The Abortion Debate: A Different Approach
Introduction
Abortion can be discussed from many points of view – sociological, psychological, legal, medical and moral. The moral debate about abortion raises many deep philosophical issues, such as the nature of rights and who has them, what to do when rights conflict, the nature of persons, the existence of the soul, personal identity and when, if ever, killing is justified. Here I intend to do two things. Firstly, I will outline fairly briefly the “traditional” debate about abortion. Secondly, I will present in more detail a different approach to the debate, an approach which, if not settling the issue, can make some progress.
Abortion is the killing of a foetus after conception and before birth. The moral debate centres on the following question: Is abortion ever morally permissible? To be pro-abortion (“pro-choice”) is to believe that abortion is morally permissible in a wide variety of circumstances. To be anti-abortion (“pro-life”) is to believe that abortion is never or at least hardly ever morally permissible.
The Traditional Debate
The following argument is at the heart of the traditional debate.- It is morally wrong to kill an innocent person.
- A foetus is an innocent person.
- tf It is wrong to kill a foetus.
- A foetus is a potential person.
- It is wrong to kill a potential person.
- tf It is wrong to kill a foetus.
For this modified argument the crucial premiss is 2. Is it wrong to kill a potential person? Why? Does a potential person have rights? Does a potential person have equal rights with an actual person? Is the killing of a potential person morally worse than contraception? Again, no clear answer has emerged.
To summarise the traditional debate, the evaluation of both of the above arguments depends on settling the “status” of the foetus. In other words, the strength of the arguments depends on coming to some agreement on, morally speaking, exactly what sort of thing a foetus is and hence on how it should be treated. And it is coming to this agreement which has proved elusive.
A different approach
The American philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson has tried to bypass the traditional debate. I'll give an outline of her argument. Thomson begins by asking the following question: Supposing that we agree that a foetus is a person, is it ever morally permissible to kill it? In other words, her aim is to avoid the traditional argument over the status of the foetus – over whether it is or is not a person. The traditional questions were: Is a foetus a person? Does a foetus have a right to life?
Thomson raises the questions, what exactly is a right to life? Is a right to life nothing more than a right not to be killed? Or is it the case that a person with a right to life has a right to that which might be needed in order to stay alive? She begins by presenting the following hypothetical example.
The Violinist
Igor is a famous violinist with a rare and fatal kidney disease. It turns out that you are the only person with the right blood type and so Igor's family and friends kidnap you and hook you up to his kidney where, you are told, you will have to stay for 9 months. After 9 months, we suppose, Igor will have recovered and you will be free to go and will not have any harmful effects of the procedure. When you protest they tell you that if you were to detach yourself, Igor would die and since Igor is a person who has a right to life it would be morally wrong to do so.
Before considering any conclusions that may be drawn from this example one objection that might be made here should be answered. Isn't the violinist example similar to abortion only in cases of rape? In other words, the case doesn't really apply to most instances of abortion. I think this is a misunderstanding of the example. If, like me, you think it morally perfectly OK to unplug yourself from Igor even if that kills him, then the violinist is an abortion-like case of a morally justified killing of a person with a right to life. It is not, and is not intended to be, a model for all cases of abortion.
If successful, the case points to certain deep-seated intuitions we have about justified killing. Our moral intuitions in this case suggest that it is morally OK to unplug yourself from Igor. Thus, even if Igor is a person with a right to life, killing him in those circumstances may nevertheless be morally justifiable. That's all. The case is not aimed to show that if it is morally OK to kill Igor then it follows that it is morally OK for a woman to have an abortion. There is no direct inference from this example to the justification of abortion.
Answering the questions
What exactly is a right to life? There are two main answers which can be considered separately. Firstly, to have a right to life is to have a right not to be killed. And secondly, to have a right to life is to have a right to what is required to keep you alive. What I hope the following discussion will show is that the morality of abortion is fundamentally a matter of degree, and also that abortion may be morally permissible even if we agree that a foetus is a person.
Consider, firstly, the right to life as a right not to be killed. If a foetus has a right to life in this sense, can killing it ever be morally justified? Start with an extreme case. Suppose after being hooked up to Igor you are told that, unfortunately, after the 9 months is up the whole procedure will kill you.
Are you justified in unplugging yourself? The answer seems obviously, yes. Suppose now that although the procedure is not going to kill you, your life span will be shortened by some years, or perhaps you will be permanently harmed or it will make you quite sick for several months so that you won't be able to work or do anything much in that time.
It seems that in these cases you would also be justified in killing Igor. You are being asked to make too great a sacrifice. A moral code which is too demanding is counterproductive. For if the demands are too high then no-one can live up to them. A morality which is too demanding will be ignored.
We could imagine a series of similar cases each gradually making fewer and fewer demands on you. Imagine now a slightly different case. Igor's family place an advertisement in the paper asking for volunteers with the right blood type to be hooked up to Igor. You answer the advertisement, give your informed consent to the conditions and are hooked up. If after a few weeks you get sick of being hooked up to Igor, is it morally permissible for you to unplug yourself? This is more difficult.
We may be more inclined to say that, having agreed voluntarily, you are morally obliged to stay for the whole 9 months and that it would be morally wrong if you didn't. Thus, interpreting the right to life as the right not to be killed we can imagine a whole series of circumstances ranging from cases where killing Igor is clearly morally justified to cases where it seems unjustifiable.
According to the second interpretation, a right to life amounts to having the right to be given what you need to stay alive. But as Thomson has pointed out, this poses problems if what you need to stay alive is something to which you have no right. Igor is just one example. Once you've been kidnapped and hooked up to Igor he needs you to stay alive.
