Moral Status of an Unborn Child

[shinbits]

.

You are equating a POTENTIAL human LIFE with a plant or bacteria... a plant will never be ABLE to grow into a being that can experience pleasure and pain, it will never be able to be of any moral value.

Simply because a fetus can not feel, I don't think it should have all of its moral value revoked. As far as I see it, a fetus is just a growing human life. A fetus is unable to have experiences, but still has the capacity to.

Right on.

 

[FSTDT]

Shinbits,

Isn't it morally wrong to rob that fetus, less than 26 weeks old, of the right to live?

See a post from another thread I made on this same topic:

I've seen your argument for moral valuability, and I have to disagree with it. Suffering or not, you rob someone (yes, it is either male or female at conception, as the chromesome is in place) their life.

I don't know what you're disagreeing with. Its pretty clear that being alive is not what matters to people, because taking the lives of plants and bacteria robs them of life just as much as a human fetus, so it cannot be just the protection of life for the sake of life itself. When we talk about protecting life, we really mean other morally valuable characteristics like experiences and wants and desires that necessarily depend on the continued living existence.

If something doesn't have any experiences nor a capacity to suffer nor any other morally relevant characteristics, then we can't say we are protecting anything at all, likewise cannot we say we are robbing the living thing of anything at all.

As far as I'm concerned, saying that we rob the fetus of its life is emotional rhetoric, you need to actually explain what morally relevant capacities or what measures of moral value apply to the fetus to make a case that abortion is wrong. I don't believe you've done this, and I don't believe you've shown anything wrong with my argument that if something lacks all morally relevant capacities then it has no moral value.

Mandevar,

You honestly feel nothing wrong with your belief that a growing fetus has no moral value one second but in another second it does? Simply based on utiltarian measurement?

You seem to think I believe moral value has a relationship with time. I don't think that at all.

Moral value has to do with the particular capacities someone has, and if someone lacks morally relevant capacities, then they lack moral value. The only thing this has to do with "...one second but in another second..." is that there is some point when someone lacks morally relevant capacities, and then immediately after the development of those capacities they have claim to moral value.

You are really starting to scare me.... you speak as if it would be morally acceptable for women to have multiple abortions as a means of birth control if they suffered no health problems... so do you not object to women using abortion as a means of birth control, morally? Because the fetus has no moral value?

You're starting to become emotional.

But, generally, I think a woman having multiple abortions reflects poorly on her character, but I can't see that there is anything overwhelming morally objectionable to it. If abortion is wrong, it has to do with the fact that the fetus is morally valuable (something I do not believe has been shown to be true), not whether it reflects poorly on someones character.

If you can state on what basis the fetus (before 26 weeks) meets any measure of moral value, I'll be in complete agreement with you in condemning non-therapeutic abortion as morally wrong.

So a fetus (before 26 weeks) has how much moral value, to what degree? It appears its none to you if it doesnt even deserve to live.

You've got me all wrong. You think I'm misanthropic, that couldn't be further from the truth.

The fetus has no claim to any moral value if it lacks the capacity to feel pain or have experiences, but this says nothing about whether I think the fetus deserves to live and it certainly does not imply that I think the fetus deserves to die. All I've done is challenge the central claim of the pro-life movement that the fetus is morally valuable. If pro-life cannot coherently defend this claim, then their objection to abortion has no moral basis.

You are equating a POTENTIAL human LIFE with a plant or bacteria... a plant will never be ABLE to grow into a being that can experience pleasure and pain, it will never be able to be of any moral value.

This is the only claim of moral value you've been able to make, but I don't think anyone takes the potential person argument to its logical ends. There is no such moral rule that say "X is a potential Y, therefore X is morally equal to Y". A few simple demonstrations for why that is:

A child is potential adult who can consent to a sexual relationship with another adult, likewise a little girl is a potential child bearer, but hopefully no one seriously believes that fact legitimizes pedophilia.

A child is a potential rational adult who knows what he or she is doing, but hopefully no one believes a child who accidentally burns something down should be charged with arson. Regardless of what their potential capacities are, we forgive the child because he didn't know what he doing at the time.

