Mr. Hume: A great deal of what is said about abortion is, it seems to me, empty word-play. “It’s a person!” says Megan McArdle. “We all agree, don’t we, that killing a person, other than an enemy in war or convicted criminal, should not be permitted. Therefore killing fetuses should not be permitted! What’s the problem?”
The problem is, of course, that a fetus is a rather particular kind of person: one sharing the body resources of another human being. It is manifestly not the case that we all agree the killing of this particular kind of person should not be permitted. Stamping your foot and yelling “But it’s a person! It’s a person!” doesn’t advance the argument.
Supernaturalists can of course point to divine ordinances, scripture, the Tao, and so on. That’s great, except that we are not all supernaturalists, so these appeals fall on a lot of stony ground. Since a great majority of people claim to be supernaturalists, these appeals might none the less form the basis for a consensus; but there is no sign that that is happening. The supernaturalist case seems to be unconvincing even to a lot of supernaturalists.
I’d guess that all the noise and confusion has origins within the scope of cognitive science and evolutionary psychology. Our brains evolved to cope with commonplace features of the world: physical features (water flows downhill) and social features (every human group has gradations of status). Fetuses — and embryos much less — just were not a feature of everyday experience until recently. The brain has no developed categories for coping with them, either as physical or social objects.
The imaging techniques that have come up this past few decades have introduced a new thing into human experience: the living, moving fetus, obviously growing in a continuous way into a human baby. How do we deal with this new thing? Nothing in brain phylogeny has supplied us with common perceptions. When we kill a grown, independent human being, or even a born baby, we have well-formed ideas about what we are doing. Of course we have: we’ve been doing it for 200,000 years. When we kill a fetus, what are we doing? We just don’t have that solidity of experience wired in to our faculties, so we fall back on words, on supernaturalism, and on emotions like generalized disgust.
Might the killing of fetuses and embryos just come to seem barbaric and be shamed out of civilized life, as slavery, public executions, cock-fighting, corporal punishment, and traveling freak shows have been, and as capital punishment has very nearly been? I can’t think of any reason why this couldn’t happen; but it seems to me we’re a long way from it yet. Since plainly great numbers of people don’t currently think the killing of fetuses and embryos should be banned, the best we can hope for is some consensus on the restrictions. It’s hard to understand why anyone needs an abortion later than three months, though I suppose there might be extraordinary cases. I find it very hard to understand the need for, or even the demand for, partial-birth abortions. An arbitrary cutoff date for legal abortions, with later abortions permitted on the authority of a panel of doctors, is probably as close to consensus as we can hope to get. Certainly I would vote for that if it came to referendum, though I think my cutoff date would be earlier than most.
Pinker thinks that the next thing to be shamed out of civilized life will be the mass slaughter of large animals for food. I’d bet on that before a total abortion ban. You never know, though; public sensibilities change in unpredictable ways. Promiscuous tobacco smoking was frowned on by the Victorians; 100 years later it was universal … and now once more it’s frowned on.
You never know, though; public sensibilities change in unpredictable ways.
agreed. though there are secular trends. but in any case, how about speculation? perhaps the abortion wars will end with a “grand bargain” of sorts: abortion is banned, but the cost is lost of reproductive freedom so that the community dictates whether you procreate or not. population control types obviously do want to ration births, and if abortion is genocide the loss of this freedom might be tolerable to the pro-life camp.
To get us to that level of societal control, Mr. H, the abortion issue would have to attain a salience that, so far as I can see, it has no prospect of attaining.
Anti-abortionism is a hysterical cult to a few ten thousand Americans, most of them deeply committed supernaturalists. Abortion-on-demand dogmatism is similarly the major social issue for a few ten thousand grim feminists. The rest of us really don’t care much, and would rather not be made to think about such an unpleasant subject. Personally I should lose not a wink of sleep if all abortion were banned tomorrow, on severe penalties; nor if it were available over the counter at K-Mart.
No doubt that’s deplorably slack-minded of us, but it’s not a promising foundation for drastic programs like the one you sketched.
(Of course people will give an opinion to pollsters on abortion, as they will on anything else. These polls don’t often tell us, though, whether the topic being polled is No. 1 in the pollee’s consciousness, or No. 1,0001. I know, I should interrogate the GSS on this, but … feeling sleepy …)
Dear Bradlaugh !
I humbly (but wholeheartedly) agree with what you wrote above. A fetus with Down syndrom is a painfully familiar example, for me on a relatively personal level. Simultaneously with your statement “though I think my cutoff date would be earlier than most”, I would like to see that you, as an esteemed opinion-maker, request greater acessibility to early diagnostics. Yours truly, F.r.
