The question of if and when abortion is morally permissible is reducible to two questions: Firstly, when does a human being, in the course of its development, acquire the right to be called a person, and thus acquire the accompanying moral rights, including the right not to be unjustly killed? Secondly, when, if ever, is it just to kill such a person? I propose that a human being is a person at the time of conception and that it is morally impermissible to kill a fetus under any circumstances. I will defend this view using Marquis' criterion for personhood, namely that the fetus, at conception, shares a future common to persons and is thus a person. I will address Thomson's view on the permissibility of killing a morally relevant person, and I will then discuss the failure of views similar to mine - that it is unjust to kill a fetus except in instances of rape or when the mother's life is jeopardized. Finally I will address views suggesting different criteria for personhood that allow for abortion at various stages of development and even infanticide.Abortion is controversial because it is morally wrong to kill innocent persons unjustly. In order to determine when in the course of development humans acquire this right, it is essential to resolve the feature of murder that makes it wrong. To interpret the morality of abortion without this resolution is to ignore the pillars buttressing the conflict and to doom the resulting conclusion to inconsistencies. Donald Marquis suggests that murder is wrong because it deprives the victim of her future. Thus any being that has a future like ours falls under the umbrella of those beings whom it is wrong to murder essentially - by our definition and condemnation of murder. Marquis entertains and rejects other plausible explanations for the immorality of murder, such as murder's opposition to the natural desire for life, based on the cases where the desire for life is absent and the immorality of murder is apparent, e.g. a suicidal teenager. Thus whenever it is wrong to kill innocent persons it is wrong to kill a fetus because a fetus, from the time it is conceived, satisfies our criterion of demarcation insofar as it has a future like ours.
It is clear that there are instances when innocent persons may be killed justly, as in Judith Jarvis Thomson's violinist example. Thomson describes the case where a victim awakens attached to a violinist who must use her kidneys for nine months. Clearly the victim is not morally obligated to remain attached, even if detaching herself means killing the violinist. Thomson argues that the right to life does not guarantee the right to take what's necessary from others (including Henry Fonda's touch or a mother's body) to sustain life, and accordingly abortion is a case of justifiable killing of an innocent person. While Thomson's view rests on the questionable assumption that obligations can arise only from one's choices we may more easily reject Thomson's argument with the help of Baruch Brody. Brody notes that the right to life does not guarantee the use of the mother's body, as Thomson points out, but that guarantee arises for the reason that "the only way to take the use of the woman's body away from the fetus is by killing him, and that is something that neither she nor we have the right to do." Another argument that moves abortion into the realm of justifiable murder is the view that a woman may kill the fetus because the fetus makes use of her body which is her property. Even if we assume that one's body is one's property, which is questionable, the conclusion does not follow because it is immoral to kill an innocent person on your property. We have shown, then, that abortion, as a rule, is not a justifiable instance of killing an innocent person.
Many that oppose abortion make an exception for the fetus that results from rape. Brody identifies two considerations used to support the justifiable abortion of such a fetus; firstly that a woman has already suffered enough as a result of the rape and that it is unjust to oblige her to carry a fetus resulting from such an atrocity, and secondly that since the victim did not consent to sexual intercourse the fetus has no right to be in the woman in the first place, and she may justly abort it. Brody criticizes these considerations on the grounds that the fetus is innocent, and that the unjust circumstances of rape do not allow the killing of innocent life "as a means of mitigation." Furthermore, Brody notes that the presence of the fetus can never constitute an act of aggression against the mother, even if the fetus is the result of such an act. I further question the notion that rape dissolves the responsibility of the mother for its child for although it is obvious that the mother did not consent to sex in the case of rape, could her responsibility for the fetus increase if she were walking through a dangerous area [without a (reliable!) army] ? In the same way that walking though a dangerous area does not sanction rape, neither does engaging in sexual intercourse, even unprotected sexual intercourse, sanction pregnancy! In fact, the only way to expel all responsibility for a child is by way of hysterectomy or tubal ligation. Hence we must reject abortion of a fetus due to rape as an instance of justifiable murder.