An baby is a potential rational adult, but we allow them to poo themselves and run around naked and free all the time (any adult who does these things would either be in a "special" home or be jailed). Regardless of their potential rational adulthood, we expect different things from rational adults and babies.​

Instead, the child's moral status is consistent with its actual morally relevant characteristics (or in this case, a lack thereof to consent or to know what it was doing), and its potential characteristics are of no interest to us.

To say that the moral value of the fetus should be valued with its actual characteristics is consistent with the moral reasoning that everyone already uses, and with good reason as demonstrated above.

Simply because a fetus can not feel, I don't think it should have all of its moral value revoked. As far as I see it, a fetus is just a growing human life. A fetus is unable to have experiences, but still has the capacity to.

See the opening post:

And I understand that an unborn fetus is a human life, but I don't believe being a member of human species matters any more than being a member of the cat species or snails species. Species membership is not a moral quality, but rather the experiences of an organism matter morally.

Species membership is inconsequential to a beings moral value, because species membership has no moral component at all. If a life is supposed to be protected, we should look at the particular characteristics it actually has and value its life accordingly.

 

[Mandevar]

Mandevar,

You seem to think I believe moral value has a relationship with time. I don't think that at all.

But I do. I Suppose anyways. I never really thought of that. But I simply feel what is inside a woman will grow up to be a living, breathing, thinking, human being. They should have that right, to be able to experience life. I dont know what you want to call this, but thats how I feel.

This is the only claim of moral value you've been able to make, but I don't think anyone takes the potential person argument to its logical ends. There is no such moral rule that say "X is a potential Y, therefore X is morally equal to Y". A few simple demonstrations for why that is:

I dont quite understand how you think "a fetus is a potential human being, therefore a fetus is morally equal to a human life." is equivalant to "a child is a potential adult, therefore a child is morally equal to an adult." The first is purely biological while your examples were psycholgoical. Now I'm not even sure what you mean by morally equal. So a newborn and an adult are not morally equal? I think im getting lost in semantics. Explain or ignore me, I can be hard headed sometimes.

 

[FSTDT]

I dont quite understand how you think "a fetus is a potential human being, therefore a fetus is morally equal to a human life." is equivalant to "a child is a potential adult, therefore a child is morally equal to an adult." The first is purely biological while your examples were psycholgoical. Now I'm not even sure what you mean by morally equal. So a newborn and an adult are not morally equal? I think im getting lost in semantics. Explain or ignore me, I can be hard headed sometimes.

No worries. (I should mention that the difference between an unfeeling experience-less fetus and a feeling experiencing newborn is also a psychological difference, not just a biological one. How else do you talk about a fetus's experiences without making a psychological point in some way?)

The phrase "morally equal" means that we are obligated to protect one being to the same degree as we protect another being. In terms of abortion, many people believe that an unborn fetus has a right to life that ought to be respected to the same degree as we respect the right to life of adult humans. People then say if the unborn fetus and adult human's right to life should be protected to the same extent, they are called moral equals by definition.

With potential people arguments, the claim is that a fetus is a potential rational human, therefore by virtue of being a potential rational human, all the same rights and considerations we give to rational humans transfer directly to the fetus, so that it can be said that talking about potential rational humans is no different from talking about an actual rational human. (The "potential person" argument looks awfully non-sequitor when its spelled out like that, doesn't it ) The argument continues that if talking about potential and actual rational humans amounts to the same thing, then there is no difference between the two, so they are the same thing by definition; or, in other words, they are equal. Thats why the potential person argument can be rephrased in the convenient little nutshell "X is a potential Y, therefore X is morally equal to Y", and also equivalently "X is a potential Y, therefore X has all the same rights as Y".