Florida resident: I certainly would not want to raise a Down Syndrome child. In that eventuality, I’d much prefer my wife have an abortion; though obviously her opinion is more important, and it would be a thing we’d have to work out between ourselves. I think it would be a gross imposition on people who think like me, to force them to raise such a child against their wishes; and I doubt the adoption market for DS children is anything like large enough to cope in a no-abortion regime. Contrariwise, I can’t see why people like Mrs. Palin who are willing to raise a DS child, should be prevented from doing so.
So although I would not lose a wink of sleep etc., my wife being past child-bearing age, I guess there were times when I might have.
Legal abortion on demand up to some reasonable cutoff date; well-controlled allowance for later exceptions; and everyone to stop jabbering about it so I don’t have to think about the grisly business. There’s my ideal.
Greatfully agreed. Yours F.r.
Gratefully. Sorry, oh, Great Speller.
I think that’s a fine ideal and I would vote for it. But it is remarkably similar to the status quo plus or minus some quibbling about dates – which makes me think it would not be acceptable to pro-lifers.
I have a hunch that pro-lifers (the majority who are not among your 10,000) would be a lot more relaxed about your ideal if pro-choicers would concede that
a) abortion _is_ a grisly business not some sterile medical procedure
b) that fetuses have a great deal in common with actual babies
c) the decision to abort is of great moral consequence (supernatural or otherwise)
Similarly, I expect that most pro-choicers would be more relaxed if pro-lifers would concede that
1) while abortion is usually a personal tragedy, there are worse
2) the mother has certain interests too
My prediction is that your 10,000 extremists at either end become discredited and the great majority in the middle reach compromise without them.
Glad to hear it, Derb. I thought you might be a bit of a pro-choice absolutist from your Corner posts (and the Schiavo affair).I am an absolutist myself as far as my own feelings are concerned and would vote to ban abortion outright if given the chance. However, I would do so being fairly confident that my position would likely not be the majority one. A reasonable compromise along the lines you suggest would go a long way towards settling the issue for me. I would still maintain that abortion is a “sin” (yes, yes…I am an atheist) but not all sins are equally bad, and certainly not all of them are illegal (nor should they be). I believe that this compromise is already pretty well standard in most civilized countries (the US is an outlier in allowing partial-birth abortion). If I got to choose the cutoff date after which abortion would be severely restricted I would make it around 6 weeks (the point at which the heart starts beating) and long before the fetus has the capacity to feel pain. Life has traditionally been deemed to end when the heart stops beating so this would have a nice, defensible symmetry to it. Not enough to make it moral, perhaps, but enough to make it legal.re: Down’s Syndrome: I can understand your viewpoint. I admire Sarah Palin immensely for her decision to do what she felt was right even though the alternative seemed easier. Down’s Syndrome to me is in a totally different category from birth defects like ancephaly, for example, where there is no hope of survival. Down’s Syndrome children, though impaired, can live fairly normal lives. They can understand and reciprocate love. I don’t imagine there is much difference between a Down’s Syndrome baby and a normal one for the first few years. Suppose you had a normal child who was struck by a car at age 3 and it became functionally as impaired as the average Down’s Syndrome child because of the accident. You obviously would not consider euthanasia just to spare yourself the burden of looking after it. However, the burdens and joys a parent would experience would be approximately the same in either case. The only difference would be that for the Down’s Syndrome fetus the parent knows about the problems before they have had a chance to become attached to the child and can consider the option of killing it dispassionately. I’m afraid the power of life and death is above my paygrade. However, unlike certain other people I could mention, this means that I choose to err on the side of life.
A fetus does not have rights. A mother does. I don’t see how any “interests” the fetus might be construed to have can ever trump the right of a grown woman to control the functions of her own body. This is between a woman and her doctor(s), and perhaps the significant male in her life, although she always ends up with the final say even in the tragic case where he wants the child and is willing to raise it on his own.
If it makes the pro-lifers feel any better, at least I don’t think it’s moral for you to be forced to pay for someone’s abortion, but of course I don’t think it’s moral for you to be forced to pay for someone’s appendectomy either – abortion’s not special.
Hi,
Everyone has an opinion on this, just like a certain piece of anatomy. Mine is that if the fetus is not viable outside the womb, it should be the choice (within limits) of the owner of the womb. If the fetus is viable, then we as a society should have a right to intervene if no other circumstances are involved (which implies responsibility for the issue).
