Abortion



Abortion

Abortion can be defined as the deliberate termination of an unwanted pregnancy. From an ethical point of view, the abortion debate arises from a clash of basic rights; that is, the conflict between women’s reproductive freedom and unborn children’s right to life. Supporters of abortion rights claim that a woman should have the right to decide what happens in and to her body, whereas anti-abortionists argue that abortion is unjustified because the fetus has the same right to life as a normal adult. (Unless otherwise stated, the term “fetus” will be used inclusively in what follows to refer to the unborn child at all stages of pregnancy.)

Much of the ethical or philosophical debate over abortion boils down to two questions: (1) Does the fetus have a right to life in the same way that adults are generally recognized as having a right to life? (2) If the fetus does have a right to life, can it be overridden by the rights of the pregnant woman? At issue, in other words, is whether the fetus has a right to life that may or may not override any competing rights of the mother. Of particular interest is the question regarding the moral status of the fetus: If it has no moral value or significance, then we may act towards it as we please, but this is no longer the case if it possesses moral status.

Roe v Wade

Abortion has been legal in the United States since 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision prohibited states from banning the procedure before the last three months of pregnancy. Prior to 1973, most states had restrictive abortion laws, in that it was a criminal offense for anyone to perform an abortion. The Supreme Court’s decision declared these laws unconstitutional and established that a right to an abortion was to be included in a woman’s constitutional right to privacy.

According to the Supreme Court’s ruling, a pregnancy can be divided into three parts, and the state’s ability to regulate abortion is different at each of these three stages. The Court determines that a pregnant woman has a right to an abortion during the first trimester of the pregnancy, and with qualifications, during the second trimester as well. Throughout this period, a woman’s right to privacy is seen as overriding any interest the state may have, and the decision regarding an abortion is to be made between the woman and her physician. Once the fetus has reached viability around the beginning of the third trimester, the state may regulate abortions, but late-term abortion must still be legally permitted whenever attending physicians judge it to be medically necessary.

Viability is the capacity of a fetus to survive outside the mother’s womb – perhaps with medical assistance – should it be born immediately. The Supreme Court’s decision came close to espousing fetal viability – then estimated to occur between twenty-four and twenty-eight weeks – as the cutoff point between not having a right to life and having one. According to the ruling, the state has a legitimate interest in protecting potential life and that this interest becomes compelling at viability “because the fetus then presumably has the capability of meaningful life, outside the mother’s womb.”

The Supreme Court’s landmark decision was often seen as the culmination of a growing societal concern for women’s equality and autonomy. However, the ruling has not answered the moral or religious questions that surround abortion. The years since Roe v. Wade have witnessed the growth of a vehement political and religious movement opposed to abortion and a counter-movement in support of women’s reproductive rights. Today, Americans continue to carry on a highly emotional and sometimes violent debate over the morality and legality of abortion.

Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice

On one side of the abortion debate are the anti-abortionists, whose view or position is often called “pro-life” or “conservative.” Generally speaking, the pro-life or conservative position holds that the fetus has the same moral status as the human adult, including having a right to life, from the very moment of conception. On this view, since fetuses are full human beings, abortion is never justified, except perhaps to save the mother’s life (i.e. when the continuation of a pregnancy poses a direct threat to the pregnant woman’s life). Strong pro-life advocates may go further and claim that women who have abortions and physicians who perform them are guilty of premeditated murder.

Advocates of the pro-life position argue that since the human fetus has full moral status, there is something profoundly wrong with abortion. The central argument here is that abortion violates one version of the sanctity of life principle, i.e. that it is wrong to take the life of an innocent human being:

P1 It is wrong to kill an innocent human being.

P2 A human fetus is an innocent human being.

P3 Abortion is killing an innocent human fetus.

C1 Abortion is killing an innocent human being.

C2 Therefore, abortion is morally impermissible.

The core pro-life conviction, in other words, is that all human beings, including human fetuses, have a right not to be deliberately killed. The right attaches to human beings in the embryonic and fetal stages of development, just as it does at later developmental stages, because human fetuses – no less than human infants, toddlers, adolescents, and adults – are living, individual members of the human species. They are not dead, or inanimate, or members of a different species, or parts of a living human body (in the way that sperm and egg cells, or liver and skin cells, are functional parts of larger organisms).

