Ethical Question

6 Abortion

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Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

• Identify some of the main barriers to reasoned, respectful debate about abortion and how to overcome those barriers.

• Explain what abortion is and describe some of the most common procedures.

• Explain and analyze the argument against abortion based on the right to life of the fetus.

• Explain and analyze the personhood argument in support of abortion rights.

• Explain and analyze the bodily rights argument in support of abortion rights.

• Distinguish between and apply deontological, utilitarian, and virtue ethics arguments for and against abortion.

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Section 6.1 Introduction: The Abortion Storm

6.1 Introduction: The Abortion Storm In the 1972 Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, seven out of nine justices ruled in favor of a woman named Norma McCorvey (“Jane Roe”), who had filed a lawsuit against the state of Texas (“Wade”) claiming that its law banning abortion was unconstitutional. By ruling in this way, the Supreme Court effectively legalized abortion in all 50 states; prior to that it was banned in all but 4 states except when necessary to save the mother’s life, with a handful of others allowing it in a few other circumstances, such as cases of rape and incest (for more on this case, see Abortion Law in the United States below). With such a radical change in abortion laws coming virtually overnight, the ruling unsurprisingly provoked some strong reactions. Those who felt blindsided by the ruling formed movements and organizations aimed at over- turning it, many of which continue their efforts today; others formed movements and orga- nizations that fought with equal passion and dedication to protect the rights that women had just been given, which they had felt were long overdue. Indeed, some mark this court decision as the beginning of what we have come to call the “religious right” and the “culture wars” in the United States (Schaeffer, 2007).

The fervor, bitterness, and turbulence that marked the aftermath of Roe v. Wade has never really abated, and it continues to be among the most divisive and vitriolic issues in contempo- rary society. Opinion polls show a relatively even split between supporters and opponents of abortion rights that has remained remarkably consistent over the past 40 years (“Abortion,” n.d.b), and it can often appear that this is an issue on which no rational resolution or consen- sus is possible. Hence, many people are tempted to either dig in their heels and adamantly assert the righteousness of their own views (often while vilifying those who hold different views) or simply try to avoid the topic altogether.

Nevertheless, there is a long history of philosophical analysis of the issues surrounding abor- tion that predates Roe v. Wade, and while there is no guarantee that careful reflection on these

philosophical arguments can resolve the debate or overcome the divides, it arguably holds greater potential than the dominant modes of rhetoric, vilification, or mere avoidance.

Barriers to the Debate Before we consider those arguments, how- ever, we should recognize and resist some common barriers to reasoned, respectful discourse on abortion.

Barrier 1: Reducing the Debate to Religious Commitment It’s common to assume that whether one supports or opposes abortion rights is a matter of one’s religious commitment, and

The Abortion Debate and Super Bowl Ads?

The abortion debate entered unexpected territory during the 2016 Super Bowl when NARAL Pro-Choice America, the most prominent defender of abortion rights, objected to a Doritos advertisement. The ad featured a woman receiving an ultrasound while her husband ate Doritos, and the fetus is shown trying to grab the chips. (See the ad here: https://youtu.be/ vH2LsFcWOFY). NARAL’s official Twitter account objected that the ad was “using antichoice tactic of humanizing fetuses.” Is this a valid criticism or an instance of the abortion debate being taken too far?

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especially that opposition to abortion is essentially a religious position. Supporters of abortion rights make this assumption when they dismiss those in the opposition as merely attempting to impose their religious views on the rest of society. Opponents of abortion rights make this assumption when the only reasons they offer for their position appeal to faith-based prin- ciples and commitments. Yet those who make assumptions like these overlook two important facts. First, there are many people who identify as religious but nevertheless believe not only that abortion should be legal but that it is morally justified, at least in certain cases. There is also a smaller but significant number of people who do not identify as religious but never- theless believe abortion is (at least sometimes) immoral and should be (at least sometimes) restricted or banned (Kruszelnicki, 2014). This shows that people’s positions on this issue do not merely reduce to religious commitment.

Second, and more importantly, the arguments that have constituted the philosophical debates almost never appeal to religious assumptions at all. Thus, those on either side of this issue who reduce the antiabortion position to the imposition of religious beliefs must ignore these nonreligious arguments or demonstrate that they are not religiously neutral after all, despite appearing to be. The existence of vigorous philosophical debate that does not refer to reli- gious assumptions suggests that this latter conclusion is unwarranted and thus that reducing the debate to religious commitment serves only to hinder reasoned dialogue and increase division and animosity unnecessarily and should be avoided.

Barrier 2: The Terms of the Debate Another common feature of the debate that can hinder civil, rational discourse is the terms that are often used to represent different sides. We commonly label those who oppose abor- tion rights as “pro-life,” while those who support such rights are “pro-choice.” We can see how problematic these terms are when we consider what they imply about someone who holds a different view. If an opponent of abortion rights is “pro-life,” that implies that a sup- porter is “anti-life.” Similarly, if someone who supports abortion rights is “pro-choice,” then by implication someone who opposes them is “anti-choice.” Both of these opposite terms are highly misleading and, indeed, demeaning. To insinuate that someone who supports a wom- an’s right to make her own reproductive choices doesn’t value life or to suppose that someone who believes in the protection of the unborn wants to subjugate women by restricting their choices grossly distorts the views and casts the opposition in a disparaging light. This kind of tactic can make individuals on one side believe that they have no need to listen to or respect what the other side has to say.

Barrier 3: Failure to Recognize or Appreciate Common Values and Principles Another relevant feature of these debates that is worth highlighting is the way that each side appeals to a similar set of values and moral principles but does so in the service of opposite conclusions. Both sides rely heavily, for instance, on the notion of “fundamental rights.” One side claims that a woman has a fundamental right to make her own reproductive choices; the other side claims that a fetus has a fundamental right not to be intentionally killed. Likewise, both sides appeal to a responsibility toward those who are vulnerable and at risk. Opposition to abortion rights is often rooted in a sense of responsibility toward the very young, while supporters of abortion rights often appeal to a sense of responsibility toward women who

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may find themselves in desperate circumstances, who are the victims of exploitation or sexual violence, and so on.

Seeking out and acknowledging the principles and values that underlie each side of the debate may not lead to ultimate agreement, but it can help us recognize those with whom we disagree as people of goodwill who share many of the same values and commitments that we hold. This, in turn, can help us discern where the actual disagreements lie, rather than continually talking past one another. Finally, it can help us appreciate that a simple, black- or-white, one-or-the-other kind of position may not be what we should be seeking to defend. The question of whether a woman should have the right to an abortion or whether a fetus has a right to life may only be the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, and there may be many other surrounding issues on which people with different positions on that question can agree. For instance, the abortion rights supporter’s commitment to supporting women who are victim- ized or in need may compel both sides to support organizations and social policies that do just that; the abortion opponent’s commitment to protecting and respecting those who don’t have all of the characteristics of a developed human person may lead people on both sides to a stronger commitment to protecting and respecting persons with disabilities or nonhu- man animals. In short, a lot can be gained by approaching the arguments on both sides with honesty, open-mindedness, and respect, even if that does not lead to agreement on the issue of abortion rights itself.

With that, we now turn to the controversy itself. We will begin by describing what abortion is, the current laws surrounding the issue, and some relevant statistics and then proceed to examine arguments for and against abortion.

What Is Abortion? Before we define abortion, we should familiarize ourselves with some of the biological background. Conception or fertilization occurs when a sperm cell joins with an egg to form a zygote or concep- tus, which has half of its genetic material provided by the mother and half provided by the father. Con- ception usually occurs in the fallopian tubes, after which the zygote travels to the uterus (womb) and develops into a blastocyst. When the blastocyst embeds itself in the wall of the uterus, it is known as an embryo; during the embryonic stage, it begins to develop organs and recognizable human features. From 8 weeks until birth, it is known as a fetus, and 8 weeks is also the point at which we can usually start detecting brain activity. For simplicity’s sake, we will use the term fetus to refer to all stages of

development from conception to birth. Finally, pregnancies are customarily divided into three 13-week periods called trimesters.

video-doctor/iStock/Thinkstock Fertilization occurs when a sperm cell joins an egg cell and forms a zygote.

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We will be using the term abortion to refer to the intentional termination of a pregnancy. It’s important to note the word intentional in this definition. Sometimes miscarriages are called spontaneous abortions, and they are obviously not intentional. Moreover, sometimes certain medical procedures, such as the removal of a cancerous uterus, will unavoidably result in the death of a fetus, but virtually no one believes that this kind of procedure is necessarily wrong. Even those who oppose abortion in all cases maintain that such procedures can be justified, since the intention is to treat the cancer, not to terminate the pregnancy; the death of the fetus is considered an unfortunate side effect, much like the death of civilians can be an unfortunate but unintended side effect of a military effort to destroy an enemy base. While these kinds of cases can raise their own difficult questions, for the sake of our discussion, we will limit the definition of abortion to cases in which the termination of a pregnancy is a primary intention, since that is what is at issue in almost all of the moral and political debates.