A lot of conundrums can be raised with any law pertaining to this issue, and I have to admit that I would be quite happy with the system outlined by Mr. Bradlaugh (Hi John!). But I think one thing that bothers many people is the use of abortion as a primary means of birth control. If I were King for a day, I would decree that every woman was born with three strikes. First time, no questions asked.. Second time, long term birth control (three to five year) implant. Third strike, sterilization. Any of these “strikes” could be eliminated by justification of the procedure by a medical board as to being “more that convenient, and executed as soon as practicable”. I’m guessing that that exclusion would be difficult to voice in law, or enforce, but remember, I’m King for a day!
I am part of the 0.1% of the population that is undecided about abortion, but I agree with the pro-lifers that ultimately the debate is about personhood. At what point does a person have rights? I can think of a four good possibilities:
1. Conception–this is when a person’s genotype is determined: At least half of what a person is is determined at this moment. This is also the point at which metabolism begins. A fertilized egg will grow into a person if it is taken care of properly.
2. Brain/Heart function–this would make when human life begins symmetrical with when death begins. This point has obvious appeal given that involuntary euthanasia (i.e.-murder) is illegal. If this were the dividing line, embryonic stem cell research and abortifacients would be legal, but not most mid-term abortions.
3. Sentience–this is when the person becomes self-aware, usually happens in the second or third year after birth. This is also the stage at which a person becomes smarter than almost any animal, and it is generally legal to kill animals.
4. Moral Awareness–this is when a person can understand and explain why it is wrong to kill. Can someone who can’t do this claim the right to live? Unfortunately, some people never get to this stage.
The place that I CAN’T see drawing the line is at birth. The only thing that changes at this point is the baby’s place of residence. If you are pro-choice on the grounds that a fetus doesn’t have the right to withdraw resources from the mother, then there is no rational argument for being against a mother leaving a newborn by the side of the road to fend for itself.
Basically, I have a hard time seeing an embryo as a person, but there is no good pro-choice argument that can justify killing a fetus that can’t also be used to justify infanticide.
This —
“The problem is, of course, that a fetus is a rather particular kind of person: one sharing the body resources of another human being.”
— seems to be the essence of it. As far as I know, under Anglo-American law, no one is ever obliged to part with their bodily substance for the benefit of another person. A child with a rare blood type might need a transfusion, and his parent might be the only practically available donor. And while we would not think very much of the parent who would refuse to donate blood in such a case, there has never as far as I know been any basis for forcing the parent to donate blood. The status of the fetus as a person is not the issue. The issue is whether this person is entitled to extract his requirements from the substance of another person, even against that person’s will.
Bradlaugh:
The problem I see with this argument is that it ignores the immense cultural differences in the way people react in cases like these. Evolutionary psychology can explain human feelings in many cases, but when it comes to abortion and infanticide, the reactions of people in different cultures are so different that it seems like cultural conditioning trumps any innate instincts.
The history of infanticide is especially striking in this regard. In some cultures, it has been considered a common and normal method of birth control, while in others, like ours, people view it with utmost horror. (Interestingly, the Wikipedia page on infanticide has links to some literature suggesting that the infanticide rates in prehistory were well into the double percentages.) Thus, it seems like it’s just an accident of history that we happen to live in a society with a total consensus on this issue, while on the other hand, abortion is an issue on which an extreme division exists in our era. I can well imagine that infanticide was a culture war issue during the Christianization of various pagan peoples that practiced it widely (and possibly even earlier during the Classical Antiquity), much like abortion is nowadays.
Thus, it seems to me that it’s just a quirk of history that we’re living in an age where the ethics of abortion is a matter of fierce disagreement, and it’s not an indication of some universally special status of this issue that would call for evolutionary explanations. As for the low quality of the arguments commonly voiced in public, well, have they ever been any better in any other ideological disputes?
@John
I think you are underestimating the importance and relevance of physical separation from the mother. Once a baby is born, literally almost anyone can care for it. Until it is born, it is solely and necessarily dependent on the bodily functions of the mother. A mother cannot leave her infant on the side of the road precisely because once she has chosen to have the baby (and it is a choice in any civilized society) she is responsible for ensuring that someone, even if not her, cares for it.
Rights cannot conflict or else they are not rights. A fetus’s “rights” would necessarily infringe upon the rights of the mother while inside her.
Now, as far as healthy babies in the 8th or 9th month that the mother decides she doesn’t want to bear for whatever reason (and really a sensible person would have made the choice long before then), I would not be opposed to a woman delivering the baby by C-section as opposed to having an abortion, at which point it could be placed in an incubator and placed with adoptive parents or, if he wishes, the biological father. The goal of the enterprise is to end the woman’s pregnancy, not necessarily to kill the fetus. If the woman’s pregnancy can be safely ended without killing the fetus, I see nothing wrong with that.