In short, from a pro-life point of view, if a fetus is a living human being, and if respect for human life is central to moral thinking, then abortion must surely be wrong.

On the other side of the debate are the defenders of women’s right to abortion who often describe their position as “pro-choice” or “liberal.” Supporters of women’s reproductive freedom typically argue that embryos and fetuses, especially during the early stages of their development, do not yet have full moral status. The fetus, as they see it, is not a separate biological entity to the mother, but is totally dependent on her body until near term. Strong pro-choice advocates may even assert that the fetus is no more than a piece of body tissue, and abortion is nothing but the surgical removal of unwanted tissue. On this view, abortion is justified any time a woman desires to get rid of an unwanted part of her body.

Reproductive freedom, including a right to abortion, has been generally recognized as a basic human right and crucial for the equality of opportunity for women. Proponents of the pro-choice position contend that women cannot be equal and responsible members of the moral community if they are denied the right to terminate unwanted pregnancies. Women, they argue, should be allowed more control over reproduction because life is usually more difficult for women and mothers than it is for men. Women, for example, are still expected to do the bulk of the child-rearing, and this might become a huge burden for many of them.

Support for the right to abortion can be extended to cover cases where women are incapable of providing an adequate upbringing for the children to be born, cases of teenage pregnancy, and families with children that cannot afford another one. Without the right to reproductive choice and safe access to abortion, women cannot decide whether to have children, how many to have, or when to have them. An unwanted pregnancy followed by the birth of an unwanted child can be catastrophic for both mother and child in view of the economic, social and psychological hardships that weigh on them, not to mention the prospect that a child brought up in an impoverished environment may end up a burden to society.

Increased acceptance of abortion rights has led to the development of safer and more effective abortion techniques. Since abortions have been legalized in the 1970s, it is one of the safest medical procedures, with little history of complication or side effects. However, even though there might be a strong case for women’s reproductive rights and a liberal abortion policy, it does not follow that whenever a woman exercises her right to her own body, she must be making a morally correct decision – that is, it is still necessary to consider the justifications for abortion.

Stages of Fetal Development

When does human life begin to have moral significance? At conception? Birth? Or somewhere in between? Disagreement arises out of conflicting accounts of the moral status and consequent moral rights of the fetus. The debate usually starts with the question of when the fetus becomes a full human being, i.e. a person with a right to life.

Conception occurs when an egg is fertilized by a sperm. This produces a zygote, a single cell that begins to divide and move through the fallopian tube. When the ball of cells reaches the uterus seven to ten days after fertilization, it is called a blastocyst. From the second to eighth week of gestation, the developing organism is called an embryo, and it is at this point that primitive tissue and organs begin to develop. From then until birth, the organism is called a fetus, although it is not uncommon in philosophical discussions of abortion to use the term “fetus” for the developing organism at all stages of fetal development from conception to birth.

It is often said that human life begins at conception, or the stage at which the sperm penetrates and fertilizes the ovum. This is the moment at which some would accord full moral status to the fetus. The usual justification is that at conception, a fertilized human egg already contains a genetic code that will govern the entire future physical development of a distinct human individual. Critics of this position often object that the bare genetic material present at conception is not enough to constitute a person at that point as none of the morally relevant properties required for personhood have emerged.

Historically, religious opposition to abortion was not based on the idea that life began at conception. Instead, church scholars such as Thomas Aquinas took Aristotle’s view that ensoulment took place after forty days when the soul entered the body at quickening (i.e. fetal movement). Some theologians seemed to think that abortion during the first weeks of pregnancy was not murder because the fetus had not yet been ensouled. Few still hold this view, since quickening is merely the first experience of the mother feeling the fetus move which in itself has little moral significance.

Viability is another possible stage at which a fetus might attain moral status. As the criterion favored by many working in the fields of neonatology and gynecology, viability is the stage of prenatal development at which the fetus can survive independently of the pregnant woman, given suitable intensive care or whatever medical and technological assistance available. Viability is possible at approximately the twenty-second week of fetal development at which point the fetus is at least potentially capable of existing apart from the mother – its organs and organ systems are sufficiently developed that it may have the capacity to function on its own.