Most commonly, abortions are performed by licensed medical practitioners in hospitals or clinics, though this is not always the case. Abortions might also be performed illegally by those without a medical license, including what are sometimes called “back-alley abortions”; or a woman who is or suspects she may be pregnant may attempt to terminate the pregnancy herself, such as by taking certain herbs or supplements or causing trauma to her abdomen. These methods are highly unsafe and can lead to severe injury or death to the woman. By contrast, injury or death as a result of a legal abortion is rare, occurring in fewer than 1% of cases; in fact, the risk of a woman dying in childbirth is 10 times higher than the risk of dying from a legal abortion.

When performed or assisted by a licensed medical practitioner, the most common meth- ods are medical or drug induced and surgical. The most common medical or drug-induced abortion procedures involve ingesting certain drugs (like mifepristone, otherwise known as RU-486) that cause the death of the fetus by preventing implantation, after which the dead fetus passes through the woman’s vagina naturally or induced by another drug—although sometimes the medical practitioner must manually remove it. Medical abortions are only effective in the first 7 to 9 weeks of pregnancy. Surgical abortion procedures involve the insertion of certain tools into the woman’s uterus to extract the fetus. In first-trimester preg- nancies, a suction device is inserted to remove the fetus in a process called aspiration, and any remaining parts are then scraped out. In later pregnancies (second trimester and beyond), the most common procedure is called dilation and evacuation (D&E), in which the cervix is dilated and the fetus is removed with suction devices. Depending on the size of the fetus, this may also involve other instruments needed to first remove body parts like arms and legs or to crush the skull. D&E is used in about 10% of abortion procedures; the other 90% are either drug-induced or use aspiration (Jatlaoui et al., 2016).

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Abortions are often divided into two types, depending on the reason a woman may seek to obtain one: therapeutic and elective. Therapeutic abortion is performed to pre- serve the life or health of the mother. Elec- tive abortion is performed when it is not necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother. This division is difficult to dis- tinguish precisely, since the meaning of “health” is ambiguous. Some may argue that the notion of “health” should be restricted to a limited range of bodily conditions, while others may argue that it should encompass a broader range of psychological conditions and personal circumstances. To adequately address the ethical issues surrounding con- troversial topics like abortion, it is impor- tant to be informed on the relevant statis- tics such as frequency, demographics, and the reasons women obtain abortions, in

order to have an accurate picture of the social reality and avoid misleading information that can lead to prejudice and distortions. The infographics in this section contain statistics on abortion to help form that accurate picture.

Abortion Law in the United States As we noted previously, prior to Roe v. Wade, only four states permitted elective abortion on request. Thirteen other states banned it with exceptions for cases like rape or incest, and the remaining states permitted it only to preserve the life of the mother. However, Roe v. Wade held that states may not restrict a woman’s choice to obtain an abortion at all during the first trimester. This was based largely on the notion of a right to privacy, which the court inter- preted to include the right of a woman to make her own choices about whether and when to have a child. This right to privacy, the court ruled, “is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy” (Roe v. Wade, 1973, p. 153).

However, the court did acknowledge restrictions and limitations on this right. According to this ruling, states may place restrictions on abortion during the second trimester if those restrictions can be shown to directly protect the pregnant woman’s health and safety. More- over, states are permitted to ban the procedure altogether during the third trimester except when the pregnancy threatens the life or health of the mother. This latter clause allowed that states may have a compelling reason to protect a fetus that is viable, that is, capable of sur- viving outside the mother’s womb. In other words, restrictions on abortion during the sec- ond trimester can only be legally justified in terms of protecting the mother, but once a fetus reaches viability, restrictions may be legally justified in terms of protecting the fetus, a dis- tinction that indicated a very important stand that the court took regarding the moral status of the developing fetus.

Going Deeper: A Short History of Abortion

Abortion has existed since at least 1550 BCE, and it hasn’t always been the source of controversy that it is now. Recent medical advances, while making abortion safer, have also brought more information about fetal development to light, stimulating a greater debate surrounding this procedure. In attempting to understand and take part in the modern abortion debate, it is helpful to understand the status of abortion throughout history. See Going Deeper: A Short History of Abortion at the end of the chapter for more.

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A later court ruling, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992), did away with the trimester distinctions when determining when a state may legally restrict or prohibit abortions in favor of the viability threshold itself, given the fact that advances in medicine may affect the stage at which a fetus can survive outside the uterus. In other words, this ruling agreed with Roe v. Wade that abortion can be restricted to protect a fetus that is viable but acknowledged that viability may occur earlier than the third trimester. But it also upheld Roe v. Wade’s general affirmation of a woman’s right to privacy when it comes to mat- ters like reproduction and family. In a famous passage, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the uni- verse, and of the mystery of human life” (Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 1992, p. 851).

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As we also noted before, many people disagreed with the court’s decision that the right to privacy (which is not explicitly stated in the Constitution, though it is supported by several amendments) extends to the right of a woman to obtain an abortion. As a result, there have been numerous attempts by states to pass laws that restrict a woman’s right to an abortion and/or protect the life of the fetus that align with federal law. Many of them have been rejected by the Supreme Court, but some have been upheld (“Abortion,” n.d.a).

In short, given these rulings, a state may not ban abortions completely, but it can ban it after a certain period of gestation (viability), and prior to that, it can place various restrictions on abortion, such as the following:

• Requiring mandatory waiting periods between requesting an abortion and obtaining it

• Requiring abortions to be performed in a hospital or within a certain distance from a hospital

• Requiring that women seeking an abortion obtain certain forms of counseling or view an ultrasound of the fetus

• Allowing health care providers and institutions to refuse to perform the procedure • Requiring minors to obtain parental consent or to have their parents notified • Restricting the use of public funds to pay for abortions

6.2 The Ethical Arguments Laws do not settle ethical questions. When it comes to abortion, many people believe that state and federal laws are too restrictive, while others believe that the laws are too lenient, so it would be a mistake to attempt to settle the ethical questions simply by looking at what the laws say. Instead, we have to back away from the laws as they happen to be and consider the ethical questions independently.

There is no single question or issue that is the deciding factor in the debate over abortion. Rather, arguments for and against abortion draw on a number of different considerations. The questions most often in dispute are the following:

• What is the moral standing of the fetus? Is it a member of the community of beings that have rights and toward which we have responsibilities?

• If a fetus has moral standing, when does it acquire this? • Is a right to life the same as a right not to be killed under any circumstance? • How far does a woman’s right to make her own reproductive choices extend? • Does a woman have responsibilities toward beings that are dependent on her for

life? • What responsibilities do societies have to protect the interests of women who are or

may become pregnant? • How do we balance the rights of a woman with the rights of a fetus? • How do we balance the well-being of a woman with the well-being of a fetus? • On which kinds of issues should the government establish laws and regulations?

These are all difficult and complex questions, and we will barely scratch the surface of most of them. As we said above, the difficulty and complexity of the debate is one reason for the

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sharp divisions and intense hostility surrounding these issues as people on both sides accuse the other of an inability or unwillingness to understand the merits of their arguments. But recognizing the complexity can also motivate us to think more deeply and critically and, most importantly, to carefully consider what the voices on each side have to say, a task to which we now turn.

An Argument Against Abortion We will begin by looking at the most prominent argument against abortion. As we will explain later, this is a deontological argument, which means it is rooted in the idea that there are certain acts that are always wrong. In this case the argument against abortion starts with the assumption that killing certain beings is always wrong; that is, we have a duty never to inten- tionally kill them. It then tries to show that fetuses belong in that category of beings. Here is the simplest form of that argument:

1. Intentionally killing a baby is morally wrong and should be illegal. 2. There is no clear and significant moral distinction between a baby and that same

being at an earlier stage of development. 3. Therefore, intentionally killing that same being at an earlier stage of development is

also morally wrong and should be illegal. 4. Abortion intentionally kills that same being at an earlier stage of development. 5. Therefore, abortion is morally wrong and should be illegal.

