I'm afraid I don't have a very interesting answer to the question of why I'm pro-choice, but suffice it to say that since fetuses lack the cognitive functions that are constitutive of moral personhood, it's not wrong to kill them. One can introduce some additional complications into the equation but it's basically that simple. That legal abortion encourages premarital sex is feature, not a bug.
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Blog for Choice Day
22 Jan 2007 04:00 pm
Comments (114)
way to nail it, matt.
Peter Singer draws that line pretty nicely in Practical Ethics, Petey. Not too far off the "fifth or sixth trimester" either.
I basically agree. Although, as with any moral reasoning, I think this is pretty ad hoc, here's my take on it:
I think you have to go back to first principles, and ask yourself why it is immoral to kill someone. A religious friend of mine has a simple answer: because God says so. For those of us who prefer reasoning, I think the answer is: because you are depriving that person of experiences. Therefore, the longer a person's life expectancy, the more experiences you are depriving them of, and thus the worse it is to kill them.
If that was all that mattered, then it would be worse to kill a fetus than a child. To take it even further back, to ridiculous extremes, you could claim it is immoral to not procreate, or to use birth control, because you are depriving a potential person of experiences. Therefore, I think you have to balance what you are depriving a person of with their level of existing personhood, as Matt suggests. According to the criterion of mental functioning, a person aquires more "personhood" with age, with that function leveling off somewhere around age 20, and then gradually declining in old age.
Multiplying these two functions, ie, the years remaining function with the level of personhood function, yields a maximum somewhere in the childhood years. This is consistent with our sense that it is morally worse to kill children than adults.
So where does that leave people in comas, exactly?
This glib "cognitive function" stuff may work for philosophy majors (tho not all of 'em, me being one), but when I saw my baby's first ultrasounds, his cognitive function vel non didn't make a helluva lotta difference to me.
As you might infer, I am less interested than I used to be on the opinions of young, single, childless people on abortion. I might as well listen to 8-year-olds who think kissing is "icky" for my opinions on sexual intercourse.
I hope you'll reconsider. Abortion is not a question of allowing or disallowing. It's recognition that what defines "human" isn't cut-and-dried, that we should have as broad a definition as we can. And not just for others: nobody is broadly human all the time.
Even within your own definition, the potential for cognitive activity should count for something or else we could all be killed in our sleep or when we're intoxicated or under general anesthesia.
While I don't agree with your position, most of your explanation here seems perfectly defensible. That is, until you tack on your last line: "That legal abortion encourages premarital sex is feature, not a bug."
That is plainly not self-evident, so please do us a favor of unpacking that gem at some point? Thanks.
Re: "...So where does that leave people in comas, exactly?"
Well, they're not people anymore because they lack mental functioning, so... Hey, we can save a lot of money that way!
Actually, this point came up on another blog a few months ago. I think the idea is, for someone who is in a coma, or in deep sleep, they retain their personhood as long as they still have the capacity for mental functioning when they wake up.
"As you might infer, I am less interested than I used to be on the opinions of young, single, childless people on abortion."
Well, presumably some young, single, childless people have actually had abortions, so would their opinions be worth listening to? I'd imagine a good chunk of them would have reasoning substantially similar to Matt's. There just aren't that many arguments on either side.
Man, that is kind of a disturbing rationale. You are saying that its okay to kill 3rd trimester fetus for the same reason that it is to kill a 3 week zygote? Theres no moral difference? There is no scale of degree of badness? You think that fetuses instantly become people at birth, rather than through a more complicated, gradual process? I'm pro-choice, but it really disturbs me when people are so glib about what I think should--while not be illegal--always be a sad decision. People just don't think on either side--nobody sees any nuance.
Legal abortion encourages premarital sex because, like other forms of birth control, it allows you to have sex without the risk of being stuck with a baby 9 months later.
they retain their personhood as long as they still have the capacity for mental functioning when they wake up.
Ahhh, so they have the *potential* for personhood?
FWIW, I'm all for legalized abortion, as being better than the coat-hanger alternative -- people do drugs tho they're illegal, & I see no reason to imagine abortion would be different. I'm just sad that we have a society where women feel unable to have the babies they conceive, and have good reasons for that feeling.
Well, presumably some young, single, childless people have actually had abortions, so would their opinions be worth listening to?
So much for my string of adjectives. Yes, they are (see my last comment). And the Y/S/C people I mentioned aren't "not worth listening to" ... I'm just starting to feel like the whole pro-choice position is set up to cater to their priorities. See MY on premarital sex, above.
I just think a woman's autonomy is more important than the life of a non-viable fetus.
Anderson: Can you articulate this ultrasound-conferred philosophical insight, or is this the part of "failth" that is forever closed off to non-believers? Sorry, non-parents!
Petey - I hope you meant fifth or sixth "month" abortions, not trimester. That would presumably be the killing of a 9-year old baby. I'm not sure of the cognitive functioning of a 9-year old baby, but I'm opposed to killing them.
