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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
Good, then you agree with me that because some people have done monstrous things to individuals in the past by denying that those individuals are what you and I would both agree are “people” that this in no way guarantees such actions in the future.
Also, in this formulation the “perfect” is your conception of what constitutes personhood vs. the “good” being mine. I have thus far heard nothing which recommends your conception as being better, let alone the zenith of such perception!
Your perception is conservative in the sense that it is cautious. This characteristic in and of itself doesn’t recommend it to me. Does it improve human life? Reduce human suffering? Does it account for the crooked timber from which we are built or does it cavalierly assert that we are all to adhere to some (allegedly ideal) standard as if we were built from perfectly straight rails?
Maj, you’re arguing against the ethical principle of full human potential: Every human being (or group of human beings) deserves to be valued according to the full level of human development, not according to the level of development currently achieved. — Spitzer
Having children of your own, you almost certainly have experienced (or will experience) why this must be the case. Otherwise, when children reach their teen years, their behavior would often lead parents to “justifiable” homicide.
The anencephalic child is another one of those exceptions that doesn’t prove your rule. That this particular human lacks even the potential for self-awareness, does not, therefore, justify the killing of another human with such potential.
You’re probably going to ask what I would do about the anencephalic child, so I’ll just get that out of the way. I agree, in this rare case, there’s no “there” there, barring a divine intervention that causes the child to grow a brain. But, even this individual is an icon of sorts, and deserving of the dignity in life and death (which comes rather quickly after birth, I believe) which we would give any other human. I would not take extreme measures (in almost any case, not just this one) to preserve life, but I would treat this child the same as any other.
There’s another ethical principle involved here — the principle of non-maleficence.
I think you’re stealing a base here. A blastocyst/embryo/fetus/etc DOES possess “body structures and biological functions like those of other members of its species” at the same point in their development cycle.
Also, if variations in body structures render non-personhood on someone, I have a couple of co-workers who are going to get worried (one missing an arm, another a kidney).
Ok, carry on.
Which in my estimation makes it at least arguable that before it reaches such a state of development that abortion is at least permissible even if it is frowned upon. This is the rub: few people in our society are going to assert that we should take for our own each other person’s judgment in this regard.
Under that heading, each of us is unique with no truly identical characteristics; thus there is no ideal against which a particular person could be measured.
Assume that I’m arguing from a position of good faith and not in the most reductive way possible: “Born without an arm? Into the shredder! You say that’s Madness? This is Sparta!”
(This is not what I’m saying, incidentally.)
Can you think of no reasons why people would abort such a fetus other than maleficence?
I don’t think conceding that abortion in such a case is acceptable is a stretch. There are other questions to be concerned with in that case as well, given that childbirth is one of the more dangerous activities that women can engage in.
The principle of nonmaleficence states: Avoid unnecessary harms; if a harm is unavoidable, minimize it. — Spitzer
I’m kind of fascinated by how this conversation is going between the secular and the religious. I can’t help notice that the intent/feelings/social connections of the adults are central to your thinking, Maj, and how the religious of us are looking outside ourselves and others for principles of reason, ethics, and natural law, relying on objective truths. This “maleficence” discussion is a perfect example.
You think I’m accusing those who would abort a deformed child of malice, but what I’m really restating is the Hippocratic idea of “first, do no harm.”
It’s times like these I think pro-lifers are the most committed libertarians of all. We wish to secure your most basic human rights from the moment of conception until natural death. Everyone else is arguing to deny you your rights until and unless you meet some (arbitrarily agreed upon) definition of “personhood.”
Do you think that I have somehow been either unreasonable, unethical, supernatural or untruthful in any of this discussion?
I can’t see that I have been. I’ve premised my position upon a series of rational tests which can be found out. We simply disagree that these are the premises upon which such decisions are to be made.
The religious as I see it derive their position from authority – Not from logical tenets. Sure, there is a logical line that you can follow to get from their position back to its origins, but the origin itself is merely an argument from authority.
What if your religion provides you with a different voice of authority, as in the case of Islam, for instance? I brought up iWe’s input which, if I recall, doesn’t strike me as being that different from my own: that abortion is acceptable in cases where there are non-life-compatible defects and before the quickening.
Whose religious sentiment should I believe? What about the scads of liberal Christians who would say the same thing?
The point is: that’s a minefield I’m not venturing in to other than to point out that simply saying that this is somehow a battle between the logical, sensible religious people and the vile, callous secular people ignores the panoply of opinion within the ranks of the religious!
Beyond that, let’s not forget that “saying” is one thing and “doing” is another. Unless you believe that all of these abortions are being carried out on seculars (they aren’t) people’s rhetoric and actions aren’t aligning.
I have no issue with the Hippocratic oath; I simply disagree that it is possible to “cause harm” to non-persons. Harm implies pain; pain involves nerve sensations and the attendant ability to interpret them. Blastocysts have no brains with which to interpret nerve signals; I am in favor of “fetal pain” statutes for instance on those grounds.
tldr, sorry, Maj.
