by Andrew
Abortion. There, I’ve said it. That’s another 100 extra hits on the statcounter today, fellow Sharpeners. There’s nothing the political world likes more than a contentious moral issue, and this particular issue is one of the daddies. This post was going to be a collaborative effort between me and Katie, but alas she is too busy, so you lucky souls just get my bit. That’s nice for me, of course, because it means I’m the de facto winner. King of the debate, if you will. Lord of the argument. Duke of disagreement. Enough…
What I’d like to do is to try to avoid a lot of the emotive language that goes with the abortion debate. It would make for an interesting study in politics to examine the words that people use to inject emotion into the debate (pro-life vs. pro-choice, embryo vs. foetus vs. unborn child vs. parasite, etc…), but I don’t think it helps. I’ll try to be scientific where possible, although my biology training stopped at the tender age of 16, so bear with me if I confuse foetuses for embryo’s, and cerebral cortexes (cortices?) for frontal lobes, or something like that.
That said, so that we can get some nice ranty comments going, I’m going to characterise myself as a pro-lifer. I’m not religious; in fact, I am an agnostic bordering on atheist, so please avoid comments about my invisible friend telling me to save the babies, as I’m not biting on that little chestnut. Nonetheless, I believe abortion should be illegal in all forms in Britain, except in truly exceptional circumstances, which I’ll define later. When it comes to commenting, can we please try to keep away from silly ‘if you take that argument to the extreme, you’d be condoning x’, where x is some ludicrous nonsensical proposition, or analogy with the Iraq war/Hitler/etc…, as that’s just plain dull. Still, if you feel the need to compare me to extremist, fundamentalist, Christian, bible-bashing, Texan-cowboy, imperialist, creationism-believing, abortion-clinic-bombing, KKK-supporting whackjobs, go right ahead. I can take it - I have the wikipedia link to Godwin’s law close to hand.
My objections to abortion are these:
Firstly, the science. I believe that the potential for life begins at conception. I hope that isn’t contentious, as it seems to me to be just a statement of fact. All other things being equal, and the world being a kind place, conception leads to birth. At some points in the 9 months, embryo becomes foetus becomes baby, and we can characterise the changes in a variety of ways. The foetus develops rudimentary organs and a brain by 8 weeks, and is able to respond to stimuli at the same point. The brain becomes capable of rational thought somewhere between 8-20 weeks, as far as I can tell - I’m not a biologist, and I’m a pretty lazy researcher. The current UK limit for abortion is at 24 weeks. Birth is somewhere around 38 weeks from fertilisation. The current legal limit for abortion seems arbitrary, and arguments that the foetus is capable of survival outside the womb with sufficient medical care at 24 weeks, albeit at a fairly low (but increasing) probability, would seem to suggest that the limit should at least be cut. That said, it seems likely that at some point between 8-20 weeks
at least, the foetus becomes capable of feeling pain and of some kind of understanding and rationality. Perhaps that implies a case for cutting the limit to 8 weeks? Of course, this is fairly contentious, because many people believe that the rights of the mother are paramount, and that the ‘pain’ or ‘consciousness’ arguments are
spurious. They have a point on the latter, and I’ll come back to the former later. I’d go further. The potential for life, which I identified earlier, is paramount. If you conceive, you should carry the embryo and then foetus to term. To deny the potential for life is, at least in my own opinion, morally equivalent to murder. To stretch
this point somewhat, but not beyond the realm of credibility, it isn’t hard to imagine that medical technology will exist in the (near) future that will allow a fertilised egg to be brought to term outside of the womb. What will the citizens of the future think of our civilisation now, as we so brutally butchered those they would
consider equal in their present?
The second point is more ethereal, and concerns the balance between rights and responsibilities. Some people on the other side of the argument believe that a woman has the right to do whatever she likes with her own body. I wouldn’t really argue with that, except in that it isn’t entirely her own body after she conceives. There is another body inside it, and although it is dependent on her for everything in those first 9 months, it is still a life, and it has rights. We can argue about the extent of those rights, but it has rights, nonetheless. To argue otherwise would create a precedent for a hierarchy of humanity, where different groups have rights according to their group classification. That’s a dangerous idea, and I’ll say no more about it, not wanting to Godwin-ise myself. This is often just summarised using the emotive terms of right-to-life and right-to-choose, but I think it’s more subtle than that. Having an extreme right to choose what you do with your own body, to the exclusion of the rights of others, however diminished those rights may be, seems to me to be a dangerous fundamental principle. To take an excessively emotive and extreme example, should I have the right to have sex with anyone I choose, regardless of how they feel about it? Of course not, but the equivalence is pretty
close, unless you deny that the foetus has any rights at all. Either way, I don’t think that these spurious, invented rights are very helpful. Everyone has a fundamental right to life, liberty and property, foetus included. Other rights either derive from that set, or are invented to prop up a cause celebre du jour (apologies to Orwell’s memory for that abuse of our language). Plus, there’s the practical argument
that if you can’t use contraception properly, abortion shouldn’t be the last line of defence. That’s what contraception is for. Yes, it can go wrong, but there’s risk in everything. If you want to take a
chance, you have to take responsibility for the outcome.
Thirdly, and finally, I am concerned with the effect that liberalised abortion law has on society. The original intention for the law in the UK was that abortion should be limited to cases where bringing the baby to term would subject the mother to undue physical or mental stress, effectively to neutralise the public health problem created by illegal abortions being carried out (and we can argue over how much of a problem really existed if you like). Legislation allowed for abortion if 2 doctors would agree to it, in cases where the mother’s, or existing children’s, physical or mental health was at risk, the mother’s life was in actual danger, or the child would be born severely handicapped. Current legislation puts a limit of 24 weeks on abortion. In practice, now more than ever before, abortion is available effectively on demand before 24 weeks, as doctors are quite willing to interpret mental or physical health problems in terms of not being able to go on holiday this year. Life’s a bitch. Stats in this section relate to England and Wales. The vast majority of abortions in 2003
(94% - 171,000 abortions) were carried out to protect the mother’s physical or mental health. The spread is remarkably even across age, marital status and race, although singletons tend to abort much more than married women do, and under 30’s more than over 30’s, for obvious reasons. 87% of abortions occur before week 12. Over 181,000 abortions were performed in 2003 (just under 50,000 in 1969, the first full year
after abortion was effectively legalised). As a comparison, just over 621,000 live births happened in 2003 (797,000 in 1969). That means a quarter of all pregnancies now end in abortion (6% in 1969). How can
that, in any way, be healthy for society as a whole, that we treat pregnancy and childbirth with such casual disdain? To compare with what is, in my view, our closest cultural comparative, the Republic of Ireland, which obviously has much stricter laws on abortion: in 2002, there were about 60,000 births, and 6,500 abortions - 1 in 10, much lower than our 1 in 4.
Finally, I don’t want to preclude the possibility of providing help and support for women who find themselves pregnant and don’t want the child. I also think abortion should be available on a limited basis, for cases where the mother’s life is genuinely at risk, or in cases of extreme emotional distress, such as after a rape. But I would go no further than that. We should provide a safety net to cover that, but it shouldn’t involve killing the foetus. People argue that this amounts to turning the woman into a human incubator, a machine, for 9 months. Well, if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. Wear a condom, or a femidom, take the pill, get a coil inserted, have your tubes tied, turn lesbian, but whatever you choose to do, go safely. And thus endeth the lesson. Over to you, commenters.
-”What I’d like to do is to try to avoid a lot of the emotive language that goes with the abortion debate.”
-”What will the citizens of the future think of our civilisation now, as we so brutally butchered those they would
consider equal in their present?”
Oooh, so close.
Hey, I did say ‘would like to’. I didn’t say ‘will do’. Besides which, that part was written from the point of view of the hypothesised future observer. Perhaps it isn’t clear.
Any constructive comments?
Yes. It seems to me that, amongst other things, you slide from the ‘potential for life’ to the rights of the unborn ‘body’ almost invisibly. Though you suggest that a foetus’ right to life should take precedence over a women’s control of her own body, does that right to life extend to cells with the potential for life in week two? Is the pin-head cluster of cells in week two as important to protect as the foetus in week twenty, or the almost-baby in week forty-five?
