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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
Nor am I “sacntioning” abortion – I’m simply saying that it isn’t our business, particularly in the earliest stages of pregnancy for the variety of reasons stated.
But where? Can you locate them until they’ve reached a stage of development where their humanity is impossible to ignore? My argument is: no.
People can come in all shapes, sizes and varieties. No one thing is going to be sufficient to define personhood, which is why this is inherently slippery.
I don’t particularly care for that aspect of it, as it would make the job of definition much easier, but alas, life isn’t easy and people reach different conclusions about what that means.
Can we stand in judgment of other people’s reproductive choices and condemn them – or even punish them if we disagree with their choices? What gives us the right to do that? Majority rules? Does the Constitution not give you pause when considering this issue – particularly given that Roe was decided incorrectly and the proper answer would be that the Federal Government has no power over the practice as it’s outside of enumerated powers?
This goes too far in the course of our debate. We’re not at the point of deciding the implications of the moral/ethical questions. We have to settle those first.
That’s a separate question from the question of moral permissibility.
We’ve established that humanity is present from the moment of conception. (See your concession in comment # 66 that a fertilized egg is a human organism and a human being.)
If you’re talking about when we can point to a physical location and say “There’s a human being there,” that’s as early as pregnancy can be detected.
But if you’re talking about the difficulty of defining a person, you’ve yet to give a non-biological account of what a person is. (You have mentioned a few clues such as sentience, potential for sentience, social relations, and names–all of which apply to embryos at some stage, and potential for sentience from the moment of conception!)
For my part, I accept both the principle that all human beings are persons and the principle that all human beings have rights. I can elaborate on my view of personhood if there is any need.
But with either or both of those principles established, the only question one needs to answer is the simple biological question which you yourself answered in # 66.
You insist an embryo, at least for a good long while, is not a person, while conceding it’s human, and not giving an alternative definition of a person.
I really don’t know what to make of this.
We can indeed pass a moral judgment, if those choices include killing innocent life but not to save another. Whether we also should pass a legal judgment is a separate question, but the answer could well be yes.
The same thing that gives us the right to pass moral (and sometimes legal) judgments on any other person whose choice is for the death of innocents.
Heavens, no!
Indeed. I’m not sure Rubio’s right about this one. It might well be a power that legally belongs to the states.
Again, you’re incorrectly conflating “human” (the condition of possessing Human DNA) with “personhood” and the Venn diagram of those two conditions do not overlap perfectly.
When I was six, my mother had a miscarriage probably 8 weeks into pregnancy. As a result of the miscarriage, she lost a lot of blood and had to be admitted to the hospital. My parents took what emerged to the hospital with them and it was biopsied.
It was human, but it wasn’t a person. Do you not see the distinction?
My parents didn’t buy a coffee-mug sized coffin and purchase a plot for this blob of matter – it was (I presume) sent out with other medical waste after biopsy. I don’t mourn this potential sibling of mine – why would I? I had no relationship with it, it had no name, no identifying characteristics that made it part of the fabric of our lives. It was a potential life only; one which did not come to fruition.
Talking to my mother about it, she regrets the potential that was lost, but she has enough to worry about in her life that concern over what might have been doesn’t really eat away at her. This is especially so given that she has two perfectly healthy children and five grandchildren to dote upon.
That’s ludicrous. These spontaneously aborted eggs never became people, so you and your pro-life compatriots are crying over spilt milk.
In the case of IVF, when parents who are through with having children order fertilized eggs held at the facility destroyed, what is your position on that? I presume you regard that as a grave moral evil?
With all of the other more pressing grave moral evils in the world, one would hope we could focus our energies elsewhere; to pull the plank out of the eye of the world before focusing on the mote in these peoples’ and casting opprobrium on them for bringing life into the world.
Not so. I happen to consider humanity a sufficient condition for personhood (not even a necessary condition). And that’s a legitimate position.
But not a single thing I’ve said here relies on it. I’ve barely even mentioned it a couple of times, as in # 82 where I profess that belief, say I don’t care about it for such a discussion as this, profess my belief that all humans have rights, and ask once again for you to explain yourself.
Your view, insofar as I can understand it, is something like this: All human embryos are human beings, and many of them are not persons, and only persons have rights.
So you should explain these things in particular:
I’ve always understood you when you professed this distinction. I just happen to disagree on two points. First, I think it was a person. Second, I think that, since (as we agree) it was a human being, it was a thing with rights.
We don’t (usually) have those emotional connections to such humans, and we don’t treat them the same way.
But these are neither necessary conditions for personhood, nor for rights.
You probably aren’t suggesting that they are necessary conditions. You think our lack of emotional connection and similar treatment is a sign of what we already know: that they aren’t persons. Fair enough, but then you have to explain how it is we know that they aren’t persons.
False. It was a life, to deny which is to deny basic biological fact. It was also (as we agree) a human. You just happen to think that it was a human without personhood, without rights. You should stick to your point.
So I ask again: Why do you think some humans lack rights, and what exactly is a person?
