The Pro-Logic View on Abortion

Introduction

The Controversy of Abortion

Definition. When a male and female human being have sexual intercourse, if not purposely prevented, sperm cells (the reproductive cells of males) will exit the male's body and enter the female's body where one sperm cell may fertilize an egg cell (the reproductive cell of females). When an egg cell is fertilized by a sperm cell, conception occurs. Conception creates a zygote that travels to the uterus. After it arrives, it is known as an embryo. The embryos may float freely for about 48 hours before implanting. About eight weeks after conception, the embryo has developed to the point that it is referred to as a fetus. The developing group of living cells continues to be a fetus until the female gives birth. Then it is known as an infant. Abortion is the act of purposely putting this process to an end any time after conception and before birth (Dworetzky).

Human Rights. Since humans have deemed themselves worthy of rights, and abortion has to do with preventing human beings from being born for the sake of the rights of other humans, it is easily an issue where two main opposing sides emerge that are generally in favor of the same thing but disagree on what actions should be taken to see that this favored thing is preserved. This is an issue of when human life begins and is deserving of human rights. Also relevant is how conflicting human rights should be weighed against each other.

Extremists. Some people take their protection of human rights to what the majority considers to be extreme. In 1994, Paul Hill killed an abortion doctor and the doctor's bodyguard for the sake of protecting the human rights of the unborn. Many people have killed other people and sacrificed their own lives in the past for rights and freedoms. Is this what is necessary for the abortion issue? That some do consider it necessary certainly shows that people have strong opinions on the issue (Campo-Flores, Rosenberg).

Setting of the Issue

Philosophical Introduction. The issue of abortion is very controversial in the United States, and this is fitting. A country that prides itself in rights and freedoms to the extent that its citizens consider it to be defined by them would, of course, exercise due diligence in making certain that human rights are as fully realized as reasonably possible. Since the two main opposing sides on the abortion issue may be traced to a general desire to preserve human rights, this issue is part of what the United States stands for.

Chipping Away at Roe. On March 17, 2003, Newsweek reported that abortion foes were poised to pass a ban on partial-birth abortion. The aides of Rep. Charles Canady of Florida conferred with Douglas Johnson, the legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, back in 1995 to find a descriptive term for the procedure. They rejected "partial-delivery abortion" and "brain-suction abortion," finally settling with the now common term "partial-birth abortion." The bill to ban partial-birth abortion was introduced and passed by Congress twice, only to be vetoed by President Clinton. President Bush is considered more likely to sign this bill into law. NARAL (National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League) Pro-Choice America president Kate Michelman worries that this bill is part of an attempt to ban abortion one procedure at a time (Rosenberg).

Texas Abortion Law Under Fire. Texas has passed a law that requires all doctors in the state to warn women that abortion may lead to breast cancer. The law also compels women to go through a 24-hour "reflection" period. During this time, doctors will be required to show women pictures of fetuses, tell them about adoption procedures, and warn them about the possibility of breast cancer. However, it does not seem to be a certainty that abortion is linked to breast cancer. Some cancer organizations deny any link between abortion and breast cancer. Twenty-eight other states have enacted similar laws based, but only two others require the breast cancer warning. NARAL Pro-Choice America describes these laws as other attempts to whittle away a woman's right to choose (Campbell).

Roe. Norma McCorvey is the real name of Roe. In 1969, at the age of 22, she was an unmarried, pregnant, homeless drug addict living on a park bench in Texas. She had already given birth to two children and had given them up for adoption. She tried to get an abortion but found the clinic, masqueraded as a dentist's office, closed. She went to an adoption lawyer, but was introduced to a young feminist lawyer named Sarah Weddington instead. Weddington had been forced to go to Mexico for her own abortion. Over pizza and beer, McCorvey agreed to make herself the plaintiff in a case against the state of Texas. She was never invited to the court during her case (Overington).