I suppose I’m asking exactly how you think abortion law should be ammended, if at all.
oh dear, taking the easy way out …
I also think abortion should be available on a limited basis, for cases where the mother’s life is genuinely at risk, or in cases of extreme emotional distress, such as after a rape
What other kinds of murder ought people (or possibly just women) to be allowed to get away with in cases of extreme emotional distress? Being prepared to allow this exception surely completely undermines your general principle.
bookdrunk: I suppose I’m asking exactly how you think abortion law should be ammended, if at all.
I thought I made that clear - it should be banned, except under exceptional circumstances.
dsquared: Being prepared to allow this exception surely completely undermines your general principle.
Yes, you’re right. It was a half-hearted attempt to prevent comments along the lines of “what? You’d expect a woman who was raped to carry the baby to term? You heartless right-wing bastard.” It doesn’t fit the rest of my argument particularly well.
I belive there are some sub arctic communities where the children are not named until they have survived for one winter as they are not considered viable until that stage.
I throw that in as, although I am not quite that extreem, I do not agree that a potential life is the same as an actual life.
My personal belief being that life starts once the baby is no longer relying on the mother - in most cases once the baby is not receiving blood throught the umbilicus.
I would challenge you to say whether you believe a life has been created as soon as the egg is fertilised or is it not until the egg has implaned in the uterus? if the former then the coil is a form of abortion.
If potential life is sacred how can preventing a sperm reaching an egg be justified? You appear to believe that contraception is acceptable but I cannot see how contraception is acceptable and abortion is not.
I consider the idea of forcing a woman who has been raped to bare a child then give it up to the state to be cruel (that is the least emotive word I can find for it, plenty of others were typed and deleted)
Lastly on a practical level I would say that abortion will always occur legally or illegally, at least the current system allows an upper time limit to be placed on abortions. I suspect that there were illegal abortions in ireland that were not included in your stats (not to mention the irish women who travel to the UK for abortions)
Apologies for any ranting that occured
The Ireland stats are, I assume, all people who travel to the UK. It is illegal over there, after all.
I would challenge you to say whether you believe a life has been created as soon as the egg is fertilised or is it not until the egg has implaned in the uterus?
Tricky, as I hate appealing to nature, but it is certainly true that many eggs are fertilised but fail to implant for whatever reason. I’d say that as implantation is a prerequisite for life, then life is only created at that point, although I recognise that as a wholly arbitrary distinction.
If potential life is sacred how can preventing a sperm reaching an egg be justified?
Again, tricky, but there are degrees of potential, of course. I recognise this as arbitrary, as well. Pragmatically, contraception isn’t going away, and I don’t see prevention of pregnancy as being inherently wrong. Basically, once conception has occurred, it is murder. Before that, it isn’t.
Lastly on a practical level I would say that abortion will always occur legally or illegally, at least the current system allows an upper time limit to be placed on abortions.
I’m not sure that’s relevant. Murder will always occur legally or illegally. As with rape. As with theft. Should we legalise them because we can’t stop them happening?
I’m not going to express this very well but here goes … I suspect that our moral codes are not wholly logically consistent, and break down at the margins. By which I mean that if you take a handful of premises that we hold be true, and start reasoning out from one, you can arrive at a contradiciton with another. I think you’ll have to take a pretty generous interpretation of these last sentences, not to consider it utter rubbish. However, abortion looks to me like a good example of what I’m trying to get at. Both sides can say “but if you say X, the logical consquence of that is Y, which is absurd”. You can go round and round on this one forever. I’m not sure we ought to expect this kind of problem to be solvable. I’m not sure that any amount of reasoning by unbaised perceptive smart people is ever going to arrive at a consistent, satisfactory answer to all aspects of this question. Perhaps, therefore, a more fruitful approach would be to abandon analytical reasoning and look at the question as a trade off between a number of desired but I(when taken to logical extent) incompatible goals (like the right to life, women’s rights, and so forth). This means accepting an outcome that is going to be wrong on some grounds or other, but moving the debate onto chosing which principles we want to compromise, and to what extent.
Well done for trying at least to make this a rational debate. I don’t have time to go into a full rebuttal, but I will take up the last point above:
“Lastly on a practical level I would say that abortion will always occur legally or illegally, at least the current system allows an upper time limit to be placed on abortions.
I’m not sure that’s relevant. Murder will always occur legally or illegally. As with rape. As with theft. Should we legalise them because we can’t stop them happening?”
Difference being that considerable numbers of women were seriously injured or even died because of botched back street abortions. There was genuine harm and horror going on - this wasn’t something that suddenly started occurring in 1969.
And as for potential for life, surely this is a sliding scale, rather than a black and white. A quarter of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, mostly before 12 weeks, but generally women do not hold funerals for them all. Most often they are flushed, quite frankly. It is our instinctive reaction to mourn more for late miscarriages than early ones, and even more for still births or premature babies that don’t make it. ‘Life’ is not as black and white as that, nor is consciousness or awareness of pain.
And ‘rights’ must be balanced - the right for a potential life to become a fully fledged life against the right of a woman to decide her own destiny and the right of a woman to control her own body - for me, that balance tips when the foetus/baby becomes capable of survival outside the womb, and of course there is a sliding scale there too. But to immediately forfeit the rights of a woman to the rights of a bundle of 4, then 8, then 12 cells - to see the world of human emotions, bodily integrity and social consequences in such black and white, right and wrong terms seems simplistic.
And may I say, without wishing to make this emotive, a simplistic approach that comes from someone who will never have to make such a judgement about themselves and their own body or live with the consequences.
Paddy: Actually, I think that’s very well expressed, and is exactly why this debate is problematic - it comes down to differences of opinion on fundamental axioms, and at that point, there is no argument, just polite (or not) disagreement.
Katherine: Difference being that considerable numbers of women were seriously injured or even died because of botched back street abortions.
I’d love to see some stats on this - as I said above, I’m a lazy researcher… - I seem to recall reading that this argument is overstated, but I really have nothing to back that up.
It is our instinctive reaction to mourn more for late miscarriages than early ones, and even more for still births or premature babies that don’t make it. ‘Life’ is not as black and white as that, nor is consciousness or awareness of pain.
Well, also without wanting to make it emotive, try standing outside an early pregnancy unit, waiting for the husband of a woman who has miscarried before 12 weeks, and say that to him, and see how he reacts. For someone who wants the pregnancy, life is exactly that black and white.
the right for a potential life to become a fully fledged life against the right of a woman to decide her own destiny and the right of a woman to control her own body
That’s really one of my points. I see the first as a real right, and the second as a question primarily of having a convenient life.
a simplistic approach that comes from someone who will never have to make such a judgement about themselves and their own body or live with the consequences.
The old “I’m a man, so I couldn’t possibly understand” argument? I’m not sure how that’s relevant to the issue - you assume I am not capable of empathy. I’m not black, but I still don’t think racism is a good thing. Should I be precluded from having an opinion?
Thank you Andrew.
But, if I’ve understood your position correctly, I’d be surprised if you are entirely in agreement with me - because your position looks to me like on made on the basis of premises (right to life) and reasoning out from there.
Surely if you accept the idea of a trade off, then you have to consider what you are prepared to trade off in return for a woman’s right to be in control of her own destiny? And if you start looking at it like that, then denying the right to life to (killing) an early stage foetus starts to look like a potentially acceptable trade. It might sound ugly, but that is what the pro-choice position comes down to isn’t it? It doesn’t look to me like your position is based on having weighed up that trade off.
Or, perhaps it is. Your use of the phrase “convenient life” (which I think might raise of few hackles) suggests that perhaps even if you did think in terms of a trade off, you might end up in the same pro-life position, because you don’t seem to attach much weight to the ‘right to choose’ end.
I think most women I know who have had abortions after getting pregnant by the wrong man at the wrong time felt it was more than convenience at stake. It would have meant their life turned upside down, and a child born without a father. That could conceivably be called ‘convenience’ but I think it’s stretching the term.