The main problem with the viability criterion is that it is entirely dependent on medical technology, such as incubators, and care provided by others. If what we are looking for is some property (or properties) of the developing human being itself in which to ground its moral status, then the technologies and assistance of others are hardly likely to suffice; yet viability is a criterion that depends almost entirely on the available medical technology and intensive care provision.

Some suggest that birth is the decisive moment when an infant becomes morally significant because it is at this point that the mother, and others, can begin to relate to the baby as a person. In order for these interpersonal relationships to arise, the infant needs to exist outside the mother. When a child is born, it becomes part of the human social world, in ways that are not possible while it is still in the womb. Social relationships among human beings, as such, provide a basis for moral status.

Those who oppose the birth criteria may argue that there is no significant difference between a baby about to be born and a baby that has been born. There is no reason to suppose that the fetus’ moral status one second before birth is miraculously transformed one second after birth. A prematurely born infant may actually be less developed than a fetus near the end of a normal pregnancy. Birth, on this account, is simply the time when the baby is detached from the mother’s body and becomes a viable social being. It has no intrinsic moral significance at all.

Personhood

What intellectual, psychological or behavioral capacities are relevant to being a person? At which point in the development of a fetus does it come to possess the necessary properties that make it a person? From a philosophical standpoint, persons (or moral persons) can be defined as beings with full moral status or the highest moral significance. Personhood is usually accepted as a sufficient condition for being accorded full moral rights, such as rights to life, liberty, privacy and personal security.

One of the bones of contention in the abortion debate is the moral status of the fetus. Advocates of the pro-life position tend to see human fetuses as persons from conception onwards. For them, abortion is morally impermissible simply because killing a person is wrong. Defenders of abortion, on the other hand, are likely to maintain that fetuses do not become persons until some later stage of development; for example, when they become viable, or when they are born. They hold that while it is wrong to kill persons, it is not always wrong to kill human beings who are not persons.

In a seminal essay titled “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion” (1973), Mary Anne Warren proposes that it is a person, rather than simply a human being, that is entitled to rights, including the right to life. For Warren, “humans” (genetic humanity) and “persons” (moral humanity) should be seen as two distinct concepts. Being human in the genetic sense – that is, being a member of the species Homo sapiens – is neither necessary nor sufficient for being a person in the moral sense – that is, being a member of the moral community with a full set of corresponding rights, including the right to life.

Warren then goes on to list several traits or criteria of personhood:

▪ consciousness (of objects and events external and/or internal to the being), and in particular the capacity to feel pain

▪ reasoning (the developed capacity to solve new and relatively complex problems)

▪ self-motivated activity (activity which is relatively independent of either genetic or direct external control)

▪ the capacity to communicate, by whatever means, messages of an indefinite variety of types

▪ the presence of self-concepts, and self-awareness, either individual or racial, or both

An individual, in Warren’s view, need not have all of these traits to be considered a person, or even any particular one of them. However, an individual with none of these traits is plainly not a person. According to the criteria laid down by Warren, some creatures are biologically or genetically human but do not have personhood status, such as fetuses, infants, the severely mentally retarded, and the hopelessly comatose; whereas non-humans, such as intelligent extraterrestrial beings, can be regarded as persons and deserving of moral rights.

Warren highlights the fact human fetuses possess at most one of defining characteristics of moral persons – namely, consciousness; but not until sometime towards the end of the second trimester – and as such, cannot be accorded moral status or moral rights. If what makes killing wrong is that the victim is a person, as the argument goes, then abortion is not impermissible if fetuses do not have personhood status. Warren concludes that the unborn child at any stage of development inside the mother’s womb is definitely not a person in the moral sense. Only after birth does a child becomes morally significant as it becomes a separate entity from the mother.