Probably, despite my efforts to spell everything out as clearly as I human could, this post only confounded the semantics problem you had in the first place

 

[Mandevar]

With potential people arguments, the claim is that a fetus is a potential rational human, therefore by virtue of being a potential rational human, all the same rights and considerations we give to rational humans transfer directly to the fetus, so that it can be said that talking about potential rational humans is no different from talking about an actual rational human. (The "potential person" argument looks awfully non-sequitor when its spelled out like that, doesn't it ) The argument continues that if talking about potential and actual rational humans amounts to the same thing, then there is no difference between the two, so they are the same thing by definition; or, in other words, they are equal. Thats why the potential person argument can be rephrased in the convenient little nutshell "X is a potential Y, therefore X is morally equal to Y", and also equivalently "X is a potential Y, therefore X has all the same rights as Y".

Okay thats what I thought you were saying... but potential rational human being = human. I think fetus = human in terms of the right to live. because fetus = potential rational human being, the reasons for stopping this potential rational human being from experiencing life is not worth the loss of this potential life. (you know, reasons for abortion).

You still havent shown me why I should think this fetuses have no moral value. And your examples seemed really weird... were not dealing with a human being yet... were dealing with the potential human being. your examples were all human beings with the potential to become more rational.

And you must feel I have no reason to feel this way? Its irrational? [previous post]:

But I do. I Suppose anyways. I never really thought of that. But I simply feel what is inside a woman will grow up to be a living, breathing, thinking, human being. They should have that right, to be able to experience life. I dont know what you want to call this, but thats how I feel.

 

[FSTDT]

Mandevar,

Okay thats what I thought you were saying... but potential rational human being = human. I think fetus = human in terms of the right to live. because fetus = potential rational human being, the reasons for stopping this potential rational human being from experiencing life is not worth the loss of this potential life. (you know, reasons for abortion).

You still havent shown me why I should think this fetuses have no moral value.

No worries. This is going to be a long post, and I apologize ahead of time if it is overwhelming, but I encourage you to read the whole thing if you can (using text-to-speech software really reduces the workload of reading).

A really basic part of the way I form my moral reasoning is first by taking people's intuitive beliefs, figuring out which moral rules people are using to come up with their conclusions for their moral beliefs, followed by taking the moral rules to their logical ends to see if people hold on to them consistently (you should really see the hoops people have to go through to rationalize animal testing, see posts 27 - 44 in this thread and posts 21 - 39 in this other thread).

In terms of abortion, I find that the intuitive beliefs we hold about abortion are often contradictory or not based on anything moral, and when something is internally contradictory it cannot be true by definition. Especially true are the following:
- When people say that taking life is wrong, they contradict themselves by taking plant, animal, and bacterial life all the time.

- When people say that taking potential life is wrong, they contradict themselves by refusing to take into consideration every other potential such-and-such that people are.

- When people say its wrong to take human life, they contradict themselves by conceding to instances of self-defense, war, and capital punishment. Even worse, they contradict themselves by allowing that species membership is a measure of moral worth, but race and sex membership are not (neither species, nor race, nor sex are moral qualities whatsoever).

After all of that, the the prohibition on abortion because it takes potential human life is based on contradictory moral principles from the very start based on the moral premises that almost all pro-lifers already accept (don't worry, your garden-variety pro-choicers suffer from some miserable contradictions as well). We can't accept that being a life, a human, or a potential anything actually matters as a brute statement of fact, we need to rationalize the abortion question to make it consistent with all the other facts we accept. To do this, we need to seriously reevaluate how we measure abortion.

First, I just want to say that I do not believe that abortion comes down to the question between a woman's choice and the unborn's life. Its really easy to demonstrate: if we imagine that a child is drowning in a pool, and without assistence the child will die, we can make a choice between saving the child or letting it die. Almost everyone agrees, pro-choicers included, that we are obligated to rescue the child, and our obligation holds true despite the discomfort of having wet clothes. If we take this principle, that saving a life is a greater good than having a choice not to save a life, and apply it to abortion, we essentially have an argument against abortion. However, this is only an argument against abortion if we make a single presumption: that an unborn's life is morally valuable. That's why abortion does not come down to a debate between choice vs life, but rather it comes down to the basis for which the unborn's life is morally valuable, or rephrased by the question "on what basis is it wrong to destroy an unborn's life?"