Let’s break this down. Consider a 6-month-old baby. Almost everyone would agree that inten- tionally killing this baby would be morally wrong. Almost everyone would also agree that if someone killed a 6-month-old baby, it would be a crime that should be prosecuted as murder. But what if the baby was only 5 months old? Would that make a difference? Most people would say no. What about 4 months? Or 3, 2, or 1 month? Or 1 day old? It seems that whatever reasons we would have for regarding the killing of a 6-month-old baby to be wrong would apply equally to a baby that was only 1 day old. But by the same token, according to this argument, whatever reasons we would have for regarding the killing of a 1-day-old baby to be wrong would seem to apply equally to a fetus 1 or 2 days before birth. After all, we never know when a baby might be born. If a baby is born on a certain day, surely it could have been born a few days earlier or a few days later, and it would be absurd to suppose that its moral status—its “right not to be killed”— would depend on such contingent and uncontrolla- ble factors. We are thus left to conclude that if it’s wrong and should be illegal to kill a being 1 or 2 days after birth, it would wrong and should be ille- gal to kill that same being 1 or 2 days before birth.

Photodisc/Thinkstock The most prominent argument against abortion is rooted in deontology and starts with the assumption that killing certain beings (for example, a 6-month old baby) is always wrong.

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The argument continues by proceeding backward in that same line of reasoning. If it’s wrong and should be illegal to kill a being 1 or 2 days before birth, what about 1 week before birth? Or 1 month? Or 6 months? Or 9 months? If we continue to step backward, is there a point at which there is a clear distinction between one kind of being—a being with a right to life that should be legally protected—and some other kind of being (or no being at all)? Opponents of abortion argue that there is one, and only one, such line: the moment of conception.

As Patrick Lee and Robert George (2014) put it, at the moment of conception there comes into being an organism that is

distinct from any cell of the mother or of the father. This is clear because it is growing in its own distinct direction. Its growth is internally directed to its own survival and maturation. Second, the embryo is human: it has the genetic makeup characteristic of human beings. Third, and most importantly, the embryo is a complete or whole organism, though immature. The human embryo, from conception onward, is fully programmed actively to develop himself or herself to the mature stage of a human being, and, unless prevented by disease or violence, will actually do so, despite possibly significant variation in environment (in the mother’s womb). None of the changes that occur to the embryo after fertilization, for as long as he or she survives, generates a new direction of growth. Rather, all of the changes (for example, those involving nutrition and environment) either facilitate or retard the internally directed growth of this persisting individual. (p. 38)

In other words, let’s start with our 6-month-old baby and ask, when did she first come into being? It can’t be at birth, since birth doesn’t produce a new being, just a change in environ- ment (from inside the mother’s womb to outside of it). Likewise, all of the periods prior to birth involve changes to that being, but not a new being where there was none before, until we get to the moment of conception. The sperm and the egg by themselves are not distinct, complete, or whole human beings, but when they are joined together there is a new distinct, complete, and whole human being where before there was none. This, abortion opponents argue, is a preliminary reason to suppose that whatever moral status the 6-month-old baby has was had by that same baby at 5 months, 4 months, and so on to the point at which it first came into being, that is, at conception; in other words, any point after conception that we could offer as being the point at which a new being with that moral status emerges would be arbitrary, whereas the point of conception is not arbitrary. Therefore, if by virtue of that moral status killing the 6-month-old baby is wrong, killing it at 5 months, 4 months, and so on to the point of conception would also be wrong.

We will look at the major responses to this kind of argument in a moment, but let’s first consider how someone making this argument would respond to two sorts of claims in favor of abortion rights. A defender of abortion might claim that a woman has a right to make her own choices about her life and her body. Naturally, the mother of the 6-month-old child also has those rights, but we would say that the right of the baby not to be killed overrides the mother’s right to choice. That is, her right to choose is correctly restricted when her choice involves killing a being that has a right not to be killed. So if, as the argument maintains, we acquire that right when we come into being—that is, at conception—then her choices should likewise be restricted so as to exclude intentionally killing the being in her womb.

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A second common claim in defense of abortion rights is that the moral status of the embryo or fetus is a matter that should be left up to the mother herself to decide. She has, as Roe v. Wade put it, a right to privacy, and the state should not be in the business of telling her what she may or may not believe regarding this deep and significant question. In response, we can note that the state wouldn’t be telling her what she may or may not believe about the moral status of the embryo; it would instead be restricting the ways that she may act on those beliefs. And the state frequently does prevent people from acting on their beliefs regarding another being’s moral status. People may believe that dogs have no moral status and that there’s nothing wrong with abusing them, but we have laws preventing many forms of animal abuse. Notoriously, some people believe that Blacks, Jews, persons with mental disabilities, and other groups don’t have full moral status, but of course we do not consider the choice of whether to act on those beliefs to be a matter of privacy. Indeed, were a mother to claim that her 6-month-old child lacks the characteristics of a full-fledged human with a right not to be killed, we would not consider this to be a valid excuse for her to kill him or her. So if we can establish through rational argument that an embryo or fetus has the same moral status as a 6-month-old child, as philosophers like Lee and George think we can, then we have the same grounds for legally restricting a woman’s right to act on her private beliefs. (Indeed, it’s worth recalling that even Roe v. Wade agreed that states can restrict a woman’s right to act on her private beliefs about the moral status of a viable fetus; abortion opponents would simply argue that distinguishing a third-trimester fetus from one at an earlier stage of development is morally arbitrary.)

In short, some abortion opponents like Lee and George (2014) argue that “in abortion, what is killed is a human being, a whole living member of the species homo sapiens, the same kind of entity as you or I, only at an earlier stage of development” (p. 39). There are many ways that defenders of abortion rights have tried to respond to arguments like this, and we will first focus on two of the most prominent. One is to concede that a distinct human being is present from the moment of conception but maintain that it isn’t yet a “person,” and person- hood is what gives a human the right not to be killed. The second concedes even more—that the human in the womb is a being with a right to life—but argues that a right to life does not necessarily mean a right not to be killed.

Like the argument against abortion that we just considered, these are, or at least can be interpreted as, deontological arguments. The first approach could agree that there are certain beings it is always wrong to kill but argues that fetuses are not among those; thus, we don’t have a duty not to kill fetuses. The second acknowledges that there are sometimes conflicts between rights and duties that have to be worked out and argues that in this case the right of a woman to bodily freedom (and our duty to respect that) overrides a fetus’s right to life (and our duty not to kill it). Later, we will compare all three deontological arguments to a utilitarian approach that maintains that the morality of abortion is not ultimately a matter of fundamental rights and duties but is decided on the basis of whether legalizing abortion would have better overall consequences than banning it, and to a virtue ethics approach that considers the issues in terms of the notion of a well-lived life and the associated virtues.

The Personhood Argument in Support of Abortion First, some philosophers argue that the reason it is wrong to mistreat or kill someone is not because he or she is biologically human but because he or she is a person. As we recall from

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Chapter 4, Immanuel Kant argued that we have a duty to “treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of anyone else, always as an end and never merely as a means” (Kant, 2008, p. 29). Moreover, “humanity” in his sense meant our rational autonomy, that is, our capacity to set our own ends and pursue them. Something very similar is at work in this argument. Though the term personhood is used instead of humanity and the criteria for personhood is a bit broader than Kant’s notion of humanity, the idea remains very similar. It’s our personhood that makes us more than mere things and thus worthy of being treated with dignity and respect. In other words, being human in a genetic or biological sense is not sufficient to count as a member of what Mary Anne Warren (1973) calls the “moral community, the set of beings with full and equal moral rights” (pp. 5–6). What does it mean, on her account, to be a “person” in this sense? She suggests five characteristics:

1. consciousness (of objects and events external and/or internal to the being), and in particular the capacity to feel pain;

2. reasoning (the developed capacity to solve new and relatively complex problems); 3. self-motivated activity (activity which is relatively independent of either genetic or

direct external control); 4. the capacity to communicate, by whatever means, messages of an indefinite variety

of types, that is, not just with an indefinite number of possible contents, but on indefinitely many possible topics;

5. the presence of self-concepts, and self-awareness, either individual or racial, or both. (Warren, 1973, p. 7)

Warren (1973) does not suggest that all of these characteristics are necessary to be considered a person; rather, “all we need to claim, to demonstrate that a fetus is not a person,” she maintains, “is that any being which satisfies none of (1)–(5) is certainly not a person” (p. 8). Since the fetus lacks these characteristics, she adds, “a fetus, even a fully developed one, is considerably less personlike than is the average mature mammal, indeed the average fish” (p. 9), such that “it cannot be said to have any more right to life than, let us say, a newborn guppy . . . and that a right of that magnitude could never override a woman’s right to obtain an abortion, at any stage of her pregnancy” (p. 9).