That said, I agree with you that abortion in the third trimester and especially the partial-birth variety are on shaky moral ground at best. If you have to draw a line, that seems like a logical place.
Anderson: Can you articulate this ultrasound-conferred philosophical insight, or is this the part of "failth" that is forever closed off to non-believers? Sorry, non-parents!
Try "moral insight." And if you're the kind of person who sees a puppy being tortured, say, but needs to read a treatise on the subject before you have an opinion, then just say so.
I just think a woman's autonomy is more important than the life of a non-viable fetus.
Define "non-viable." Because the default presumption here is that the fetus is viable, until you abort it. Or are you limiting your argument to fetuses with fatal abnormalities?
This adolescent emphasis on "autonomy uber alles" is just the kind of thing I'm talking about.
Abortion is not in the Constitution, therefore it is a 'right' that each state must decide (10th Amendment). A federal abortion law (Roe v. Wade) is unconstitutional because the Constitution is silent on said issue. However, the the gov't rountinely violates our Constitutional rights.
They violate the 1st Amendment by caging demonstrators and banning books like "America Deceived" from Amazon.
They violate the 2nd Amendment by confiscating guns during Katrina.
They violate the 4th Amendment by conducting warrant-less wiretaps.
They violate the 5th and 6th Amendment by suspending habeas corpus.
They violate the 8th Amendment by torturing.
They violate the entire Constitution by starting 2 illegal wars based on lies and on behalf of a foriegn gov't.
Abortion is a state issue, not federal. If they violate one Amendment of the Constitution then they will violate them all.
Last link (unless Google Books caves to the gov't and drops the title):
America Deceived (book)
I'm pro-choice too, but I have to ask:
What are the "cognitive functions that are constitutive of moral personhood"? And when do they begin? Is there a line where it becomes wrong to kill them?
Just to say "It's not a person, so it's OK to kill it," is, to quote John Cusack from High Fidelity, some cold-ass shit.
You are saying that its okay to kill 3rd trimester fetus for the same reason that it is to kill a 3 week zygote
Well, some folks think it's just as morally wrong to kill the three-week zygote as well as the third trimester fetus, however they don't necessarily think removing the option of legal abortion is the best way to prove their moral rationale. I for one disagree, philosophically, with Matt regarding the 'moral personhood' of a zygote, but I don't think that automatically shifts me over into the overturn Roe v. Wade crowd.
Since I have this moral issue with abortion, the real question to me is how can I make abortion irrelevent. It's quite obvious through the course of history that simply banning something doesn't always do that. As a result, the more logical, albeit more difficult one, would be to work to change society by helping to provide the appropriate support structure for those women considering abortion. Is there a good health care system to assist them? Are there ample anti-poverty programs in place to help low-income women? Is there a good philosophical discussion going on regarding this? And not one limited to 'pass this law' or 'overturn that case?'
Of course, societal change is incredibly difficult and requires a considerable amount of work so pro-life folks on the right often fall back on the standby, which is 'let's get this sucker banned' without realizing that 1) abortions will still happen and 2) the additional children who enter the world often do so without an adequate support structure in place (both familial and political).
Pro-life folks in the center-to-left area like me (as of late) have been trying to think outside of the box and work on real, practical solutions to the matter ... not just hot button issues which only serve a political purpose for one side or another.
Anderson - Are you really suggesting that there is no legitimate debate between pro-life and pro-choice positions? Or just that the Y/S/C crowd can not be pro-choice without alterior motives? Do you honestly believe that the pro-choice movement is just a front for the young and promiscuous? And if that's the case, where do you guys hold the meetings of that club? Mmmmm...young and promiscuous - my favorite two qualities in a woman.
Just to say "It's not a person, so it's OK to kill it," is, to quote John Cusack from High Fidelity, some cold-ass shit.
Indeed.
Badguy kidnaps pregnant mom & induces an abortion. Should he be any more liable than if he'd killed her dog? Why or why not? Has any offense been committed against the fetus, or just the mom? Same questions.
One of the best arguments *for* legal abortion is "this is a very difficult issue." Glib undergrad stuff about "cognitive functions" does not exactly support that argument.
Are you really suggesting that there is no legitimate debate between pro-life and pro-choice positions?
I said that where, exactly?
Or just that the Y/S/C crowd can not be pro-choice without ulterior motives? Do you honestly believe that the pro-choice movement is just a front for the young and promiscuous?
Well, as MY's post demonstrates, ulterior motives are not off the table. But I don't really mean to focus on those. I just think that having kids may be a relevant life experience to evaluating the abortion issue.
It is also possible that, even though they can drive and vote and fuck, people in their 20s are not automatically as authoritative on moral issues as people in their 40s, say. I have no position either way on that, but it's not a blatant non-issue. (Unless we're going to make "cognitive functions" the test here, too. Why not throw in the long-jump, while we're at it?)
Aristotle thought the young were not good subjects for the study of ethical philosophy. Just a kooky Dead White Guy? Maybe.
The fact that you have the right to abort your fetus does not necessarily imply that every random person has a right to abort it for you.
