Discussing Abortion Without Reference to Religion

[Taure]

Well, look at that, another abortion thread.

This one is different though!

I thought it would be good to have a neutral debate about abortion in purely non-religious terms. That doesn't mean you have to be an atheist to post, but I think it's rather obvious that quoting large chunks of biblical text about the sanctity of life at atheists isn't going to be a very productive discussion.

So, Christians (I'm actually making a rather false generalisation that Christians will be "pro-life" here), see this as a chance to try to have a rational debate with atheists on a level that you can both relate to. Non-Christians, see this as a way to think about abortion without the many dogmas and labels that yes, even non-religious people have become used to when discussing this topic.

I think it's a great pity that the debate about abortion has become so wrapped up in religious prejudices. "Pro-choice" people see "pro-life" as a religious position, and vice versa, and I think this is a mistake. I think there are perfectly rational ways that an atheist can consider abortion wrong, and similarly there are plenty of convincing arguments that can make a Christian believe it to be allowed (I don't think many people go so far to say that abortion is actually desirable, only that it is not undesirable).

Anyway, enough introduction. Let's get to the matter at hand.

The debate around abortion seems to me to be very simple.

I am going to make the assumption that we all agree that murder is wrong.

Murder I shall define as the ending of the life of another person.

So, the question is this: is abortion murder? If it is, then it is wrong, if it isn't, then it is not.

That question boils down to this: is a foetus a person? If a foetus is a person then terminating it is murder. If a foetus is not a person that terminating it is not.

So all questions around abortion come to this. What is a person? By what characteristics do we demarcate personhood? The question of whether a foetus is a person cannot be answered until we know what a person is, and thus the question of the morality of abortion is in the same position.

There are a number of obvious answers that come to mind but they all seem problematic. Let's go through a few of them.

Consciousness (by which I mean being self aware).
I think we can rather easily say that consciousness is not what makes a person, otherwise we would consider it okay to kill sleeping people or those in comas.

Intelligence.
Again, this is problematic, and linked with consciousness. A sleeping person displays no intelligence. Moreover, if intelligence became the factor that makes a person a person, then what is the status of mentally disabled people? Are they suddenly not people any more?

You could say that it is not intelligence/consciousness but potential or future intelligence/consciousness, which would get around the sleeping person and coma objections.

Given that a foetus will also possess potential/future consciousness, deciding this as your defining characteristic of personhood means that a foetus would count as a person.

Some of you may think that potential/future consciousness is the answer, but I suspect that many of you will find it an unsatisfying one, like myself, so lets keep looking.

Biological configuration.
This seems unlikely, as we still consider those with disfigurations people.

Genetic material.
A single skin cell has human genetic material yet is not a person. Further, if we allow ourselves a thought experiment, we can say that we might consider an alien a person, yet they would have different genetic material.

Human interaction
We could say that people are those who take part in human social activity and interaction. But what about a hermit? What about people who are disabled such that they can't socially interact? What about coma patients? We still consider these people.

Again you could bring in the idea of potential and say that it's potential human interaction, but the moment you have the word potential in there you make the debate moot as you've included foetuses in your definition.

Those are most of the obvious possible defining characteristics I can think of, and as you can see none of them are really satisfactory. We could say that it is not any one characteristic that makes us people, but rather a combination of them, but this makes the problem worse, not better, as if you start having multiple requirements for personhood then the concept becomes even more exclusive and suddenly we have all these things we consider people that don't fit the definition.

So how are we to define personhood? It seems like a problem indeed. If you have any ideas you are welcome - indeed encouraged - to put them forward. That is the central question of this discussion.

However, I will now move on to suggest one possible answer.

The clue to this is actually in the argument above. With each characteristic I proposed there would be a problem roughly in the form "yet X doesn't possess characteristic Y and we consider them a person, so Y is not the characteristic that defines personhood".

This type of objection clearly shows that we think we already possess some kind of correct intuition about what is a person and what is not. When we are looking to define personhood we are not just looking for something to tell us what a person is or isn't, but also something that defines what we already feel we know about personhood. The ultimate authority in these matters seems to be this intuition. It is not the case that we say "intelligence is the requirement of personhood; screw all the stupid people!". Rather the fact that we consider stupid people as people is seen as evidence that intelligence is not the requirement of personhood.

From this we can form some sort of quasi-defintion about personhood. I say "quasi-" because it is an entirely unsatisfactory one which does not solve the debate at all, but instead leaves it wide open and apparently with no solution.

A thing is a person if we as a society collectively believe it to be so.

The controvosy and endless nature of the abortion debate is rather neatly explained by this, because foetuses are clearly a case of where society is split. This split seems to me, from the above ramblings, to be really based on mostly unjustified opinion. Both sides are guilty of deciding that a foetus is/is not a person without any real justification.