What Warren is calling forth through this argument is philosophical reflection on the deep and challenging question about what it means to be the kinds of beings that you and I are in the morally relevant sense. Surely when we reflect on our own selves we will find those characteristics she describes to be deeply significant to who and what we are as human beings, which is why we sometimes say that when individuals are in a vegetative state their body is present but the person that they were is gone. Likewise, when we reflect on what makes killing individuals different than, say, having a gallbladder removed, it’s not the presence of human DNA, which the gallbladder has; rather, it’s the fact that individuals, unlike a gallbladder, have plans and projects, experiences of themselves and the world, can feel pleasure and pain, and so on, all of which are destroyed when a person is killed.

Therefore, in response to the argument against abortion we considered previously, Warren would say that the reason it’s wrong to kill the 6-month-old child is because that child is a person, but a fetus is not. Therefore, abortion is no more wrong than having a gallbladder removed or even “cutting one’s hair” (Warren, 1973, p. 5).

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How might the opponent of abortion respond to Warren’s argument? First, he or she might raise the point that we already noted about arbitrary cutoff points. That is, even if we grant Warren’s claims about personhood, it will still be the case that any line we try to draw that distinguishes a person from a nonperson in her sense will be arbitrary, and thus we should fall back on the only nonarbitrary point of development (conception) to identify those in the moral community. In response, philosophers point out that there are many real and substan- tial distinctions we make without being able to identify a precise point at which one thing becomes something else. When, precisely, does a tadpole become a frog, a man become bald, or a hill become a mountain? There is no answer to those questions, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t meaningful distinctions between a tadpole and a frog, having a full head of hair and being bald, or a hill and a mountain. Likewise, we can recognize that very early fetuses, at least, lack the qualities Warren attributes to personhood even if we cannot identify the precise point at which they gain personhood.

Second, abortion opponents frequently argue that Warren’s account of personhood is flawed. One argument is that she seems to presume a view of humanity that is dualistic, drawing a sharp distinction between the inner or mental/psychological dimension of human life and the outer or physical/biological dimension, identifying my true or essential self—the aspect that is morally relevant—only with the first dimension (Lee & George, 2014, pp. 39–40). Dual- ism is a philosophical view that has been strongly defended, as well as strongly contested, throughout human history, and we cannot possibly go into those metaphysical debates here. The crucial point here is that those who regard the human body itself to be an integral and essential part of the human person may not find Warren’s criteria of personhood to be satis- factory, which raises the question of whether the presence of biological humanity may play a more important role in defining our humanity (in the morally relevant sense) than Warren’s argument allows.

At the very least, some argue, if there’s even a possibility that a fetus is an innocent person, we ought to err on the side of assuming that it is and forbid abortion, given the moral grav- ity of killing the innocent. This is sometimes called the argument from indeterminacy. On the other hand, supporters of abortion might offer their own version of the argument from indeterminacy: Given the moral gravity of interfering with the liberty of others, we should only do so when there are clear and compelling rational grounds for believing that failing to interfere will cause significant harm to some other person we are charged to protect—but the indeterminacy of the fetus’s status means we don’t have such grounds. Therefore, we should not interfere with a woman’s liberty to have an abortion.

Third, some philosophers—including those who defend abortion rights—have worried that basing the right not to be killed on personhood as defined in terms of the characteristics Warren describes has implications beyond the abortion debate that many people find troubling. Some philosophers (Tooley, 1972; Singer, 1993) have agreed with Warren’s main line of argument but concluded that not only does this argument justify abortion, it also justifies the killing of other beings that, though biologically human, lack most or all of these characteristics, such as infants and the severely disabled. For instance, Michael Tooley (1972) argues that “an organism possesses a serious right to life only if it possesses the concept of a self as a continuing subject of experiences and other mental states, and believes that it is itself such a continuing entity” (p. 44). He goes on to say that “a newborn baby does not possess the concept of a continuing self, any more than a newborn kitten possesses such a concept. If so, infanticide during a time interval shortly after birth must be morally acceptable” (p. 64).

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In other words, according to the personhood argument, abortion is permissible because a fetus lacks the right not to be killed, and it lacks that right is because it lacks characteristics that would make it a person, such as self-awareness and a robust consciousness. Infants also lack these characteristics and thus are also not persons in this definition. It would follow that infants also lack the right not to be killed; thus, infanticide is morally justified. Those who think that infanticide is morally unacceptable would either need to explain why the personhood argument doesn’t justify infanticide after all or have to admit that the personhood argument in favor of abortion rights is flawed, and a being can have a right not to be killed even if it doesn’t meet Warren’s criteria for personhood. (For an argument that Warren’s defense of abortion entails the permissibility of infanticide, see Card [2000]. For Warren’s response, in which she claims that her argument does not justify infanticide, see Warren [2000].)

Finally, some philosophers respond to concerns like these by attempting to show that the question of whether abortion is morally justified doesn’t depend on the status of the fetus. On the antiabortion side, Don Marquis (1989) has argued that we can show that abortion is normally wrong regardless of whether the fetus is a person by first considering why murder is wrong. Murder is wrong, he argues, because it deprives the victim of a valuable future. Even if fetuses are not yet persons, they have a future ahead of them with various kinds of goods just like a child or an adult. If depriving a child or an adult of those future goods is what makes killing them an act of murder and thus wrong, then it would likewise make killing the fetus wrong.

However, abortion rights supporters have also tried to make their case without settling the question of whether a fetus is a person with a right to life. We now turn to the most famous of such arguments.

The Bodily Rights Argument in Support of Abortion We considered arguments that abortion is morally justified because the fetus is not a person and thus is not the kind of being that would be wrong to kill. If that’s the case, a woman should be free to end her pregnancy if she so chooses, since by doing so she won’t be harming or kill- ing anyone that deserves protection. However, many people find those arguments unconvinc- ing and maintain instead that we have good reason to treat the fetus as a person, or at least as having a right to life. But does this mean that abortion is morally wrong?

Some philosophers have answered no, arguing that we can defend the right to abortion even if we grant that a fetus has a right to life from the moment of conception. Earlier we suggested that if a certain being has a right to life, that right will override another’s right to make her own choices when the two come into conflict. But this is what some defenders of abortion deny, maintaining instead that a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body is stron- ger than a fetus’s right to life.

The most well-known of these arguments was offered by Judith Jarvis Thomson. Thomson (1971) has us consider the following analogy:

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

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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 now is 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 recov- ered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.” Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says, “Tough luck, I agree, but you’ve now got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person’s right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you can- not ever be unplugged from him.” I imagine you would regard this as outra- geous. (p. 49, reprinted with permission from Blackwell Publishing, Inc., John Wiley & Sons, Inc.)

Finding oneself hooked up to the famous violinist, Thomson suggests, is like a woman finding herself with an unwanted pregnancy. In each case there is a being—indeed a person—that needs someone else’s body to survive. We can grant that this person has a right to life, but that doesn’t by itself mean that the person has the right to use someone else’s body to sustain its life. “The right to life,” Thomson (1971) argues, “consists not in the right not to be killed, but rather in the right not to be killed unjustly” (p. 57). We would not be acting unjustly by refus- ing to be plugged into the violinist for 9 months, and by the same token, she claims, a woman would not be acting unjustly by refusing to grant the fetus the use of her body for 9 months.

While it may be an act of generosity to do so, Thom- son nevertheless concludes that “nobody is morally required to make large sacrifices, of health, of all other interests and concerns, or of all other duties and commitments, for nine years, or even for nine months, in order to keep another person alive” (p. 61–62).

As with the personhood argument, evaluating the bodily rights argument as Thomson describes it takes us into some deep and complex philosophi- cal terrain, but we can briefly raise two questions worth considering when assessing its merit.

First, is there a morally relevant distinction between killing and allowing to die that would pertain to this case? In the violinist analogy as Thomson presents it, one exercises one’s bodily right by unplugging, which will result in the violinist’s death, but that’s not necessarily what one directly intends to happen;

Furtseff/iStock/Thinkstock Thomson’s bodily rights argument begins by asking whether you would submit to being tethered to a famous violinist for 9 months, acting as the violinist’s life support.

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abortion, on the other hand, involves the direct killing of the fetus. Some philosophers, espe- cially those who take a deontological approach, believe that we have a duty not to kill but that this does not necessarily mean we cannot allow someone to die.