An argument against Warren’s account of personhood is that it seems to imply that infanticide, i.e. killing newborn children, is permissible, since it is difficult to show any relevant difference between the capacities of the late-term fetus and the newborn. Another objection to Warren’s view is that people who are temporarily comatose cannot fulfill her criteria of personhood and therefore could be killed with impunity. If the personhood argument were followed, we would be permitted to kill unconscious and severely retarded and senile humans, even normal people when they sleep, for none of these have the required characteristics for personhood.

In response to the infanticide objection, Warren says she agrees that infants are non-persons (and so killing them is not strictly murder), but denies that infanticide is generally permissible. For, in Warren view, once a child is born, there is no longer a conflict between it and the woman's rights, since the newborn can be given up for adoption. In Warren’s view, infanticide is rarely justified in the contemporary world, because there are usually alternatives that would give the child a chance to live a good life.

Sentience

Not everyone is satisfied with Mary Anne Warren’s view that only persons can be accorded moral status and rights. Some philosophers propose, as an alternative, that sentience (i.e. the capacity to experience pleasure, pain, and other conscious mental states) should be seen as sufficient for moral status. All sentient beings, they argue, can be harmed or benefited in ways that need to be taken into account in our moral deliberations. Thus, if fetuses are sentient beings with the capacity to feel pain, they have an interest in not being made to suffer.

There is scientific evidence that a human fetus begins to develop (or acquire) sentience sometime into the second trimester of pregnancy. Although it is not clear exactly when this happens, it is fairly certain that first-trimester and early second-trimester fetuses are not yet sentient, since neither their sense organs nor the parts of their central nervous systems that are necessary for the processing of sensory information are sufficiently developed. A fetus will gradually acquire more sentience as its nervous system develops and as it experiences more things as pleasant or painful.

Since sentience admits of degrees, we can speak of different degrees or levels of sentience. If a fetus possesses some degree of sentience, it has some moral status. More specifically, the criterion of sentience provides us with a rational basis for attributing moral status to late-term fetuses while denying moral status to early-term fetuses. An early-term fetus, being non-sentient, cannot think or feel, or experience anything, or want anything. As such, it is not possible to impede its interests unfairly or do something to make it worse off in any meaningful sense. In short, it is not morally considerable.

According to the interest theory of rights, an entity cannot have rights unless it has interests that need to be protected. An early-term fetus does not have rights because it lacks interests, but the same cannot be said of a late-term, sentient fetus which, presumably, has all the interests ascribable to a newborn, including the interest in continued existence. A sentient being can experience pleasure and pain and therefore has an interest in having further pleasurable experiences, that is, in the continuation of its life. The late-term fetus, on this account, is entitled to a right to life in virtue of having an interest in continued existence.

The possibility of sentience in the later stages of fetal development is one of the reasons for regarding early-term abortion as morally preferable to late-term abortion. Some of the concerns about late-term abortions are related to the pain that they allegedly cause. Most people, even those who are fervently pro-choice, are distressed by late-term abortions, partly because of the risk of inflicting pain and partly because the late-term fetus is so close to being a full-term infant that all of the reasons for the protection of infants are present.

Concerning pain, there is general agreement that it should not be inflicted upon sentient beings without justification. This would rule out pain-inflicting methods of abortion after the development of fetal sentience. If a late-term abortion has to be performed, then it seems reasonable to ensure that the fetus is not made to suffer unnecessarily, for example, by including some form of anesthetic or other means of preventing fetal pain as part of the medical procedure.

After all, whether sentience is necessary for moral status remains a matter of dispute. It can be argued that a pregnant woman has a duty to avoid behavior that might be harmful to fetal development, whether the fetus inside her body has acquired sentience or not. Consumption of alcohol, for instance, is known to have serious health risks on the fetus at all stages of its development. It is, therefore, reasonable to say that pregnant women have a moral duty to abstain from alcohol throughout pregnancy, for fear that drinking might cause harm to their not-yet-born children.

Potentiality

The strong pro-choice position holds that a fetus is nothing but a clump of cells (or tissue), and aborting an unwanted fetus is not much different than cutting one’s hair or trimming one’s fingernails. The main objection to this view is that the human fetus is not exactly like any other human cells or tissue because of its potential to develop into a person. While a human embryo may be pictured as a clump of cells that in no way resembles a fully formed human, what is special about it is that it has the potential to acquire all of the qualities that typically define a person.