Roe v. Roe. In 1995, Norma McCorvey changed her mind about abortion. She quit working at abortion clinics and established her own anti-abortion group, Roe No More. During the week of June 21, 2003, McCorvey asked her attorney to lodge a motion to have the decision in Roe v. Wade overturned. Usually the loser of a court battle is the one who wants a case reheard, but McCorvey's lawyer says that she is entitled to have the case reheard even though "she" won. The problem that reporter Caroline Overington sees is that Roe v. Wade was not about Norma McCorvey. It was a class action on behalf of all women to which McCorvey simply provided a name for the paperwork (Ibid).

Historical Perspective

Earliest Laws. The earliest laws that provided punishment for killing fetuses seemed to have been made in the interest of the fathers and not the fetuses themselves. The Code of Hammurabi, which was thought to have been written in the Eighteenth Century B.C.E., required that silver be paid to the father of a pregnant woman who was caused to miscarry by another person (Platt). A Middle Assyrian law that was in force around five centuries after Hammurabi's code provides the most striking example of a law protecting fetuses in the interest of the father. It punished a woman who purposely caused herself to miscarry with impalement and no burial, but fathers had the right to practice infanticide on their unwanted offspring (Lerner; Reiman).

Ancient Greeks. Plato is reported to have recommended aborting the offspring of undesirable unions in his Republic (Reiman). However, this was said in the context of writing about a perfectly just state, and the terminating of the offspring of undesirable unions does not seem to be limited to before birth in this case. It sounds much more like Plato is suggesting that since justice would be best served when the "best" people mate with each other that when unauthorized mating occurs, the resulting offspring should not be allowed to live, regardless of when the unauthorized offspring is discovered (Plato). Aristotle considered abortion a proper means of limiting family size as he considered a fetus to have a soul only when it begins movement (Aristotle). From this time period, there is also the Hippocratic Oath that states, "I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give a woman a remedy to produce abortion." Hippocrates actually was reported to have beliefs similar to Aristotle about when fetuses became animated. It is thought that perhaps the Pythagoreans, a group in ancient Greece against all abortions, were responsible for the addition of the statement against abortion to the Hippocratic Oath (Reiman).

Quickening. The Stoics held that birth was when a fetus became a human being, and early Christians were opposed to abortion at any point, but the majority view continued to be that it was only wrong to abort a fetus that had begun movement. It was this first movement that was described as the fetus's quickening and indicated its possession of a soul. This view was prevalent from Aristotle's time until at least the Seventeenth Century. Saint Augustine and Thomas Aquinas also held this view (Reiman).

Medical Advances. As medical knowledge about reproduction and embryology increased, fetal growth appeared more and more a continuous matter, with no significant breaks between conception and birth. The Roman Catholic Church began to insist that abortion was gravely wrong at any point after conception. In 1869, Pope Pius IX removed the distinction between quickened and unquickened fetuses from canon law (Ibid).

The United States of America. The laws against abortion in the 19th Century United States were similar to that of medieval Europe, being mainly concerned with quickening. Many products and procedures that would cause abortion were available, but these products and procedures were not specifically indicated to be for the purpose of abortion. Products carried warnings that they would cause miscarriage, and procedures were recommended for removing blockages of menstrual flow (Ibid).

American Medical Association. In 1847, a number of physicians formed the American Medical Association (AMA). This association's aim was to professionalize and control medical practice in the United States. Horatio Robinson joined the AMA, and in 1857 he urged his fellow physicians to take a stand against abortion in the United States. The AMA accepted this viewpoint in 1859 and sought to outlaw abortions from then on. The AMA was rather successful, and much legislation was passed prohibiting abortions at the state level. From the late Nineteenth Century until the late 1960s, doctors made the assessment of how the fetus's right to life weighed against the woman's right to life (Ibid).

Liberalization. Public health contributed to the modification of the execution of abortion laws. The visible problem for low-income pregnant women led many doctors to interpret existing exceptions to the anti-abortion laws liberally. With a general feeling in the population that women should have the same rights as men, the opinion grew that the decision to have an abortion should be a private one. As a result, some states slowly began to allow abortions on demand in the first twenty-four weeks of pregnancy (Ibid).

