Abortion

The embryo-foetus is a human, because it is made of human cells. Anything with human cells is human by definition. The foetus is not a person though. Personhood is a slow development with no clear beginning (or end, except in death), but this development must take place within society. Outside of society the concept makes no sense. The logic of abortion does not support infanticide. The social structures we currently have in place would mean that infanticide is unethical - there are lots of childless people who would adopt the newborn, so there is no reason to kill it (assuming it is healthy). This does not mean that all women should carry foetuses to full term and then give them up for adoption - this removes their choice and freedom and impels them to sacrifice their (emotional and physical) health and endanger their against their will. This would be enforced gestation. There is no compromise between abortion and gestation.

The fantasised foetus(1)

Many people consider the foetus to be a child. It is difficult to criticise what are often tender and loving feelings, but this belief is a mistake.

Today it is possible for the foetus to be viewed in utero. For many it looks like a miniature baby, at later stages that is, when it isn’t looking like a lizard. (Interesting how pro-lifers only show older foeti isn’t it?) The foetus seems to be already here in the world and people feel for it. This visualisation is medically useful but ethically it is leading people astray. This image has usurped the woman from her place of importance, she is invisible, all eyes are on the foetus. The pro-life (anti-choice) movement regularly portray the foetus as a separate entity - but this is not the case of course.

This fantasy of foetus as child, as life, as ideal is based in the romanticisation of the child and the over-valuation of life as some intrinsically good-in-itself, which it is not. Indeed, I would defend the argument that nothing has intrinsic value, instead value is inter-subjective and born from the exigencies and struggles of history and cultures.

Freedom

I do not dispute that abortions can hurt women, or that they can’t be bad things. They can. People are different, their beliefs, values and lifestyles are different. Anti-choice adherents do not need to agree with my analysis - but they should tolerate differences of opinion. For some women abortion is painless and necessary and convenient. This operation is a freedom equal too the choice of having a tumour removed. How many women’s lives are ruined by unwanted children (and how many children’s lives are ruined by being unwanted), compared to how many woman’s lives are ruined by abortion?

Women should have the choice to have an abortion or to maintain the pregnancy no matter what their situation is. Aside from the individual feelings and plans a woman has, there are of course situations that recommend abortion. (However, aside from a persons idiosyncratic feelings on this issue, I can only think of absurd hypothetical situations that would recommend pregnancy.) In any situation a woman must have the option to choose what she feels/thinks is the best thing to do. I support the right for women to keep pregnancies even if I think they should abort. I support the right for women to abort even if the reasons are considered frivolous by others. These are fundamental rights which are freeing women from 10 000 years of oppression, that is, since agriculture arose and the ideology of possession took hold, something which has remained until today.

The Ideology of Possession

The law enshrines the foetus as mens' possession. In many countries women are still considered a possession. I quote from Judith Roof's book "Reproductions of Reproduction" (Routledge 1996): "The statues themselves treat the woman as a medium rather than a subject with her own will, enforcing not a philosophy of maternal choice, but rather the authority of the state to perpetuate procreation..." (p107) and "In abortion laws, the foetus is treated as a kind of property right; aligned with the state and with the vastness of Social order, the foetus is inscribed not as the personal interest of what is not yet a personality, but rather as the future interest of the Law situated i the place of the absent father, whose "theoretical" right in genetic perpetuity is assumed" (p108).

But women are not objects, nor are they owned. Women must have a choice to end pregnancy.

Abortion is Murder

The claim that abortion is murder is based on the premise that foetuses are persons with the same inviolable rights as everyone else in our culture. Rights, like personhood, are a social construct with a long complex history, supported by cultural institutions and laws. Only a person with the right to life can be murdered. Only a person who is conscious, who is aware of their future and of themselves has a right to life. Foeti are not people because they do not have this capability and thus have no right to life. I will not argue that abortion is killing - it is. But so is swotting a fly. Killing and murder are two different things.

Abortion is not killing a person it is stopping one from becoming.

Potential

The rights of an actual person outweigh the rights of a potential person. For example: 100 clones might be grown from your body, but you have the right to refuse to allow your cells to be cloned. Pulling out sprouting acorn is not same as cutting down a venerable oak. Dropping an egg in boiling water is not same as dropping in a chicken.