Of course, we've already excluded "is a life", "is a human", and "is a potential human" as reasonable answers, so we need to define other morally relevant characteristics. We know that the definition of intrinsic value is "something worth pursuing without reference to some other entity" (this definition comes from Antony Flew's A Dictionary of Philosophy, and its reaffirmed by the Oxford and Stanford dictionaries of philosophy as well), so we can define a few things like happiness and suffering having intrinsic value and disvalue respectively (this is because people pursue or avoid happiness and suffering for no other reason than to obtain or avoid those experiences in themselves, so they meet the definition of intrinsic value). Through our intrinsic measures of moral value, we can define other instrumental measures of moral value like goal setting, seeing yourself over time, being rational, making choices, having experiences, and a whole host of other measures of moral value which affect the way we make choices.

After we've defined characteristics which are morally valuable, we weigh a being against those characteristics and value them accordingly. Notice in this neat little scheme that its not the fact something is alive which matters, but its whether a being possesses morally relevant characteristics; and when we talk about protecting life, we really mean respecting the moral characteristics which necessarily depend on continued existence of life. Thats why its wrong to kill people but not plants despite the fact they are both living things, because people can suffer and be rational beings and plants cannot; the capacity to suffer and be rational constrain what is permissible to do to the human, but the constraints do not apply to the plant which lacks those capacities. Notice that the measures of moral value are necessarily connected to a being's capacity to have morally relevant experiences (suffering, satisfaction, happiness, goal setting, rationality, etc. are all experiences), but because a fetus has no experiences at all, no measures of moral value which depend on those experiences can apply to the fetus by definition.

The end result of all this is pretty clear: if moral value is connected with experiences and our obligation to protect life is based on the preservation of morally relevant experiences, and a fetus has no experiences at all, we can't say that fetus possesses any moral value at all.

And your examples seemed really weird... were not dealing with a human being yet... were dealing with the potential human being. your examples were all human beings with the potential to become more rational.

And you must feel I have no reason to feel this way? Its irrational? [previous post]:

But I do. I Suppose anyways. I never really thought of that. But I simply feel what is inside a woman will grow up to be a living, breathing, thinking, human being. They should have that right, to be able to experience life. I dont know what you want to call this, but thats how I feel.

If you still feel that abortion is wrong, then at best maybe you can commit consistently to the following position: you don't believe abortion is right for you, but that is not the same thing as saying it isn't right for anyone at all

 

[shinbits]

Shinbits,

See a post from another thread I made on this same topic:

[26 weeks old as a fetus], That is the threshhold when the capacity to feel pain occurs, and the capacity to feel pain is morally relevant.

Is it morally okay to kill someone in thier sleep? Or rape a woman while she's drunk, and can't feel or have memory of the event?
Is it okay to steal from a severly mentally retarded person who probably will never realize somethings missing?

Well, the same with a baby. To rob a baby of the chance to live because "It won't know" is just as evil.

 

[FSTDT]

Is it morally okay to kill someone in thier sleep? Or rape a woman while she's drunk, and can't feel or have memory of the event?
Is it okay to steal from a severly mentally retarded person who probably will never realize somethings missing?

No.

Specifically, when we talk about killing, even painless killing, we are literally talking about preference satisfaction and dissatisfaction. A preference is anything sought to be obtained or avoided, and it is a morally relevant characteristic on the same basis as the capacity to feel happiness or suffering (i.e. people seek to satisfy preferences for no other reason than to satisfy the preferences).

When you kill someone, you systematically violate each and every one of their preferences, which includes a preference for continued existence, continued happiness, any long and short-term goals, and thwarting what the person has worked for his or her whole life. Whats more, you violate those preferences to the most total extent: by reducing them down to nothingness so that they can never be recovered. What you gain for killing a person is fleeting and trivial, namely your own satisfaction for killing (you can probably be made just as happy by less violent means). So, by utilitarian calculation, killing a person violates more preferences than not killing them. Because we are obligated to produce the best balance of preference satisfaction over dissatisfaction, and killing a person produces such a lopsided imbalace of dissatisfaction, we are obligated not to kill the people you listed above.