Recall the trolley car illustration that we discussed in Chapter 3, in which a runaway trolley car is heading toward five people on a track with no means of escape. In one scenario, we can pull a lever switching the car to a side track in which there is a single worker, resulting in his death but sparing the five people on the main track. In another scenario, we can push a large man over a bridge to stop the car, killing him but saving the five workers. Many people believe that pulling the lever is morally permissible because even though we know it will result in the death of the worker on the side track, we aren’t trying to kill him; or if you like, we aren’t killing him in order to bring about a good result. On the other hand, pushing the large man over the bridge is a direct act of killing or using a person as a mere means to an end, and so it would violate a duty against either of these. Some argue that unplugging the violinist to restore a person’s bodily freedom would be like pulling the lever to switch the track, while aborting the fetus to restore bodily freedom would be like pushing the large man over the bridge (Foot, 1985).

Of course, Thomson could respond by modifying the violinist scenario such that the only way to restore bodily freedom is by directly killing the violinist. Would that be a morally permis- sible act? Many people would continue to hold the intuition that we would not be morally required to support the violinist’s life with our body, and if directly killing him is the only way to gain bodily freedom, we would be morally justified in doing so. They may, for example, regard this as a justified form of self-defense. Even if we were to make that judgment about the violinist case, does that justify abortion? Does Thomson’s analogy hold?

A question one might raise when considering the strength of the analogy is whether some- one can have responsibilities toward another by virtue of a certain special relationship, even when one hasn’t necessarily chosen that relationship. In this case, we can note that there is nothing natural or normal about being kidnapped and hooked up to a famous violinist, but the mother–child bond is one of the most common, fundamental, and natural relationships one can have. Nor is it natural or normal for an adult person to be completely dependent on another person’s bodily organs for his life, but all humans were once in exactly that relation- ship early in their development. Does this challenge the relevance of Thomson’s analogy? More importantly, could the naturalness of the dependency of the fetus on the mother’s body mean that she has responsibilities toward it even if she hasn’t chosen them?

Many people would claim that we have responsibilities toward the families and communities into which we were born, toward other animals, and toward the natural world, even though we haven’t voluntarily chosen to assume those responsibilities. Similarly, most people would agree that parents have certain responsibilities toward their children after birth that do not depend on whether the parents have chosen them or on whether exercising those respon- sibilities places burdens on the parents. So granting, as Thomson does, that the fetus is a person leads us to consider whether we may have similar unchosen responsibilities toward it. Supposing so, of course, raises very difficult questions about whether this responsibility would extend to cases like rape and incest or cases in which carrying a pregnancy to term would place significant social, financial, emotional, or physical burdens on the woman. In other words, even if we grant that a woman may have special responsibilities in some cases, does it mean she has those responsibilities in all cases? And could we draw a line between the

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two sufficient for a legal distinction? We will return to this question later when we consider a virtue ethics approach to abortion.

6.3 Utilitarianism and Abortion To summarize an earlier point, the arguments we’ve been considering could be regarded as deontological. The argument opposing abortion began with the assumption that a child (say, 6 months old) has a fundamental right not to be intentionally killed and argued that this right must extend all the way back to the point of that child’s conception. Another way of saying this is that we have an absolute duty not to intentionally kill either a 6-month-old child or a fetus. The personhood argument in support of abortion agrees that we have an absolute duty not to kill a 6-month-old child but maintains that this right (and our corresponding duty) rests on the fact that the 6-month-old child is a person. According to this argument, since a fetus is not a person, it lacks this fundamental right, and thus there is no duty not to kill it.

The argument from bodily rights maintains that even if we normally have a duty not to kill certain beings, that duty can be overridden by a stronger duty to respect the right to bodily freedom. Thus, even if we grant that a fetus (or a violinist) has a right to life, the right to bodily freedom is stronger. So we are still speaking in deontological terms, but in this case we are refining our conception of the circumstances in which we have a duty not to kill another person. Much of the debate, then, would rest on how we weigh the rele- vant duties involved, duties like not killing the inno- cent, respecting reproductive choice and bodily freedom, not treating a fetus or a mother as a mere means to an end, and so forth.

How might a utilitarian approach the issue of abor- tion instead? Recall from Chapter 3 that a utilitar- ian approach judges right and wrong in terms of the consequences. In particular, according to act utili- tarianism (as opposed to rule utilitarianism, which we won’t consider here), an action or policy is right if it leads to the greatest overall well-being, happi- ness, or utility (however that’s defined) compared to alternatives. In the case of abortion, to answer the moral question, we would need to consider whether an act of aborting an embryo or fetus would lead to better overall consequences than not aborting it, and on the legal question we would need to con- sider whether a policy that permits abortion would be better overall than a policy that restricts it. While some utilitarians may argue that abortion is usually immoral and/or that it would be best to restrict it, we will focus on the kind of argument that a utilitar- ian might give in support of the morality and legality

Hemera Technologies/AbleStock.com/Thinkstock A utilitarian approach to abortion would entail weighing the benefits and harms that would result from restricting the procedure against the benefits and harms that would result from permitting it.

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of abortion. In short, many utilitarians would maintain that there are at least some instances in which abortion would result in better overall consequences than continuing the pregnancy to term. If this is the case, and we compare the harms that would result from restricting abor- tion with the harms that may result by permitting it, there would be strong utilitarian reasons to establish policies that permit abortion when the mother chooses it.

What might those instances be? If we consider a typical case in which a woman may seek an abortion, it is generally a situation in which a woman has found herself pregnant but some- thing about the circumstances makes the prospect of carrying the child to term burdensome or undesirable, as we discussed earlier. Many of these circumstances would elicit our sym- pathies at the difficulties some women have to face or arouse a strong sense of indignation at the injustices they suffer. Some of those circumstances and motivations, however, may strike us as trivial and selfish. Regardless, the question would be how the burdens and other negative effects of carrying a fetus to term, and the positive effects of aborting it, would weigh against the positive effects of carrying it to term or the negative effects of aborting it. And if we were thinking specifically about laws concerning abortion, we would ask similar questions about the effects of a law that enables or permits a woman to obtain an abortion in certain circumstances versus a law that bans abortion in those circumstances.

In considering such questions, many factors could enter in. Naturally, if a woman is contem- plating an abortion, she has judged that carrying the child to term may threaten her health, diminish her happiness, cause increased difficulties for her existing family, and so on. She may have to drop out of school, face the condemnation of her family or community, or simply take on a responsibility that she doesn’t feel she’s ready for or willing to do. She may also judge that the child itself would likely have a difficult life if she were to carry the pregnancy to term. The child may be born into poverty or other difficult circumstances. She may be married to an abusive man who will likely abuse the child as well. She may have a history of a certain kind of illness that she would likely pass on to the child.

These are just a few examples of the many negative consequences of carrying a pregnancy to term that a woman may contemplate. Such possible consequences may not occur, and it could be that the child brings great joy and happiness, both to the mother and to the broader world, that outweigh the negative consequences the mother anticipates. But according to most utili- tarians, our moral judgments must be based on the best available evidence, even though we are ultimately limited in what we can know about future consequences.

What’s also crucial for the utilitarian is that there will be comparatively few negative effects on the embryo or fetus itself that would factor in. Remember that according to the utilitar- ian accounts we focused on in Chapter 3, positive and negative consequences that we need to consider are those having to do with experiences like happiness and pleasure, pain and suffering, satisfaction of desires and preferences, and so on. Accordingly, the embryo or fetus will have few to no such experiences that would need to be factored in. It’s true, according to modern medical science, that fetuses can normally feel pain after a certain stage of develop- ment, though exactly when is a matter of controversy (the most common scientific estimate is that it starts to feel pain around the beginning of the third trimester, or about 27 weeks [Lee, Ralston, Drey, Partridge, & Rosen, 2005]). And some of the surgical techniques that abortion providers use may very well cause pain to the fetus. That’s certainly going to be relevant, but we can imagine many cases in which the suffering that the woman would have to endure would outweigh the pain that the fetus would endure through that procedure.

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Accordingly, a utilitarian could argue that abortion can sometimes be morally justified. Moreover, the person best placed to make that judgment of the consequences of aborting the pregnancy versus carrying it to term is almost certainly going to be the mother herself. For these reasons alone, a utilitarian could argue that we ought to allow a woman to make her own decision about whether to have an abortion. But the utilitarian could add that banning abortion would not only prevent women from obtaining one when doing so results in the best overall consequences, it could lead many women to seek an illegal abortion (such as the back-alley abortions we mentioned earlier). These are highly dangerous, and forcing women into a position in which they feel they have no alternative can cause much more harm than providing them the means to obtain an abortion safely.