Is it relevant that also most of the woman I know that have had abortions, did so hoping to have a child when the time was right, and that they were expecting to have only one or two children in their lives, and wanted to do so when they felt the conditions for that child were above a certain threshold. So that, on some interpretations, it was not so much a life destroyed as a potential life deferred until such a time when the actual life has an improved chances of being a happy one? I’m not sure where this line of reasoning leads.
For my money, if a woman has a real sense that they are ending a potential life and all that entails (and I think most do, although I have no evidence for this supposition, other than the limited sample of my experience) then they’re not going to make that trade off lightly - and if having the baby would only mean inconvenience, most women I think would bear the child and the inconvenience.
So my solution is to impose a deadline that looks safely towards the right end of the potential to actual life sliding scale (perhaps 16 weeks?) and leave it up to the woman.
You may object that you can’t legislate for any women who do take the decision lightly. That, though, is the cost of leaving decisions in the hands of individuals.
oh f*ck it, this approach is no better than any other - re-reading what I’ve written, it just looks like I don’t attach much weight to the right to life for 16 week old foetuses. Just a arbitrary. So where do we end up? Put it to a vote, then accept the outcome and shut up.
Paddy: That’s what I meant. The argument when you analyse it basically boils down to a question of aesthetics - what aspect of abortion is the least distasteful for you, as an individual? As that is a question with purely relative answers, there is no real position on abortion that will satisfy everyone. Simplistically, for the pro-lifers, it is less of an issue that a woman is inconvenienced than for a foetus to die. For the pro-choicers, it is less of an issue for the foetus to die than for a woman to lose control of her life. (Forgive the choice of terms, but I’m struggling for appropriate words - the meaning is hopefully clear even if my semantics are a bit emotive)
Those positions are fundamental. They are axiomatic. There is no argument over them, as they won’t change. That’s why it is such an emotional subject.
Your solution is, of course, perfectly correct - we put it to the vote and the majority rules. Aint democracy wonderful?
That said, I’ll challenge some of your points:
Surely if you accept the idea of a trade off, then you have to consider what you are prepared to trade off in return for a woman’s right to be in control of her own destiny?
I don’t accept the idea of a trade off here, because I don’t see that the woman has anything of value to trade - the foetus, for me, holds all the rights. The woman is just looking for an easier life. Of course, that’s just my view - I know that many people think the total opposite.
I think most women I know who have had abortions after getting pregnant by the wrong man at the wrong time felt it was more than convenience at stake. It would have meant their life turned upside down, and a child born without a father.
Well, that’s precisely what I mean. That’s a choice to have an easier life. It is pure convenience. I don’t see that anyone has a right to an easy life. If only we did…
Is it relevant that also most of the woman I know that have had abortions, did so hoping to have a child when the time was right, and that they were expecting to have only one or two children in their lives, and wanted to do so when they felt the conditions for that child were above a certain threshold.
Again, that’s another choice for an easier life. It might be possible to mentally justify that choice to oneself as doing the right thing for the future children in terms of giving them the very best you can, but it does very little for the foetus that doesn’t fit in at that moment in time. Let’s take a ridiculous example. My next door neighbour plays heavy metal music at maximum volume at all hours of the night. It affects my whole neighbourhood, as none of us gets enough sleep. The world would be indisputably a better place for the majority if I took him out with a shotgun one dark night. Does that make it right? After all, I have a fundamental human right to undisturbed sleep.
Andrew, good post (though I would say that, right?!), but I think you’ve slipped in language when you say “I believe that the potential for life begins at conception.” My guess is that you mean that, biologically, life (actual, not potential) starts at conception - to plagiarise from a recent article (it’s pro-life, but academic - Lee and George in First Things):
“Human development begins at fertilization when a male gamete or sperm (spermatozoon) unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to form a single cell—a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.†(Keith L. Moore and T. V. N. Persaud, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 5th edition; see also William J. Larsen, Essentials of Human Embryology; Scott F. Gilbert, Developmental Biology, 7th edition; and Ronan O’Rahilly and Fabiola Muller, Human Embryology and Teratology, 3rd edition)
Basically, there is no coherent point of distinction between a human being and the fertilised egg. So, if that’s ‘not a life’ or ‘potential life’, then we could well be too. This means that most forms of contraception, which prevent fertilisation from taking place, are substantively different - a sperm or egg alone cannot become a human; their fusion can. (The coil would remain problematic, yes.)
Now, I’m with Andrew on this, so when Katherine says:
“And as for potential for life, surely this is a sliding scale, rather than a black and white. A quarter of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, mostly before 12 weeks, but generally women do not hold funerals for them all. Most often they are flushed, quite frankly.”
… then, obviously I’ll disagree, but it’s important to clarify why and how. Yes, many embryos will not make it to term; but then, many 80-year-olds won’t make it through the next fortnight - if life exists but has a low probability of survival, it doesn’t mean we treat it as throwaway… In fact, we might consider it all the more precious.
Yes, a large number of miscarriages happen than we typically think (ditto for abortions, though), and that it’s significant that we often don’t grieve for them as much as we might somebody who had lived. But as Andrew hints at, those I know who’ve suffered them (as mother or father) have certainly not treated it as a casual occurence in their life; their feelings run far deeper than those of disappointed expectations.
Incidentally, re the backstreet abortions argument - I’ve heard it was overstated too, and might try and track it down later… but one argument that’s inconvenient for both sides in this debate (Paddy’ll be ok, then!) is that there’d be fewer deaths these days, because medical advances - specifically, pharmaceuticals - allow for cheaper, safer abortions. Inconvenient for pro-lifers, because our argument hangs on saying “it won’t be as bad as it was before.” Inconvenient for pro-choicers, because the most convincing argument against restrictions isn’t quite as powerful. So nobody talks about it.
Blimpish: I used the word potential precisely to mitigate against the “but what about miscarriages?” argument. I wanted that statement to be absolutely uncontroversial. Now, I would personally go further, and say that actual life begins at conception, but that certainly isn’t an uncontroversial statement of fact to all parties.
Your backstreet abortions point is pretty powerful, thinking about it - most early abortions are done chemically I believe, rather than by suction aspiration, so would be much safer… I’ll try to dig out the actual stats.
Incidentally, the Catholic Church treats the coil as abortion, rather than contraceptive. Not convincing for many on the opposite side of this fence, but it holds some authority on mine, at least.
Sorry - our connection went dead so I had to wait to post that one.
Following on from Paddy and Andrew’s discussion there, Andrew says:
“Your solution is, of course, perfectly correct - we put it to the vote and the majority rules. Aint democracy wonderful?”
Now, I’m in agreement with this - but remember that democracy only works by us continuing with that debate, and taking sides (moderately, we hope) on it. It should be said that, except a few nutjobs in the US, pro-lifers have accepted majority rule - even though we often find the law abominable (less so here than in the US, where it wasn’t even majority rule).
Aside from that niggle, both points are well made. Pro-lifers (me being one) have to face up to the fact that abortion is pretty much part and parcel of today’s society and how we all live in it. We can seek to limit it, but if we want to really see its end, then we’ll have to get to a pretty radically different society first. (Don’t ask me what and how about this society; I don’t bloody know.)
“You’d expect a woman who was raped to carry the baby to term?” The classic response to that is to enquire why it is reasonable to execute a child just because her father is a criminal. How about an appeal to tradition? Doesn’t Blackstone, or some other ancient legal sage, draw a distinction concerning when life quickens in what we now call the foetus. Could one get a usefully wide agreement on such lines?
To be honest all this talk of principled reasons for or against abortion leaves me somewhat cold, because we live in a messy world with few (moral or otherwise) blacks and whites just different shades of grey. So I would ask: In practical terms what are the effects of various laws on abortion?
It seems to me that in practical terms, the law should stay roughly as it is, because:
1. banning abortion is likely to lead to an increase in crime years later, as people get born and brought up in deprived backgrounds who wouldn’t otherwise be born. (The Steven Levitt argument on the connection between abortion and crime).
2. if you ban abortion except where the woman’s been raped, you’ll get women falsely claiming to have been raped in order to get asn abortion. This will lead to miscarriages of justice and wasting police time.
3. you cannot enforce a ban on abortion anyway unless you have monthly gynecological checks on all women of fertile age and ban them from overseas travel while pregnant.