What is a person?

The foetus would have to meet these criteria to be considered a person:

  • -sentience/self-awareness (involving an awareness of the future)
  • -emotionality
  • -rationality
  • -communication
  • -moral agency

None of these are absolutely necessary to personhood. All criteria are not always met by people but the foetus has none of these. Of course self-awareness is the most necessary (though not sufficient) condition for personhood

This is why a person in a permanent coma can be ethically killed. Death and killing are not intrinsically bad things. But our culture is based on an ancient and misguided tradition of moral absolutes ("thou shalt not kill"), and social mores typical holds that death and killing are intrinsically bad things - unless we are at war of course, or executing evil men. There can be many situations where death and killing are good things (self-defence, euthanasia, sometimes even suicide). What is good or bad depends on a situation. This is why abortion can be good or bad. If a woman is helped or gladdened by her abortion (however this may be: emotionally, physically, financially) it is good. If a woman is hurt by the abortion, it is bad (e.g. she wanted to keep the foetus to had to abort it for her own health) - but it is not absolutely and universally bad!

Disagreements over the personhood of the foetus will will remain, because the issue will be resolved to every ones satisfaction. However it is clearly obvious that there is at least one person (and one person’s rights) at stake - the woman. Arguing against abortion just in case the foetus is somehow a person is a matter of possibility versus fact (the possibility of the foetus’ personhood versus the fact of the woman’s), thus it is obviously the woman who must take precedent.

Moral Consideration

The foetus is only worthy of moral consideration if it is intended to be grown and birthed. If a foetus will be a future child, it must not be harmed. To do so would be to harm a future autonomous being. Essentially, the foetus is being treated as a person, even though it is not. How the carers feel about the foetus is what is important here. If they are making preparations for its entry into society, then they must morally consider it. If they are not making preparations for its continued existence, then what happens to the foetus is irrelevant. It is a biological redundancy.

The Future of Abortion

Scientists have created artificial wombs prototypes made out of cells extracted from women's bodies. Embryos successfully attached themselves to the walls of these laboratory wombs and began to grow. These artificial wombs will pose many ethical difficulties as well as provide solutions.

When artificial wombs are developed, the foetus could be placed in one instead of aborted, and the woman told she has to look after it once it has developed into a child, or be forced to give it up for adoption. She could not choose to have the foetus terminated. She would loose control over her genetic heritage and reproductive power.

A man could goad a woman into abortion - or rather, removal - and still keep their child even if she wanted nothing to do with it. The man could technological plunder her body and keep the foetus as his. A woman's objections to the pregnancy could also be undermined. "You only have to give me some genetic tissue honey - no excuses!" Women be goaded by this tech into giving up genetic material an forced into a pregnancy that "doesn't involve them".

That said, the arti-womb (exo-womb? ante-womb?) could provide all sorts of compromises between couples, like solutions to separations, or for people squimish about abortions: "you want the foetus, I don't, here take it!".

Another example of how this technology could liberate, is that, if combined with cloning technology, artificial wombs raise the prospect that gay couples could give 'birth' to their own children. Another example would be that for women who want children but don't want to go through the pains and physiological damage of pregnancy and childbirth have the option to do so.

However, this could have unexpected consequences for working women and health insurance. Women may loose maternity leave and choice of what kind of pregnancy to have, being expected to use an artificial womb and work until the baby is born.

Are there possible psychological consequences also? Could there be problems with parents bonding with their child to be if it is sat in a machine and not a future mother? Or could the couple gain more sense of bonding if they could see their baby-to-be growing day by day through a window in the arti-womb? Could this just lead to an increase in delusions that people are seeing a baby and not simply a foetus, leading to "pro-life" (anti-choice) backlashes against people who feel not sentimentality over a foetus? What of the future of abortion and women controlling their own bodies? Already the anti-choice camp are pushing to limit abortions to the point where the foetus can survive outside the womb. If it can survive outside from day one, they can eliminate abortion entirely.

But the bottom line should always be control over ones reproductive powers.

  1. Rothman, B. K. "Redefining Abortion" in LaFollette, H. - Ethics in Practice (Blackwell 1997).
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