This kind of argument presumes, of course, that the utilitarian approach is the best way of reasoning about ethical issues, or at least about the issue of abortion. For nonutilitarians these kinds of considerations are quite important but not ultimately decisive. Both the argu- ment presented by Lee and George (2014) against abortion and the argument by Warren (1973) in support of abortion maintain that if a fetus is a person with a fundamental right not to be killed, that right takes precedence over the positive and negative consequences, just as it does in the case of already born children. They would regard the hardships and difficulties that a pregnant woman may have to face in similar ways that we regard hardships that moth- ers with already born children often face: circumstances that may call us to offer sympathy and support to women with unwanted pregnancies rather than condemnation and rejection, to support governmental policies and social programs that provide assistance and help to women in need, to encourage and maybe even participate in adoption programs, to support sex education, and so on.

In short, the utilitarian approach to whether abortion is morally right or wrong comes down to whether the choice to have an abortion has the best overall consequences compared to carrying the pregnancy to term; as a matter of law, the question similarly comes down to whether a law permitting or restricting abortion has the best overall consequences. For deon- tological (duty-based) approaches, there will be other, more fundamental considerations at stake, such as the right of women to make their own reproductive choices or the right of the fetus not to be killed.

But some philosophers argue that focusing entirely on whether abortion is right or wrong according to some abstract utilitarian or deontological rule or principle fails to adequately capture the full ethical significance of this issue and that we need to instead consider how abortion relates to the question of what it means to live a good, flourishing life, the virtues that are needed for such a life, and the vices that inhibit it. So in our final section we turn to what an Aristotelian or virtue ethics approach might have to say on this topic.

6.4 Virtue Ethics and Abortion As we discussed in Chapter 5, virtue ethics starts not with questions like “What kinds of actions are, in themselves, right or wrong?,” “What duties or rights must I respect?,” or “What kind of world should I strive to bring about?” but with the question “What kind of person is it good to be?” This will lead us to describe certain personal qualities like courage, honesty, justice, compassion, and self-control as characteristic of someone who is flourishing or living

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well. And ultimately, this will be related to a notion of the telos or purpose, aim, or character- istic function of particular roles and activities and of human life as a whole. As we also dis- cussed (though not in as great detail), similar forms of reasoning can be applied at the level of society and social policy, considering such questions as the kinds of ends and aims that ought to inform our interactions with one another and the kinds of freedoms, protections, and social support systems that best promote human flourishing and the common good.

A criticism of virtue ethics that we discussed is that it doesn’t seem to present us with clear, concrete answers to ethical questions, and as we shall see in a moment, some may see this as a drawback to thinking about abortion along these lines. Many people who approach abor- tion in either deontological or utilitarian terms maintain that their arguments can show that a certain conclusion is unmistakably right or wrong. The virtue ethicist might respond that, first, the judgments are not as clear as proponents of one position or another would main- tain (as the dispute between different deontological approaches attests), or that a certain approach might yield a supposedly clear verdict in the abortion case but have very troubling implications for other cases (as when a utilitarian approach might seem to justify infanticide, for instance).

Second, they might worry that a simple, black-and-white answer to a question like “Is an act of abortion morally right?” or “Is a policy that bans abortion justified?” fails to appreciate the full ethical significance of the broader circumstances surrounding these questions. Those who oppose abortion rights are often criticized for reducing the issue to one of fetal rights, leading to indifference and even callousness toward the women who might find themselves seeking an abortion or toward the broader social conditions that lead to these kinds of situations. If one regards abortion as something wrong or bad, is one’s ethical responsibility exhausted simply by opposing and condemning abortion and those who support it? The theologian Stanley Hauerwas (1997), for example, argues that “the responsibility of the whole Christian community to care for ‘the lease of these’” (p. 225) extends far beyond the fetus, placing on us responsibilities toward the mothers and to work to remedy the broad social circumstances that lead many women to feel that abortion is their only option. He characterizes this as expressing the virtue of hospitality, and even suggests that “we ought to be ready to say to a woman considering an abortion. . . , ‘Will you come home and live with me until you have your child? And, if you want me to raise the child, I will’” (Hauerwas, 1997, p. 236). Moreover, those who support abortion rights are sometimes criticized—even by those who agree that it may be morally justified and/or should be legal—for reducing the issue to one of bodily rights or freedom of choice and failing to appreciate the profound significance of the fact that abortion ends a human life that, in other circumstances, would be the source of deep value and responsibility (Hursthouse, 1997). Pro-choice feminist Naomi Wolf (1995) remarks:

Even while Elders spoke of our need to “get over” our love affair with the unwelcome fetus, an entire growth industry—Mozart for your belly; framed sonogram photos; home fetal-heartbeat stethoscopes—is devoted to sparking fetal love affairs in other circumstances. . . . If we avidly cultivate love for the ones we bring to term, and “get over” our love for the ones we don’t, do we not risk developing a hydroponic view of babies—and turn them into a product we can cull for our convenience? (p. 5).

While firmly supporting the right to abortion, Wolf nevertheless objects to the way this issue is framed and discussed by some people who share her position. “With the pro-choice rhetoric

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we use now,” she worries, “we incur three destructive consequences—two ethical, one strate- gic: hardness of heart, lying and political failure” (Wolf, 1995, p. 3).

Such considerations beyond the mere question of right and wrong are integral to how we should respond to the problem according to virtue ethics. Nevertheless, we shall now take a closer look at what someone reasoning along these lines might say about the moral status of abortion itself. We won’t suggest that virtue ethics supports a clear position one way or the other; rather, we will open up the kinds of questions and considerations that would be involved, ones that would need to be developed and worked out further before arriving at a concrete answer.

The Moral Considerations Since abortion is the termination of a pregnancy, one way to begin is by considering how preg- nancy normally and characteristically fits into a human life. In most cases a pregnancy is the initial stage in becoming a parent to a particular child. So when a woman becomes pregnant, she (and usually the father) generally starts adjusting to the kinds of responsibilities and demands involved in raising a child. What do these responsibilities and demands include? We might identify certain things like “unconditional love,” “nurture,” and “care” as characteristic of the relation between a good parent and a child. And again, what does it mean to love a child unconditionally, to nurture a child, and to care for it? What qualities and characteristics are needed to carry out these responsibilities? What attitudes and behaviors might prevent us from carrying these out well?

When we think about these questions in the context of parenting an infant, toddler, pread- olescent child, and adolescent, we’ll give different kinds of answers, of course, but certain things will likely be consistent no matter the society or culture (MacIntyre, 1999). First, the parent has to recognize, appreciate, and respond to the kind of dependency that the child has on him or her, which is greater and more direct the younger and more vulnerable the child is. This calls for certain attitudes and behaviors that are appropriate to this level of dependency, including protection and an appropriate willingness to put the interests and well-being of the child above his or her own. While we hope that in most cases the interests and well-being of the parent and those of the child will be in harmony, we recognize that sometimes they are not, and when that’s the case we recognize that a virtue of a parent is the willingness to sacrifice in a way that is appropriate to the circumstances and needs of the child (indeed, sacrifice by the parent for the sake of the child seems characteristic of many other animal species as well). As children grow, parents will gradually shift toward helping them become independent, thinking and making decisions for themselves and forming their own identity, and parents will begin to relinquish control over their child’s well-being; but the flip side of this is that the younger and less developed a child is, the more direct care we need to give the child for his or her own well-being, which often corresponds to the level of sacrifice the par- ent needs to make.

Second, parenting involves what Michael Sandel (2007) has called an appreciation of the “gifted character” (p. 27) of human life, that much of parenting—indeed much of human life itself—is less a matter of controlling one’s circumstances than of responding well to those factors that are given or outside of one’s control. To recognize children, along with all of their unpredictable and unruly characteristics and behaviors, as a gift rather than as a product of

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our will or choice, calls for virtues like humility, courage, and an “openness to the unbidden” (Sandel, 2007, p. 45).

In short, parenthood itself essentially involves recognition, appreciation, and appropriate responses to a child’s vulnerability and dependency, which varies depending on the circum- stances and the child’s level of development. And it involves recognition, appreciation, and appropriate responses to the gifted and uncontrollable character of human life, especially as it relates to children. By speaking in such terms, we have been seeking to uncover the telos of parenthood (nurturing, caring for, and raising a new generation that can live its own flourish- ing human life); the characteristic activities (care, unconditional love, protection, meeting needs appropriate to the level of development, responding to unforeseen circumstances, nur- turing what has been given in and by the child rather than what one has chosen, etc.); and the virtues needed to fulfill those well (humility, compassion, courage, patience, self-control, will- ingness to sacrifice, and a host of others).

You may have already anticipated how this might be relevant to the abortion debate. We mentioned how, normally and characteristically, the role of parenthood begins not at birth but in pregnancy. Accordingly, the question of what it means to be a good parent would also have relevance during preg- nancy, along with the corresponding considerations concerning the level of dependency and vulnerabil- ity of the child; the roles and activities like nurture, care, and protection; and the need for humility and an openness to the unbidden. These considerations may lead us to consider at least some attitudes and choices regarding abortion to be unethical, mani- festing vice rather than virtue.

