Abortion: Philosophical Perspectives
Richard Klaus
September 23, 2024
South Mountain Community College
Introduction
· Welcome to Christian Challenge’s “Areopagus” series
· My name is Richard Klaus
o Work in the Philosophy and Religious Studies Department at Glendale Community College
§ Student Engagement Staff
§ Adjunct instructor in philosophy
· Here in my capacity as private individual…
o My views stated today ought not to be considered the views of…
§ Glendale Community College
§ South Mountain Community College
§ nor the Maricopa County Community College District
o Views not necessarily the views of Christian Challenge
· I am a Christian—a follower of Jesus
· As a follower of Jesus and someone with a deep interest in philosophy…
o I am excited to address the topic of abortion today
o I will not pretend to be neutral on this topic
§ I am pro-life in my understanding of this topic
· ABORTION: one of the most divisive issues in our culture today!
o Especially in this election year…
o Especially in our state of Arizona with Proposition 139 on the ballot
· Can we make headway on this most divisive of topics?
· No neutrality on the issue…
· But we can be civil and rational in our pursuit of the truth of the matter
· CIVIL—rooted in respect
o Book: Civil Dialogue on Abortion by Bertha Alvarez Manninen and Jack Mulder
o Quote Charles Camosy: Four (4) general traits needed for constructive dialogue:
1. Humility
2. Solidarity with our conversation partners
3. Avoiding dismissive words and phrases that erect fences
4. Leading with what we are for instead of what we are against
o Manninen and Mulder:
§ “Thus we might say that civil discourse occurs when people of sincere conviction (a subjective condition) who are willing (also subjective) to submit their opinions to the (metaphorical) court of argument and rational discourse (this is at least moreobjective in the sense that we can agree on certain logical rules that can be articulated for any debate) are therefore invited to the table of conversation and not disinvited unless they refuse to make their case in such a fashion.”[1]
§ Following Manninen and Mulder…
· “Pro-Choice” and “Pro-Life” as labels
o Rather than “pro-abortion” or “anti-choice”
· “…this usage is a decision we’ve made to respect the other person’s view as rationally defensible. Using terms the other accepts is a way to honor the other person as a full partner in dialogue and to recognize that this is a complex debate that will never truly be won by ideological sleight of hand.”[2]
· RATIONAL—committed to reason and the avoidance of bad reasoning
o Both sides have offered bad (fallacious) arguments… usually slogans[3]
§ Pro-choice: “No uterus, no voice to speak on abortion.”
§ Pro-life: “The aborted child could have grown up to cure cancer.”
· Strategy and outline of this talk
1. Lay out some of the key philosophical arguments and strategies used to argue for the pro-choice position—two key strategies
a. Found in the philosophical literature over the past 50 years
b. Used today in popular arguments
2. Briefly explain how the pro-life position answers these two pro-choice strategies
a. Why the pro-life position is worthy of rational consideration
b. How the pro-life position is rationally defensible and superior
· NOTE: Philosophical arguments—What about science?
o Science: subsidiary role
o There is really not any scientific debate about human life begins.
§ Popular culture thinks there is, but…
o Vast number of embryologists acknowledge that human life begins at conception
§ Document with 10 leading embryology textbook definitions and 34 peer-reviewed papers[4]
§ Steve Jacobs (PhD dissertation, University of Chicago)
· Surveyed over 5000 biologists
· 96% affirmed life begins at conception[5]
o “At the very least, this data lends some support to the view that ‘[t]here is no credible scientific opposition to the fact that a genetically distinct human life begins at conception and that an induced abortion is a death’.” (p. 260)
o Responsible pro-choice defenders recognize this!
Peter Singer (Princeton ethicist)
§ “It is possible to give ‘human being’ a precise meaning. We can use it as equivalent to ‘member of the species Homo Sapiens.’ Whether a being is a member of a given species is something that can be determined scientifically, by an examination of the nature of the chromosomes in the cells of living organisms. In this sense, there is no doubt that from the first moments of its existence an embryo conceived from human sperm and eggs is a human being.” --Peter Singer (Princeton ethicist who defends abortion and infanticide)[6]
Two Argumentative Strategies Arguing for Abortion
· Two ways to argue for the pro-choice position
1. Personhood Arguments—focus is on the fetus
§ Implied philosophical question: Is the fetus as morally valuable as a mature adult?
2. Bodily Autonomy Arguments—focus is on the woman
§ Implied philosophical question: Does a woman’s right to bodily autonomy override whatever value the fetus has, even if we concede the personhood of the fetus?