By "non-viable" at T I mean it wouldn't live (even with incubators and all the rest) if delivered (naturally or by C-section) at T. So no, my position is not limited to abnormal fetuses. And yes, I think a woman's autonomy is more important. But uber alles? My, my. Where did my Naziness betray itself, Anderson?
Anderson - So, what's your position exactly? You seem to be saying that you're pro-choice, maybe with some restrictions, but that MY and the rest of us are not entitled to agree with you because we're young, single and childless.
Or, are you just saying that MY's post, like so many algebra problems, got to the right answer (pro-choice), but only gets half credit because the work was wrong (i.e., "cognitive function" test is not appropriate)?
In theory, i'm in favor of the 'choice' arguments. But the economics of a woman getting an abortion are quiet high:
-Plan B (now over the counter) - somewhere around $30-60 for one set of pills
-Contraceptive pills - $40-80/month (covered by most insurances)
-Condoms - either $3-10/box depending on style, or multiple free brands at bars/convenience stores/Planned Parenthood/medical clinics/schools
-Abortion - $500 in the first trimester, and increasing each week thereafter up to $1500. (there are NO free abortions, except home-procedures, even through Planned Parenthood)
Coupled with the economics are the logistic hurdles: finding a doctor, getting to a clinic, and hiding it from family members.
(not to mention the emotional trauma)
So while some in the pro-choice movement are fighting this ideologic argument, the reality has moved far past the existential question. Easier and cheaper access to Plan B, simple & reversible sterilization procedures, condoms, and male contraception pills are a few of the new horizons making the question moot for people actually in such situations.
Anderson,
There are plenty of not-young, married-with-children people who are pro-choice and prominently so. Are you as dismissive of their perspectives on this question as you are of the Y/S/Cs? If so, on what grounds?
Because they lack "cognitive functions that are constitutive of moral personhood, it's not wrong to kill them".
Those cognitive functions being... what exactly? rationality? self-consciousness? self-awareness?
Are those possessed by 1, 2, 6, 12, 18th month olds? Is it ok to kill them?
Dogs don't have acute senses of rationality or self-consciousness, is it a morally nuetral act to kill them?
SqueakyRat,
Do you really want to commit yourself to a definition of viability that is subject to change as technology improves?
Anderson - So, what's your position exactly? You seem to be saying that you're pro-choice, maybe with some restrictions
Few restrictions -- I think most people are unhappy w/ 3d-trimester abortions, and I have mixed
but that MY and the rest of us are not entitled to agree with you because we're young, single and childless.
Nope. I made the personal observation that I've had my opinion affected by having a baby, and that I am thus more skeptical than I used to be of the arguments of those who haven't had babies (or gotten pregnant, per the correction from Doug T above).
There are profound arguments favoring abortion in many circumstances, but I am not terribly comfortable with the either/or logic that leads people to dismiss a ten-week-old fetus as utterly non-human waste tissue b/c it doesn't have "cognitive functions." You are, obviously, free to differ.
suffice it to say that since fetuses lack the cognitive functions that are constitutive of moral personhood, it's not wrong to kill them
This is how I see it also -- though the fact of a continuum of development, in the fetus, of the biological structures that support those functions also has to be taken into account. In other words, the morality gets dodgier as the fetus gets more developed.
But what is really striking to me about it is that I (a male) have had conversations about this with very passionate and intelligent feminists in which it was made clear to me that
(a) any discussion at all of the moral status of the fetus is a harmful distraction from the real issue of women's autonomy over their own bodies;
(b) because I am a man, my opinions about abortion are essentially worthless.
I actually see the point behind both of those, but re (a) I spent quite a bit of time unsuccessfully trying to make the point that autonomy over one's own body is limited by the duty not to cause certain kinds of harm to other persons, and so the question whether the fetus is a person or not is one that has to be considered and answered, not just swept aside as irrelevant;
and that (b) women don't have any particularly advantaged viewpoint when it comes to this general discussion of what makes a being a person (in the relevant moral sense).
Hm, after "mixed" above I was going to have something about minors' seeking abortions w/out notice to their parents, but I think the usual regime (judicial alternative to parental notice where minor can argue danger exists) is actually as good as we can expect on that.
Are those possessed by 1, 2, 6, 12, 18th month olds? Is it ok to kill them?
Dogs don't have acute senses of rationality or self-consciousness, is it a morally neutral act to kill them?
This goes the other way too. Is it OK to kill a cow? A chicken? A shrimp? A venus fly trap? A carrot?
Unless you're a pretty strict vegan, you're complicit in killing things with substantially higher levels of intellectual function than a 2-month-old fetus.
Basically we make arbitrary categories of "kill this, don't kill that" all the time. The only real rule we use is intuition. And there's a debate about abortion because people have different intuitions about fetuses. Unlike, say, carrots, about which we all have the same "OK to kill that" intuition.
I have a pro-choice intuition about fetuses, but lots of other people have pro-life intuitions, and I respect that difference. But let's call it what it is.
