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its opponents. Until 1967, abortion was illegal in almost all the |
Western democracies except Sweden and Denmark. Then Britain |
changed its law to allow abortion on broad social grounds, |
and in the 1973 case of Roe v Wade, the United States Supreme |
Court held that women have a constitutional right to an abortion |
in the first six months of pregnancy. Western European |
nations, including Roman Catholic countries like Italy, Spain |
and France, allliberalised their abortion laws. Only the Republic |
of Ireland held out against the trend. |
Opponents of abortion did not give up. In the United States, |
conservative Presidents have changed the composition of the |
Supreme Court, which in tum has nibbled around the margins |
of the Roe v Wade decision, allowing states to restrict, in various |
ways, access to abortion. Outside the United States, the issue |
of abortion re-surfaced in Eastern Europe after the collapse of |
communism. The communist states had allowed abortion, but |
as nationalist and religiOUS forces gathered strength, there were |
strong moves in countries like Poland for the re-introduction |
of restrictive laws. Since West Germany had more restrictive |
laws than East Germany, the need to introduce a single law for |
a united Germany also caused an intense debate. |
In 1978 the birth of Louise Brown raised a new issue about |
135 |
Practical Ethics |
the status of early human life. For Louise Brown was the first |
human to have been born from an embryo that had been fertilised |
outside a human body. The success of Robert Edwards |
and Patrick Steptoe in demonstrating the possibility of in vitro |
fertilization, or IVF, was based on several years of experimentation |
on early human embryos - none of which had survived. |
IVF is now a routine procedure for certain types of infertility, |
and has given rise to thousands of healthy babies. To reach this |
point, however, many more embryos had to be destroyed in |
experiments, and further improvement of IVF techniques will |
require continued experimentation. Perhaps more significant |
still, for the long-term, are the possibilities for other forms of |
experimentation opened up by the existence of a viable embryo |
outside the human body. Embryos can now be frozen and stored |
for many years before being thawed and implanted in a woman. |
Normal children develop from these embryos, but the technique |
means that there are large numbers of embryos now preserved |
in special freezers around the world. (At the time of writing |
there were about 11,000 frozen embryos in Australia alone.) |
Because the IVF procedure often produces more embryos than |
can safely be transferred to the uterus of the woman from whom |
the egg came, many of these frozen embryos will never be |
wanted, and presumably will either be destroyed, be donated |
for research, or given to other infertile couples. |
Other new technologies loom just a little way ahead. Embryos |
can be screened for genetic abnormalities, and then discarded |
if such abnormalities are found. Edwards has predicted that it |
will become scientifically feasible to grow embryos in vitro to |
the point at which, about 17 days after fertilisation, they develop |
blood stem cells, which could be used to treat various nowlethal |
blood diseases. Others, speculating about the further future' |
have asked if one day we will have banks of embryos or |
fetuses to provide organs for those who need them. |
Abortion and destructive embryo experimentation pose dif- |
136 |
Taking Life: The Embryo and the Fetus |
ficult ethical issues because the development ofthe human being |
is a gradual process. If we take the fertilised egg immediately |
after conception, it is hard to get upset about its death. The |
fertilised egg is a single cell. After several days, it is still only a |
tiny cluster of cells without a single anatomical feature of the |
being it will later become. The cells that will eventually become |
the embryo proper are at this stage indistinguishable from the |
cells that will become the placenta and amniotic sac. Up to about |
14 days after fertilisation, we cannot even tell if the embryo is |
going to be one or two individuals, because splitting can take |
place, leading to the formation of identical twins. At 14 days, |
the first anatomical feature, the so-called primitive streak, appears |
in the position in which the backbone will later develop. |
At this point the embryo could not possibly be conscious or feel |
pain. At the other extreme is the adult human being. To kill a |
human adult is murder, and, except in some special circumstances |
like those to be discussed in the next chapter, is unhesitatingly |
and universally condemned. Yet there is no obvious |
sharp line that divides the fertilised egg from the adult. Hence |
the problem. |
Most of this chapter will be concerned with the problem of |
abortion, but the discussion of the status of the fetus will have |
obvious implications for two related issues: embryo experimentation, |
and the use of fetal tissue for medical purposes. I |
begin the discussion of abortion stating the position of those |
opposed to abortion, which I shall refer to as the conservative |
position. I shall then examine some of the standard liberal responses, |
and show why they are inadequate. Finally I shall use |
our earlier discussion of the value of life to approach the issue |
from a broader perspective. In contrast to the common opinion |
that the moral question about abortion is a dilemma with no |
solution, I shall show that, at least within the bounds of nonreligious |
ethics, there is a clear-cut answer and those who take |
a different view are simply mistaken. |
137 |
Practical Ethics |
THE CONSERVATIVE POSITION |
The central argument against abortion, put as a formal argument, |
would go something like this: |
First premise: It is wrong to kill an innocent human being. |
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