Andrew: grant your attempt to be consensual, but a fertilised egg’s ‘potential’ for life is materially different from that of a sperm (or a pebble, for that matter). And there is no clear cut-off point from conception until death where we can say that it becomes ‘human life’.
Walker Percy (yes, yes, a pro-lifer) once made the point that the typical pro-choice position on this question - that a fertilised egg is not a life - might’ve been intellectually respectable a hundred years ago, but since the growth in biological understanding, is left looking like a bizarre assertion in the face of fact. (This isn’t an argument against being pro-choice; only an appeal for better arguments. It might be that this form of killing is less bad.)
The closest to a scientific distinction would be some kind of test of sentience. But, aside from the thought of mind and body as wholly separate being highly controversial (and uncomfortable for pro-choicers to take, given the ‘body sovereignty’ argument), it’s likely that such a test would allow the ‘abortion’ of newborns too, a la Peter Singer.
The brain becomes capable of rational thought somewhere between 8-20 weeks, as far as I can tell
Ha! 8 to 20 years more like.
On a more serious note, I would put the start of rational thought around 2-4 years.
Phil: On 1, While the Levitt argument appeals to my amateur economist side, I think that pre-emptive capital punishment for future crimes isn’t a morally acceptable way to reduce the crime rate. At what point do we move from abortion to just rounding up the chavs and putting them into the electric chair?
On 2, without wanting to sound callous, there would have to be forensic evidence of the rape, or at least a very prompt report of the incident to the police.
Can’t really argue with 3, although I think the lower rates in Ireland are sufficient motivation for me to ban it here as well. We ban cannabis here, but people still fly to Amsterdam to try it out. Doesn’t mean in itself that the ban is worthless (although, for different reasons, I think it is).
Perhaps ‘rational’ is the wrong word - ‘conscious’ would be better, I think.
Blimpish: I agree, but I think you’d agree that abortion is largely permitted because we aesthetically distinguish it from murder, rather than rationally do so. The scientific difference, as you say, is largely one of defining consciousness.
It doesn’t fit the rest of my argument particularly well
Well yes, and the fact that in order to protect your argument from looking horrendously authoritarian and heartless you had to include a couple of things that didn’t fit very well, suggests that there might be something wrong with the argument.
My view on this has always been that you don’t have to be an out-and-out libertarian to think that there should be some boundaries to the state, and the cervix seems like as good a start as any.
Blimpish: Walker Percy (yes, yes, a pro-lifer) once made the point that the typical pro-choice position on this question - that a fertilised egg is not a life - might’ve been intellectually respectable a hundred years ago, but since the growth in biological understanding, is left looking like a bizarre assertion in the face of fact.
Yes a fertilised egg is alive. So is an unfertilised egg or a sperm. They are all alive. Asking when does life begin is irrelevant, because it doesn’t; life began, once, billions of years ago and has continued being a chain of life since then.
I’m also reminded of the recent controversy over stem cells. It seems we might not need to used embyronic stem cells in research because ones taken from the umbilical cord will do just as well. It seems to me that that’s an argument over nothing, because it’s saying that one clump of cells you can only see under a microscope has rights, but another, very similar set of cells you can only see under a microscope doedsn’t have rights. That seems bizarre to me, like arguing about how many angels can stand on the head of a pin.
Phil: leaving aside whether these things should simply be a question of utility, and the questions over evidence that are still being debated, Levitt’s argument is amusing because of what he leaves out. As James Q Wilson (hardly a militant pro-lifer, IIRC) put it:
“Levitt conspicuously refrains from saying so, but a very large fraction of these poor, single, teenage mothers would have been African American: over 60 percent of all black children are born out of wedlock, and the abortion rate is roughly three times greater among black than among white women.”
For most of us, a policy argument that prioritises slowing black people from reproducing is only a tiny wee bit worrying. Wilson goes on (it was in Commentary) to point out some research by Akerlof, Yellen, and Katz that “argued that legalized abortion actually increased the number of out-of-wedlock first births—because the availability of abortion, along with the advent of new contraceptive devices, rendered sex “cost-free†for men but not necessarily for the women they impregnated.”
Dsquared: My view on this has always been that you don’t have to be an out-and-out libertarian to think that there should be some boundaries to the state, and the cervix seems like as good a start as any.
While I think that states have some uses, I too think they should be limited in power. And I think that one limit should be on the integrity of a person’s body.
Phil: I don’t like to think of people as an overgrown sperm. It gets… awkward.
dsquared: My view on this has always been that you don’t have to be an out-and-out libertarian to think that there should be some boundaries to the state, and the cervix seems like as good a start as any.
Perhaps, but that’s totally arbitrary as well.
I don’t really have any problem with sounding like a heartless authoritarian, but I didn’t think it would make for a good discussion if I came out with all guns blazing like that.
Blimpish: leaving aside whether these things should simply be a question of utility
I don’t think you can ever leave utility aside. You got to be practical; it’s simply impractical not to be. That’s not to say that utility will ever be (or should ever be) the only consideration, but any socirty where it isn’t a very big one isn’t going to be a nice place to live (e.g. theocrats praying all day while the population diew of hunger and disease).
For most of us, a policy argument that prioritises slowing black people from reproducing is only a tiny wee bit worrying.
I dare say it is the case that in the USA a higher proportion of abortions happen to black women. But I think that’s irrelevant. I think black babies are neither more nor less valuable than white ones, they are im moral terms and in terms of what societies priorities are, just the same. Therefore if a policy has a different effect on the number of black babies born than the effect it has on the number of white babies born, that’s irrelevant, it’s totally unimportant just as it would be totally unimportant if a policy inadvertantly changed the relative frequency of alleles for blue and brown eyes.
You also say that legalised abortion makes sex “cost-free” to men. I suspect any men being chased by the Child Support Agency might disagree with you on that point!
Andrew: in the spirit of that arbitrariness… my view on this has always been that you don’t have to be an out-and-out authoritarian to think that there should be some boundaries to peoples’ power over those weaker than themselves, and the cervix seems like as good a start as any.
Re your point above - yes, aesthetics, very much so.
Phil:
1. I didn’t say to leave utility aside, only whether it should be “simply a question of utility.” Huge difference.
2. On differential effects, I’d agree, and I was being slightly tongue-in-cheek. I assume, though, that you’ve never worried about golf clubs which happen to have no black or Jewish members either.
3. “legalised abortion makes sex “cost-free†to men” - was quoting Wilson quoting Akerlof et al, as some evidence contra Levitt… but ah yes, I see your point.
My, there’s nuthin’ like abortion to get the comments flowing, is there?
Just a quickie - I do not personally consider the right to control over ones body a matter of convenience or a matter of a convenient life - it is a matter of great importance. Bodily integrity is not something to be written off - whether it is control over something going into it or something coming out of it.
And whether or not the statistics on back street abortions are exaggerated or not, does it not strike you that women have been prepared to take this risk, both of injury and of imprisonment - and for what, for convenience?
And my reference to miscarriages was not to treat this casually - but to point out the simple fact that we do emotionally and instinctively treat unborn babies on a sliding scales - these are shades of grey, not black and white. Let’s keep emotive pictures of people who desperately want children out of this debate shall we?
And by flushing I was referring to the fact that many miscarriages occur without the woman even being aware of it. Foetuses die. Frequently. For many reasons. Life in the womb is not the same as life outside it, both by nature and by our own emotions.
And yes, I do think that a man will have difficulty empathising with a woman who has something growing inside her that she desperately does not want; similarly, although I can empathise with a victim of racism, I would not have the arrogance to assume that as a white person who has never experienced such a thing that I would really know how it would feel.
Blimpish: I didn’t say to leave utility aside, only whether it should be “simply a question of utility.†Huge difference.
Ah; misuderstanding there.
On differential effects, I’d agree, and I was being slightly tongue-in-cheek.
Yes i thought you might have been.
I assume, though, that you’ve never worried about golf clubs which happen to have no black or Jewish members either.
My understanding is that many golf clubs are run by frustrated middle managers who enjoy imposing silly rules on people. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of those people are bigots too. If a golf club is run by small-minded bigots, should that be legal? I suppose so, but I wouldn’t want to be a member of any such club (I expect I’d probably get kicked out!)