There are three ways that we could go from here.

Firstly, we could continue the endless arguments and hope that one day a concensus is reached.

Secondly we could decide to "play it safe" and say abortion is wrong (or, if you want a weaker statement, should be discouraged), as we don't know if foetuses are people or not, and thus, just in case they are, we shouldn't abort them.

Conversely we could adopt the scientific position of doubt (think of Bertrand Russell's intergalatic teapot) and say that foetuses aren't people until it is shown that they are. Of course it seems to me that we could equally say that foetuses are people until it is shown that they aren't.

Somehow I get the feeling we're going to be doing the first.

 

[Deba]

Just going with the thread title, I'd like to share my recent experience with abortion.

As you can see in the corner, I live in Laos. Birth control is pitiful, basically only condoms are available.

Due to economics and cultural traditions, women and men mostly live together before the wedding. But a woman having a baby before the wedding causes a family to loose face, so families and boyfiriends are very pro-abortion.

I opened my house as a daycare and hired some workers to help my married employees better care for their babies. A year later, to my great surprise, I had FOUR babies of single mothers. They chose to keep their baby, despite all the pressure otherwise, simply because there was someone there to help them.

So it seems to me there are some other elements that color abortion morality, like the morality of sitting in judgment instead of offering a helping hand?

 

[TeddyKGB]

A fetus has measurable brain activity at 12 weeks; that threshold seems to make sense as an indicator of personhood for many otherwise pro-choice people.

The more difficult question is: Other than the potentiality argument, what could possibly argue in favor of personhood for undifferentiated dozen- and hundred-celled blastulae and morulae?

 

[jayem]

For practical purposes, the philosophical question isn't important. It's only the legal definition that matters. Just like the question of what is adulthood. Philosophically, we know there is more than just age. There is the ability to understand and be held accountable for one's actions. But since there's no way to reliably determine who has these qualities with scientific accuracy, we simply pick 21 years and define an adult as someone of this age. It's an objective, but arbitrary distinction that is a matter of legal necessity. We have to do the same with personhood. The defining criterion(a) must be objective, but will be ultimately be arbitary.

I think as far fetal personhood goes, using its physical relationship to the mother is a useful characteristic. A fetus makes a direct physiologic demand on it's mother's body. It lives in her uterus and uses her heart, lungs, kidneys, etc. After delivery, a baby really makes no obligatory demand on it's mother at all. It can thrive perfectly well under the care of any motivated person. But there is a point in gestation when it's viable, and can reasonably be expected to survive on it's own if it were born. So I'd say a fetus should be considered as a separate person when it no needs it's mother's body in a physiologic manner. And that happens at 2 times: 1) When it's born--whenever that occurs. And 2), when it's natually viable. Meaning it could survive without high-tech life support if it were born. That's at 24 weeks gestation. A person is thus defined as any human being who's been born. Or, if still in utero, has reached 24 weeks. (And personhood applies to anyone who's been born, no matter how premature. So a preemie at any age--no matter how much life support is required--is a person.) This is simple and objective and doesn't involve nebulous criteria like consciousness, or cognitive capacity, or ability to interact with others. Sure, it's arbitrary, but it's reasonable and workable. And no more arbitrary than claiming a zygote--one single cell--is a person.

 

[Taure]

Hmm... the idea of personhood is an interesting one. It's definitely different from "life" and "human".

I'd say that "life" and "human" are technical biological classifications, whereas "person" is a value judgement. Calling someone a person is a judgement that the thing has value, it's an assignment of rights and an acknowledgement of worth. I also don't think it has much in common with the idea of "human". Something can be non-human and be a person (think back to the idea of an alien we'd call a person).

So as for how we could call a foetus a person, this is saying that we see it as having a certain worth, a certain value. And I think at some level we all think this: most of us would see a zygote as having a different value to a lump of skin cells.

Edit in response to the above:

I was expecting that idea and was going to write something addressing it in my original post but forgot. Anyway, independence is not really a good factor of personhood at all. Once again there are many things we consider people that are not independent. A newly born isn't independent in any way. An even more extreme case would be an example from my life: my girlfriend's prematurely born sister currently relies on various pieces of medical equipment to survive. Or another example: a coma patient who relies on life support or some other kind of intervention.

So yeah, lots of dependent things (both physiologically and otherwise) that we call people. The only difference with a foetus is that nature provides a provider for its needs, whereas a coma patient needs human intervention.

As for practical purposes... I'm not sure how much relevance the law has for problems of morality.

 

[Chesterton]

For practical purposes, the philosophical question isn't important. It's only the legal definition that matters.

What? Please... The legal definition should be derived from the philosophical definition, as with all legal definitions.