Andrew Edwards - That's a reasonable position. I think part of the problem is that many people with pro-life intuitions do not respect the difference. They believe you should be forced to live by their moral code.
Ultimately that's why Anderson's position (the personal experience angle) is justified. The person that has to live with the decision should be the one that makes the decision. Plenty of people are pro-choice but would never have an abortion themselves.
The issue of abortion and related topics (such as stem cell research) really comes about because of the unacknowledged religious beliefs. This is not so much a matter of the "sanctity of life" as the belief that there is an immortal soul which gets infused into a blastocyte as some unspecified moment.
Without the belief in a soul the moral issues become much easier to parse. The fact that religions are inconsistent about life only furthers the complications. What does justifiable war mean in this context?
The person that has to live with the decision should be the one that makes the decision. Plenty of people are pro-choice but would never have an abortion themselves.
True. And I think that if the "pro-life" politicos were really pro-life, and not just pro-patriarchy, they would be going wild with public measures to promote motherhood: free child care, subsidies, & maybe most important, de-stigmatization & positive valuation of *any* woman who decides to carry her child to term &/or raise it herself.
But of course it's not like that, & until it is, I refuse even to consider outlawing abortion.
If all judgments about where valuable life begins are "intuitions," how is the pro-life movement not "respecting difference" by seeking to codify its intuitions into law? After all, somebody's judgment has to hold sway. Presumably individuals who favor a parental right of infanticide up to 6 months after birth feel put upon because their intuitions are not respected by law.
Matt, please don't embarrass yourself like this unless you'd like to explain why it's alright to kill the severely retarded, people in comas, etc. and thus reveal yourself as a monster.
Also the idea that one can't be pro-life without harboring some belief in the soul is complete bullshit. One can say that an embryo is human life (what else is it?), that taking human life except in self-defense is wrong (hardly a controversial stance), and that therefore killing embryos is wrong. I oppose abortion in all cases except those where the mother would die without it for these reasons, the same reasons I oppose capital punishment and unnecessary wars, and the same reason I want massive funding for sex education and birth control.
Guy, killing the severely retarded *diminishes* the number of potential sex partners for the rest of us, which is why MY is against it ... [/snark]
I would be happier if people who think abortion is OK would just come out in favor of killing other inconvenient humans, like the severely retarded, or unwanted six month olds. After all, pro-abortion arguments come down to utilitarian claims—that it would be inconvenient for those not allowed to have abortions, that they would have them even if they were illegal, etc. Spread the logic far and wide. Live up to the rhetoric!
Personally, I don't think that the government should be legislating restrictions on the choices of individual people. Third trimester abortions aside, I think that if a woman chooses to have an abortion she should be able to have one. It's her choice and she'll live with that decision.
Same with people in comas or vegetative states. If the legally declared guardian of said comatose/vegetative individual decides, with the consultation of an unbiased medical professional, that it is in that person's, and the person's loved ones, best interests or wishes to no longer live then they should be able to choose that course of action.
On the topic of premarital sex: who cares. Is there something wrong with this? Is sex bad? Explain to me how. Do people get hurt emotionally and physically? Of course. They do playing sports too.
For those who wish to judge those who are "young" and "childless" you might consider that we may have had to deal with friends our age who have made this decision. I have known young women who decided to have a child and young women who have had abortions. I have also known women who have had miscarriages. It's never an easy decision, but it should be allowed to be that, a legal and difficult decision.
Personally, I don't think that the government should be legislating restrictions on the choices of individual people.
What *else* is there to legislate on? The value of pi?
I am glad the government legislates restrictions on a whole range of offensive behaviors. Killing and stealing from other people, for instance, are wrong. I'm glad you're not allowed to do these things, even though I have wanted to kill and steal from other people and found it inconvenient that I was not allowed to do so.
Anthony Edwards said:
"This goes the other way too. Is it OK to kill a cow? A chicken? A shrimp? A venus fly trap? A carrot?"
Actually it doesn't go the other way. Suggesting that rationality or self-awareness is not the reason why it is wrong to kill something does not imply that it one believes it is wrong to kill a carrot, or even that one should be bothered by such juvenile pettifoggering.
If I were to say that 'it is wrong to end life', then yes, your point would have a shred of merit. Since myself, nor anyone else suggested that, I think you are being a little loose with your inferences.
Regarding intuition, our intuitions accord remarkably well with a theory which holds that conscious activity is intrinsically valuable, and that there is a positive correlation between value and cognitive complexity. This is why most people think it is nearly morally meaningless to kill small insects, but not whole species (they have SOME value); why most people think its to some degree wrong to torture and kill pigs, cows and horses, and why it is really wrong to kill a walking, talking human.
RickM, I think that the intuition you identify comes down to "like us" or "not like us." The case of a human fetus falls arguably on either side of that dichotomous continuum (quick google, okay, that's not as hideous as it sounds) in a way that is, morally, quite confusing. Which makes easy analogies not very persuasive.
