Newsgroups: talk.abortion
Subject: ATUI: The Conservative Position, and Why it's Morally Correct
From: mcbeanb@brandonu.ca
Date: 7 Nov 92 22:13:50 CST
Organization: Brandon University, Brandon, Manitoba, Canada

The Conservative Position, and Why it's Morally Correct

     Generally speaking, the conservative position on abortion, or
pro-life position, implies that abortion is the destruction of
human life, and it is wrong.  Perhaps the pro-life perspective
should only be considered conservative for the civilized world.
In an intensive study by Devereux (1955), it was found that primitive
societies around the world condone abortion under a wide variety
of circumstances:  avoidance of shame, ineligibility to marry
certain people if a baby is present, minor marital arguments,
protection of the potential mother's beauty, and to allow an
acceptable continuation of sexual activity.  Although these reasons
may well be used to abort in the civilized world, it is easy to
see that such whimsical acts of abortion are undesirable.
     A common, but not entirely sound argument used by conservatives
is tht of the Golden Rule:  "Do unto others as you would have them
do unto you" is not an intelligent statement taken literally as such
(Rachels, 1986).  If one were to adhere to such a rule, then one
would be obligated to allow sadists and masochists to tie you up,
and cause pain to your body.  It is not difficult to apply this
argument to abortion, even if it is too general in some cases.
If you follow the rule, you cannot abort a fetus because you
are likely grateful that when you were a fetus, no one aborted you.
The argument seems concrete, but there is a loophole.  How can anyone
say what an actual fetus would or would not want?  Could a fetus want
people to treat it in any particular way?  There are also some people
in the world who can honestly say "I really never wanted to live,"
otherwise, we would have little or no incidence of suicide.  These
people may have had several feelings while living in the womb.
Evidently, the Golden Rule needs some work done to it before it
may be considered acceptable to follow.
     A more concise derivation of the Golden Rule may be found in
Shakespeare's (1965) "The Merchant of Venice":
     I am a Jew.  Hath not a Jew eyes?  hath not a Jew hands, organs,
     dimensions, senses, affections, passions?  fed with the same food,
     hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal'd
     by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer,
     as a Christian is?  If you prick us, do we not bleed?  if you
     tickle us, do we not laugh?  if you poison us, do we not die?
     (p. 261)
If "Jew" is replaced by "fetus", and "Christian" by "person", the argument
still holds true.  This argument surely calls upon our compassion for
those who may be called "persons", as the fetus matches each of these
perspectives just as well as any person would.  Is it not enough to
consider this great amount of similarity to consider the fetus to
have a right to life?  The only terms not readily proven by medical facts
are whether or not a fetus has "affections" or "passions", but every 
other premise holds true.  Still, some are not sentimental enough to be
satisfied by this argument.
     A case which is overlooked by many is that of the depressed woman
who feels badly after the abortion.  According to statistics by Luker,
as many as 65% of women having a therapeutic abortion felt it was a
positive experience (1975), but what of the other 35% that didn't?
How can you have a positive experience when you have an abortion?
Surely it isn't enjoyable, or something anyone would go out of their
way to do just for the sake of having an abortion.  I think in most 
cases there is likely an undeniable feeling of loss, as there was in this
case recorded by Borg and Lasker:
     It was very hard to talk to anyone about it.  When I did tell 
     someone, it seemed they were either shocked, or else they told
     me it was all for the best.  No one understands that I missed
     that baby (cited in McDonnell, 1984, p. 36).
When an act causes oneself grief and psychological pain, it is certainly 
not an act to be looked upon in a positive way.  The feeling of loss
does hint that our human nature does not approve of abortion.
     For me, the most convincing conservative argument is that of
potentiality used in conjunction with the argument of probability.
The first argument may be stated as such:  The fetus is a potential
person from conception.  It is wrong to kill a potential person simply
because of that potential, therefore abortion is wrong.  This seems
reasonable, especially when applied to this analogy:  Suppose there
was a cocoon which was tested by experts, and was discovered to be
housing a man who was in some sort of temporary sleep.  It would not
be right to terminate the life of the man in the cocoon simply because
he would eventually wake up, exit his cocoon, and become a person.
The main problem with the argument is the fact that it may be reduced
to the absurd.  If a zygote is a potential person, then why isn't a sperm
or ovum considered to be a potential person?  Surely it isn't wrong to
terminate sperm or ova, because each are destroyed naturally by our
bodies on a periodic basis.  The argument of probability clears this
discrepancy up by saying that the higher the probability personhood
will be achieved, the greater our obligation is not to destroy that
potential (Noonan, 1972).  In one ejaculate there are anywhere
between two and four hundred million sperm (Haas & Haas, 1990).  Only
one of these sperm may fertilize an ovum, if the ovum is fertilized
at all.  That means that any single sperm has, at best, a one in
two million chance of creating what could be a potential person.
Indeed, the potentiality of a sex cell to become a person is negligible.
A newly conceived zygote, on the other hand, has about an eighty
percent chance of implanting in the uterus and developing into a
person (Noonan, 1972).  There is a tremendous leap of probabilities
at the point of conception, but I still like to draw the line at 
implantation.  The zygote still seems too alien from a human
perspective to be considered even a potential person.  A zygote
has no cell differentiation to give itself human characteristics, but 
this process is undergone after implantation.  With these arguments,
one can safely contracept without grief, yet one can also adhere to
a pro-life position concerning abortion.


NEXT POST:  The Liberal Position, and Why it is Morally Incorrect

Brian McBean  -  McBeanB@BrandonU.Ca
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