· Important to notice…. These are different and independent philosophical questions!
o Support for abortion might stem from either of these views
o The pro-life view needs to answer both perspectives to uphold its view
· Personhood Argument
o Separates human life and personhood
o Prenatal human is…
§ Biologically human life but not…
§ A human moral person with intrinsic value
o “a fetus cannot be considered a member of the moral community, the set of beings with full and equal moral rights, for the simple reason that it is not a person, and that it is personhood, and not genetic humanity… which is the basis for membership in this community.” --Mary Ann Warren
o “I will argue that a fetus, whatever its stage of development, satisfies none of the basic criteria of personhood, and is not even enough like a person to be accorded even some of the same rights on the basis of this resemblance. Nor, as we will see, is a fetus’s potentialpersonhood a threat to the morality of abortion, since, whatever the rights of potential people may be, they are invariably overridden in any conflict with the moral rights of actual people.” --Mary Anne Warren[7]
o Radical separation of human life from personhood = “Personhood Theory”
o Criteria of Personhood “the traits which are most central to the concept of personhood, or humanity in the moral sense” (Warren)
§ Consciousness
§ Reasoning
§ Self-motivated activity
§ Capacity to communicate
§ Self-concepts & self-awareness[8]
o “Thus, since the fact that even a fully developed fetus is not personlike enough to have any significant right to life on the basis of its personlikeness shows that no legal restrictions upon the stage of pregnancy in which an abortion may be performed can be justified on the grounds that we should protect the rights of the older fetus; and since there is no other apparent justification for such restrictions, we may conclude that they are entirely justified. Whether or not it would be indecent (whatever that means) for a woman in her seventh month to obtain an abortion just to avoid having to postpone a trip to Europe, it would not, in itself, be immoral, and therefore it ought to be permitted.” --Mary Anne Warren[9]
o “And I think that a rational person must conclude that if the right to life of a fetus is to be based upon its resemblance to a person, then it cannot be said to have any more right to life than, let us say, a newborn guppy…”[10]
o Other philosophers offer additional criteria, but the result is the same
§ The prenatal human being is not accorded the right to life since she does not meet the personhood criteria.
· What can we say in response to this?
· Examine where Personhood Theory leads; what are the consequences that follow from this theory theory has several problems!
o Ethical problems with the theory
o Philosophical problems with the theory
o Historical injustices committed with this theory
· Ethical Problems with Personhood Theory
o Personhood criteria offered are so advanced that even newborns do not meet them -- JUSTIFIFES INFANTICIDE!
o Mary Anne Warren, Michael Tooley, Peter Singer— all recognize this
o Recent example: 2013 Journal of Medical Ethics article by Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva
§ “After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?”
§ They use Personhood Theory…
§ “Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’. We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her… Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life.”[11]
§ Any reasons that justify an abortion, justify infanticide…
§ “In spite of the oxymoron in the expression, we propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion’, rather than ‘infanticide’, to emphasize that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus (on which ‘abortions’ in the traditional sense are performed) rather than to that of a child. Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be.”[12]
· Philosophical Problems with Personhood Theory
o Personhood Theory Functional Criteria
§ If and only if an entity functions in a certain way, then we can consider the entity a person
o Again, it proves too much…
o If these personhood criteria are necessary conditions for personhood, then what about human beings…
§ Asleep
§ Unconscious
§ Temporarily comatose
o Do these humans cease to be persons in these conditions?
o When they come out of these conditions are they a new person or the same person as prior to the condition?
o Functionalist criteria are not adequate to determine who is a person and who is not.
o “Consequently, it seems more consistent with our moral intuitions to say that personhood is not something that arises when certain functions are in place, but rather is something that grounds these functions, whether or not they are ever actualized in the life of a human being.” --Francis Beckwith[13]
o “The pro-life position is that human beings are valuable subjects of rights in virtue of whatwe are, not in virtue of some attribute that we acquire some time after we have come to be.” --Patrick Lee[14]
o Debate concerns the following issue:
§ (1) Do you have to exercise these Personhood Criteria to be a human? Or…
§ (2) Can a human person have these capacities but not expressed immediately?