"SqueakyRat,
Do you really want to commit yourself to a definition of viability that is subject to change as technology improves?"
Yes.
Anderson-
Well certainly, 'us' (or, 'I' says the pendant), can be the ONLY reference point for any serious morality. Best start with what we know best.
The case of a human fetus falls arguably on either side of that dichotomous continuum (quick google, okay, that's not as hideous as it sounds) in a way that is, morally, quite confusing.
Genetically, an embryo is human. In its need for support from an outside agent and in its lack of self-awareness, it's no different than many adult humans. I therefore don't find the issue at all confusing, and in fact I think one could find it confusing only if one were starting from a position of supporting abortion and wishing to find reasons why one should do so.
As it happens I find most pro-lifers repellent (what could be worse than thinking people ought not to have abortions and then not supporting birth control?) and agree with most pro-choicers about the vast majority of political and cultural issues; these are not adequate premises on which to support what is clearly the killing of humans, though.
Any pro-choice argument is more coherent than the typical Repubican's anti-choice stance when the latter position is thought by him to be consistent with the desirability of, for example, the killing of tens of thousands of Iraqis in a war based on blatant falsehoods.
This is probably true. If Sam Brownback wanted to outlaw capital punishment, renounce nukes, withdraw from Iraq, negotiate with hostile nations, and subsidize child care and birth control, I'd take his claims of being pro-life seriously. Oddly, pro-choice people would probably even find him far more respectable and less demagogic...
People in there 40's are less likely than people in their 20's to tolerate interracial dating / marriage, believe in evolution and the big bang, accept gay marriage as a civil right and a whole host of other common sense ideas. We're supposed to look to your generation for guidance on these? The truth of the matter is that anyone who is 1) over the age of 26 or so and 2) not a nun while 3) a virgin is pretty creepy in general. This includes many priests.
ersonally, I don't think that the government should be legislating restrictions on the choices of individual people.
What *else* is there to legislate on? The value of pi?
Posted by: Anderson on January 22, 2007 06:15 PM
Actions of individual people that don't affect others - namely, victimless crimes - under theories of liberalism, limited government and libertarianism are not subject to government intervention because doing so treads on people's freedoms. Providing the minimum safeguards to protect such freedoms (criminalizing rape, etc., maintaining a military), protecting the commons (regulating dumping of industrial waste), and ensuring basic standards of fairness and a functioning economy (social security, legal backing of contracts) and the like are the domain of governance. When you go beyond this, you enter into authitarianism of sorts, either soft (Japan), medium (Singapore), hard or totalitarian, depending on the degree.
"Aristotle thought the young were not good subjects for the study of ethical philosophy. Just a kooky Dead White Guy? Maybe."
Well, his reasoning led him to believe women had fewer teeth then men and that the Earth was the center of the universe.
Love the line about premarital sex. I mean, seriously, who wants to discourage that? Okay, some people do. But what's wrong with them?
I think part of the problem is that many people with pro-life intuitions do not respect the difference. They believe you should be forced to live by their moral code.
Well, yes, quite so. It's called "obeying one's conscience." Thing is, if your intuition tells you that the abortionist is killing somebody, you can't just sit back and do nothing. There are lots of things we can just sit out, of course. But killing ain't one of them.
If Sam Brownback wanted to outlaw capital punishment, renounce nukes, withdraw from Iraq, negotiate with hostile nations, and subsidize child care and birth control, I'd take his claims of being pro-life seriously.
Brownback I think wouldn't have a problem with much of the above. The bastard even wants to help the suspicious looking brown folks who sneak in across the southern frontier to clean our toilets and cut our grass.
Geez, I hope no anti-abortion people are reading this blog. I can imagine the tagline on National Review:
Leading liberal blogger says it's ok to kill fetuses in order to promote premarital sex!
Which, if I read this post correctly, is pretty much what Matt said.
The pro-choice movement has absolutely zero chance of convincing the nation to support this kind of position, even if we all believed it ourselves, which is obviously not the case. This is the kind of cavalier attitude that allows the anti-abortion people to keep claiming they "support a culture of life."
Anthony Edwards said:
Actually, that's the guy on ER. My name is Andrew. Don't worry, happens all the time.
Actually it doesn't go the other way. Suggesting that rationality or self-awareness is not the reason why it is wrong to kill something does not imply that it one believes it is wrong to kill a carrot, or even that one should be bothered by such juvenile pettifoggering.
I read this a few times and I think I understand what it means.
All I'm saying is that the "zipper" logic that:
"if you think it's OK to kill a fetus, you must think it's OK to kill a disabled human with the same abilities"
...can run both ways. I.e. it's exactly equally valid to say:
"if you don't think it's OK to kill a fetus because of its intellectual ability/capacity to feel pain/whatever, then you must think it's also wrong to kill a cow with the same abilities."
I'm not saying that my super-clever insight is some awesome bulletproof takedown of the pro-life position. I'm just saying that neither position is especially solid - they're both just ex-post justifications of a more fundamental intuitive (not analytic) construct of "we should kill these things but not those things."
