More Lousy Arguments for Abortion

I see in student papers and reflection assignments a lot of weird and lousy thinking about abortion. Sometimes they give lousy pro-life arguments, like this one (paraphrasing with my own words):

Kant says actions should be universalizable, and if abortion were universalized the human race would become extinct.

In Kantian ethics, you're supposed to test the justification or reason for an action--the principle behind the action-- to see if it can be universalized. In other words, would it make sense if everyone lived by that principle?

But few people (if any) choose abortion simply on the principle “I should abort this pregnancy” or “Abortion is good.” The principle behind the action is more detailed: “In such-and-such circumstances, a person should abort” or “In such-and-such circumstances, a person can abort if she wants” or “In such-and-such circumstances, abortion is a good thing / a lesser evil.”

My students who wrote this were looking at the wrong justification for abortion.

More often, though, I see bad defenses of abortion from my students. Let's look over a few gems.

"Rape Makes Everything Ok!"

Here's a wild one:

Abortion in the case of rape is ok--even if the fetus is a human being with rights--because the woman is just trying to deal with the consequences of her trauma.

After dealing with this argument a number of times, a clear and direct response finally formed in my head: She does not have the right to kill the rapist if that would help to deal with the consequences. Why would she have the right to kill her baby instead?

More formally, "I was victimized" is just not a good premise for the conclusion "I can victimize someone else now." If the fetus is a human being with rights, then someone else being a rape victim does not make an exception to those rights.

Anyway, can trauma be erased like that? Is that how life works? Of course, trauma can be redeemed by bringing good out of evil; but that's an insight pointing in a pro-life direction.

Plain Old Science Denial

These are weird. I see arguments like this:

The fetus is not a human being. Therefore, it doesn't have rights.

Or:

There is debate about whether the fetus is a human being. Therefore, it is unclear as to whether it has any rights.

As I explain to my students, a human fetus is unambiguously a human being, from the moment of conception. It is a human organism. There is no proper debate on this; there is only ignorance.

What there is debate on is whether all human beings have rights, or whether all human beings are persons. I suspect most students want to play it easy and not take on that debate. But I wish they would. I'd prefer a straight disagreement to all this sneaky sophistry.

The Speculative Utilitarian Argument: Botching Utilitarianism

Students sometimes write up an argument along these lines:

Utilitarianism means we shouldn’t decide based on absolute moral rules and instead think about the pain that might be experienced by a pregnant woman who is poor, or a rape victim, etc. Therefore, we cannot say unequivocally that abortion is wrong, etc., etc.

This argument is a remarkable failure to think like a utilitarian. Utilitarianism, by definition, must consider long-term consequences, and it cannot leave out of its consideration all the happiness experienced in an entire lifetime by the life that abortion cancels.

The only thing we know for sure about abortion is that--whatever suffering the baby or his mother might possibly experience otherwise--it cancels out all the future happiness of that one human life.

The Speculative Utilitarian Argument: Ridiculously Selective Speculation

There's another problem with that last argument. The argument depends on sheer selective speculation–“Here is a person who might suffer in some way; therefore, let’s do whatever it takes to prevent that suffering.”

What about other speculations? What about the healing that might come from a good (specifically a baby) coming out of suffering (as a rape victim)? Or the suffering a woman might experience from feeling guilty for killing her baby? What about the people who suffer because the baby didn't grow up to invent a better treatment for cancer? If we're building arguments on speculative stories about how sad or happy people might be, then pro-life arguments are at least as strong as pro-choice arguments.

A Textbook False Dilemma Fallacy

I've seen variations of the argument below several times. Hopefully the screenshotted student comment and my response will speak for themselves.