Roe v. Wade. Three years after Norma McCorvey was introduced to Sarah Weddington, Roe v. Wade finally made abortion legal in the United States. Justice Harry A. Blackmun declared in his writing for Roe v. Wade that the right to privacy in either the Fourteenth Amendment or the Ninth Amendment is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. Jeffrey Reiman, a Professor of Philosophy at American University in Washington, D.C., defends Roe v. Wade by saying that he sees it as right that the woman's right to control her pregnancy be protected since it is not controversial, and when life begins is controversial (Ibid).

Viewpoints

Owning One's Womb. Some philosophers have argued that a woman has not the right to abort a fetus, but rather to expel it from her body as a property owner may evict an intruder. Judith Jarvis Thomson, a professor of philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, asks the reader to imagine waking up and finding he or herself attached to a violinist who needs the use of his or her kidneys. In this imaginary scenario, the director of the hospital says he is terribly sorry that the society of music lovers did this, and that he wouldn't have let it happen if he had known, but since the violinist is already attached and to detach him would be to kill him, no one could do that until he has spent nine months recovering. Her point is that the right to life is a negative right, indicating a right to not be killed, but not a right to allow one person invasive use of another person's body to live unless it is okay with that person whose body the one person needs (Thomson).

Extension of Owning One's Womb. This view encompasses a woman's right to control her body because it is the woman's right to control her body that would allow her to expel the fetus or disconnect the violinist. It also encompasses the viability argument. By indicating a right to not be killed, Thomson implies that the person attached to the violinist would not have a right to kill him if he survived after being detached from him or her, and the mother would not have a right to kill a fetus that survived after being removed from her body (Reiman).

Human From Conception. This view holds that all that is needed to establish a fetus's right to life from conception on is to show that it is a human being from then on. Oxford professor of law and legal philosophy John Finnis provided this statement during a talk delivered to the American Political Science Association panel in Washington D.C. on August 30, 1997, "Every human being is entitled to an equal right to life; unborn children, even in the first three months of their life, are human beings; therefore unborn children are entitled to the protection of the law against being deliberately killed even in the first three months of their life (Finnis; Reiman)." Princeton political theorist Robert George agrees with this statement; "At no point in embryogenesis does the distinct organism that came into being when it was conceived undergo substantial change or a change of natures. It is human and will remain human (George)."

Potentiality. This view holds that what is valuable in the zygote is that it is a potential person. The fetus is a potential person, a potential bearer of moral rights. Because of this, Burleigh T. Wilkins, a professor of philosophy at the University of California, holds that the fetus has a right to life (Wilkins).

Sentience. This view holds that abortion is not permissible after the fetus is capable of experiencing pain or pleasure. This occurs in the human fetus sometime after the third month of pregnancy. However, it is not really a settled issue when sentience occurs. Some scientists maintain that it is impossible before the beginning of the seventh month of pregnancy (Morowitz; Trefil).

Author's Viewpoint

Thesis. My viewpoint is that abortion is almost always wrong. The exception to this would be when the expected odds of the most people living are better if the abortion is performed. Also, I hold that this nearly complete avoidance of abortion is not an unreasonable expectation for us to have for ourselves. This leaves me with two main questions to answer. I must explain why the life of a human zygote, embryo, or fetus can compete with the life of an adult human being, and I must explain how we are capable of granting these human rights to human zygotes, embryos, and fetuses.

Explanation Plan. I will begin my explanation by discussing the similarities and differences between murder and infanticide. I will continue by discussing responsibilities related to pregnancy and the raising of children. I will explain my exception to a rather strict anti-abortion policy and why I believe it is the only exception we can justify. Finally, I will discuss what actions can be taken to comply with the strict anti-abortion policy that I will have described, which I think is helpful in convincing those who object to abortion restrictions on grounds of impracticality.

Abortion

Murder. When an adult human being kills an innocent adult human being, we call it murder. Murder is illegal in most societies. The United States is no exception. Why do we hold that murder is wrong? According to Jeffrey Reiman, this is because we respect the property in human beings of being aware of, and caring about, their lives (Reiman). However, the penalty for murder does not seem to differ if the victim is a child or infant. Also, it does not seem to differ if the victim is sleeping or comatose. Since infants, sleeping people, and comatose people have no awareness of or care about their lives, one may assert that it is permissible to kill them when they are innocent.