So as someone broadly pro-choice, I don't regard "but what about disabled adults?" as an especially mind-changing line of reasoning. Any more that you should regard "but what about carrots?" as a mind-changing line of reasoning.
Hopefully that makes sense.
It doesn't make sense. The proper position isn't that a fetus shouldn't be killed because it feels pain, it's that a fetus shouldn't be killed because it is human and it's wrong to kill humans.
Ya, exactly. There is varying intuition about whether fetuses are or are not meaningfully human. There is almost no variance in views about the human-ness of cows on one side (no) or disabled adults on the other (yes). So quit it with the "what about disabled humans" thing, is all.
I'm afraid I don't have a very interesting answer to the question of why I'm pro-choice
MY underrated himself, evidently.
Well, no, there is no varying position on whether fetuses are human. They are genetically human. The varying positions involve whether or not people are willing to admit to the implications of the fact that fetuses are human, among them that they shouldn't be killed.
The "what about disabled people" line of reasoning is valid because the only possible way to argue that fetuses aren't human is to argue that being human requires some degree of consciousness and self-sufficiency. Any argument that claims that fetuses aren't human because they lack these also implicitly argues that certain kinds of disabled people aren't human and can be killed. That's unpleasant, but that's what it really means to be pro-choice, and that's why it's wrong to be pro-choice. The right to live trumps the right to privacy, just as it trumps my right not to be annoyed, which is why I can't kill annoying bank tellers or Dick Cheney.
Well, no, there is no varying position on whether fetuses are human. They are genetically human.
I think "person," not human, is what Andrew Edwards was going for. And genetic reductivism is not much more helpful than the cognitive variety.
That said, I would think the burden was more on the pro-abortion side to demonstrate why a fetus is *not* entitled to protection. "Getting pregnant really would mess up my life plan" is an argument that some very sympathetic people have made ... but if a fetus is a *baby*, that argument doesn't work so well.
So -- why isn't a fetus a baby? Why is it that women who look at ultrasounds and say "there's my baby!" are mistaken?
Well, I am an atheist and a materialist, so I don't think "personhood" is a reasonable concept in a discussion about whether or not it's alright to kill people. What all people have in common is their biological humanity; start making finer distinctions and it becomes acceptable to kill people for a variety of reasons. I think you have a right to be alive because of your humanity, not because you fit any further criteria.
For this reason, I think it's amusing that pro-choicers, with their talk about consciousness and when a fetus is conscious, are basically religionists in drag, with "consciousness" functioning as a stand-in for "soul."
For this reason, I think it's amusing that pro-choicers, with their talk about consciousness and when a fetus is conscious, are basically religionists in drag, with "consciousness" functioning as a stand-in for "soul."
You have something there, methinks.
What all people have in common is their biological humanity;
What does that mean?
For this reason, I think it's amusing that pro-choicers, with their talk about consciousness and when a fetus is conscious, are basically religionists in drag, with "consciousness" functioning as a stand-in for "soul."
I don't understand this argument. Why would one have to be religious to believe in consciousness or to use it as the measure of moral worth? Why is using "consciousness" for the definition of moral worth any more religious than using DNA?
It might be helpful to keep in mind the common usage of the phrase "it's not a bug, it's a feature." You can google it yourself, or see this citation. It's specifically not a way to phrase something seriously.
responding to guy at 9:37:
At what point does the right of the fetal human supercede the right of the woman carrying it? The pro-choice argument to me is just as much about autonomy and whether or not governments have the right to compel female citizens to carry a pregnancy to term as about whether a fetus is a person.
Secondly, if you believe that the right of the fetal human supercedes the right of the woman carrying it to control her destiny, what does that say about your opinion of women?
Williestyle: These are completely self-explanatory points.
Drjimcooper: I don't think the rights of fetuses supercede those of women; I just don't understand why the rights of women must somehow include the right to kill, a right people have in no other circumstances save those in which they're defending themselves or others. This is not, no matter what you might imply, a misogynist argument, unless the opposite of misogyny is taken to mean that women have the right to kill.
These are completely self-explanatory points.
I think you just called me stupid.
Why is using "consciousness" for the definition of moral worth any more religious than using DNA?
You ducked that.
Ok, zing, maybe self-awareness is codeword for "something like me that I empathize with" and maybe it's not a great criteria, but yours doesn't seem much more substantial.
Consciousness is a rather subjective and amorphous criterion for humanity when compared to DNA. It's soft, rather than hard. Humans are conscious at some point, not conscious at some point; it's all rather airy. One can use the concept of consciousness blossoming forth in the fetus to support more or less any position one wants to. It's religious.
It's also not a very good tool to use in determining whether or not it's alright to kill something. To return to the point, is it alright to kill a severely retarded person, like a 9-year-old with the brain of a 6-month-old? Is it alright to kill a 6-month-old? Neither are conscious in the sense of having moral personhood in any meaningful sense. Any framework in which once can't disavow the killing of infants without being inconsistent is a farce on its face. I understand that the abortion debate is actually just a proxy for one's views on the role of women in society, but it's an important issue, worth debating on its merits and too important to be used as an identity badge.