Andrew,
Have you perhaps misunderstood the concept of a trade off? (or rather, have you a different understanding of it to me, which is of course the same thing as being wrong).
It is not the point that the woman has no rights to trade, it is that ‘we’ as a society would like to fix things so that human beings of all ages (and stages) have a right to life, and we would like to fix things so that woman have the right to determine their own destiny, but we can’t do both, so we have to decide which to trade off against the other, and how.
And, briefly, on this point:
It might be possible to mentally justify that choice to oneself as doing the right thing for the future children in terms of giving them the very best you can, but it does very little for the foetus that doesn’t fit in at that moment in time.
It’s a bit more than a mental rationalisation of a selfish decision isn’t it? It’s a real choice with real consequences in the world: 1) have child now in bad circumstances 2) have child in future better circumstances. Choice 1) is curtains for potential life 2) although in that case the potential is theoretical, rather than a bundle of growing cells.
and what the heck, while I’m here …
Surely the debate over when life begins is utterly redundant, because even if you accept the premise that life begins at the point where sperm fertilises egg, you then have to persuade me that I ought to care about killing a fertilised egg, while it is still in the very early stages of its life. Just because you can say:
1) sanctity of life
2) fertislise egg is life, therefore
3) sanctity of fertilised egg
is not going to cut any ice with me, because I can just ask whether/how much we should care about killing ALIVE fertilised eggs, foetuses, and in what circumstances it is permissible. So even if you reach consensus on when life begins - so what?
bugger, when talking about trade offs, I shouldn’t have used the word rights, which is precisely what you dispute, I should have just said “would to fix things so that …”
Perhaps, but that’s totally arbitrary as well.
I don’t think it is at all. It’s the distinction between “inside” and “outside” the human body. Even white blood cells recognise it.
Interesting post - and comments. My own view of abortion is similar to your own, coming as it does from a non-religious perspective. I don’t, however, think the language of rights helps the debate particularly; being absolute, this conception of the abortion issue results in two sides basically having a competition to see who can scream the loudest. I don’t think this does justice to what those of us who are uneasy about the scale of abortion in our society today feel is wrong with it. The balance isn’t really one of rights and responsibilities but rather whether, to what extent, and at what stage the unborn child becomes a separate entity from the mother. The idea that in aborting a foetus that may be over six months old is a woman exercising control over her own body is an idea I find grotesque. On the other hand, the notion that abortion in the very early stages carries the same moral weight as the cold-blooded murder of an adult doesn’t seem credible.
Katherine:
I do not personally consider the right to control over ones body a matter of convenience or a matter of a convenient life - it is a matter of great importance. Bodily integrity is not something to be written off - whether it is control over something going into it or something coming out of it.
Andrew’s position seems to be, in effect, that when you’re pregnant it’s different - your bodily integrity’s gone down the drain, and you just need to get used to it (”it isn’t entirely her own body after she conceives”). Andrew obviously doesn’t share my reluctance (as a man) to say anything at all about this subject, but on the basis of his own argument I really think he should. I mean, is that what it’s like to be pregnant? Who would know? Not me or Andrew.
I do think that a man will have difficulty empathising with a woman who has something growing inside her that she desperately does not want
I find it hard to begin to imagine (not without thinking of Alien, anyway).
I think there are strawmen in the underbrush. Do we approve of women terminating pregnancies for reasons of personal convenience, and thinking no more of it than if they’d had a wart removed? Not really - but I don’t think a lot of casual and unthinking terminations are going on out there. The question is not whether women should be able to terminate pregnancies casually, but whether a woman has the right - after considering all that it means to be pregnant, to be carrying within you the beginning of a new human life - to terminate that pregnancy. Either the final say rests with the woman (in which case the anti-abortion side is free to use persuasion, but not to constrain her) or it rests with the state (in which case pregnant women forfeit their bodily integrity by law).
Is abortion wrong?
Andrew’s argument against abortion at The Sharpener seems to depend on a combination of two separate arguments which sound superficially attractive when intertwined, but which does not seem convincing when the pieces of the argument are disassem…
Andrew says: “The argument when you analyse it basically boils down to a question of aesthetics - what aspect of abortion is the least distasteful for you, as an individual? As that is a question with purely relative answers, there is no real position on abortion that will satisfy everyone.”
I wonder whether that insight might help to explain why many people would like to prioritise the views of pregnant women - people who actually have to make the decision - over everyone else, including of course foetuses who are incapable of making decisions. And why the “men can’t understand” argument is a badly phrased way of articulating something quite important.
It’s one reason why I’m in favour of devolving the moral choice over abortion to the lowest possible level - the individual, who in this case will always necessarily be a woman, as it happens - rather than letting the (aesthetic?) preferences of others dictate her decision.
Katherine: And my reference to miscarriages was not to treat this casually - but to point out the simple fact that we do emotionally and instinctively treat unborn babies on a sliding scales - these are shades of grey, not black and white.
But that’s not a simple fact. It’s just your opinion. Mine is the opposite - it is absolutely black and white. So your use of ‘we’ is misleading.
Bodily integrity is not something to be written off - whether it is control over something going into it or something coming out of it.
Indeed not. I just don’t think it outweighs the possibility of life.
Paddy: It is not the point that the woman has no rights to trade, it is that ‘we’ as a society would like to fix things so that human beings of all ages (and stages) have a right to life, and we would like to fix things so that woman have the right to determine their own destiny, but we can’t do both, so we have to decide which to trade off against the other, and how.
Again, no - you make the same mistake as Katherine - using ‘we’ when you mean ‘I’. I note you retract the word ‘right’, but then what would you call it? I think the foetus has a right to life, as with every other human. I don’t think the mother, when pregnant, has an absolute right to determine her own destiny any more, having (hopefully) consciously forfeited some of this ‘right’ when taking the risk that she could become pregnant. I guess this is why I see rape as different - that conscious risk decision was never made.
So even if you reach consensus on when life begins - so what?
Well, then the link with murder would be far clearer.
Shuggy: I don’t think this does justice to what those of us who are uneasy about the scale of abortion in our society today feel is wrong with it.
Yes, and I feel most strongly about my third point - the effects of the, frankly, huge number of abortions in today’s society, but I find it hard to articulate exactly what I find so wrong about it. Will have a think about that.
Andrew obviously doesn’t share my reluctance (as a man) to say anything at all about this subject, but on the basis of his own argument I really think he should. I mean, is that what it’s like to be pregnant? Who would know? Not me or Andrew.
No, I don’t share that reluctance. If we had to have experienced something to be able to cast an opinion on it, the world of politics would be an extremely dull place (or maybe not…). On this specific topic - should we restrict the debate to women who have been pregnant? Plenty of feminists would get upset at that. Should infertile women be unable to talk about it? Perhaps we should only let women who have actually had an abortion decide what society’s view should be. After all, they know best what the issues are.
Either the final say rests with the woman (in which case the anti-abortion side is free to use persuasion, but not to constrain her) or it rests with the state (in which case pregnant women forfeit their bodily integrity by law).
Yes, powerfully put. Of course, when you say state, I would say society. We take all sorts of moral decisions at the level of the state by legislating on them. I don’t see that this one is any different. Should we devolve all decisions involving the taking of another life down to the individual level? I think your argument is really just a cop out from making a difficult decision.
I also recommend that everyone clicks through to Owen’s post on this (see trackback above) - it’s very good.
Andrew, looks like everyone’s made the relevent points in the comments already. I had a couple of other things though.
If you don’t think that “doctors are quite willing to to interpret mental or physical health problems in terms of not being able to go on holiday this year. Life’s a bitch.” is emotive language, try reading the Daily Express. Maybe you already do, in which case perhaps you should consider writing for them, putting this story right beside the one about young women getting pregnant solely to acquire a council house.
As you believe that abortion is “morally equivalent to murder” I can provide a list of Marie Stopes clinics, which you might want to protest outside, or perhaps attack. After all - what right minded person wouldn’t want to prevent mass murder?
I think you know - as most reasonable pro-lifers realise eventually - that abortion is not even close to murder.
Paul: If only HTML provided a ‘this is a joke’ tag, we could avoid all this unpleasant sniping.