Who cares about “rights,” even if they existed, which they don’t? Derbyshire is correct: hardly anybody decides about abortion in terms of “rights” or personhood. (Pace Ms. McCardle, if the concept of personhood were useful here then it would already have solved the problem.) The whole rights/personhood discourse is in practice irrelevant to the abortion issue.
Mr. Derbyshire says he can’t think of any reason why abortion couldn’t be shamed out of existence, as were slavery, corporal punishment, cock fighting, etc. Well, here’s the secret ingredient from each of those recipes: the shamers and the shamees are, roughly speaking, two different classes of people – North/South, upper/lower-class, etc. – and it’s the shamee class that always pays the price, not the shamers.
Now, for abortion and similar culture war topics the potential shamers are the upper-middle class, or the New Class (magazine writers, TV produces, etc.) or whatever you want to label them. If the time ever comes that your average Upper West Side Manhattanite doesn’t imagine herself or her friends or family as potentially “needing” – i.e., preferring – an abortion, then the conditions will be ready for the New Class to shame abortion out of existence. That doesn’t mean it will happen; for one thing, the New Class would be throwing overboard not just white trash (who cares about them?) but also nonwhite women. But when upper-middle class women no longer see abortion as something that they themselves or their friends might do, then such a change will be possible.
If my analysis is correct, then it has strategic implications.
How is rights discourse not relevant to abortion? The fact that hardly anybody decides about abortion on the basis of rights is part of the PROBLEM – that’s why most of the arguments for the pro-choice side are, unfortunately, stupid and ineffective, such as all of the utilitarian and “privacy” arguments. Quite frankly, Roe vs. Wade is bad law and a pretty weak defense, and this is a pro-choice person saying this. As soon as you grant the fetus any kind of “rights” or consideration beyond the mother, then frankly abortion IS murder and there is NO justification for it, not rape, not incest, not the health of the mother, NOTHING, because you couldn’t justify murdering any other person for those reasons. But a woman is sovereign over all parts of her body, even those that may POTENTIALLY grow into another human someday, which means that she may have an abortion for any and all reasons. To say that “society” has an “interest” in a woman’s physiology comes dangerously close to saying that society is “owed” her reproductive function, as was assumed in the old days. Then again, some here may feel that way, I don’t know. I’ve seen a wide spectrum of views expressed here so far.
As to using abortion as birth control, honestly, I have never heard of anyone doing that. And frankly, it seems terribly stupid to me. Every time you undergo surgical abortion (not drug-induced which isn’t nearly as big a deal), you are basically having a surgery with all its attendant risks and frankly you are risking the proper functioning of your organs with even one, not to mention several, abortions. So I don’t know what intelligent woman would do that. But if someone does do that, well, that’s their folly, really. I’m not sure if you could make the argument that it’s immoral, but you might be able to, because of the potential harm to the woman. If it is the case it is immoral, that still doesn’t mean it should be against the law. There are lots of immoral things that should never be against the law, like drug use, paying for sex, lying to people, etc. This is because they are not rights violations.
I’m sorry you don’t think rights exist, but they do, and it’s a shame you won’t acknowledge yours. Sadly a lot of people think that because rights are not granted by God or government they are not real. But recognizing individual rights is the means, the ONLY means, by which rational people will maintain a civilized society.
The problem with this boundary is that it’s not even fully settled yet how many people this fertilized egg will become. Identical twins differentiate well after conception.
The vast majority of late-term abortions are for very abnormal fetuses. Far worse than Downs Syndrome bad – we’re talking anencephaly bad (and anencephaly isn’t usually detected until the third trimester). At that point, the parents are looking at a child that will either die immediately after birth, or will only live for a short time and only then subject to massive medical efforts to prolong life. At this point, I see the choice to abort is essentially equivalent to the choice to euthanize, or even to simply pull the plug on life support (with the mother herself being the life support system).
“One sharing the body resources of another human being.”
By nature, the body resources do not belong to one of the persons more than the other.
@The Kat — “Rights cannot conflict or else they are not rights.”
hmm? How is this so? I really can’t think of any absolute right.
@Donna B.
All right, that’s cool, let’s talk about it. By the way, it may help to think of rights not as “absolute”, meaning intrinsic and disconnected from reality, but as “objective”, i.e. based on the requirements of humans to live according to reason. That might help clear up some of the confusion.
Anyway, give me an example where you think rights conflict, and I’ll respond as best I can. For the time being let’s leave the mother/fetus issue out of it as I think it might obscure rather than clarify rights discourse at this point.