Ok, so how about the brain dead?
"Legal abortion encourages premarital sex because, like other forms of birth control, it allows you to have sex without the risk of being stuck with a baby 9 months later."
Um, sure, and legal dental drilling encourages eating candy because, like brushing your teeth, it allows you to eat sugar without the risk of losing them to unchecked enamel decay.
Oh, and legally euthanizing kittens at the shelter encourages people to not spay their cats, because like other forms of feline population control, it allows you to let your fertile furball prowl outdoors all night without the risk of being stuck with a litter in 9 months.
Now seriously. Abortion, like tooth extraction, doesn't become even the least bit less undesirable by virtue of being legalized. How could it? Legalization does not necessarily reduce the ordeal of having an abortion one iota. It only makes it possible to get one legally. Legalization is quite obviously not the same as encouragement. Anyone who thinks it is the same probably thinks legalizing suicide will make it more common too.
An example of what would encourage abortion: if you offered a woman $10,000 to have one. Or another: if you passed a law requiring that a woman had to marry a rapist who fathered her child. Unlike legalization, those examples encourage abortion by making it more advantageous to get one.
I think the brain dead should be fed, given water, turned to prevent bedsores, and treated for illnesses and such, at taxpayer expense, in the absence of a living will stipulating otherwise (in which case pulling the plug amounts morally to suicide). They'll eventually naturally die. I find this a far tougher moral problem than abortion, but as in all areas I say you shouldn't kill unless you have to do so.
Being against killing is less popular than one might think, if you try to be consistent about it. I don't think you should be allowed to own a gun unless you're a policeman or soldier, for instance, nor do I think we ought to invade other countries without a good reason to do so. I also think we ought to provide plenty of maternity leave, child care, flexible schedules and other things that encourage motherhood as a sustainable decision rather than a dreary sentence, as well as realistic sex education, birth control and family planning. Many people disagree with these positions, oddly.
Guy,
You say that the woman does not have the right to kill the fetal human inside of her at any point from conception on (is that a correct reading of your position?). If the woman, then, is compelled by the state to carry the fetal human to term and then dies as the result of complications from childbirth, does the woman's family (including husband/boyfriend, living parents, the now born human) have the right to monetary compensation for the loss? If not, why not?
Alright Guy, walk the walk. What is an appropriate punishment for a woman who aborts her fetus in your Pro-Life world?
Holy hell, are there any women involved in this discussion? Nothin' like a roomful of men talking about something they'll never have to personally experience: pregnancy and abortion.
As a woman who's had two abortions, let me give you my take on The Holy Fetus: it ain't a person. It has no brain or consciousness; no personality or conscience. It isn't "innocent" because it has no moral agency, nor any understanding of same.
The fact that it has the potential for all those things is about as meaningful as the fact that a newborn has the potential to be a mass murderer when it grows up. You want to start judging things by their potential, maybe we should do brain scans and chemical analyses of newborns, pick out the ones who look like they could potentially be sociopaths, or paranoid schizophrenics, and institutionalize them right away, eh?
Drjimcooper: No, as I said, I think abortion should be legal in cases where the mother's life is in danger. You can't force someone to die so that someone else can live.
Francis: I don't know, that's a complicated question. On the one hand if you think abortion is murder, it follows that a woman who kills a fetus is a murderer. On the other hand, the practical impact of putting women in jail for abortions would be a horrible bureaucracy that followed women around testing them for pregnancies, women avoiding early prenatal care, etc. So it's a tough, tough problem.
On the other hand, catching people out doing things society deems unacceptable and trying them is often difficult; that it's so doesn't mean society should decide things are acceptable just because they're practically difficult to penalize.
I'd prefer to focus on the large scale changes in the way we treat motherhood socially and economically, in the way we educate children about sex, and in the way we provide medical care. I think that if we truly valued life and made the cessation of unwanted pregnancy a national goal, we could come close enough to doing so for it to be worth the effort.
Unfortunately, you have on the one hand people who compare living people to boils, people on the other hand who don't give a fuck about "life issues" except as a stalking horse for a theocratic agenda, and a wide middle of people who don't care about unwanted children and their mothers any more than they care about the too-abstract Iraqis who die when we turn AC-130 gunships on them in the name of democracy. So I don't see a principled, leftist life agenda becoming anyone's priority soon, and so don't worry too much about what we'd do with women who had abortions in a society I'll never live in.
CaseyL: Exactly why shouldn't I be allowed to kill a severely retarded person, according to your definition of personhood?
I am deeply disapponted in Matt, who looked like a promising young man.
First, he seems to be approving of sex. For shame, Matt, for shame!
Second, your position on personhood is glib, or, in other words, logical. A mature person would conclude that we should treat killing a zygote as murder, and then leave it up to the judgment of an individual. You know, as a property owner, in many state you are allowed to kill an intruder even if no threat is apparent. We can revoke residence permit to a fetus and classify as a malicious trespasser.