Some anti-abortionists argue that abortion is morally wrong not because embryos and fetuses are already fully-functioning persons, but because they have the potential to become actual, fully-functioning persons. Proponents of this view admit that fetuses do lack certain morally important properties or capacities, but assert that they possess them potentially. On this view, although a fetus is not a person at this point, it will eventually develop, under normal circumstances, into a person. It should therefore be valued and respected for that potential and be accorded the same moral status and protection that we accord to persons.

Those who oppose the argument from potentiality might say that it is not normal to treat potential as though it was already realized. Someone who has the potential to become a millionaire cannot spend the money yet. An acorn has the potential to be an oak tree but not many buyers would pay the same for acorns as they would pay for oak trees. A caterpillar has the potential to become a butterfly but few nature lovers would accord the same value to caterpillars as to the butterflies they might become. Someone who has the potential to become a teacher is not yet a teacher, and should not be put in charge of lessons.

The question, then, is whether rights of any kind should be accorded to potential persons (i.e. fetuses). Proponents of the potentiality argument might say that potential possession of a right entails actual possession of it. If an entity has the potential to develop into a being that clearly has a given right, then this fact about it justifies conferring the right on it already. But such an argument seems unconvincing: it is patently clear that adults have rights and responsibilities that children or adolescents do not have. For example, the right to vote in elections may be granted, for good reasons, to citizens over 18, but not to younger individuals – even though most of them have the potential to reach the age of 18.

Defenders of the potentiality argument may retort that the right to vote (a legal right) should not be conflated with the right to life (a moral right). Some rights vary with respect to place or circumstances, while others do not. One may have the right to vote in Switzerland, but not in Mexico. One’s right to life, in contrast, does not vary with place or circumstance because it is a moral right that exists apart from any country’s legal system. To say that a fetus has a right to life is to acknowledge its moral status; that is, to recognize and respect its potential to develop capacities of a person in some specific time of the future.

An objection to this line of thinking is that a distinction has to be made between “capacity” and “potentiality.” Consider a lump of clay. It does not have the capacity to hold water, but it has the potentiality for that capacity – only when it is molded into a cup does it have the capacity for holding water. By the same token, there are crucial differences between actual and potential persons that may justify treating the former with greater respect than the latter. The fetus, for example, only has the potentiality for rational self-consciousness, whereas an actual person has the capacity for it already.

This is not to say that fetuses do not have moral status or rights of any kind. But it seems fair to say that the argument from potentiality alone is not sufficient for granting full moral status (or full moral rights) to fetuses. To put it another way, full moral respect should only be given to actual, fully-functioning persons who already possess those capacities relevant to moral status, such as rational self-consciousness. It follows that if conflicts arise between a mother (an actual person) and a fetus (a potential person) – for example, if a pregnancy is unwanted or medically dangerous – the former’s actual rights should prevail over whatever potential rights the latter might possess.

Future-like-ours

One version of the potentiality argument asserts that abortion is wrong because it prevents a being (the fetus) from actualizing its potential. In an essay titled “Why Abortion is Immoral” (1989), Don Marquis advances an argument that purports to show that abortion is seriously immoral in the exact same way that killing a mature human being is seriously immoral. He begins by explaining what it is that makes killing human beings wrong in general:

When I am killed, I am deprived of both of what I now value which would have been part of my future personal life, but also what I would come to value. Therefore, when I die, I am deprived of all of the value of my future. Inflicting this loss on me is ultimately what makes killing me wrong.

The best explanation for the wrongness of killing, according to Marquis, is that killing deprives the victims of their futures of value. What makes killing adult human beings a serious moral wrong is the loss to them of their valuable futures or, more specifically, of all the goods of their futures that they otherwise would have experienced. Marquis then goes on to say that killing a fetus is also seriously immoral because the fetus, too, can be said to have such a future of value:

The claim that the primary wrong-making feature of killing is the loss to the victim of the value of its future has obvious consequences for the ethics of abortion. The future of a standard fetus includes a set of experiences, projects, activities, and such which are identical with the futures of adult human beings and are identical with the futures of young children.