When we understand that preference dissatisfaction is morally harmful, everything mentioned above makes a lot of sense, because its a logical extension of our obligation to minimize the harm that we cause.

The only thing worth noting about killing someone in their sleep is this: in general, it is not as immoral to kill someone quickly and painlessly than it is to torture them beforehand. But, the fact that painless killing is marginally less immoral than other things you can do to the person does not justify the grevious and systematic harm that you actually do. A person's preferences are still a part of them even when they are not thinking about them or unconscious; the only way the preferences can be destroyed is if the person changes the preference or looses a capacity to hold the preference (such as brain death or catastrophic brain injury); while a person has preferences to speak of, we are obligated to weigh them morally.

This has to do with abortion in the following way: the capacity to suffer is a prerequisite to having any preferences at all, in which the fetus has no capacity to suffer and consequently has no capacity to hold preferences. So, by our utilitarian principle to find the best balance of preference satisfaction over dissatisfaction, the unborn fetus has no competing preferences to weigh against a mother's preference to have an abortion. So abortion is not immoral.

Well, the same with a baby. To rob a baby of the chance to live because "It won't know" is just as evil.

Alright, if you think I'm wrong, then please tell me what measures of moral value apply to the fetus. That's all I'm asking for.

If you can name what they are, and show me that the pro-life claim that fetus actually matters morally is true, I'll be happy to change my "lifeviews" thing in my profile from pro-choice to pro-life.

 

[shinbits]

No.

Specifically, when we talk about killing, even painless killing, we are literally talking about preference satisfaction and dissatisfaction. A preference is anything sought to be obtained or avoided, and it is a morally relevant characteristic on the same basis as the capacity to feel happiness or suffering (i.e. people seek to satisfy preferences for no other reason than to satisfy the preferences).

Isn't an inconvient pregnancy a dissatisfaction? Isn't abortion satisfying a preference?

Yes. It is.
By your definition, that makes abortion just as evil as killing someone who "can't feel it".

 

[FSTDT]

Specifically, when we talk about killing, even painless killing, we are literally talking about preference satisfaction and dissatisfaction. A preference is anything sought to be obtained or avoided, and it is a morally relevant characteristic on the same basis as the capacity to feel happiness or suffering (i.e. people seek to satisfy preferences for no other reason than to satisfy the preferences).

Isn't an inconvient pregnancy a dissatisfaction? Isn't abortion satisfying a preference?

Yes. It is.
By your definition, that makes abortion just as evil as killing someone who "can't feel it".

Run that by me again?

I thought I was pretty clear: satisfying preferences is morally good, dissatisfying them is morally bad. You were correct to say "an inconvient pregnancy a dissatisfaction ... abortion satisfying a preference?", but how on earth did you get deduce that its wrong to have an abortion?

 

[shinbits]

I misread that statement.

When you kill someone, you systematically violate each and every one of their preferences, which includes a preference for continued existence, continued happiness, any long and short-term goals, and thwarting what the person has worked for his or her whole life.

Robbing someone of the chance to even have goals, is just as evil as taking them away by killing them.

 

[FSTDT]

Robbing someone of the chance to even have goals, is just as evil as taking them away by killing them.

I'll retort with the following: robbing someone of the chance to even have goals is not evil at all. My statement has just as little qualification as your statement (i.e. none at all), so there is no basis that either statement should be preferred over the other.

Would you care to provide some reasons to show why your claim is true, otherwise it sounds like you're defining a blanket condemnation of condom use and menstruation, both of which thwart a person of even the chance to have goals to the same degree as abortion.

 

[shinbits]

robbing someone of the chance to even have goals is not evil at all.
.

wow.

Peace.

 

[Sundragon2012]

wow.

Peace.

I am a theist and I do not wholly buy into utilitarian morality on a personal level but on a societal level I think its a pretty solid non-sectarian system of moral thought.