I understand that’s your view. I just wish you would explain it.
It is indeed. Like I said, I believe all human beings have rights.
No objection.
I don’t cast opprobrium on them.
I didn’t know Baptist’s held the same view of IVF as Catholics! ;-)
I’d just like to drill down on why IVF is gravely evil, and, yet, how we justify not casting opprobrium on those who use it, for a moment.
It isn’t just that humans are “disposed” of as a result of IVF. That’s bad enough. But, it furthers the cheapening of human life. This is a huge concern to pro-lifers, and should be a concern to everyone. It’s that drip, drip, drip, of “too small, too undeveloped, too incapacitated, too voiceless, too… worthless.”
As to opprobrium, we treat people with love and mercy (whatever their sinful choices), because we are among those who “know not what they do.” We are encouraged to give what we wish to receive.
Well, those of us who are thoroughly orthodox probably do–at least as far as the tossing aside of human life is concerned. (There may be many who think it’s ok as long as the leftover embryos are kept in the freezer waiting to be adopted and become snowflake babies. I don’t think that’s ok–at least not until the demand for those embryos equals the supply.)
On non-natural forms of reproduction and sexuality, Baptists are more divided. (My views are pretty close to the Catholic views, but not quite the same.)
Indeed, indeed, indeed.
They’re committing grave moral evil. It’s sort of implied.
Look: we come at this from a different set of priors but I think we generally want the same thing: to reduce suffering and misery in the world.
I have said in the past that the Christian notion that this is a fallen world is a correct one – not in the metaphysical sense that Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge, but that human nature is flawed and limited, which leads to irremediable suffering in the world. We can never immanetize the eschaton because humanity isn’t perfectible and neither is the world. This is a fundamentally conservative insight.
I don’t view fertilized eggs as the equivalent of people and I know you don’t either via a simple test: if you were able to rescue either a newborn infant or a handful of test tubes containing frozen embryos from a raging fire, I know immediately which you would save – the reason being that we are social creatures with an evolved moral sense. That sense has taught us to empathize with those like us, and microscopic life – even if it bears the hallmarks of human-ness in the form of DNA – is a foreign and alien concept to our daily experience of interaction with humans.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that choosing to save the embryos over the infant would constitute a grave moral evil, for which a person would be rightly judged as lacking in empathy and moral reasoning.
I don’t disagree with you, I just don’t think this example justifies abortion. If you can only save one, you should save an infant before a handful of test tubes =/= it is morally permissible to kill vulnerable people.
I implied nothing, and I still imply nothing.
But if you consider calling an action a grave moral evil to be the casting of opprobrium on people who do it, ok. (But I cast moral opprobrium on myself and everyone else in the same fashion for all the other grave moral evils we commit.)
What I would do is completely irrelevant. What I think I should do is relevant. And I don’t know what I think I should do. Am I saving the frozen embryos from one death only to deliver them unto another? Or am I saving them to be unfrozen, implanted, and born?
If the latter, I might have to say it’s best to save the embryos.
But I’d like to think about it some more before I say anything too confidently. That decision would rely on one criterion we can use to make decisions: to keep as many people alive as possible. But since the embryos aren’t conscious, there is a different criterion hanging around here: to minimize the suffering of conscious beings.
You wax eloquent about empathy and the moral sense, which are fine things to be sure (says I, following Plato and Lewis and Augustine).
But these emotions and the moral sense are all beside the point.
The point is: You don’t think the embryos are persons, and you think only persons have rights.
These are principles which you use to object to me, but you still haven’t explained why you think non-persons (even human ones) lack rights, or what exactly you think a person is.
If you wish to speak of the moral sense and moral reasoning, then hear this: The moral sense is a response to moral truth. It does not create it. The moral truths that are relevant in this scenario are the personhood (or lack thereof) of the (born) baby and of the embryos.
You can’t argue that the embryos lack personhood because we are lacking in emotional attachment to them–unless you are going to define personhood as the state of being the object of these emotions.
You may argue that the embryos lack personhood because our emotional responses are a clue to the presence of personhood. But then you have to presume that our emotions rarely fail to recognize persons–a dubious presumption in light of human history.
And you still ought to explain what characteristic of personhood these particular humans lack.
The “truth” as you would have it is fundamentally unknowable because of the limits of knowledge.
No, but it’s one possible inclusion in the definition of personhood, although an additive one, not a multiplicative one.
Is the perfect is always the enemy of the good?
Size, morphology, cognitive function (past, present or potential,) nominally independent biological function (sufficient critical organ function to sustain life outside of the womb even if assisted by artificial means.)
It seems to me that this is a short (by no means exhaustive) list of items that persons possess and that they could either “add up” to some threshold of personhood or act as force multipliers depending upon your perspective. I would place extra emphasis upon the cognitive function tests; i.e., there must be some.
If you believe they are force multipliers then having any one of them represent a Zero means that the subject is not a person – I am hard pressed to think that anything or anybody whom I would consider a person would fail any one of these tests spectacularly.