Marquis’ point is straightforward: If what makes killing us wrong is that it robs us of the valuable futures ahead of us, then abortion is also seriously immoral because it involves taking the life of a fetus and along with it all the future goods that it potentially could have enjoyed. The future-like-ours argument has a strong intuitive appeal because we were all fetuses once, and we know that fetuses, like infants, toddlers and ourselves, have futures of value ahead of them. Abortion is the intentional act of killing a fetus by robbing it of a valuable future like ours. As such, abortion can be deemed a serious moral wrong.

An argument against Marquis is that although fetuses may have futures like ours (a kind of potentiality), but they do not possess other morally relevant capacities such as rationality and self-awareness, and thus are excluded from full moral status. If all potential beings were to be granted a right to life simply in virtue of having a valuable future, then not only is abortion morally wrong but it is also immoral to prevent an ovum from being fertilized, whether by using contraceptives or by deliberately avoiding sexual intercourse when conception is possible.

Towards the end of his essay, Marquis responds to the contraception objection by drawing attention to a fundamental difference between abortion and contraception. What makes abortion wrong, in his view, is that it robs its victim of a valuable future, but the same is not true in the case of contraception, which does not involve taking the life of any actual victim or “subject of harm” because there is no life or conscious experience to speak of before the ovum is fertilized. Contraception is thus not morally equivalent to abortion.

Bodily Autonomy

Philosophical discussions of abortion tend to focus predominantly on the moral status of fetuses and whatever moral obligations others have towards them. Arguments in the abortion debate are typically divided into two opposing positions. Pro‐life advocates argue that all human beings, including those in the fetal stage of development, have intrinsic value that confers on them the right not to be unjustifiably killed. Supporters of the pro-choice position, in contrast, maintain that human fetuses lack certain morally relevant qualities that afford them any significant moral status or serious moral rights.

The argument from bodily autonomy shifts the focus of the abortion debate from the moral status of the fetus to the pregnant woman’s rights over her own body. Proponents of bodily autonomy believe that a woman has the right to decide what happens to her body, and as such is under no obligation to use her body to support a child she does not want.

In her well-known essay titled “A Defense of Abortion” (1971), Judith Jarvis Thomson argues that given a woman’s right to exercise control over her own body, abortion is in some circumstances permissible irrespective of the moral status of the fetus. Thomson grants for the sake of argument that the fetus is to count as having personhood status and endowed with a serious right to life, but then defends the permissibility of abortion by appeal to a thought experiment:

You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. [If he is unplugged from you now, he will die; but] in nine months he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.

Thomson argues that you would be justified to unplug yourself from the violinist even though this will cause his death. A person’s right to life, in her view, does not include the right to use another person’s body, and so by unplugging the violinist you do not violate his right to life but merely deprive him of something – the use of your body – to which he has no right. You have no duty to save the violinist’s life as long as you have not consented to devoting your body and your time to assist him, although it would be generous of you to do so; or as Thomson herself puts it: “[I]f you do allow him to go on using your kidneys, this is a kindness on your part, and not something he can claim from you as his due.”

The violinist scenario, in Thomson’s view, can be compared by analogy to abortion. For Thomson, abortion does not violate the fetus’ legitimate rights, but merely deprives the fetus of something – the use of the woman’s body and life-support functions – to which it has no right. The type of demands a fetus makes on the woman during pregnancy exceed the normal duties that any moral person is supposed to bear. Thus, if the woman chooses to terminate her pregnancy, she does not fail in her duty to the fetus. On the other hand, if she chooses to carry her pregnancy to term, she must be praised as a “Good Samaritan” who goes beyond her obligations.

In Thomson’s view, even if a fetus is to count as a person with full moral status and a serious right to life, it still does not follow that it has a right to draw sustenance from the pregnant woman. For Thomson, persons do not in general have a right to get what they need at the expense of the autonomy and well-being of others. What is at stake in the abortion debate, as Thomson sees it, is not the fetus’ moral status, but the mother’s bodily autonomy, i.e. the right to control what happens in or to her body.