§ Even pro-choice thinkers recognize that (2) is possible
· In the cases of sleep, unconsciousness, and being temporarily comatose
§ “But there is sense in which human embryos and fetuses also have a capacity for higher mental functions.” --Patrick Lee
§ “The human embryo has within herself all of the positive reality needed to actively develop herself to the point where she will perform higher mental functions, given only a suitable environment and nutrition, and so she now has the natural capacity for such mental function.” --Patrick Lee[15]
· Looked at ethical problem (infanticide) and philosophical problem with Personhood Criteria view…
· Historical injustices committed with this theory
o Whenever people have denied personhood to a segment of the human population (Jews in Nazi Germany, African Americans in 17th-18th century America, Native Americans, etc.) the results have been horrific and evil.
o “Note that every single time that we have divided the human family into those who have basic rights and those who do not, we have made a terrible mistake. When Germans did this to Jews, when ‘true believers’ did this to ‘heretics,’ when Soviets did this to dissidents, all these cases, we look back and recognize moral mistake. Now too, some propose to divide the human family, granting privileges and immunities to those like us, but denying them to the less powerful, the vulnerable ‘other.’ Whenever in the past we have chosen the ‘exclusive’ view over the ‘inclusive’ view, we have made a horrible moral mistake. If we are to learn from the painful lessons of history, we will choose the inclusive view that all human beings, even those who are not like us, should be included within the scope of protection. Although human beings in utero are not like us, not powerful, unable to protect themselves, and as vulnerable as a human can be, these characteristics do not change in the least the fact that they are just as human as any of us. History teaches us that we have always made a mistake in the choosing the ethics of exclusion.” --Christopher Kaczor[16]
· Ethical, philosophical, and historical arguments
o Personhood Theory with its Functionalist Criteria is WRON
· Bodily Autonomy Argument
o No one has the right to forcibly use the body of another—even for life-saving, life-preserving ends.
o Famous article by Judith Jarvis Thomson—“A Defense of Abortion”[17]
· Thomson’s Argument and Analogy of the Violinist
o “I propose, then, that we grant that the fetus is a person from the moment of conception.” (p. 48)
o Violinist analogy….
“You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, "Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you--we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you." Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says. "Tough luck. I agree. but now you've got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him." I imagine you would regard this as outrageous, …” (pp. 48-49)
o “I am arguing only that having a right to life does not guarantee having either a right to be given the use of or right to be allowed continued use of another person’s body—even if one needs it for life itself.” (p. 56)
· Responding to Thomson’s Argument
o Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “Violinist Argument” analogy: does it work?
§ Typically getting pregnant is not like rape (getting forcibly plugged into the violinist).
§ “Unplugging” is not like the active act of killing pre-natal life by decapitation and dismemberment or poisoning.
§ Violinist is a stranger; pre-born is a son or daughter to the mother
· There are familial responsibilities
§ Violinist is not in a natural state; child in the womb is exactly where she is supposed to be given her state of development
§ Responsibility Objection: we bear moral responsibility if we engage in an act which brings about a human life[18]
o Do we have moral obligations that we did not consent to?
§ Volunteerism
· Moral obligations must be voluntarily accepted in order to have moral force
· “Surely we do not have any such ‘special responsibility’ for a person unless we have assumed it, explicitly or implicitly.” (Thomson, 65)
§ Problems with Volunteerism
· Special relationship between parents and children even if not freely chosen
o Couple has consensual sex but that seeks to be “protected” from pregnancy by multiple birth control methods.
§ Woman gets pregnant and wants to keep
§ Mother pleads for child support
§ “Although he took every precaution to avoid fatherhood, thus showing that he did not wish to accept such a status, according to nearly all child support laws in this United States he would still be obligated to pay support precisely because of his relationship to his child.”[19]
· Obligations even without a special family relationship
o “Those who find Thomson convincing are convinced not by the far-fetched example of the violinist, but by the intuition that grounds it: the intuition that unless one has previously agreed to be so obliged, one is not required to make personal sacrifices on behalf of one’s fellow man, even when that life hangs in the balance. It is this claim, it seems to me, that the opponent of abortion really ought to be interested in refuting.”[20]
o “… dependency itself obligates broadly when no particular individual is intrinsically motivated to provide care.”[21]
o Examples:
§ Finding a newborn on your step of cabin in wilderness
o Expressive Individualism vs. Embodied Relationality[22]
Conclusion
· Examined two argumentative strategies for the pro-choice position
o Personhood arguments
o Bodily Autonomy arguments
· Tried to give some pro-life responses
· Goals:
o Alert you to the deeply philosophical issues embedded in the abortion debate
o Render the rationality of the pro-life perspective more clear and, hopefully, persuasive
· As a Christian… I’d like to end with Jesus and his ethical analysis
o Appropriate for at least two reasons
§ (1) Jesus can be seen as a philosopher
“But the fact that Jesus did not ‘build’ a philosophical system does not preclude the possibility that he thought in terms of a well-ordered and logically consistent account of reality and argued rationally with those who disputed it. If he thought and spoke in this manner, he was a philosopher indeed—and the most influential one in Western history.” –Douglas Groothuis[23]
§ (2) Judith Jarvis Thomson brings up the teaching of Jesus on the famous parable of “The Good Samaritan” (p. 62)
§ Luke 10.30-35
30Jesus replied and said, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he encountered robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. 31And by coincidence a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32Likewise a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33But a Samaritan who was on a journey came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion, 34and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him on his own animal, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35On the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return, I will repay you.’ 36Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands?” 37And he said, “The one who showed compassion to him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same.”
