontaneously aborted people.
Human beings have rights that we can discover in nature. Those rights are not absolute.
She is not killing a human being.
If she were killing a human being, what is that human being’s name? (This ovum doesn’t have a name. It isn’t a person.)
Does it have a unique genetic signature? (No, it is genetically indistinct from the person who ordered it made. If the police were asked to determine if a homicide had occurred, the “victim” and “perpetrator” are the same person.)
Who are that human being’s relatives who are going to complain to the authorities that a human being has been murdered? (There are none, because it isn’t a person who anybody knows; in fact, the people who do know the person that had this homunculus constructed are glad that that person is alive and made whole or better as a result.)
It seems pro-life to me to favor the interests of the living over potential life.
Not a metaphysicist here, but I think that question was settled in science by Watson and Crick.
A name is a human construct. If it was born and not given a name till it was 18 years old then it would be ok to kill it till then?
On the other hand I do own a boat that I have given a name to. Does that mean I can not destroy it because it has been named?
Watson and Crick discovered DNA – many human beings have unique genetic sequences. Does that imply automatically that merely having a unique genetic sequence grants you personhood and therefore full citizenship and all of the rights attendant to such as described Constitutionally?
Obviously.
The implication would be that human beings interact with one another socially; one of the markers of that social interaction is that we name ourselves. There are a whole host of other markers that we use in addition to the convention of “naming.”
I’m sure that I don’t have to explain that – but it begs the question: why are you being obtuse and assuming that my argument only goes so deep as “If we don’t name it, we can kill it!”
Like Mike, you’re arguing toward the ends of policy and law. I’m arguing moral reasoning.
Scientifically, a human is a living creature with a unique and complete human genome. If you layer up the definition with “rights” and “abilities,” you add arbitrariness subject to the whims and dictates of other humans.
Biologists might require that a human be capable of sexually reproducing other humans, for example. What, then, happens to the infertile couple? Or the pre-pubescent child? Or the elderly? Some biologist might be tempted to categorize them as “not human,” or, at least, “not persons.”
This issue actually arises and is differently handled depending on the states when a pregnant woman is murdered. Some states will charge the murderer with two murders and some with one. I completely agree that leaving this question to the states would yield a much better moral exploration of the problem
I think much of the problem stems from separating sex and children. The assumption behind abortion is that people ought to be able to have sex with no consequences, as with the violinist analogy. The person was kidnapped and given no choice about being connected to the violinist. To the left, sex with no consequences is an inalienable right, which then requires birth control and abortion. Conservatives are likely to believe that when the person made the choice to engage in the behavior that caused the pregnancy, they should be willing to be responsible for the consequences. This serves to give sex the serious place it deserves in human society. Trying to maintain a lack of seriousness about sex and yet maintain some mores surrounding sex that prevent not only rape but emotional trauma is proving to be (surprise) impossible.
Again, there are a lot of other markers that we use to assign people the rights of humanity, are there not?
You argued above that embryos and fetuses essentially have the rights attendant to a fully fledged human citizen because: Watson and Crick, unless I’m misinterpreting your response. You seem to be indicating that a unique genome is dispositive and the only factor that matters.
There is a lot more to it than that, and I don’t see it as being arbitrary. Man is by necessity a social creature. There are a set of social markers that we associate with personhood which I believe are additive. There can be circumstances which arise which can cause us to ethically accept the permissibility of certain acts – that boundary is disputable, and is not wholly contingent upon the singular question “Does this organism have a unique and complete human genome?”
Right, which is why ethics becomes a minefield when you’re arguing “personhood,” which is your argument, not mine.
I’m starting my moral reasoning from what we can objectively agree upon. An organism which is alive and has a complete, unique human genome is a human. Yes or no?