Having said that, I don't think you understand the full implications of your own argument. You claim that preventing someone from ever having goals is as evil as preventing those that have goals from ever achieving them ie. killing them.

Let's look at this for a moment. Your argument is a direct statement against the use of birth control to prevent unwanted pregnancy. In many instances sexual activity can lead to pregnancy and in theory nearly every act of sex contains within it the potential to conceive.

If the act, in your mind, of terminating a pregnancy is evil because it denies the fetus of ever having goals you must in turn be against birth control because the act of preventing pregnancy may be denying a potential human being the opportunity of being born at all.

I am just looking for the consistancy of your argument if taken to its rational conclusion.


)o( Blessed Be,

Chris

 

[shinbits]

I don't believe being a member of human species matters any more than being a member of the cat species or snails species. .

That's pretty sad.

 

[FSTDT]

Some of my favorite counter arguments in the thread so far:

However, I don't see any explanation for why the fetus has any moral status at all. Destroying life is not wrong in itself, its wrong because destroys a person's experiences and interests, but a fetus has none at all.

Oh dear god....

Galilean

robbing someone of the chance to even have goals is not evil at all.
.

wow.

Peace.

Shinbits

I don't believe being a member of human species matters any more than being a member of the cat species or snails species. .

That's pretty sad.

Shinbits

Shinbits, would you please stop adding noise to my thread? I started the thread to have a rational discussion on abortion, and you are not helping. You are a grown adult, and if you have it in your ability to act like a mature one. If I've said something wrong, tell me why I'm wrong.

Remember, I'm pro-choice. If you want me to stop being pro-choice, and start being pro-life, you have in your capacity to refute anything I've said. Just tell me what measures of moral value apply to the fetus, and I'll defend the right-to-life with every other pro-lifer out there.

 

[shinbits]

Shinbits If I've said something wrong, tell me why I'm wrong.

Okay.

I don't believe being a member of human species matters any more than being a member of the cat species or snails species. .

.

If you think that about human beings, then what's a babies life to you?

If you don't have the conviction that human life is special, then there's no way to reason with you.
A human life is a matter of morals, not intellectual decision.

If it were, then we may as well wipe out the poorer nations to make room for hotel resorts, since that would be a productive ecconomy.

Kill babies if you want.

 

[shinbits]

.

Let's look at this for a moment. Your argument is a direct statement against the use of birth control to prevent unwanted pregnancy. In many instances sexual activity can lead to pregnancy and in theory nearly every act of sex contains within it the potential to conceive.

This isn't true. a sperm and an egg aren't a human being.

A fetus is.

 

[FSTDT]

I don't believe being a member of human species matters any more than being a member of the cat species or snails species. .

If you think that about human beings, then what's a babies life to you?

If you don't have the conviction that human life is special, then there's no way to reason with you.

There is a serious misunderstanding.

You actually think the only reason I say being a human doesn't matter is because I hate people and babies when it couldn't be further from the truth. But the actual reason I say it is because its consistent with my ethical vegetarianism that there is no justification for the claim that someones species membership entitles it to a special moral status to dominate all other creatures, so I reject entirely the claim that someones species matters morally at all. I reject species membership as a measure of moral value for the same reason as I reject race and sex membership as a measure of moral value, because they have nothing to do with morality at all (no, I don't have the conviction that Aryan life is special either). This might have been evident to you if you'd only read the entire quote that you've lifted out of context:

And I understand that an unborn fetus is a human life, but I don't believe being a member of human species matters any more than being a member of the cat species or snails species. Species membership is not a moral quality, but rather the experiences of an organism matter morally.​

You've seriously never met any vegetarians in your life before?

 

[shinbits]

But the actual reason I say it is because its consistent with my ethical vegetarianism that there is no justification for the claim that someones species membership entitles it to a special moral status to dominate all other creatures, so I reject entirely the claim that someones species matters morally at all.

Again, if you don't have the moral conviction that human life is special, there's no way you would think an unborn babies life matters.