 

[TeddyKGB]

What? Please... The legal definition should be derived from the philosophical definition, as with all legal definitions.

Should be or are? After all, atheism is classified as a religion for purposes of constitutional protection.

 

[Criada]

My 'gut reaction' is that a fertilised ovum can develop into a human, and is therefore, to all intents and purposes, human life. This is not a purely Christian viewpoint, since I have been pro-life for longer than I have been a Christian... indeed, ever since I heard that such a thing as abortion existed,. I have felt it to be morally wrong.
If something, with no medical intervention has the potential to grow into a person, I can't see how an arbitrary age can be assigned to that personhood. Thus a zygote is a human, albeit an undeveloped one.

However, as a person, the unborn has equal rights, not greater rights. Thus if it's survival is a threat to the life of it's mother, I think abortion is at least something to be seriously considered. I am speaking of ectopic pregnancies and child rape victims who are not developed enough to carry a baby, not of minor risks.

 

[Chesterton]

Should be or are?

Both.

 

[yasic]

I personally find person-hood to be a trait of self-aware logical consciousness. If a creature (not necessarily human or even biological) displays this trait or can be shown to have the capability to display this trait given a curable injury it currently has is removed, then I would give it the title of a person and full person rights.

So in other words, if a man is in a coma, and it is possible for him to recover from this coma and retain his person hood traits, he deserves full protection under the law. If, however, this man has no realistic chance of recovery, even if he is capable of living with nothing other than a feeding tube, I would not consider him a person but a 'thing' and property of his family.

By this system of mine, a fetus is not a person and I have no objection with the termination given the mothers consent. I would furthermore not consider killing a pregnant woman to be a double homicide but a single.

There are several exceptions, (with logical cause) I have in my system, namely for the mentally handicapped, however it would take a very long post to explain them all.

In short, I actually do have a very explicit system I use myself for finding what is moral or immoral in situations like this.

 

[MaxP]

I personally find person-hood to be a trait of self-aware logical consciousness. If a creature (not necessarily human or even biological) displays this trait or can be shown to have the capability to display this trait given a curable injury it currently has is removed, then I would give it the title of a person and full person rights.

So in other words, if a man is in a coma, and it is possible for him to recover from this coma and retain his person hood traits, he deserves full protection under the law. If, however, this man has no realistic chance of recovery, even if he is capable of living with nothing other than a feeding tube, I would not consider him a person but a 'thing' and property of his family.

But you seem to have a flaw. Is it mental capacity or physical ability to recover that is your criteria?
Maybe the man in that coma wants to wake up, and is aware, but has no physical ability to do so. Is he property?

 

[TeddyKGB]

Both.

Except legal definitions are not always properly philosophical, as the example you omitted demonstrates.

 

[Thomas The Atheist]

in my opinion, abortion should be legal and accepted.

I dont think this should be seen as any form of murder.
we're already "over-populating" so some birth control shouldnt be bad...

if this wont happen, then I do certainly say it shoud be legal under certain conditions...

 

[karisma]

Whether or not a fetus is a person with rights or not is irrelevent. Even if we assume that it is a full person with full rights, all people have the right to bodily integrity. No born person has the right to another's blood or organs as it violates their right to bodily integrity. This applies even if it means saving that person's life.

Hypothetical scenario 1: a hemophiliac infant with a rare blood type is born and needs an emergency blood transfusion to survive. Neither parent is required by law to donate blood to save the infant. That baby can bleed to death right in front of the parents and it's perfectly legal, as forcing people to give blood or organs is considered a violation of the right to bodily integrity. No born child has any right to a parent's blood or organs, and in the interest of equal rights, neither can a fetus.

Hypothetical scenario two: an otherwise healthy 18 year old is killed in a tragic accident. This person is not an organ donor. Even though this person's perfectly healthy kidneys, heart, and other organs could be used to save many other lives, it is against the law to take that person's organs, as it would violate their right to bodily integrity. A needy person can lie dying in a hospital bed while those organs get buried with the person.

As you can see, one individual's right to bodily integrity supercedes another's right to life, even when that violation will save another's life. This right to bodily integrity even applies to the deceased. A person (or the unborn) may have a right to life, but they do not have the right to violate another's right to bodily integrity.

 

[keith99]

There is an example often used. You go to sleep one night and wake up the next morning attached to someone through tubs in each others arms. You are told if the tube is disconnected the other person will die.

Is it murder if you disconnect the tube?

The usual answer is no. Now here is the followup. If instead you cut the other person into quarters is it murder?

Anyone see the tie to abortion? Might it be that the method does in fact make a difference?