Another group of antiabortionists would make an exception for cases in which the presence of the fetus puts the mother's life in jeopardy. The common argument used by this group is that the mother may kill the fetus in the name of self defense. Although it is clear that I may use deadly force to protect myself from an attacker with an intent to injure me, the fetus has no such intent; again the fetus is innocent. Thomson argues that a mother "surely" has the right to kill a child who is growing so fast that it will crush the mother in the small room they both share. This is by no means clear - the essential question is whether or not one has the right to kill an innocent attacker. Dr. Becker provides the example of the person who gives off by no fault of her own a fume that has a lethal effect on one other person. Clearly the victim does not have the right to kill the innocent assailant. Following, a mother does not have the right to abort a fetus threatening her own life if the value of their lives are equal, as we have earlier concluded in accordance with their sharing the same type of future.
Those who favor the right of a mother to choose an abortion in any case of unwanted pregnancy usually move a fetus outside of the realm of morally significant beings, in other words, they use a criterion of demarcation other than Marquis'. Though he is an antiabortionist, it is useful to inspect John T. Noonan, Jr.'s, argument. Noonan's criterion is genetic humanity - any product of two humans is human enough to be morally relevant. Mary Anne Warren clarifies the problem of the argument that if it is wrong to kill human beings, and a fetus is a human being, than it is wrong to kill a fetus. Warren points to the two different senses in the way 'human being' is used: it must refer to moral humanity in the first premise and genetic humanity in the second premise for the argument not to presuppose what it is trying to prove or not beg the question of why it is wrong to kill a genetic human being, and if this is the case than the logic is inconsistent because the human being in the second premise is not the same human being in the first premise. Thus the genetic criterion of demarcation fails. Another common criterion of personhood is that of viability. This argument supposes that a fetus is morally irrelevant until it is a viable human, or capable of living without relying upon its mother. This argument falls short for proabortionists because it excludes from personhood not only the diseased but also four year old toddlers, both who are incapable of survival (not viable) without care. Similar problems plague those who look to traditional criteria for humanity, such as rationality, communication, self-awareness, etc. as Warren does. These distinctions flounder because they can not include all beings that are enough like us that we don't want to exclude them, or they can not exclude all beings that are enough unlike us that we don't want to include them. The above criteria suffer from the inconsistencies we predicted would "doom" any conclusion based on arguments not considering the cause of our interdiction of murder. Only using Marquis' criterion of personhood, having a future like a person, can the killing of a single human cell be innocuous and the killing of a innocent person be immoral.
Epilogue
I wrote this paper for a medical ethics class in the fall semester of 1996. The assignment was to take a stand on the abortion issue and defend it against other positions. I found that the extreme pro-life position, that it is immoral to abort a fetus under any circumstances, to be the only position I could defend consistently.
This conclusion has very disturbing ramifications in terms of my world-view and self-view. Most conspicuous among the problems raised in the course of writing this essay is that if my girlfriend became pregnent I would want her to abort the fetus. How can I reconcile this certainty with my position on abortion? I would choose to act immorally in this case. I would, for purely selfish reasons, choose an operation I see as profoundly unethical. I am thankful that the present political climate allows me to pursue and easily secure what is in my own view unethical, and this is a distressing realization about myself.
Even more distressing is the way in which I can understand anti-abortionists - even the violent ones. I have always viewed the intimidation of abortion providers as a very low human pursuit. I have come to recognize, though, that if you believe very strongly that abortion is murder, it only makes sense to do everything you can to stop it - even murdering the "murderers." Obviously I do not condone this and thankfully it is rare to feel passionately enough about the rights of the unborn to kill providers. It's frightening, however, that I now perceive the difference between myself and these extremists to be my own immorality.
12/22/97, Bangkok
Epilogue two, May 2003