Infanticide. Jeffrey Reiman wants to save the infants. He really does. However, he insists on doing this without saving fetuses as well. He says that this is fitting because a love for fetuses is not a spontaneous emotion like a love for infants. He also says that it is good not to treat babies as trial babies since it could affect their psychomoral development negatively, preventing them from becoming beings who are aware of and care about their lives (joining the moral community) or at least becoming happy and productive beings who are aware of and care about their lives (Ibid).

Objection #1 to Jeffrey Reiman's Avoidance of Infanticide. The citing of a spontaneous emotion sounds kind of flaky (Byrne). Perhaps Reiman realized this and that is why he went on to say the spontaneous emotion to love infants was good. A spontaneous emotion may have worth in that it accomplishes some purpose. This supposed spontaneous emotion to love infants does tend to keep the earth populated. Surely if no one ever loved an infant, there would be no people today. However, if a spontaneous emotion is recognized, and the purpose it serves is decided to be a purpose that should be served, the emotion is no longer important. The purpose can be served in any way possible. So long as we are devoted to keeping the earth populated with human beings, there is no reason to always avoid infanticide for this purpose.

Objection #2 to Jeffrey Reiman's Avoidance of Infanticide. Granted that babies will be permitted to grow up, it is only logical that we do nothing to negatively affect their psychomoral development. However, this does not really give any convincing reasons for us to actually permit them to grow up if we don't want them. Simplified, I read the reason like this, "If we let the babies we do not want to grow up to do so, they would be negatively affected by the way we treated them." This points to the fact that we are responsible for helping infants join the moral community, but makes what I see as an unjustifiable assumption that this help is in some way significantly different from the help provided to zygotes, embryos, and fetuses in reaching the moral community.

Why Mom? The difference that may be cited between the help provided to fetuses and infants may well be that the help for the fetus must come from the mother of the fetus, in which the fetus currently resides (Callahan). The reason that it is fair to single her out with this duty is that she could have avoided the pregnancy if she had really wanted to (Forsythe). Consider the fact that once she delivers a baby she is not bound to take care of it. She may put the baby up for adoption. However, if we cannot bind the mother to take care of the person that exists partially because of her (Schweinsberg), how can we say anyone else has an obligation to take care of it? Surely someone will take care of it, but why should he or she have to? If people want children, they have their own. The taking in of the unwanted infant creates a state of mediocre acceptability for the people who take it in. They judge their inconvenience better than the death of the infant, but not as good as if someone else had not put them in the position to make the decision they did not want to have to make.

Why Not Dad? The father could have prevented the pregnancy too. He should have to take as much responsibility as mom. He doesn't have a place to put a fetus though. There is a natural imbalance in responsibility here. In the past, mothers have been compensated with child support payments when an imbalance in responsibility for the care of children occurs after birth. Assuming consensual sexual relations, it would seem fair for her to impose upon him some penalty payable to her that is determined to compensate her for half of the inconvenience of pregnancy. Assuming the couple had a relationship and this incident did not result in the ending of their relationship, this need not be a public matter. Then, perhaps in the case of adoption, both parents should similarly compensate those who take care of the unwanted child!

Rape. There is no doubt in anyone's mind that a rapist is an atrocious sort of person. Assuming the rapist is a male, he forcefully has sexual relations with a female. He has done wrong. She is victimized. No one doubts that. But what if the rape has caused the female victim to become pregnant? What can we do here? Do we permit an abortion? I do not think we can justify one. The person growing inside of her is not the rapist but a new individual (Grigg). Though she is not at fault for her being raped, she failed to take a possible precaution to avoid pregnancy that would have included avoiding pregnancy by rape (Schweinsberg). Her fault is microscopic compared to his, but we cannot get carried away. Unless we are willing to accept a new moral standard permitting infanticide, we cannot justify an abortion. The most we can do is minimize her inconvenience. Seeing as how the rapist is at greater fault, it seems we would be justified in seizing from him all that we can to compensate his victim and take care of the child he helped to create.