As you believe that abortion is “morally equivalent to murder†I can provide a list of Marie Stopes clinics, which you might want to protest outside, or perhaps attack.
Well done. You get the prize for being the first person to compare me to an abortion clinic bomber. I’m surprised it took 40 comments before my prediction came true. If it would make you feel better, you can call me a Nazi in your next comment. It would certainly make me look like some kind of clairvoyant genius.
I love the smell of a Good Argument in the Morning.
Andrew at the Sharpener and Owen Barder comments on….yes, you’ve guessed it, abortion. Rather than go into the debate point by point a quick recap of my position. I’m agin it in all but the most limited circumstances. Despite a
This seems to me totally, utterly wrong. Your warning of scanty knowledge of biology is graciously given, but it makes all the more bizarre that you would make statements like this.
Firstly, nociception - the biological correlates of a noxious insult - needs to be distinguished from the experience of pain. Pain is necessarily a subjective experience and must be underpinned by, if not consciousness proper, some kind of conscious-like state. Read sea slugs responding to shocks, read pain experience under anaesthetic (i.e., none). The foetus may show responses of one form or other relatively early - that is neither here nor there, and we must take care not to anthropomorphise (as scientists; as a parent it’s perfectly healthy to begin to think of the little person becoming part of our family). Serious scientists do disagree on the stage at which foetuses can feel pain, and I’ve idly followed a little of the controversy in the pages of Bioethics. Stuart Derbyshire argues for experience of pain very late, whereas David and Michael Benatar strongly (vehemently, according to Derbyshire) disagree, putting the experience far earlier.
(For those interested, the particular articles I am talking about in my folder:
The bottom line is, the lower limit Benetar^2 are going for is around 28-30 weeks. Derbyshire argues that pain experience doesn’t develop until 12 months of age, although it will develop along a continuum of increasingly pain-like experience to get there (NB his article arguing so begins with a claim he objects to - that consciousness emerges at 30-35 weeks).
I happen to think Derbyshire has got legs. But even if not? Your estimate of 8-20 weeks falls well below all the assessments made by the experts. So right from the off you’ve lost me a little. I should go back and read the rest but I can’t imagine that this won’t have a knock-on effect on the rest of the argument.
Bugger. Sorry. Some text was lost in the making of this cockup. The opening paragraph (in blockquote) should be (from Andrew)
The brain becomes capable of rational thought somewhere between 8-20 weeks, as far as I can tell…(in comments) Perhaps “rational” the wrong word - “conscious” would be better, I think.
Alex - Fixed it for you - let me know if I missed anything.
Andrew, point taken and apologies - I can see what it looks like, but I wasn’t intending the comparison to a bomber. I actually had in mind attacking the patients and staff at the clinic verbally, if you can believe that.
I am interested to know what you are doing to help stop this mass murder (c200,000 in the UK per year), though. If I believed that scale of preventable killing of innocent life was going on in my own country, I’d be out there marching at least.
And - What joke?
Paul: Making abortion illegal would be a good start - hence the comparison with Ireland, where the rates are lower. And I thought the piece was littered with jokes, but maybe I have a high opinion of how funny I am. The bit I was referring to specifically was the “going on holiday. Life’s a bitch” part - I thought it was pretty clearly hyperbole. Obviously, I don’t really think many women have abortions because they’ve booked a summer break.
Apology accepted, by the way, but on your own blog you do directly compare me to an abortion clinic bomber.
Well done. You get the prize for being the first person to compare me to an abortion clinic bomber.
but it’s a serious point and brushing it off won’t make it go away. If you believed that thousands of murders were taking place at the end of your street every year, then this would normally demand some action from you. The fact that you regard this as a matter for civilised debate between people who can otherwise remain friends strongly suggests that you in fact /don’t/ regard abortion as morally equivalent to murder. I don’t think it’s unfair at all to point out that your claims are undermined by your actions.
dsquared: Or maybe I think it is more appropriate to persuade others to make it illegal, rather than taking direct violent action. I’m sure I’ve argued before and elsewhere that terrorism is wrong. I don’t see why I should be exempt from that just this once.
Still, although you can’t admit it for some reason, you are treating this issue differently to murder. I’m guessing (and if I’m wrong you can stop reading) that at least one person you consider a friend is in favour of legal abortion even if it is only in the most extreme cases (such as rape, to use your example). Most people will know someone who has been a supportive party in an actual abortion. If I found out a friend supported a policy, law or belief system which directly caused the murder of 200,000 innocent people, who are absolutely unable to defend themselves, I think that one thing would mean the end of our friendship. I don’t want to compare you to a “whackjob”, but, aside from their violence, I can’t see much difference between their and your (professed) beliefs.
Thanks Andrew, that’s it in a nutshell.
I wonder if anyone has read the issue as covered on Left2Right, where a liberal academic argues for abandoning Roe vs Wade? Here and here. Interesting stuff - Prof Velleman has a very nuanced take on the whole children/new life issue. (For example, his cogent post arguing that embryo donation is immoral under a liberal framework) - Here.
As others have here, I’d like to query whether we really treat life, or even the potential to be a person, in the same way as we treat someone who has attained personhood. Take this scenario.
Imagine someone takes a piece of your skin (sloughed off your foot and thrown in the trash, it’s in the public domain), and puts it in a special cloning device. This device will then work to generate from your skin a person weaved from the same cloth - similar to you but not exactly the same (the device is a beta version). Let’s assume that the clone is created from the bottom up, and would feel nothing until the last minute, where the brain is switched on. You are incenced, and want it to stop. Does the entity being created have rights? Would you expect to have any say in the eventual outcome?
Note that in this version you have weaker claims than a mother does - it isn’t taking your bodily resources, there is no associated risk of death and disfigurement, you won’t need to give up your job, and you won’t need to look after a baby.
Now, although I don’t claim that this would be entirely unproblematic, I anticipate we would agree that terminating the foot would be ok - if not on your say-so (perhaps you have no proprietary claim) on the basis of society, perhaps in the form of pitchfork-wielding townsfolk, demanding that the experiment be stopped. Once the process finishes and the thing is switched on, I would argue that a different set of moral conditions exist. An actual person demands rights, a potential person doesn’t. (A part-person, such as an entity with limited but real conscious experience, would perhaps have certain protections, like great apes, but not rights, or, if they had passed a certain milestone, such as birth as an independent being, could be granted rights as a matter of simple convenience).
Oh bloody hell. I’ve been using the html detailed in the “Leave a comment” spot - i.e., using sharp brackets: [a href="www.etc" title="whatever"]
- but should I stick to the normal one - i.e., in sharp brackets: [a href="www.etc]whatever[/a]
? Don’t want to be doing this all day….
Weighing in a little late here.
dsqaured’s right, we need to talk a little bit about what it means to be pro-life, that is, if one believes that the government should at least place further restrictions on, if not outright ban, abortion.
It is mentioned earlier that the Catholic church considers the coil abortion, and therefore wrong. I would add that based on the definition of life beginning with fertilisation, andrew and blimpish also consider the morning after pill abortion.
In the States, debate is currently raging over the way that some pharmacists are taking matters into their own hands about these fine lines between contraception and abortion. It appears that christian, right-wing pharmacists are protesting their right to refuse a woman, with a prescription from her medical professional, contraception (including the pill) or in less extreme cases, the morning after pill.
In some cases, the pharmacist has taken the prescription and refused to relinquish it so that the woman can go elsewhere and get it filled. When the morning after pill requires 72 hours to be effective, and you need to make another appointment, and find another pharmacy, this matters.
Now, it goes without saying, surely, that people who become pharmacists have to accept their professional responsibility to defer their personal feelings before a doctor’s judgement. But we have provision for conscientious objectors in the army. And pharmacists are allowed to withhold drugs from patients if they suspect she came by them nefariously. And doctors in the states are already allowed to refuse to prescribe contraception or the pill.
All this means that it is likely that pharmacists will continue to be allowed to do this. Walmart, for example, has stipulated that pharmacists must decalre their leanings upon appointment and that whenever he or she is on duty, a second pharmacist must be too.