We noted that a good parent will often need to reorient his or her own personal desires, ambitions, or goals for the sake of the child; a person who finds herself (or himself ) with an unexpected or unwanted pregnancy may be called to do so as well. The refusal to do so could be a manifestation of self-centeredness, or it could mean that the person places too high of an importance on other ends like being entertained or making money. We can readily recognize this in parents that neglect their (already born) children for such reasons, and those who seek to abort a pregnancy for the same kinds of reasons may be manifesting a similar misplace- ment of priorities, at least according to some virtue ethicists (Hursthouse, 1997).

Similarly, those who abuse their children, expose them to unnecessary harm, or fail to pro- vide them adequate protection or nutrition are generally regarded as failing to appreciate the vulnerability and dependency of children and their need for nurture, protection, and care. We take a similar attitude toward those who smoke, do drugs, or drink too much alcohol during pregnancy for the exact same reasons, and the added dependency and vulnerability of the fetus often leads us to regard such behaviors during pregnancy as even more negligent than those same behaviors after birth. This pattern of judgment suggests that if we were to con- sider the killing of a child for certain reasons to be a great failure in parental responsibility, then killing the fetus for similar reasons would be a similar failure in parental responsibility.

monkeybusinessimages/iStock/Thinkstock Ideally, parenthood involves recognition and appreciation for one’s child and a willingness to make sacrifices for the sake of that child.

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Section 6.4 Virtue Ethics and Abortion

One response to these two points—that a woman seeking an abortion may have misplaced pri- orities and may be failing to appreciate the significance of the vulnerability and dependency of children—might be to say that if a woman is behaving wrongly by (say) drinking, smok- ing, or using drugs during pregnancy or if her priorities are misplaced by putting too high of an importance on entertainment, wealth, career, and so on, that’s because she has made a decision to bring a child into the world, and by having made this decision she has assumed a responsibility to ensure that the vulnerable and dependent child receives the best kind of nurture and care possible. The implication seems to be that whatever responsibility a person has toward a fetus depends on whether she has voluntarily assumed that responsibility.

This is an important point that we raised when we discussed the bodily rights argument. However, recall the dimensions of parenthood having to do with unpredictability and appre- ciation of children and their characteristics as something largely given rather than voluntary assumed. This may lead us to reconsider the relationship between responsibility and volun- tary choice. Could it be that, in some cases, parental responsibility does depend at least partly on whether one voluntary chooses to accept it, but in other cases a man or woman might have parental responsibilities even if he or she does not choose to accept them? We would unequivocally say yes to this second question if we are talking of children after birth, which is why we often condemn men who fail to support the children they have helped conceive and the women who bear and care for them. But if one regards parenthood as characteristically beginning in pregnancy, someone could argue that those kinds of unchosen responsibilities may be given prior to birth as well.

It’s worth reiterating the point that none of this involves an appeal to “rights.” The notion of what a woman may or may not have a right to do does not settle the question of what is ethi- cal, in this account. As Rosalind Hursthouse (1997) notes:

In exercising a moral right I can do something cruel, or callous, or selfish, light-minded, self-righteous, stupid, inconsiderate, disloyal, dishonest—that is, act viciously. Love and friendship do not survive their parties’ constantly insisting on their rights, nor do people live well when they think that getting what they have a right to is of pre-eminent importance; they harm others, and they harm themselves. So whether women have a moral right to terminate their pregnancies is irrelevant within virtue theory, for it is irrelevant to the question “In having an abortion in these circumstances, would the agent be acting virtuous or viciously or neither?” (p. 228)

We have similarly avoided the question of whether a fetus has a right to life or a right not to be killed. We might say that this question is secondary under virtue theory, since we can characterize a certain attitude or choice as virtuous or vicious regardless of whether we can settle the question of the rights or status of the fetus itself (in similar fashion, as we shall see in Chapter 9, we may not need to determine whether other animals or the environment have rights to characterize certain behaviors toward animals or the natural world as “cruel, or callous, or selfish” and so on). Some virtue ethicists would argue that if we determine that a person has an ethical responsibility to care for or protect a fetus, the fetus thereby has a right to care and protection, but even so the primary question is not whether the fetus has rights but whether we have certain ethical responsibilities toward it.

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This is an important point when we consider another feature of the foregoing discussion of virtue ethics; namely, that we have taken as our starting point a conception of what is normally characteristic of parenthood, the kinds of virtues and virtuous behavior involved in fulfilling that, and the kinds of vices and vicious behaviors that are contrary to that. Of course, many circumstances in which a woman may seek an abortion are quite far removed from what is “normal” in this sense. Women may be the victims of rape, their social or financial situations may be quite desperate, they may have a severe health condition, the fetus may have a severe health condition or may otherwise be destined for a short life of severe suffering, and so on. Some philosophers who have taken a virtue ethics approach to this issue, like Hursthouse (1997), believe that circumstances like these can lead us to make the judgment that a choice to abort need not be ethically vicious, contrary to the meaning of parenthood, and so on, especially since so much about the circumstances would already be contrary to a flourishing life that the pregnant woman may be simply trying to make the best out of a tragic situation. Other philosophers in this tradition disagree and argue that certain things like abortion are never justified because they are fundamentally contrary to what it means to live well even in a minimal sense. Instead, these tragic circumstances place strong ethical responsibilities on the rest of us to respond with justice, mercy, and compassion toward the women involved.

As we said previously, these are questions for which, in this kind of approach, there are no easy answers, and addressing them adequately calls for dialogue and an open mind. The same sort of open dialogue would be needed when considering questions of law and public policy, since what we have been discussing thus far has primarily concerned ethical responsibility, which does not necessarily carry over directly into questions of law.

The Legal Considerations Addressing legal questions from the Aristotelian perspective is, again, not primarily a matter of considering rights or freedoms in the abstract but asking what it means for a society to flourish, what kinds of common goods and values ought to be recognized and endorsed through our social policies, and what kinds of injustices or harms are contrary to a flourishing society and ought to be opposed or prevented as far as possible. The granting of rights and freedoms corresponds dialectically to our answers to these considerations about what it means to be a flourishing society. Recall from Chapter 1 that “dialectic” is a mode of reasoning that moves back and forth between the abstract and concrete. In this case, we start with an abstract conception of a good society and consider the concrete rights and freedoms that must be granted if this conception is to be realized in practice. We might, however, find ourselves with conceptions of certain rights and freedoms that are undermined or not adequately supported by this conception of a good society. This may lead us to reconsider our conception of a good society, or it may lead us to reconsider the rights and freedoms we had taken for granted.

For example, most people believe that a good society is one in which people are able to exer- cise their individual choices. So we would recognize a right to freedom and individual choice as necessary in such a society. However, most people also believe that a good society ought to protect its most vulnerable members from exploitation, marginalization, or harm. Ensur- ing such protections often involves restricting the freedoms and individual choices of others. What is the appropriate balance between freedom and individual choice on the one hand and protecting the vulnerable from exploitation, marginalization, and harm on the other hand that would characterize a flourishing society?

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This is a question we cannot settle here. However, we can appreciate its relevance to the abortion debate in the following ways. We already are restricting individual freedom of choice (or at least, many people believe we ought to do this) when it comes to persons with disabilities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people; minority races; and those in poverty by placing restrictions on how businesses may operate, banning many forms of discrimination and public speech, having stricter penalties for hate crimes, and so forth. The justification for such laws, in the Aristotelian view, derives partly from a conviction that a society cannot flourish if it allows its vulnerable members to be neglected, exploited, or harmed by those with greater status, wealth, or power. In the same spirit, laws banning or restricting abortion may be justified in the interest of protecting the most vulnerable (fetuses) from exploitation and harm, an interest that may be regarded as overriding a woman’s freedom to choose whether to have a child.

On the other hand, those who oppose such restrictions often appeal to the importance of conscience and integrity across one’s whole life. Thus, some would argue that individuals and businesses ought to be allowed to express their personal moral convictions through the choices that they make. One might defend the right of a woman to express her moral convic- tion about the status of a fetus or whether carrying a fetus to term would impose more hard- ships than she should have to endure. To deny someone this right might be seen as diminish- ing her status as a moral agent and undermining her capacity to make her own reasoned, moral decisions.