Pregnancies that Threaten the Lives of Mothers. This is where I can finally see a logical justification of an abortion. Here we have a pregnant mother and a fetus. The fetus is likely to die in any event. The mother will die if she tries to give birth but will live if she has an abortion. Here we measure life against life. We are now comparing apples to apples. Some may claim these fetuses are oranges though, so let us explore that.

Potentiality. Jeffrey Reiman attacks the potentiality argument by asking us to imagine that at the moment of fertilization of a female human's ovum, there is a mutation with the effect that the resulting zygote has the genetic instructions for producing all the parts of a human being minus only whatever was necessary to hold the parts together against the force of gravity. This, he says, would lead us to no longer say it was a potential person, and he points out the statistics stating that only 32.4% of zygotes make it to birth when left alone by human beings (Reiman). However, we could craft this mutation so that an infant is completely formed and born before it somehow dies without any intention on the part of human beings. It does not follow that we would see this as a sign that we are right in killing an infant that does not have this mutation, even if this happened 67.6% of the time. The idea that zygotes are potential persons comes from the idea that conception is the only way to make more human beings.

The Future-Like-Ours Argument. Don Marquis, a member of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Kansas, came up with the Future-Like-Ours argument to oppose abortion. It is an argument similar to the potentiality argument in that it holds that since a future like ours is what is potentially in store for a fetus, it is wrong to abort a fetus. Marquis addresses the objection that his argument entails the claim that using contraception is as immoral as killing an adult human, since ova and sperm, like adults, have valuable futures, and contraception deprives them of these futures. He says this does not follow because in that case the ovum and sperm before participating in fertilization are distinctly separate, which prevents them from being identified with a single future. Since identifying either one of them with this future would be arbitrary, he says that it follows that neither ovum nor sperm can be identified with the future person (Marquis).

The Future-Like-Ours Argument and Twinning. H. Scott Brill, a member of the Department of Philosophy at Frostburg State University, says that this explanation binds Marquis to the opposite claim. Marquis claimed that two things before coming together could not be associated with the single future they will represent once they do come together. H. Skott Brill says that if Marquis accepts that he must also accept that one thing that becomes two things cannot be associated with a future like ours before it becomes two things that have a future like ours. The example given is when a zygote produces twins (Brill).

Objection to Brill's Twinning Scenario. While a zygote that goes on to produce one human being and a zygote that goes on to produce two twin human beings are different, I do not see how this is relevant to our decision of whether the zygote merits protection. Once a zygote is produced, it can go on to make one infant or two, and we do not know which it will do until it does, but if we did, it does not change the fact that the zygote is of a nature that it makes people with futures like ours. Brill holds that since an ovum and sperm that make a zygote cannot be associated with each other, twins that were produced from a zygote cannot be associated with that zygote (Ibid). The problem with this reasoning is that the second occurrence is one we know afterward. The twins did, in fact, come from the single zygote. However, the ovum and sperm are associated with each other only after they together make a zygote.

Necessary Evils. Let us assume that we are satisfied with the evidence that zygotes should be given the same consideration as infants. If that is agreed to, we can easily say that abortion is "evil," but what about the possibility of "necessary evils?" Could abortion be one of those? According to polls cited by Clarke D. Forsythe, the president of Americans United for Life in Chicago, 60% of Americans consider abortion to be a "necessary evil." He concludes that this separation between morality and legality is built on the belief by these Americans that the only options available are either legal abortions or unsafe illegal abortions (Forsythe).

Handling the Logical Truths of Abortion. While some have thought abortion is wrong enough to be illegal all along, if evidence is convincing for this view, society will feel compelled to do things it did not feel compelled to do before. When this was only a personal feeling, one needed only to avoid becoming pregnant or impregnating when a child was not desired. Then, if somehow against our every attempt, a pregnancy occurred, we could depart from our principles and obtain an abortion. However, if the evidence is compelling to society that abortion is something wrong to do, it will not be easy to obtain an abortion. Similarly, if because of our self-interest at some time we were to wish to go against our principle that murder is wrong and proceed to murder someone, we would find ourselves having to answer to society. In realizing this after society has accepted that abortion is something wrong to do, each individual in society, excluding those of a murderous type, will have an interest in making completely sure that he or she is not responsible for an unplanned pregnancy.

