Abortion is Generally Immoral

Hello everyone, my thanks to Keytar for the debate. First, I’ll show the substance view of personhood is false, and so abortion does not harm morally significant beings. Second I’ll show pregnancy remains supererogatory from woman to (fully person) foetus, and women refusing to continue are not generally immoral. Foetuses and persons If the human foetus is not a person, then abortion is likely permissible, as harm to the fetus is the main motivation to be opposed to abortion. The question becomes when (and in virtue of what) to we gain personhood. (Maklin 1983) Those who hold abortion is generally immoral are obliged to take a substance view of personhood – that personhood arrives fully at conception. The bulk of abortions in the developed world occur <20 weeks gestation (see e.g. Department of Health 2011, Lilo et al. 2003), and so competing views of personhood hold the foetus at this stage to have little moral salience. Yet the substance view is false. The Scourge Ord asks us to imagine the following. (Ord 2008) The Scourge struck swiftly and brutally. This terrifying new disease, more deadly than any before it, left no part of the world untouched. From the poorest countries in Africa to the richest countries of the West, it killed with equal, horrifying, efficiency. It struck quickly, killing most of its victims within a few weeks of onset, and silently, for there were no detectable symptoms prior to death. Before the Scourge, the global death rate was 55 million per annum. That is, all causes of death—old age, war, murder, disease, and so on—conspired to take 55 million lives each year. The Scourge changed this dramatically. It alone killed more than 200 million people every year. From that time on, more than three quarters of the deaths each year were due to the Scourge. Where life expectancy in the West had risen steadily over the past century to 78 years, it had now dropped to just 29. Perhaps worst of all, the effects of the Scourge were not felt equally across all members of society. It killed only the very young and innocent—those who were completely powerless to prevent it. Compared with the Scourge, all other problems seemed insignificant. The Scourge was the major issue of the age, and there was an overwhelming obligation on society to fight it. Other projects had to be put on hold and a major international effort directed towards loosening the Scourge’s grip upon humanity. If the substance view is true, then this Scourge is no fiction, but rather the fact of natural embryo loss. All estimates agree 50% or more of all conceptions never make it to term (see e.g. Bocklage 1990, French and Bierman 1962, Driscoll and Bieber 1995). If all are persons from moment of conception, natural embryo loss kills more than any disease – indeed, more than all diseases combined. If so, our medical budget is completely misallocated: we should be spending all (or at least most) of our resources trying to conquer natural embryo loss, rather than diseases like HIV or Malaria that kill orders of magnitude fewer. Yet virtually everyone finds this recommendation preposterous. The substance view must be wrong. If the substance view is true, then orders of magnitude more people die from natural embryo loss than HIV, Malaria, etc. If orders of magnitude more people die from X than Y, then we should spend much more money on X than Y. It is wrong to spend much more money on natural embryo loss than HIV or Malaria. The substance view is false. So here is the first argument: For abortion to be generally immoral, the substance view must be true, for other views on personhood will not accord foetuses at <20 weeks great moral salience, and so make abortion generally innocuous. Yet we see the substance view is untenable for it entails this reductio. So there are no grounds for holding abortion to be generally immoral. Here’s a map of the argument. Violins and bodily duties Although the substance view is necessary, it is not sufficient to make abortion generally immoral. Following Thomson (Thomson, 1971) perhaps the circumstances of pregnancy are such that the woman is ‘within her rights’ to refuse this relationship, even if that results in the death of another human person. Here’s my modified violinist analogy: One morning, you are visited by the Society of Music Lovers. They tell you of the plight of the Famous Violinist, and inform you that you are the only known match they could find. They tell you that to save his life, you would have to be hooked up to him for nine months before you could both go on your way, and are fastidious in informing you about the risks of the hooking-up process. Although not a member of the Society, you love the Violinist's music, so you give enthusiastic consent. After establishing that you are fully informed and you are still happy to help after a week, you are booked in for hooking-up, and you are in the bed next to the unconscious violinist. Sadly, your attitude changes a month later, and you cease to want to stay hooked up for nine months, or any longer - perhaps you find being hooked up intolerable, or you realize the costs for your family are too great. It is now your settled view you want to unhook yourself. You do, and the violinist dies. It is worth noting that this is much stronger than the original violinist example. Instead of being hooked up without one’s knowledge (and against one’s will), one gives explicit and informed consent. Yet it remains intuitive that one is ‘within one’s rights’ to unhook oneself: granted it may be more laudable to stay hooked-up, but that doesn’t make unhooking oneself immoral. You haven’t harmed the violinist (you gave him a month of life he would otherwise never have had), and the fact he could have lived even longer had you stayed hooked-up gives him no ground for complaint, as you were already going ‘beyond the call of duty’ to be hooked-up for any length of time. This parallels the law in similar situations: transplant donors always retain the right to opt out at any stage, and few states demand a ‘duty to rescue’ (and even then not when one it is at risk). So a woman does nothing immoral when she aborts a pregnancy to which she gave her prior and informed consent, for doing so is only a refusal of (further) supererogatory actions towards another person. A fortiori a woman does nothing immoral when she aborts a pregnancy she knowingly ‘ran the risk’ of happening but did not desire (e.g. contraceptive failure, ill-advised sex). So even if the foetus is a person, the vast bulk of pregnancies are morally permissible, and not generally immoral. I look forward to PROs response. References: Bieber, F. R., & Driscoll, D. G. (1995). Evaluation of early pregnancy loss. In G. B. Reed, A. E. Claireux, & F. Cockburn (Eds.), Diseases of the Fetus and Newborn (2nd ed., pp. 175–186). London: Chapman & Hall. Boklage, C. E. (1990). Survival probability of human conceptions from fertilization to term. International Journal of Fertility, 35(2), 75, 79–80, 81–94. Department of Health. (2012). Abortion Statistics, England and Wales: 2011. Retrieved from https://www.wp.dh.gov.uk... French, F. E., & Bierman, J. M. (1962). Probabilities of fetal mortality. Public Health Reports, 77(10), 835–848. Macklin, R. (1983). Personhood in the Bioethics Literature. The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly. Health and Society, 61(1), 35–57. doi:10.2307/3349815 Ord, T. (2008). The scourge: moral implications of natural embryo loss. The American Journal of Bioethics: AJOB, 8(7), 12–19. doi:10.1080/15265160802248146 Strauss, L. T., Gamble, S. B., Parker, W. B., Cook, D. A., Zane, S. B., & Hamdan, S. (2003). Abortion Surveillance - 2003 ( No. 55(SS11)). Surveillance Summaries (pp. 1–32). Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov... Thomson, J. J. (1971). A Defense of Abortion. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 1(1), 47–66.