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Abortion and persons
Michael Lacewing
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© Michael Lacewing
Arguing about abortion
• Most of the argument focuses on the
moral status of the foetus: does it have
a right to life?
• This question is usually connected to
asking whether the foetus is a person.
Questions
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What is a person?
Why think persons have a right to life?
Is the foetus a person?
Does it make a difference to whether
abortion is right or wrong that the
foetus is/is not a person?
– The metaphysical question may not be
relevant to the ethical question, and viceversa.
Persons as possessing souls
• Persons have souls. This both distinguishes
them from everything that isn’t a person,
and is the basis of the right to life.
• If persons have souls, when do the soul and
body come together? Traditional Catholic
doctrine: at conception - so the embryo is
sacred, as all human life is, straight away
Objections
• Many philosophical problems with the
concept of a soul as a separate ‘thing’.
• Am I a soul? Is a soul a person before it
has any of the characteristics of a
person?
• Locke: persons aren’t souls
– If you swapped all the memories between
two souls, which soul would be which
person?
Characteristics of
personhood
• Implication: a person must have psychological
attributes
– But not all creatures with a psychology are persons
• What determines whether something is a
person, if not having a soul?
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Self-awareness, having a ‘point of view’
Language
Reason
Autonomy
Morality
Being human
Dividing people up
• Apart from souls and ‘being human’, all other
criteria are possessed by some human beings
and not others, e.g. severe mental disability,
senile dementia, permanent vegetative state
– Not all human beings are persons
– Yet we don’t think it is permissible to kill them for
the benefit of others
– Is this because they still have a right to life?
Sentience
• Sentience: primitive consciousness of
perception, pleasure, pain
– Doesn’t distinguish persons from non-persons
– But perhaps it is the ground for a right to life?
– Many animals are sentient - do they have a right
to life?
• Sentience begins around 18 weeks, so
younger foetuses don’t have right to life.
The argument from
potential
• Foetuses are have a right to life because
they will become a person with a right to life
if allowed to develop
• But:
– Sperm and egg prior to conception have this
potential, if allowed to conjoin
– Does potential matter? A student, who has the
potential to become a teacher, is not put in
charge of lessons until trained as a teacher; you
can’t spend money you don’t have yet
Persons and abortion: recap
• Unless persons = embodied souls or persons =
human beings, foetuses aren’t persons
• But they may still have a right to life
– Potential persons
– Sentience
• Both of these options are difficult to defend
• But even if the foetus doesn’t have a right to
life, it might be wrong to kill it.
– Not all morality is about rights.
The right to choose
• But suppose foetuses are persons, with a right
to life. Is that enough to make abortion (always)
wrong?
– The case of the violinist
• Even a person with a right to life does not have
a right to use another person’s body. Until it
can survive outside her body, the foetus is part
of the woman’s body.
• Even if the foetus is a person, even if it does
have a right to life, the right to choose may
take precedence.
Act utilitarianism
• The right thing to do is what will cause the
greatest balance of happiness over pain.
• Importance of pleasure and pain - suggests
sentience is right criterion for moral importance
• Since the feotus can’t feel pleasure or pain,
does it not count at all?
• Or because, if it developed into a child, it
would, should we count its future experiences
(consequences)? Though we can’t tell exactly
what these are, we normally prefer being alive
to not being alive.
Virtue theory
• The discussion seems to treat women as
containers for a foetus, rather than creators of
life. The meaning of pregnancy in human life,
and of abortion, haven’t been discussed.
• To think the foetus doesn’t matter is callous:
– Even if the answer is that abortion is morally
permissible, it would be wrong to do so lightly
and without due consideration
• The life the woman is leading and her reasons
for choosing abortion are central. Each case
must be judged individually.