Avoiding Pregnancy. As a business major in college, I have been informed again and again about the importance of being proactive when attempting to succeed (Gilliand). In attempting to avoid abortion, we have a goal that we hope to succeed in reaching. That goal can be reached by avoiding unplanned pregnancy. When considering ways to avoid pregnancy, there are many options. We could try condoms, birth control pills (that prevent fertilization), shots, and of course, abstinence. The first three would be considered less extreme than abstinence, and have varying degrees of potentially failing. Abstinence should be 100% effective in avoiding pregnancy, but many think that would be harsh. Besides, the possibility of rape really puts us in a position that we cannot be totally in control of whether we aid in the causing of an unwanted pregnancy so long as we are capable of reproducing (Grigg).

The Car Analogy. I think the use of an analogy would be very illustrative here. Let us assume that I will become pregnant if I get into an automobile accident. If I want to avoid pregnancy, all I must do is avoid getting into an automobile accident. This puts me in control of my life, right? Well, this helps me be in control of my life, but there is the possibility that even with all my attempts to avoid an automobile accident, I may someday be in one. Then I will be forced to be pregnant against my will and will have lost control of what I consider to be an important aspect of my life. However, let us begin the scenario again. Only this time, let us say I become pregnant only if I get into an automobile accident without having automobile insurance. I will still try my best to avoid an automobile accident. The accident itself is something I do not wish to experience, but since I acquired the insurance, if even with my best efforts, I can not handle the demands of driving and get into an automobile accident, I will suffer through that incident, but I will not have to suffer through an unwanted pregnancy or get an abortion (Walker).

Explanation of Analogy. I compare the original scenario without the insurance to the attempts to avoid pregnancy that have already been mentioned. Even with our best efforts, a pregnancy can still occur because of contraceptive failure or rape. The insurance, mentioned in the second version of the analogy, is comparable to more proactive measures that could be taken to avoid a pregnancy, even in the case that best efforts at the times shortly before and during intercourse fail to prevent pregnancy (Ibid).

Proactive Measures. These proactive measures that are useful for preventing pregnancy include tubal ligations¹, vasectomies², and the use of Norplant progestin rods³ (Schweinsberg; FDA). Also possible would be removal of organs that produce egg and sperm cells. The method chosen should reflect the risk of becoming pregnant or impregnating that the individual wishes to accept. The taking of these more proactive measures would be much more helpful than other methods in preventing unwanted pregnancy.

Conclusion

Important Findings

Weak Distinctions Between Abortion and Infanticide. Jeffrey Reiman expects us to rely on a flaky spontaneous emotion to distinguish abortion from infanticide (Reiman). H. Skott Brill interprets the uncertainty of a future event as reason to deny a past event, and he expects us to use this as reason to object to the protection of zygotes because his unjustified interpretation would cause protection of zygotes to require protection of all sperm and egg cells (Brill). Finding these weak distinctions tends to lead to the conclusion that abortion is immoral so long as infanticide is immoral.

Being Proactive. People need not be put into a position where they must choose between unwanted childbirth and abortion. I think this gets way too much time in abortion debates and hope that it will lose importance in abortion debates for people who have read this essay. I think this finding tends to lead to the conclusion that a society deeming abortion immoral is not unreasonable.

Limitations and Implications

Limitation. I have not attempted in my research or writing to find or construct an answer for cases of unwanted pregnancies that have already occurred. I have found and given only reasons that abortions should not be done, and I have attempted to show how this can be practically carried out. The raped and pregnant 14-year-old daughter who will come to serious harm by giving birth will have to look to another essay for an answer she wants to hear.

Implication. I think this essay implies a need to take on a greater responsibility for our own bodies. This responsibility would be one based on knowledge of how we are capable of making more human beings without our explicit intention. These are big responsibilities, but anyone who is convinced and consistent will consider these responsibilities necessary.