Going back to the personhood idea. Might it not be that personhood in fact develops over time and that a mere fertilized egg is not a person, but a feotus just before birth is. And the one thing no one wants to deal with is that there is no nice clear line as to when it really is a person? To me the sad part of that is it means the field is left to extreemists on either end of the question.

 

[yasic]

But you seem to have a flaw. Is it mental capacity or physical ability to recover that is your criteria?
Maybe the man in that coma wants to wake up, and is aware, but has no physical ability to do so. Is he property?

It is the mental capacity, not physical ability. If a person can function fully mentally but is permanently immobilized, he would be a person. If a person can function physically fully but is brain dead (aka the part of the brain regulating self reflection was harmed while the lower parts were not) then he is property.

When I said a person can recover, I meant that he can kick-start his brain again for consciousness.

 

[Chazemataz]

I think that abortion as an option should always be open. However, many women get abortions more often than they should, with that number steadily rising. While I hesitate to tell a woman what to do with her body (and even moreso to identify in any way with a religious right movement), I hold the belief that we simply do not know what happens after we die, and therefore abortion is a last ditch effort to be used only when the woman's life is threatened. Sometimes, too, when the baby would be born with serious abnormalities, and I've even heard stories of where what was thought to be things like malignant tumors there wasn't really anything there. What if that unborn child was well aware of what was happening to it, what if it could feel pain? Where would it go after its short, pain-filled life?

In essence, we cannot answer the question because science has not yet found a definite answer as to when life-awarness, consciousness- truly begins.

With things like condoms, the pill, and other forms of birth control, there is really no excuse, and even then I'd suggest just having the baby and giving it up for adoption. There are many people that would love to have a child but cannot physically give birth.

 

[Taure]

@ Karisma's post.

That seems to be a rather obtuse position, given that the foetus is not a random thing that has come along to steal the mother's blood etc. (technically the mother and the foetus' blood do not mix, but rather the placenta acts as an intermediary between the two).

The foetus is there because the mother (by having sex voluntarily - excluding rape here) put it there.

The foetuses' need for the mother was created by the mother (and the father). In this case I'd say that since it's her fault she bears the responsibility for it. She gave up her right to refuse her body when she created something that depends on it.

In the same way that a born child is legally entitled to financial support from its creators.

It's the same principle: it is considered that if you create a person then you're obligated to provide for it.

Once the child is born this is material provision.

But if we consider a foetus a person then it is biological provision.

Really, your argument is just another formulation of "the mother has the right to abort because the foetus is dependent on her". I think its clear enough that dependence is not a good enough justification to allow abortion if we consider a foetus a person.

I'd also argue that a person doesn't have the right to bodily integrity. Rather, they have freedom of will. If a person says "I don't want to give my organs away when I die" it's not the right to bodily integrity that is upheld, it's the right to self-determination.

A pregnant woman (unless raped or contraception has failed) has self-determinedly landed herself in that position.

an otherwise healthy 18 year old is killed in a tragic accident. This person is not an organ donor. Even though this person's perfectly healthy kidneys, heart, and other organs could be used to save many other lives, it is against the law to take that person's organs, as it would violate their right to bodily integrity. A needy person can lie dying in a hospital bed while those organs get buried with the person.

Interestingly, not for long. Opt-out laws are on their way in.

A feel this post was rather rambling, but oh well.

 

[yasic]

@ Karisma's post.

That seems to be a rather obtuse position, given that the foetus is not a random thing that has come along to steal the mother's blood etc. (technically the mother and the foetus' blood do not mix, but rather the placenta acts as an intermediary between the two).

The foetus is there because the mother (by having sex voluntarily - excluding rape here) put it there.

His example includes not giving blood to a bleeding baby after birth. Once again the child was a product of the parents yet this does not mean that they have to provide their blood to the child.

Furthermore, the parents do not have to take care of, or provide financial support to a child. They may simply tell the hospital that they do not wish to keep the child and they are resolved of all responsibility.

If I remember correctly, this can be done within the first 12 days of birth in my state. Past this moment, it can still be done but requires a TON more paperwork.

 

[Taure]

His example includes not giving blood to a bleeding baby after birth. Once again the child was a product of the parents yet this does not mean that they have to provide their blood to the child.

I would say that, if we take a foetus being a person as a given, then what the child is entitled to doesn't change with birth.

Anyway, we're getting off on a bit of a legal tangent here. It may be the case legally that there are certain laws about withholding of care, but this is a moral discussion.

The question is not that you're allowed to withhold blood from your bleeding baby, which may well be the case (though I would imagine you would end up in court nonetheless). The question is whether it is right to withhold blood from your bleeding baby.

This seems to be obvious, to me. To let your baby bleed to death when you could prevent it is the same as letting it drown when you could remove it from the water. Murder by inaction.