· Jesus ethical vision
o Moves beyond bounds of self-interest
o Circle of concern is widened
o Parable of the Good Samaritan—in line with certain strands of feminist ethics
§ Better—certain strands of feminist ethics are in line with Jesus!
o “… dependency itself obligates broadly when no particular individual is intrinsically motivated to provide care.”[24]
o Not merely a moral principle: Deontological ethic
o Also, conceptualizing a new way to be human: Virtue ethics
o Imagine the consequences of a people, society embodying this ethic
§ Use your moral imagination!
· Jesus is …
o Moral teacher—specific ethical principles
o Moral exemplar—he himself models this self-giving ethic
§ Most vividly in his heroic death upon a cross
§ Christian tradition teaches…
· Death was “for us”
· Substitute for us in our alienation from God
o Relational rupture caused by ethical mis-alignment (SIN)
o Moral Savior
§ First step… NOT:
· Listen to his moral teaching…
· Or, try to follow his moral example…
§ Rather, look to him and trust in him for forgiveness of our willful alienation (our sin)
· Trust him (believe in him) for forgiveness and ask him for a new heart…
o A new orientation of life with profound ethical consequences
o I leave you to consider him.
[1] Bertha Alvarez Manninen and Jack Mulder, Jr., Civil Dialogue on Abortion (New York: Routledge, 2018), 4-5.
[3] See Francis Beckwith, “Bad (Thought Not Entirely Bad) Pro-Life Arguments” Public Discourse (January 14, 2019)—online: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2019/01/47604/ and David Hershenov, “Ten (Bad, But Popular) Arguments for Abortion” Public Discourse(August 23, 2017)—online: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2017/08/19718/.
[4] "The Origin of Human Life at Fertilization: Quotes from Medical Textbooks and Peer-Reviewed Scientific Literature" by M. L. Condic (September 2017)—online: https://bdfund.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Condic-Sources-Embryology.pdf-old.
[5] Quoted in Scott Klusendorf, The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture, 2nd ed. (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2023), 64. Klusendorf is quoting, Steven Jacobs, “Balancing Abortion Rights and Fetal Rights: A Mixed Methods Mediation of the U.S. Abortion Debate” (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2019)—online: https://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/1883?ln=en&v=pdf
[6] Quoted in Christopher Kaczor, “Abortion as Human Rights Violation,” in Kate Greasley and Christopher Kaczor, Abortion Rights: For and Against (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 91. Kaczor is quoting from Peter Singer, Writings on an Ethical Life (New York: Ecco Press, 2000), 127.
[11] Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, “After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?” Journal of Medical Ethics 39 (2013), 262.
[12] Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, “After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?” Journal of Medical Ethics 39 (2013), 262.
[13] Francis J. Beckwith, “Abortion, Bioethics, and Personhood: A Philosophical Reflection,” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 4.1 (2000), 18-19.
[14] Patrick Lee, “A Christian Philosopher’s View of Recent Directions in the Abortion Debate,” Christian Bioethics 10 (2004), 14.
[15] Patrick Lee, “A Christian Philosopher’s View of Recent Directions in the Abortion Debate,” 14-15.
[16] Christopher Kaczor, “Abortion as Human Rights Violation,” in Kate Greasley and Christopher Kaczor, Abortion Rights: For and Against (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 132-133.
[17] Judith Jarvis Thomson, “A Defense of Abortion,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1.1 (1971), 47-66.
[18] See especially: C’zar Bernstein and Paul Manata, “Moral Responsibility and the Wrongness of Abortion,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 44 (2019), 243-262.
[19] Francis J. Beckwith, “Personal Bodily Rights, Abortion, and Unplugging the Violinist,” International Philosophical Quarterly 32.1 (1992), 111.
[21] Gina Schouten, Fetuses, Orphans, and a Famous Violinist: On the Ethics and Politics of Abortion 43.3 (2017), 645.
[22] For more on this see especially: O. Carter Snead, What It Means to Be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2020).
[23] Douglas Groothuis, On Jesus [Wadsworth Philosophers Series], (Wadsworth, 2003), 8. See my blog post, “Jesus as a Philosopher: Some Resources,” White Rose Review (December 15, 2020)—online: https://whiterosereview.blogspot.com/2020/12/jesus-as-philosopher-some-resources.html.
