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important, not because it creates in the fetus a right or claim to
life, but because anyone who kills a human fetus deprives the
world of a future rational and self-conscious being. If rational
and self-conscious beings are intrinsically valuable, to kill a
human fetus is to deprive the world of something intrinsically
valuable, and so wrong. The chief problem with this as an argument
against abortion - apart from the difficulty of establishing
that rational and self-conscious beings are of intrinsic
value - is that it does not stand up as a reason for objecting to
all abortions, or even to abortions carried out merely because
the pregnancy is inconveniently timed. Moreover the argument
leads us to condemn practices other than abortion that most
anti-abortionists accept.
The claim that rational and self-conscious beings are intrinsically
valuable is not a reason for objecting to all abortions
because not all abortions deprive the world of a rational and
self-conscious being. Suppose a woman has been planning to
join a mountain-climbing expedition in June, and in January
she learns that she is two months pregnant. She has no children
at present, and firmly intends to have a child within a year or
two. The pregnancy is unwanted only because it is inconveniently
timed. Opponents of abortion would presumably think
an abortion in these circumstances particularly outrageous, for
neither the life nor the health of the mother is at stake - only
the enjoyment she gets from climbing mountains. Yet if abortion
is wrong only because it deprives the world of a future person,
this abortion is not wrong; it does no more than delay the entry
of a person into the world.
On the other hand this argument against abortion does lead
us to condemn practices that reduce the future human popu-
154
Taking Life: The Embryo and the Fetus
lation: contraception, whether by 'artificial' means or by 'natural'
means such as abstinence on days when the woman is
likely to be fertile; and also celibacy. This argument has, in fact,
all the difficulties of the 'total' form of utilitarianism, discussed
in the previous two chapters, and it does not provide any reason
for thinking abortion worse than any other means of population
control. If the world is already overpopulated, the argument
provides no reason at all against abortion.
Is there any other significance in the fact that the fetus is a
potential person? If there is I have no idea what it could be. In
writings against abortion we often find reference to the fact that
each human fetus is unique. Paul Ramsey, a former Professor
of Religion at Princeton University, has said that modem genetics,
by teaching us that the first fusion of sperm and ovum
creates a 'never-to-be-repeated' informational speck, seems to
lead us to the conclusion that' all destruction of fetal life should
be classified as murder'. But why should this fact lead us to this
conclusion? A canine fetus is also, no doubt, genetically unique.
Does this mean that it is as wrong to abort a dog as a human?
When identical twins are conceived, the genetic information is
repeated. Would Ramsey therefore think it permissible to abort
one of a pair of identical twins? The children that my wife and
I would produce if we did not use contraceptives would be
genetically unique. Does the fact that it is still indeterminate
precisely what genetically unique character those children
would have make the use of contraceptives less evil than abortion?
Why should it? And if it does could the looming prospect
of successful cloning - a technique in which the cells of one
individual are used to reproduce a fetus that is a genetic carbon
copy of the original - diminish the seriousness of abortion?
Suppose the woman who wants to go mountain climbing were
able to have her abortion, take a cell from the aborted fetus and
then reimplant that cell in her womb so that an exact genetic
replica of the aborted fetus would develop - the only difference
being that the pregnancy would now come to term six months
155
Practical Ethics
later, and thus she could still join the expedition. Would that
make the abortion acceptable? I doubt that many opponents of
abortion would think so.
THE STATUS OF THE EMBRYO IN THE LABORATORY
It is now time to tum to the debate about experimenting on
early human embryos, kept alive in a special fluid, outside the
human body. This is a relatively new debate, because the possibility
of keeping an embryo alive outside the body is new; but
in many respects it goes over the same ground as the abortion
debate. Although one central argument for abortion - the claim
that a woman has the right to control her own body - is not
directly applicable in the newer context, the argument against
embryo experimentation relies on one of the two claims we
have already examined: either that the embryo is entitled to
protection because it is a human being, or that the embryo is
entitled to protection because it is a potential human being.
One might therefore think that the case against embryo experimentation
is stronger than the case for abortion. For one
argument in favour of abortion does not apply, while the major
arguments against abortion do. In fact, however, the two arguments
against abortion do not apply as straightforwardly as
one might imagine to the embryo in the laboratory.
First, is the embryo already a human being? We have already
seen that claims for a right to life should not be based on species
membership, so the fact that the embryo is of the species Homo
sapiens does not show that the embryo is a human being in any
morally relevant sense. And if the fetus is not a person, it is
even more apparent that the embryo cannot be one. But there
is a further interesting point to be made against the claim that
the early embryo is a human being: human beings are individuals,
and the early embryo is not even an individual. At any