No, nothing you’ve said is corrupt in any way. It’s just…. subjective. As much as I like and admire you, I’m glad you’re not the one deciding “personhood” for all of us. You see what I mean?
Also, ending someone’s existence would seem pretty “harmful” to me.
Sorry, I’ll try to get back and read your response more carefully later.
There is nothing subjective about creatures lacking brains being unable to feel pain.
Do ferilized eggs or blastocysts have brains? I know they don’t, so it’s begging the question. That is undeniably factual. Nothing subjective about it.
RE: who gets to decide personhood for all of us. I don’t want you to decide what personhood is to me, and it has nothing to do with your excellent judgment: My proposal is that no one person gets to make that decision and no group, supermajority or any 5 Supreme Court Justices have the requisite wisdom to make that decision for each of us.
We are left in the position of having to make these decisions for ourselves, using whatever means we have at our disposal to do so.
I do think there are certain boundaries beyond which we can begin to impose restrictions and the tradeoffs aren’t onerous upon individual liberty, but the boundary isn’t “Conception” and the other boundary isn’t “5 minutes after birth.”
The real question is: do we trust people to manage their own affairs, or do we need to act in loco parentis?
That’s still a separate question from the question of moral permissibility.
Some, yes. I understand that the Catholics officially deny that their position is based on religious authority.
Some base their positions on both authority and reason. I think of myself in that category, but if we drill down to the foundations of my views and it turns out the whole set of them rests on a theological principle, I don’t think I’ll shed a tear.
My views would still be at least as rational as those of Kant, or of anyone who claims to believe in human rights without having much of a reason for it. I’d be more rational than the non-pro-lifers who say they believe in human rights but oppose the protection of a certain class of humans, showing that they don’t really believe in human rights as such.
By definition, they do not recognize the same authority which the orthodox recognize.
It also says “I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion.”
Yes, I know.
This particular disagreement is small in scope. I grant that for such humans fail to meet that secondary necessary condition for personhood.
But this is a point you could use to support the moral permissibility of only a very tiny percentage of abortions.
By the way, I think your second necessary condition for personhood is a very respectable theory. I just don’t quite agree.
(And I think all humans have rights.)
How else can you argue for the moral permissibility of slaughtering non-conscious human beings?
So it’s a necessary condition for having rights that a being either be able to or have the potential to be able to conceive of them?
Why should that be the case?
That proves nothing at all! You’ve claimed that size is, in itself, a necessary condition for personhood. I don’t need a factual counterexample to refute that claim; fictional cases from Isaac Asimov or Dr. Seuss would do the trick.
Moreover, I can see from the facts that size, by itself, and personhood are irrelevant to each other. You might as well say that color or oatmeal or narfiness or oogadarontolomyness is a condition for personhood; it would make as much sense.
After I started heading towards bed I realized it was much more likely you meant the word in the biological sense.
You ignored my reply: The shape of the organism 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.
I’m always genuine in serious discussions like this (except in fairly obvious dumb jokes I may employ from time to time).
Every unborn child.
What has biological dependence or bodily location have to do with personhood? I don’t see the connection.
I rather think I can see that there is no connection.
Counterexamples number in the millions. These things don’t affect the personhood of the nearly-born, who have your characteristics of personhood #s 2-11, and meet both your necessary conditions for personhood. And biological dependence doesn’t affect the personhood of the recently born.
Sure.
This is off topic, however. If you argue that embryos lack personhood because our emotional responses are a clue to the presence of personhood, your argument relies on the unstated premise that our emotions rarely fail to recognize persons. Human history renders this premise highly dubious.
Sorry. You lost me here. I don’t know what you’re talking about in this paragraph.
I know not what “zenith of such perception means,” but you’re right that I haven’t defended my own view of personhood.
I never set out to present a positive case, or even to explain my own views. I was only interested in looking at two lousy arguments for the moral permissibility of abortion, and then later I was interested in looking at your case for the same.
If we subtract your first (and refuted) necessary condition for personhood, then your own view of personhood is so close to my own that it differs only with respect to the human embryo who lacks the physical ability to become sentient. So the responsible thing for us both to do is to recognize that abortion for all others is morally impermissible.
Regarding my own view (in comment # 116) that personhood is determined by membership in a sentient species, rather than mere sentience: If you are asking me to explain or defend or argue for this view, then I can certainly take a cup of tea and see what may be said on its behalf.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to keep up with this post. I just wanted to mention, I was thinking about it a long time, and I’m leaning towards adultery being impermissible.
The way I view it now is marriage is basically a very strong form of oath taking, and it seems pretty intuitively obvious that oath breaking needs some fairly extreme circumstances to be permissible. So in the vast majority of cases, adultery is impermissible.
I stand by my assertion that moral philosophy is really hard.