Several objections have been advanced against Thomson’s violinist argument, suggesting in one way or another that a false analogy has been made between the violinist scenario and abortion. The most common of these objections is that the violinist scenario, involving a kidnapping, is analogous only to abortion after rape. In most cases of abortion, the pregnant women were not raped but had sexual intercourse voluntarily, and thus have tacitly consented to allowing the fetus to use her body. In other words, if a woman engaged in sex voluntarily, she has suspended her right to bodily autonomy by engaging in an act that brought the new being into existence.

Another objection that is often raised against the violinist argument is that there is a significant moral difference between killing and letting die. Most methods of abortion, it is said, involve deliberately taking the life of a fetus, or killing it intentionally; while unplugging the violinist causes death only as an unintended side-effect. Aborting a fetus, therefore, requires a stronger justification than detaching oneself from the violinist.

Other Considerations

If we are to acknowledge that a pregnant woman has a special relationship with the fetus she is carrying, we may also have to accept that they should have a right to make life-and-death decisions concerning the unborn child. However, even if we end up agreeing with Judith Jarvis Thomson and other champions of abortion rights that women should be allowed to choose whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, we still need to consider under what circumstances should abortion be seen as the best (or the least worst) course of action.

There are a variety of personal reasons why women seek abortion. A woman whose health is already at risk may not want to undergo the increased risk that carrying the fetus would impose on her. When the pregnancy constitutes a danger to the mother’s life or health, abortion may be viewed as the lesser of two evils. For example, chemotherapy for cancer treatment may cause a miscarriage, and yet the death of the fetus is probably viewed only as an unintended consequence of the treatment. In such cases, we naturally feel more sympathy and concern for the woman who has fully developed capacities and a network of established relationships than we do for a fetus which has neither.

Abortion on grounds of fetal abnormality is often seen as justifiable because it may be the only way to prevent the suffering that may accompany the birth of a defective child. In recent years, however, we have witnessed an increasingly vocal disability rights movement claiming that abortion on such grounds is morally objectionable in discriminating against people with disability. If it is agreed that human fetuses are persons, fetuses with disabling abnormalities have to be treated as disabled people. To allow abortion on the grounds that a fetus is abnormal, as such, is morally repugnant and tantamount to encouraging disrespect, hostility, and contempt for people with disability.

Alongside the risk to the mother’s health and the risk of fetal defect, another case for abortion is pregnancy resulting from rape or incest in which the prospect of carrying and giving birth to an unwanted child can be devastating to a woman. In fact, from the perspective of the pregnant woman, there is a multitude of circumstances in which abortion might be justifiable as a last resort. For example, a woman may already have several children and find it difficult to take care of yet another one; or she may get pregnant unexpectedly due to contraceptive failure at an inopportune time when she is preparing to embark on a career that requires hard work and dedication.

Access to safe abortion has been labeled as a fundamental human right by the International Women’s Health Coalition, which claims that: (1) a woman should have the choice to carry a pregnancy to term or not; (2) abortion services should be part of a comprehensive sexual health program; and (3) lack of funding and illegality do not reduce the number of abortions; they only serve to put the woman’s health in danger. Despite this, abortion is still illegal or difficult to access in many different parts of the world.

The Roman Catholic “Declaration on Procured Abortion” (1974) insists upon the responsibility of human communities to guarantee standards of living and social support systems such that “always and everywhere it may be possible to give every child coming into this world a welcome worthy of a person.” Concern for the child in the womb, if it is to be credible and consistent, must find expression in aid to families and unmarried mothers, support for children, legal equality for children born out of wedlock, and services to facilitate adoption; that is, “a whole positive policy must be put into force so that there will always be a concrete honorable and possible alternative to abortion.”

Suggested Readings:

1. Barbara MacKinnon & Andrew Fiala (2015) Ethics: Theory and Contemporary Issues (8th edition), Cengage Learning, Chapter 11.

2. Mary Anne Warren, ‘On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion’ (online)

3. Judith Jarvis Thomson, ‘A Defense of Abortion’ (online)

4. Don Marquis, ‘Why is Abortion Immoral’ (online)

5. ‘Abortion’ (online) in BBC Ethics Guide,

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