Not criminal behavior, certainly. But think about the kind of people who these pharmacists are turning away who don’t have the knowledge or the confidence to overcome the hurdle of a medical professional condemning you and withholding your unfilled prescription.
This takes us back neatly to the discussion of levitt: what levitt argues, quite specifically, is that the people most likely to not have access to abortions, teenage mothers or ones from disadvantaged backgrounds who can’t afford expensive, secret procedures (because they will, indeed happen if the law is changed) fit the profile of the environment that current thinking on crime considers creates ‘criminals’ out of children.
If we are to eradicate that kind of environment, allowing abortion must be part of it. Having a baby has real, devastating consequences for those kinds of women.
I don’t believe that the figures for abortion in this country are that high because of these kinds of mothers-to-be. It is almost certainly because of women like me, young, underpaid ‘educated professionals’ who don’t feel ‘ready’ for children, when what they really mean is they want to keep partying into their late thirties and then, when they’re practically infertile, make the NHS pay for treatment. Selfishness should never be an excuse for murder.
Yes, that’s what I think abortion is. I think to have one, in all moral clarity, you have to confront that fact. And I don’t think enough people do.
But I don’t know if, knowing that, I would still be able to go through with it. I’ve never had to make that choice and hope I won’t have to. But if I do, I’ll do it with my eyes open. And if I do, I want it to be available. As a last resort. So that my kid doesn’t have the start in life that sets him up for a life os disadvantage and possibly crime.
I’m with Hilary: safe, legal, and rare.
As I said in a comment above, aside from a few bombing nutjobs, almost all pro-lifers tend to accept majority rule and argue against it. This probably owes a lot to the fact that we’re more likely quite conservative types who value order. I don’t believe there’s a ‘right’ to civil disobedience, for example; as Andrew points out, it’d be a bit rum to say “except where I want there to be.”
No, I wasn’t calling into question your approach. Just pointing out how people ARE allowed to get away with disobedience.
Katie: Medical staff and pharmacists in the UK can ethically opt out of either giving abortions, or dispensing the morning after pill, but I believe there is an obligation to refer patients to someone who will do the job. I think that’s the right approach for now.
Alex: You need to close the tags - I’ve edited your other comment to do so - the text in the Leave a comment section isn’t that clear. It’s just standard HTML.
Regarding your first point, Andrew. (BTW I wish the comment system did threads).
On 1, While the Levitt argument appeals to my amateur economist side, I think that pre-emptive capital punishment for future crimes isn’t a morally acceptable way to reduce the crime rate. At what point do we move from abortion to just rounding up the chavs and putting them into the electric chair?
I suppose I basically find abortion morally acceptable because I don’t think of fetuses as people. (I don’t really young humans as fully people either, until they learn to speak and communicate. To me, human rights begin when a person is capable of signaling “I have rights! I don’t want to be killed!”. Of course, this point of view implies a downgrading of the rights of the severely mentally handicapped, but as Paddy Carter pointed out above, any set of moral propositions taken to their logical conclusions, will produce something nasty).
Regarding rounding up chavs, etc. I think that once babies are born they are part of the national community and it is up to society (parents backed up by the state) to ensure that they are brought up in a way that they become productive and happy members of that society, and not criminals. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do some pre-emptive quality control on who gets born in the first place.
On the subject of quality control, it seems to me right that the state continues to encourage the abortion of severely disabled fetuses, because these people if born will be an economic drain on society.
Society should also continue and expand screening for genetic diseases, in order to increase the future health of society. Where possible, we should also encourage the propagation of good genetic traits (as far as their genetic basis can be determined) such as health and intelligence. (Now everyone will think I’m a Nazi
)
Andrew: On 2, without wanting to sound callous, there would have to be forensic evidence of the rape, or at least a very prompt report of the incident to the police.
Some women who’ve been raped are traumatised and don’t report it promptly. Or at all. Should these women be forced to carry the baby?
Phil: Without wanting to sound too authoritarian, a change in the law might have the consequence that more women report rapes that were previously unreported, because the consequences are possibly ‘worse’ than before in some sense. And now everyone thinks I’m a Nazi.
Katie: yes, you’re quite right that under our definitions, the morning-after pill would count as an abortion method (and, it is). Here I confess: under my dictatorship - and believe me, the planning is now quite advanced - I’d hope to cleave to a hypocritical blind-eye policy, where such methods were freely, cheaply, easily, but not openly, available.
Hypocritical, yes - but then so is every attempt to maintain some moral standard in law. (And don’t even dare suggest the law should have no moral standard - there is no neutrality here.)
And anyway, we’re hypocrites together - your argument is that “it’s murder but we should allow it in these cases, so we’ll keep it legal but hope people will keep it minimal;” whereas I say “it’s murder so it should be illegal, but it’s better that we don’t enforce it too far.”
My hypocrisy, I think, works better - law has a massive educational role, and to set a framework which allows (in practice, as of right) one of the most heinous crimes to go unpunished is sending some awful signals about duty and justice.
Phil H: Nazis have feelings too, right?
Andrew: I always knew you were one anyway.
A couple of comments for ye.
Firstly, although the potential for life may occur at conception, it often doesn’t happen. Many pregnancies (estimates are at about 40%, I believe) spontaneously abort, either through miscarriage or even before the mother is aware that she was pregnant. This is believed to be because the genes were so defective that the child is utterly unviable.
Secondly, I read a report on the Beeb site yesterday (link here) which stated that scientists now believe that babies are incapable of feeling pain until at least week 28. This is because the neural networks required have not yet formed. In fact, the peripheral nervous system does not develop fully until some years after birth (which is why babies’ coordination is not very good).
(Not relevant, but also the soft palate does not recede until about 18 months, which is why babies (and monkeys) cannot talk properly until that point.)
Just thought I’d lob those in.
DK
I find the pro-life arguments quite strange. The essence is that once pregnant, a woman becomes little more than a repository for this precious new life. For a ‘pro-lifer’, this little clump of gestating human cells must now take precedence over the mental, emotional, social and financial well-being of their sentient, fully formed host.
Those who come to an anti stance from an aetheist viewpoint confuse me even more. Surely the sanctity of a developing foetus is based on religious notions of a divine soul. For supposedly dogma-free aetheists, the notion of a divine human soul is ultimately unworkable. Ipso facto, the so-far unquestionned (on this thread anyway) logic of the sanctity of human life also becomes a matter for debate.
Andrew, and other commenters have unconsciously framed the terms of this debate on estblished religious morality. If anyone wants to justify the sanctity of human life itself from an aetheistic viewpoint, I would be interested to debate it.
Andrew,
Presumably if a foetus is granted the same rights as a post-birth human and termination of that life is illegal, a murder investigation will have to be conducted into every miscarriage? Or at least a coroner’s report?
Tim: Not necessarily - I think the last comment that Blimpish left expresses my view of practical side of the law quite well.
Kate: It might be convenient for you to lump us atheist anti’s in with the religious anti’s, but it isn’t correct. I don’t believe that life is sacred because of religious notions of a divine soul. I simply believe that everyone has a right to life, foetus included. Your straw man looks like it might need more stuffing. I don’t think you have to be religious to believe that killing people is wrong. From an aesthetic stance, just think of all that wasted potential. What if I aborted the next Orwell, or Einstein, or Mozart, etc?
The essence is that once pregnant, a woman becomes little more than a repository for this precious new life. For a ‘pro-lifer’, this little clump of gestating human cells must now take precedence over the mental, emotional, social and financial well-being of their sentient, fully formed host.
Yes, because none of those things are more important than the right to life. Only an incredibly selfish person could possibly include things like social and financial considerations above the right of someone to live. After all, I’d be considerably wealthier if I killed my parents - should that be an acceptable defense at my murder trial?
DK: On your first point, that’s why I used the word ‘potential’. I am painfully aware that about 1 in 3 pregnancies ends in miscarriage, most likely due to genetic defects in the developing foetus. I’m not sure that this adds anything to the debate about abortion though. There’s a huge difference between, for example, murder and accidental death. Debating them in the same context just confuses the distinction.
