Abortion Is Morally Permissible

Thank you, KeytarHero, for that very interesting and thought provoking argument! My opponent defends a natural law argument against abortion known as the substance view of persons. I previously offered four reasons why we should reject this type of argument. C1: The sanctity of life doctrine is morally untenable. 1. First, I argued that Con's argument leads to the absurd view that the irreversibly unconscious have a right to life. The objections given by Con are plainly false. For instance, the substance view does not maintain that these individuals are non-persons or that they need a future to be valuable.[1] Patrick Lee, a pro-life philosopher and defender of the substance view, writes, "every human being, including those in persistent vegetative state and anencephalic infants, are persons and intrinsically valuable as subjects of rights."[2] My objection is completely unscathed. 2. Second, I argued that Con's view is false because it's based on a morally irrelevant biological property. Con's response clearly begs the question. He says that racism and sexism are wrong because different ethnicities and men and women are all human. But why think that this is the case? He merely assumes the truth of his view– namely, that being human is what makes one morally valuable. 3. Third, I argued that humans can't be intrinsically valuable. Con responds by saying that he sees no reason to suppose that being intrinsically valuable entails being necessarily valuable in all possible worlds. As the esteemed philosopher Ben Bradley argues, "[I]f a thing's intrinsic value is essential to it, then intrinsically good entities are intrinsically good in all possible worlds."[3] Trent Horn, a highly respected pro-life advocate, points out that under the substance view "a human being's personhood is an essential property."[4] It therefore follows that the substance view entails that humans must be intrinsically valuable in all possible worlds. 4. Finally, I argued that the right to life is an accidental property. In essence, Con objects by arguing that we would not lose our substantial identity in a cerebrum swap. The problem with Con's response is that he assumes that the new cerebrum will develop a natural capacity for self-awareness. But since the genetic code of the body holding the cerebrum hasn't changed, it seems clear that this capacity would be unnatural, and thus the change to the organism would be accidental.[5] Moreover, Con says that the right to life is not an accidental property because it cannot be tied to consciousness since that comes in degrees. His argument here is self-defeating. Natural capacities come in degrees among various animals. There exists a continuum of natural capacities as well as developed capacities.[6] On a side note, I am not trying to "poison the well" by using the word "doctrine." Even pro-life philosophers like Don Marquis use the phrase "sanctity of life doctrine" to delineate my opponent's type of argument.[7] In addition, a reasonable person reading Brahm's argument in its full context would be lead to believe that he regards anencephalic fetuses as lacking a right to life. I'm not trying to be dishonest, just clever. C2: A fetus is not a person and thus cannot have a serious right to life. First, I must say that Con's attack on P1 is simply misguided and philosophically confused. The term "person" in a philosophical context is synonymous with a being that possesses a right to life. 1. What about my argument that only beings that have had conscious desires can be harmed? Con argues that my view entails the permissibility of infanticide. There are numerous problems with this objection. First, moral intuitions alone can't establish the wrongness of infanticide because people can clearly be blinded by failures of moral intuition. Paul Slovic, a research scientist at the University of Oregon, has demonstrated this conclusively with his psychological research on human responses to genocide.[8] In general, people tend to care a great deal about the plight of individuals in trouble; however, these same people are often blithely indifferent to mass-murder. Second, the view that infants are not persons does not necessarily make it acceptable to kill infants. As Peter Singer argues, no other line except birth has the visibility and self-evidence required to mark the beginning of a socially recognized right to life. And thus birth provides a compelling reason to think that infants should be treated as if they have a right to life under the law.[9] Toddlers or adults with virtually no mental lives would be practically brain-dead, so I wouldn't say that killing them is seriously wrong. 2. What about my argument that my view explains why the irreversibly unconscious don't have a right to life? Con tries to strengthen his argument by conjoining it with the future-like-ours argument. First, Con's entire pro-life case collapses when he does this. Why? Because the substance view and the FLO argument are mutually exclusive, as Patrick Lee points out![10] For example, the substance view says that anencephalic fetuses are intrinsically valuable. The FLO argument would maintain that anencephalic fetuses are not intrinsically valuable. This makes Con's argument self-referentially incoherent and therefore necessarily false. Second, the existence of "ideal desires" would constitute a defeater to Marquis' argument in any case. Moreover, Con argues that my view entails that it's acceptable to kill people who are asleep or in temporary comas. Simply put, the states which allow for personal identity such as memories and personality traits are present in the brain of the sleeping individual and the temporarily comatose patient.[11] These individuals who are psychologically continuous over time through memories and personality traits have enjoyed self-consciousness in the past, and it is this that makes depriving them of continued existence seriously wrong. 3. What about my argument that Warren's psychological criteria offer a non-arbitrary and species free account of personhood for various beings? I will grant that the substance view can offer a species free account of personhood. Con does not, however, offer us an explanation of how his view would grant a right to life to self-aware robots. 4. What about my argument that the psychological account resolves issues in personal identity? Con hasn't responded to my argument about conjoined twins. 5. What about my argument that it is plausible that rights function to protect interests? Here Con claims that my view implies that it's permissible to kill an indoctrinated slave who wants to die and to steal from a child who has an unknown inheritance. This is simply not the case. David Boonin, a philosopher at CU-Boulder, explains how individuals can have actual as well as ideal desires.[12] If the slave better understood its future prospects, then it would hold an actual desire to live. It can therefore be said that the slave has an ideal desire to live. Likewise, the child has an ideal desire to keep all of that which belongs to him or her. My opponent might object by arguing that a fetus has an ideal desire to live. But this rejoinder, too, is flawed. As Boonin argues, ideal desires are simply actual desires that have been corrected for cognitive distortions.[13] You need to have actual desires in order to have ideal desires. Con can't just impute a desire out of thin air and apply it to a fetus when the fetus doesn't have any actual desires in the first place. | Conclusion | So in conclusion, then, I think we've seen good reasons from the desire based view of rights for supposing that fetuses are not persons and that the pro-life arguments do not serve to subvert that conclusion. Unless and until Con can overcome my objections, I maintain that we have ample justification for regarding his argument as unsound. Sources: http://tinyurl.com...