“I find it very hard to understand the need for, or even the demand for, partial-birth abortions.”
Then you don’t understand all the different things that can go wrong in a pregnancy and/or the development of a baby.
If, for instance, there is a massive swelling of fluid in the braincase of the fetus, such that it severely damages the brain (in some cases killing the fetus), what’s the solution? If the mother delivers, the huge head gets stuck, and she dies. Even if the baby is removed it is often so severely damaged that it has little hope of long term survival, let alone normal function. And you’ve put the mother’s life at risk not to mention potentially destroying her ability to have children again in the future.
“Conception–this is when a person’s genotype is determined: At least half of what a person is is determined at this moment.”
Talking about “determined” here isn’t really warranted. Yes, we can now easily see what the complete genetic code will be, but the code is a recipe for constructing the fetus, not the fetus itself, and in that sense it’s simply one step in a long causal chain. And if you know what the specific sperm and egg that will come into contact will be ahead of time, then you know just as much about the eventual genetic code as you would with the zygote.
It’s hard to understand why anyone needs an abortion later than three months, though I suppose there might be extraordinary cases.
Approximately 99% of abortions are performed in the first 6 months. In other words, *all* late-term abortions are extraordinary cases. (Which is pretty obvious if you think about it: why go through 6 months of pregnancy, with all its discomfort and risk, unless you have already decided you want the baby? If you have decided that you want a baby badly enough to go through pregnancy and birth to have one, what would it take to change your mind? Some pretty horrible medical conditions, that’s what.) Antiabortion activists concentrate on the late-term cases because they know those are the ones that make people queasy, but they’re giving a misleading picture (in some cases literally) of what the abortion debate is about. (Whether they’re frauds or dupes on this point, I don’t know – probably some of both.)
As for the panel of doctors idea, all abortions already must be approved by one doctor, namely the one performing them. Tiller was known (and vilified, and ultimately assassinated) for handling cases other doctors wouldn’t, and even he turned away some cases. What’s the case for a larger panel? How do you prevent it from being taken over by antiabortion extremists who will deny all requests, justified or not? (After all, they’re the ones with the strongest incentive to get on it – for everyone else it would be a tedious chore at best, and at worst, make you a target for more assassination attempts.) It’s odd to see conservatives eager to inject a panel of (what would effectively be) government bureaucrats into a decisionmaking process that is almost inevitably going to be dominated by difficult edge cases.
On the other hand, the “abortion on demand” extremists may take that position because they *do* know what kinds of circumstances prompt someone to consider a late-term abortion (after going through 6, 7, or 8 months of pregnancy with the intention of completing it). Second-guessing their decision *at all* is generally pretty horrible, let alone second-guessing it from an armchair without knowledge of the particular facts of their case (which, necessarily, is the only way a legislature can operate).
The idea of someone going through 8 months of pregnancy and all the attendant discomfort and risk just for the Satanic glee of aborting a perfectly healthy baby is pure fiction. It’s very emotionally moving fiction, which is why it’s used, but it bears no relationship to the actual effect of antiabortion laws.
“Talking about “determined” here isn’t really warranted. Yes, we can now easily see what the complete genetic code will be, but the code is a recipe for constructing the fetus, not the fetus itself, and in that sense it’s simply one step in a long causal chain. And if you know what the specific sperm and egg that will come into contact will be ahead of time, then you know just as much about the eventual genetic code as you would with the zygote.”
Drew: Interesting argument, but I would counter with the metabolism argument. Even I don’t contend that a computer printout of someone’s genetic code is a person. I also don’t clain that a white blood cell, which has the same genetic code as a zygote, is a person. But a zygote is different because it is actually in the maturation process which will eventually turn into a person as long as it is taken care of. (Whether and/or when the mother has a responsibility to care for it is a different debate.)
“Anyway, give me an example where you think rights conflict, and I’ll respond as best I can. For the time being let’s leave the mother/fetus issue out of it as I think it might obscure rather than clarify rights discourse at this point.”
The Kat: I’ll try–The guys in the fraternity house have a right to have a party on Friday night, but the people living next door have a right to enjoy peace and quiet in their house. I would see this as a conflict of rights, which would need some sort of compromise, like a noise ordinance.
Bradlaugh clearly didn’t read McArdle’s post. She believes fetuses are not persons.
Unlimited abortion is a great gift. Our society is bankrupting itself in an attempt to decouple fitness and survival, and abortion provides someone with self-awareness of unfitness the opportunity to select herself out of the race. How is that not good?