What impresses me is a person who urges us to define humanity as broadly as possible. Let us start with Buddhism and Jainism: as the souls transmigrate, any, and I mean, ANY critter is in the posession of an immortal soul which is as good as yours -- with bad luck, it can be you in your next life! Next step is recognizing personhood of trees, but I would stop short of endowing the lesser shrubbery with personhood. Being a size-ist, I would also bestow personhood on mountains -- no more decapitations of mountains, please!
Guy,
Many deaths that occur during childbirth are not easily predicted beforehand. So if the state has the legal authority to compel an otherwise healthy woman to give birth, and due to an unpredicted complication, this woman dies, why doesn't her family have the right to compensation? In this instance I've just described, the state has just been responsible for involuntary manslaughter, so why not recourse?
Re: "For this reason, I think it's amusing that pro-choicers, with their talk about consciousness and when a fetus is conscious, are basically religionists in drag, with "consciousness" functioning as a stand-in for "soul."
We value human (and animal) life to the extent that we believe it has experiences that are worth experiencing. This is a belief that none of us can ever have proof of, due to the subjective nature of conciousness. It seems to me that it is a completely reasonable belief, both intuitively and based on all that we've learned from Psychology and Neuroscience. What's the problem?
On the other hand, there is no evidence for any "soul", unless by "soul" you mean "mind", which is produced (somehow, mysteriously) from the brain.
It doesn't make sense. The proper position isn't that a fetus shouldn't be killed because it feels pain, it's that a fetus shouldn't be killed because it is human and it's wrong to kill humans.
No. It's wrong to kill dolphins, elephants, whales, gorillas, and intelligent extraterrestrials that have cognitive abilities approaching or exceeding those of humans, even if the aliens have no have DNA at all.
Consciousness is a rather subjective and amorphous criterion for humanity when compared to DNA.
That's correct, there's nothing amorphous or subjective about distinguishing Down's Syndrome people from common people. Or white people from black people.
For this reason, I think it's amusing that pro-choicers, with their talk about consciousness and when a fetus is conscious, are basically religionists in drag, with "consciousness" functioning as a stand-in for "soul."
There's no less physical reason to believe in consciousness than there is in objective moral realism--in fact, the Naturalistic Fallacy being what it is, there's a good deal less. Without subjective consciousness, morality becomes nothing more than a device our species uses for our collective, pragmatic benefit, with "thou shalt not kill humans" being no more compelling than "thou shalt not kill fellow tribesman".
Given that position, how do you respond to the inevitable follow-up about the status of people who are severly mentaly retared, either by birth, or following an accident?
I think the amount we value the life of someone who is severely retarded should also be based on what we believe their capacity is for conscious experience. What other basis for valuing life could there be?
That does not mean we should legally codify different a different status of personhood, and thus different rights, for different people. This would be completely impractical. But, obviously, all sentamentality aside, if you have to make a Sophie's choice between a child who is perfectly healthy and one who is severely retarded, you would choose the former.
What CaseyL said.
Given that position, how do you respond to the inevitable follow-up about the status of people who are severly mentaly retared, either by birth, or following an accident?
I'm not sure who's position your asking about, and I'm not sure I really gave a "position", but I'll defend the "personhood == consciousness" position. In the perfectly idealized world, people with no future cognitive function are morally dead, and people with greatly reduced cognitive function have reduced moral rights. OTOH, there's nothing saying that the mapping between cognition and moral significance is linear--I picture more of a logarithmic scale, like the Richter Scale, so that if someone has 150% of my cognitive capacity and someone else has 50% of my capacity, we're all within one unit of moral significance. It's vague and fuzzy, but life is vague and fuzzy.
But we don't live in an idealized world. We are ignorant, prejudiced creatures, and a sliding scale of personhood, even logarithmic, would be too easily misused to justify anything things like segregation, caste systems, eugenics, and genocide. Or even simply killing people when they take a nap.
It is not that principle is wrong, it is that our wisdom and honesty are insufficient to apply it perfectly. Being the flawed creatures that we are, we should tend to err on the side of equality. But this is a principle of prudence, not moral absolutism! In fact, moral absolutism is the enemy--an absolute belief that healthy embryos are "human beings" while teratoma are not would, in the extreme, allow us to re-engineer teratoma to grow Blade Runner-esque "replicants" lacking moral rights but having cognition.
Principles of prudence are good, but they are overridden by other concerns and principles all the time. The incredible simplicity of early embryos, the autonomy of women, the hopelessness of a particularly bad medical prognosis, or the necessities of a "Just War" can override the safeguard that all humans are protected, in the same way that you'll drive above the speed limit in an emergency.
While I'm adamantly pro-choice, I do feel it's important to draw the line somewhere. I'm OK with fifth or sixth trimester abortions, but after that point, I start to feel a bit of moral queasiness.
Posted by Petey | January 22, 2007 4:14 PM