On the point about pain and consciousness, I’m not sure it matters. I used to know a guy who had a degenerative condition of the nervous system, one of the effects of which was that he couldn’t feel pain (or later on, temperature). If I had murdered him, would that be an acceptable defense in court? “Sorry, m’lud, but he couldn’t feel any pain. That means he wasn’t human, right?”
Andrew: I believe that killing people is wrong. For the same reason that I believe stealing is wrong, or bullying is wrong. This is a result of the human capacity for compassion and empathy, useful social tools in an evolutionary sense (it stops us all killing each other). I do not attach any value to life itself, after all a bacterium is alive in the pure sense. I feel very little empathy for basic multi-cellular structures and far more for fully cognisant humans.
I think we need to make a clear distinction between life that is self-conscious, and that which is not. And a 12 week foetus most definitely isn’t.
I don’t get what is so intrinsically valuable about human existence that every fertilized egg deserves a go?
Tim: following on, a bit of prudence goes a long way here. 100 years ago, investigations into deaths during childhood were a lot more casual than now, because of high infant mortality. Given that (according to varying estimates cited above) between a third and two-fifths of fertilised eggs don’t make it to term, there’d be no reason to go to those lengths, just as there wasn’t when abortion remained almost wholly illegal. (A point so far missed is that, in England, abortion remains illegal unless licensed; and was allowable before the Abortion Act, under certain circumstances, as tested in case law in the 1920s, I believe.)
Kate: well, I’m not an atheist, but since you ask…
Why do you believe that killing people is wrong? From your answer, it’s on a combination of utilitarian reasoning and your own sentiment - so ‘wrong’ is not so much the right word as ‘inefficient’ and/or ‘ghastly’. Here, we come back to Andrew’s point about aesthetics - that your non-objection to abortion becomes a matter of “what I can’t see, doesn’t matter.”
Indeed. You say that this is because you’re (and, by implication, we’re) evolutionarily programmed not to do so, and these are “useful social tools (it stops us all killing each other).” Well, aside from the valiant attempts of many to disprove your rule (ahem, Hitler, Stalin, etc), why are they useful? Maybe a more cut-throat attitude to life, a sort of living application of Social Darwinism, where the strong are encouraged to kill the weak, might lead to a more efficient society?
This is in keeping with the logic of your position: “I feel very little empathy for basic multi-cellular structures and far more for fully cognisant humans.” So, you’re setting up a scale of value for human lives, along which there is a threshold where they’re worth being protected, but beneath which is more questionable. Now, I guess you’re a charitable sort, so you probably draw that line generously - but your only difference with a more aggressive type is one of degree, not type. (Humanitarianism is great, until somebody decides to start making distinctions over quite who counts as ‘human’.)
Leaving all that aside, your argument about religion and atheism misses the point wholly. Religious arguments, even in the West, have taken a range of positions over the start of human life and personhood. Within Christianity, for example, Tertullian took the current view (body=soul=person=not for killing), but later St Augustine distinguished the embryo informatus (abortion punished with a fine) from the embryo formatus (punished with death, as murder).
This was pretty much taken as the rule right into the nineteenth century, with ‘ensoulment’ not seen to be taking place for some time into pregnancy (the traditional rule being 40 days for a boy, 90 for a girl). Before ensoulment, the foetus was seen as an actual life, potential person, but afterwards, as an actual human person. (I believe Islam takes a similar view of ensoulment taking place after conception.)
Now, if I were an atheist (and I used to be), I would still be against abortion (and I was). Let’s think about it in materialist terms - body and mind rather than body and soul. On a purely materialist view, ‘mind’ is simply an extension of body - our personality is purely the result of our biochemistry. Given that that biochemistry starts to happen at conception, what basis have you (other than arbitrary judgements as to ‘lives worth living’) for declaring that that person doesn’t exist.
Now, most Christian thinking takes a similar view, because it is felt that, scientifically, we can’t say what the soul is or how it is manifest, and therefore judgements of when the foetus is ensoulled are just as arbitrary. But at least the idea of ensoulment would allow for a moral boundary of the sort you seek. An atheist-materialist view of the same is simply a condemnation of some human beings as worthless. But if you can do it to a voiceless foetus, who else can you do that to?
“I don’t get what is so intrinsically valuable about human existence that every fertilized egg deserves a go?” If human existence is without value, then anything that depends on it is without value. So, if human existence is without value, then so is the discussion that it allows, and so, therefore, is that question.
Blimpish:
So, if human existence is without value, then so is the discussion that it allows, and so, therefore, is that question.
I suppose that’s really my point. I always find the moral certitude of the anti-abortionist slightly suspect. You can put it down to quasi-nihilist tendencies if you must.
I also wonder how much the abortion debate is distorted by a curious sort of societal mysogyny that says women should naturally put the needs of others before their own. But I would guess that’s a debate for another day.
Kate: Your continued ad hominem arguments (anti-abortionism is just religious fundamentalism, then our slightly suspect nature, then just social misogyny) betray an unwillingness to confront the issues raised. The irritating thing for those of us on the anti side of the argument is this sort of group smearing by association. It isn’t convincing, by any stretch of the imagination, unlike many of the other pro-abortion comments.
Andrew: worse than that; Kate’s accusations don’t even give us the respect of ad hominem attacks; they’re attempts at psychological reduction (“unconsciously framed the terms of this debate”) or sociological reduction (“debate is distorted by a curious sort of societal mysogyny”). Luckily, we have Kate here to show us what dupes we are.
Or, we would, except that Kate admits to nihilist tendencies (being ‘quasi-nihilist’ is a bit like being ‘half-pregnant’) and so nothing she says means anything, really. So, what we say has at the very least some meaning as reflections of our twisted, misogynistic psychological or sociological backgrounds, as compared to whatever Kate says, which is, by her own admission, meaningless chatter.
Ho hum, Kate brought up the point that I was going to investigate more fully.
Essentially, if you are an atheist, you cannot believe that any human has an intrinsic right to life, for who confers that right? Only a higher being than ourselves could possibly confer an objective human right to life and, if you do not believe in a higher being, then how can that right be guaranteed?
Personally, I don’t believe that any animal on this earth has a right to live. Since humans are no more than highly evolved animals, then they have no intrinsic right to live. In fact, of course, if you are an atheist, you cannot believe that humans are intrinsically different from animals and thus, if a human has a right to live, then so does every animal on earth, which is patently silly. Every animal could be said, I suppose, to have the right to attempt to survive to the best of their ability. However, even that is dodgy, because rights are an artificial human construct.
When writing on a subject that has a large scientific dimension, it might be an idea to go and look at some of the science before writing: not so to do implies, at best, a certain amount of laziness; at worst it destroys credibility. If you are ignorant of the science, and you aren’t arguing from a religiously dogmatic point of view, then what are the strengths of your argument exactly? Essentially, you are arguing a vague personal aestheticism, and why should I take seriously your personal morality?
DK
On a purely materialist view, ‘mind’ is simply an extension of body - our personality is purely the result of our biochemistry. Given that that biochemistry starts to happen at conception, what basis have you (other than arbitrary judgements as to ‘lives worth living’) for declaring that that person doesn’t exist.
And this is just rubbish. Mind could be said, I suppose to belong to a certain part of the body, i.e. the brain. This is certainly not present at conception, or indeed for a reasonable amount of time after. I take it that you don’t believe that bacteria, amoebae or viruses have “minds”? And yet they have biochemical interactions.
Do algae, corals, fungi or any other simple multicellular organisms have minds? And yet they too have inter- and intra-cellular biochemical processes.
(As a matter of fact, the human central nervous system (which includes the brain) is not fully formed physically until the end of the human growth period (roughly speaking, at about 20 years of age). This is because once the CNS is fully grown, the fluid surrounding it is then flooded which enzymes which prevent any further growth (which is why broken backs, etc. do not repair themselves).)
Kate: Of course, your interpretation of ‘atheist’ assumes that believing there is no higher being automatically means that an atheist considers all humans nothing but an animalistic cluster of cells. In which case, you are naturally pro-choice. But, to be morally consistent, you couldn’t then object philosophically to, say, cannibalism. It’s just cells, after all, and plenty of other animals eat their own species, especially miscarried foetuses.
DK: “Essentially, you are arguing a vague personal aestheticism, and why should I take seriously your pers