However, clearly he has no right to the use of your kidneys and it seems clear that you are justified in unplugging yourself from him. In general, having a right to life does not entitle you to anything you need to stay alive, for what you require may be something that you have no right to at all. This second interpretation leads on to another way of viewing this issue that makes no reference to rights.
Extending the argument
Suppose now we leave rights out of the picture altogether. Thomson asks: What is morally required of you if a person's life depends on you? In order to answer this, Thomson reminds us of the parable of the Good Samaritan - if you've forgotten, here it is: A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said: "Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend." (The Holy Bible, Luke 10:30-37)
Thomson distinguishes different grades of Samaritans. A Good Samaritan will go to considerable inconvenience in order to help you. What she calls a “Minimally Decent Samaritan” does what is absolutely necessary to help but no more. A “Splendid Samaritan” goes to great lengths – in fact the original Good Samaritan should really be regarded as a Splendid Samaritan. And of course there will be many shades in between – “Reasonably Good Samaritans”, “Very Good Samaritans” and so on.
As argued before, if you were kidnapped and hooked up to Igor then obviously you would be entitled to unplug yourself. No one can expect you to sacrifice 9 months of your life for Igor, even if he is a person with a right to life. He has no right to the use of your kidneys. Forgetting about rights for the moment, why shouldn't you stay hooked up to Igor if that is what it takes to save his life? Because staying there for 9 months is too much to ask – you are being expected to be a Splendid Samaritan, and that can't be morally required of you although it would be very nice of you to do it. It is simply too demanding to expect people to be Splendid or even Good Samaritans.
But what if it would only take one month? One day? One hour? If Igor's life depended on you staying there for one hour, should you refuse? While he may have no right to use your kidneys even for an hour maybe it is something you ought to do. If you see me drop my waIlet I do not have a right that you tell me about it but you ought to tell me nevertheless. Perhaps it is similar here.
If all it takes to save Igor is being plugged in for one hour (with no harmful effects) then perhaps you ought to do it. In this case you only have to be a Minimally Decent Samaritan and aren't you morally required to at least be that? Suppose you were dying in hospital and the only thing that would save you is a visit by Nicole Kidman, who at the time happens to be on holiday in Europe. Is she morally required to interrupt her holiday and visit you? Obviously not. Splendid Samaritanism is great when it happens but can't be a requirement.
However suppose that she were not on holiday but visiting a friend of hers in the room next door to you? Is she morally required to visit you in this case? Here it seems that all that is being required is for her to be a Minimally Decent Samaritan, and shouldn't she at least be that? Even in this case you have no right to Nicole's visit but if your life depends on her taking about one minute of her time, isn't this something she ought to do? Shouldn't we help people out if there is a lot at stake and it can be easily done?
Thomson's discussion of abortion and the various grades of samaritanism can be seen as part of a wider issue of easy rescue. Under what conditions are you morally required to carry out an easy rescue? How much can be morally expected of you in saving the life of a person to which you have no special responsibility? What exactly are the responsibilities of a mother to a foetus she is carrying? If Thomson's argument is plausible, then in trying to answer these questions we can make progress in the abortion debate without having to decide on the status of the foetus.
Concluding comments
The discussion of the right to life and of the various grades of samaritanism pointed to the existence of a moral spectrum – the rightness and wrongness of the cases discussed were a matter of degree. Abortion too involves a moral spectrum or sliding scale. How exactly does Thomson's argument apply?
A foetus depends on the mother. What is morally required of a mother with regard to a foetus? Remember that we accept that a foetus is a person with a right to life. Is it morally OK to kill it if the mother's life is at risk? If her physical health (but not her life is at risk)? If she has been raped? If the foetus is seriously deformed? If her psychological health is at risk? If her husband has deserted her? If she can't afford another child? And so on, down to cases where an abortion is performed because the woman doesn't want to delay going on holiday or because the child is a girl rather than a boy. If a foetus puts the mother's life, physical or psychological health at risk, if the foetus is seriously deformed or the result of rape, then the mother is placed in the position of a Splendid Samaritan. Having the child in these circumstances is an enormous sacrifice and, if the previous argument has been correct, a sacrifice that she cannot be morally required to make. It is, morally speaking, simply too much to ask.
Other circumstances will demand less sacrifice. For example, if she loses her job or if her partner leaves her. Even less sacrifice is involved if the child has a hare lip or if it is a boy rather than a girl.
One of the main advantages of Thomson's view is that it recognizes the ethics of abortion to be a matter of degree. This is an advantage because it seems clear that, as pointed as above, some abortions are morally worse than others – not all abortions are morally on a par. There is a moral sliding scale. At one end of the scale there are abortions to save the mother's life, and at the other end there are late term abortions to avoid delaying a holiday.
Thomson's argument allows, as I think it should, that abortion can be morally justified where the mother's life, physical or psychological health is at stake, where the pregnancy is due to rape or where the foetus is seriously deformed. These sorts of cases require a woman to be Splendid Samaritan and this is too much to ask. Less serious cases are progressively harder to morally justify, and cases where an abortion is carried out to prevent the postponement of a holiday may not be morally justifiable at all. From a moral point of view a woman may be required to be a Minimally Decent Samaritan.
If Thomson is right, the abortion debate is not settled by establishing (if this were possible) that a foetus is a person with a right to life. There are other issues relating to justified killing and the saving of a human life.
Reference
Judith Jarvis Thomson, In Defence of Abortion, Philosophy and Public Affairs (1971)
R. Neurath