You may have noticed that on this question of how to balance caring for the vulnerable and marginalized with freedom of conscience and choice, we have suggested that considerations that might support a “liberal” view on issues like discrimination could support a “conserva- tive” view on abortion, and vice versa. In doing this, the intention was to illustrate one of the barriers to the abortion debate that we highlighted at the beginning of the chapter; namely, the failure to recognize or appreciate common values and principles. As we said in that sec- tion, conservatives and liberals frequently appeal to certain values and principles to defend their position on one issue, while similar values and principles are appealed to by the other side to defend a position on another issue (and sometimes the same values and principles are involved in defense of opposition positions on the same issue). Recognizing and appreciating this can help us resolve issues, and it can help us overcome the deep divisions and animosity that so frequently result from debates about issues like abortion.

Going Deeper

Did something in this chapter catch your interest? Want to get a little more in depth with some of the theory, or learn about how it can be applied? Check out this feature at the end of the chapter.

A Short History of Abortion

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Conclusion & Summary

Conclusion & Summary There are many other arguments on both sides of the abortion debate that we were unable to discuss. Nevertheless, hopefully the reader has gained a clearer sense of the complexity of the debate, the many kinds of arguments that are offered on both sides, and the significance of the kind of approach that one takes to reasoning about these issues, whether deontologi- cal, utilitarian, virtue based, or a different approach that we have not been able to discuss here. Some people may have found themselves questioning or even changing the views with which they came into this discussion; some may have maintained their views but found themselves with a clearer sense of justification for them, and I hope that most people have a better appreciation and respect for the reasons people have for different views.

What we can say, I believe, is that in all the views we have been considering, a stance of “neutrality” (as opposed to being undecided or unsure) is not a neutral stance at all. If it’s true that women or fetuses have certain rights, as a deontological view maintains, then refusing to acknowledge and respect them is itself morally significant. If we have a respon- sibility to promote the greater good, then a utilitarian would maintain that we have this responsibility whether we acknowledge it or not. And for the Aristotelian, we are all joined together by common membership in society, such that if we fail to consider and act toward the flourishing of others and of the society itself, we are failing to live well and flourish as individuals. Perhaps one of the reasons for the heated and passionate character of the abor- tion debate is that we all recognize, at least implicitly, how much is at stake. We can respond with indifference or with more shouting and vitriol, or we can seek to gain a deeper under- standing of the ethical issues and arguments in the hope of being able to have a more civil, reasonable, and respectful conversation.

Key Terms abortion The intentional termination of a pregnancy.

argument from indeterminacy An argu- ment that starts with the assumption that the fetus’s moral status cannot be conclu- sively determined by rational argument but maintains that this calls for opposition to abortion (in one version) or support for abortion (in another version).

dilation and evacuation (D&E) A type of surgical abortion in which the cervix is dilated and the fetus extracted using tools and a suction device.

dualism A philosophical view accord- ing to which the physical body is strongly distinguished from the inner dimensions of human life, such as the mind or soul.

elective abortion Abortion performed for reasons other than protecting the life or health of the mother.

fertilization or conception The join- ing of the male gamete (sperm cell) with the female gamete (egg) to form a distinct organism.

fetus A developing human organism from 8 weeks until birth. In this text, the term refers to a developing human organism from conception until birth.

medical or drug-induced abortion Abor- tions performed using medicines or drugs.

person A being with full moral rights; a member of the moral community toward whom we have responsibilities.

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Primary Sources

spontaneous abortion or miscar- riage Termination of a pregnancy as a result of natural causes, rather than deliber- ate interference.

surgical abortion Abortion performed using surgical procedures.

therapeutic abortion Abortion performed to preserve the life or health of the mother.

trimester One of three 13-week periods into which a pregnancy can be divided.

viability The stage of fetal development at which the fetus may be able to live outside the uterus.

Further Reading Beckwith, F. (1992). Personal bodily rights, abortion, and unplugging the violinist. International Philosophical

Quarterly, 32(1), 105–118.

Boonin, D. (2003). A defense of abortion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Foot, P. (1967). The problem of abortion and the doctrine of double effect. Oxford Review, 5, 5–15.

Gensler, H. (1985). A Kantian argument against abortion. Philosophical Studies, 48(1), 57–72.

Harman, E. (1999). Creation ethics: The moral status of early fetuses and the ethics of abortion. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 28(4), 310–324.

McMahan, J. (2002). The ethics of killing: Problems at the margins of life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Noonan, J. (1985). An almost absolute value in history. Human Life Review, 11(1–2), 125–178.

Primary Sources The following articles relating to the ethics of abortion are available from the university library:

• Lee, P., & George, R. (2005). The wrong of abortion. In A. I. Cohen & C. Wellman (Eds.), Contemporary debates in applied ethics (pp. 13–26). New York: Blackwell. Lee and George present several arguments against abortion and responses to com- mon pro-choice arguments, the primary one being that at the moment of conception a distinct and complete being emerges, with all subsequent points being mere stages in its development rather than points at which it would acquire a “right to life” that it did not have before.

• Thomson, J. (1971). A defense of abortion. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 1(1), 47–66. Thomson argues that even if we grant that a fetus is a person, a woman’s right to control her body permits her to end the life of the fetus if she chooses. This argument includes the famous “violinist” analogy.

• Warren, M. (1973). On the moral and legal status of abortion. Monist, 57(1), 43–61. Warren argues that fetuses are not persons, and therefore the rights of a woman over- ride whatever right to life a fetus may possess.

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Going Deeper

Going Deeper

A Short History of Abortion • 1550 BCE: The earliest recorded evidence of induced abortion is from 1550 BCE in

Egypt. Early abortion techniques were nonsurgical and included rigorous physical activity, fasting, and irritating herbs, among other methods (Fox, 2016).

• 5th century BCE–3rd century CE: The evidence suggests that abortion was usually not punished in Ancient Greece. When it was, it was generally prosecuted as a decep- tion of the husband or a violation of the husband’s rights to dispose of his offspring. Thus, abortion was not seen as a crime against the unborn child, only against the husband if the wife did not seek his permission first. Aristotle believed that the state should “let abortion be procured before sense and life have begun” (350 BCE, Book 7, Part 16, para. 5), which was at 40 days old for a male child and 80 days old for a female child. Stoic philosophers believed that abortion was acceptable at any point in a pregnancy, as the fetus only became an animal once it was born and breathed air, at which point the soul entered the body (Klein, 2010).

• 1803: For centuries English common law had held that abortion was a crime if it took place after the “quickening” of the fetus, or when the fetus first moves in the womb. In 1803 English statute law made abortion after quickening punishable by death. Abortion before quickening was also made illegal but received a less severe punishment. In 1873 the law changed to remove the death penalty for abortion and to eliminate the significance of the quickening (“Historical Attitudes,” 2014).

• 1869: The Catholic Church declared that abortion at any point of pregnancy would carry the penalty of excommunication (Noonan, 1967). Prior to this, abortion was generally condemned (but not necessarily accompanied by automatic excommuni- cation), but some theologians and church leaders seem to have regarded it as per- missible in some cases prior to the ensoulment of the fetus, though there was also variation of belief on when that occurs (McGarry, 2013).

• 1880: By this time every state in the United States had criminalized abortion. Prior to this, abortion before quickening had been legal under common law and was widely practiced (Reagan, 1997).

• 1969: A California Supreme Court ruling declared California’s 1850 law criminal- izing abortion to be unconstitutional (Associated Press, 1988). This began a nation- wide trend of reforming and repealing strict abortion restrictions.

• 1973: The Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that states may not restrict a wom- an’s choice to obtain an abortion during the first trimester (the first 21 weeks). States may restrict it during the second trimester to protect the pregnant woman’s health and safety and during the third trimester to protect a fetus since that is when the fetus was regarded as viable (able to live outside of the womb). Prior to this rul- ing, 4 states had permitted abortion on request, 13 permitted it in limited cases such rape and incest, and the rest permitted it only to preserve the life of the mother.

• 1976: Congress passed the Hyde Amendment, which banned the use of federal fund- ing (e.g., Medicaid) for abortion care.

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Going Deeper

• 1980: Researchers in France developed mifepristone, an abortifacient (abortion- inducing) chemical that came on the market in 1988 in France but was not approved in the United States until 2000.

• 1992: The Supreme Court ruling in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsyl- vania v. Casey affirms that women have a right to abortion before fetal viability but also proclaims that states can restrict abortion access so long as the restrictions do not impose an “undue burden” on the woman (Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 1992).

• 2016: According to Gallup, the United States remains divided about evenly when it comes to abortion. Results show that 47% of those surveyed identified as pro-choice and 46% as pro-life. Fifty percent of those surveyed agreed that abortion should be legal under certain circumstances (Saad, 2016).