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argument against laws prohibiting abortion, and not an argument |
against the view that abortion is wrong. This is an important |
distinction, often overlooked in the abortion debate. |
The present argument well illustrates the distinction, because |
one could quite consistently accept it and advocate that the law |
should allow abortion on request, while at the same time de- |
143 |
Practical Ethics |
ciding oneself - if one were pregnant - or counselling another |
who was pregnant, that it would be wrong to have an abortion. |
It is a mistake to assume that the law should always enforce |
morality. It may be that, as alleged in the case of abortion, |
attempts to enforce right conduct lead to consequences no one |
wants, and no decrease in wrong-doing; or it may be that, as |
is proposed by the next argument we shall consider, there is an |
area of private ethics with which the law ought not to interfere. |
So this first argument is an argument about abortion law, not |
about the ethics of abortion. Even within those limits, however, |
it is open to challenge, for it fails to meet the conservative claim |
that abortion is the deliberate killing of an innocent human |
being, and in the same ethical category as murder. Those who |
take this view of abortion will not rest content with the assertion |
that restrictive abortion laws do no more than drive women to |
backyard abortionists. They will insist that this situation can be |
changed, and the law properly enforced. They may also suggest |
measures to make pregnancy easier to accept for those women |
who become pregnant against their wishes. This is a perfectly |
reasonable response, given the initial ethical judgment against |
abortion, and for this reason the first argument does not succeed |
in avoiding the ethical issue. |
Not the Law's Business? |
The second argument is again an argument about abortion laws |
rather than the ethics of abortion. It uses the view that, as the |
report of a British government committee inquiring into laws |
about homosexuality and prostitution put it: 'There must remain |
a realm of private morality and immorality that is, in brief |
and crude terms, not the law's business: This view is widely |
accepted among liberal thinkers, and can be traced back to John |
Stuart Mill's On Liberty. The'one very simple principle' of this |
work is, in Mill's words: |
144 |
Taking Life: The Embryo and the Fetus |
That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised |
over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is |
to prevent harm to others ... He cannot rightfully be compelled |
to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because |
it will make him happier, because in the opinions of others, to |
do so would be wise or even right. |
Mill's view is often and properly quoted in support of the repeal |
of laws that create 'victimless crimes' - like laws prohibiting |
homosexual relations between consenting adults, the use of |
marijuana and other drugs, prostitution, gambling and so on. |
Abortion is often included in this list, for example by the criminologist |
Edwin Schur in his book Crimes Without Victims. Those |
who consider abortion a victimless crime say that, while everyone |
is entitled to hold and act on his or her own view about |
the morality of abortion, no section of the community should |
try to force others to adhere to its own particular view. In a |
pluralist society, we should tolerate others with different moral |
views and leave the decision to have an abortion up to the |
woman concerned. |
The fallacy involved in numbering abortion among the victimless |
crimes should be obvious. The dispute about abortion |
is, largely, a dispute about whether or not abortion does have |
a 'victim'. Opponents of abortion maintain that the victim of |
abortion is the fetus. Those not opposed to abortion may deny |
that the fetus counts as a victim in any serious way. They might, |
for instance, say that a being cannot be a victim unless it has |
interests that are violated, and the fetus has no interests. But |
however this dispute may go, one cannot simply ignore it on |
the grounds that people should not attempt to force others to |
follow their own moral views. My view that what Hitler did to |
the Jews is wrong is a moral view, and ifthere were any prospect |
of a revival of Nazism I would certainly do my best to force |
others not to act contrary to this view. Mill's principle is defensible |
only if it is restricted, as Mill restricted it, to acts that do |
not harm others. To use the principle as a means of avoiding |
145 |
Practical Ethics |
the difficulties of resolving the ethical dispute over abortion is |
to take it for granted that abortion does not harm an 'other' - |
which is precisely the point that needs to be proven before we |
can legitimately apply the principle to the case of abortion. |
A Feminist Argument |
The last of the three arguments that seek to justify abortion |
without denying that the fetus is an innocent human being is |
that a woman has a right to choose what happens to her own |
body. This argument became prominent with the rise of the |
women's liberation movement and has been elaborated by |
American philosophers sympathetic to feminism. An influential |
argument has been presented by Judith Jarvis Thomson by |
means of an ingenious analogy. Imagine, she says, that you |
wake up one morning and find yourself in a hospital bed, somehow |
connected to an unconscious man in an adjacent bed. You |
are told that this man is a famous violinist with kidney disease. |
The only way he can survive is for his circulatory system to be |
plugged into the system of someone else with the same blood |
type, and you are the only person whose blood is suitable. So |
a society of music lovers kidnapped you, had the connecting |
operation performed, and there you are. Since you are now in |
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