In the case of, say, Terry Schiavo I would say that she passed the tests of size and morphology, but she failed the test of possessing the potential for future cognitive ability. I would think we could better than allowing a person in a persistent vegetative state to be denied nutrition and allowed to die.
By comparison, Stephen Hawking passes all of these tests, unless you believe Dr. Hawking is a grotesque puppet, whose strings are being pulled by other people.
No, it’s not.
But if you want to have a serious discussion of skepticism or agnosticism with respect to moral truth, I’m happy to hear your arguments for it.
Also, if you’re really a skeptic about moral knowledge, how can you be so confident that all things with rights are persons?
So how do you define personhood? How does being an object of emotional attachment from other persons fit in? Is it a necessary condition for personhood? A sufficient condition? One of many characteristics that most but not all persons have?
Sorry, you lost me. How is this question relevant?
(In any case: No, I don’t think so.)
Yay! We’re getting somewhere now! To be precise, you’re starting to explain a view of personhood (though you’ve not yet explained why you think only persons have rights).
[Edited for accuracy and rigor!]
As near as I can tell, between comments 52, 85, and 110, you’ve now listed these characteristics of personhood:
# 1 doesn’t make a lick of sense as a characteristic of personhood; I shall ignore it.
You specify numbers 10 and 11 (the ones involving “cognitive function”) as necessary conditions for personhood. Then you say this:
Meaning: No persons totally lack any of the characteristics of #s 6-11. Meaning: All persons pass have a least a degree of each of these characteristics. Meaning: A necessary condition for personhood is having at least a degree of each of #s 6-11.
However, you presented 9, 10, and 11 in a group. So you have stated two necessary conditions for personhood:
(The only thing you’ve clearly said about sufficient conditions is that humanity isn’t one.)
And now my response.
I think it’s false that size is in itself a necessary condition for personhood. If I sit down (tomorrow morning, since in a few minutes I gotta be done for tonight) with a cup of tea and think about it I might find I have a reason for this view. But maybe it’s just a rational premise, not a conclusion.
I don’t know what you mean by morphology, which can refer to a branch of the study of language or to the shape of an organism. Maybe you mean the ability to communicate linguistically. But that doesn’t seem like a necessary condition for personhood; newborns might well not have that (depending on how well they understand that crying gets Mommy’s attention). If you refer to the shape of the organism, then, it doesn’t seem like a necessary condition for personhood; moderate deformation does not, in itself, affect personhood at all, and I can’t imagine why we should think any extreme amount of deformation (like mutants in fiction) would, in itself, affect personhood.
Ability to live outside the womb: I have little to say about this. I don’t consider it a necessary condition for personhood. Why should I? What has biological dependence or bodily location have to do with personhood? I don’t see the connection, and I rather think I can see that there is no connection. (But I speak as one who is uncaffeinated.)
That’s why I reject your first necessary condition for personhood.
Your second necessary condition fares much better! Roughly, I agree with it!
Fortunately for the human embryo, he possesses characteristic #9 and thus meets your second necessary condition for personhood.
To be more precise, I don’t quite agree, but I’m darn close enough! I also define personhood in terms of sentience, but in a somewhat more complicated manner. I think sentience is a sufficient condition for personhood. I also think membership in a species which naturally possesses sentience in its mature and healthy members is also a sufficient condition for personhood.
(So any member of the human species which has some medical impairment as a result of which it lacks the potential for consciousness is still a person.)
And . . . that took way longer than I wanted it to. Bedtime approaches in my time zone!
If your brain’s a bit worn out like mine, and your sense of humor resembles mine, I can’t recommend Bad Lip Reading’s “Bushes of Love” music video too strongly.
Good night, Wesley. Sleep well. I’m most likely to kill you in the morning.Good night, Ricocheti. Reason well. I’m most likely to converse with you in the morning.And here we disagree – fetuses with anencephaly have a number of these characteristics, but utterly lack the ability to gain sentience as they lack the necessary equipment: a brain. They are definitely “human,” in possessing Human DNA, but are not people. In many cases they would similarly lack the ability to exist independently outside of the womb.
So, there is a degree of medical impairment beyond which human organisms aren’t people.
I didn’t think I would have to.
This simple statement is the precondition for the entire notion of rights. Inanimate objects without a sense of self cannot have “rights” because such a thing couldn’t conceive of them and lack the potential to gain such an understanding.
No person is microscopic. I guarantee you know zero of them. QED.
Morphology.
In this case, possessing body structures and biological functions like those of other members of its species.
Are you simply trolling me or are you being genuine here?
This is one of those things like the Second Law of Thermodynamics in that it’s only valid so long as we see nothing which violates it, but how many people do you know who survive only via the benefit of being attached to their mother’s womb?
Again, in my (admittedly) limited experience I know zero. I imagine it would be a spectacular story in the media – “Meet Womb-boy, who can burrow into his mother like a Kangaroo’s pouch!” 0_o