Creation ethics: The moral status of early fetuses and the ethics of abortion

Philosophy and Public Affairs

Volumn 28, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 310-324

  Harman, Elizabeth ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ANALYTICAL APPROACH; ARTICLE; BEGINNING OF HUMAN LIFE; BEHAVIOR; EMPATHY; ETHICS; FETUS; GENETICS AND REPRODUCTION; HUMAN; INDUCED ABORTION; LIFE; LOVE; MENTAL STRESS; MORALITY; MOTHER FETUS RELATIONSHIP; MOTIVATION; PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH; PHILOSOPHY; PREGNANCY; PREGNANT WOMAN; PRENATAL DEVELOPMENT; PRENATAL EXPOSURE; PROBABILITY; REPRODUCTION; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SPONTANEOUS ABORTION; THERAPEUTIC ABORTION; UNCERTAINTY;

ANALYTICAL APPROACH; GENETICS AND REPRODUCTION; PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH;

ABORTION, INDUCED; ABORTION, LEGAL; ABORTION, SPONTANEOUS; BEGINNING OF HUMAN LIFE; EMBRYONIC AND FETAL DEVELOPMENT; EMPATHY; ETHICS; FETUS; HUMANS; INTENTION; LIFE; LOVE; MATERNAL-FETAL RELATIONS; MORAL OBLIGATIONS; MOTIVATION; PHILOSOPHY; PREGNANCY; PREGNANCY TRIMESTERS; PREGNANT WOMEN; PRENATAL EXPOSURE DELAYED EFFECTS; PROBABILITY; REPRODUCTION; SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY; STRESS, PSYCHOLOGICAL; UNCERTAINTY;

EID: 0033187081     PISSN: 00483915     EISSN: 10884963     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1088-4963.1999.00310.x     Document Type: Article

References (16)

1. Someone might believe that up until the moment of birth, or for some time after, an individual has no intrinsic properties that themselves confer moral status on it. While the arguments I make about early fetuses might be put forward about fetuses at any stage of development or about young babies, they are not written with such applications in mind.
2. For simplicity, I will sometimes talk as if all early fetuses fall into these two categories. But there is a class of early fetuses not addressed by the Actual Future Principle: those early fetuses that will die after they have developed some intrinsic properties that themselves confer moral status but before they have become persons. I leave open to further discussion what a proponent of the Actual Future Principle should say about the moral status of these early fetuses.
3. Warren Quinn ("Abortion: Identity and Loss," Philosophy & Public Affairs 13, no. 1 [Winter 1984]: 24-54) makes the point that it is numerically one and the same individual which is a fetus and then later a person. However, Quinn neglects to recognize that this fact only applies to some fetuses. He claims that the fact that the person is "already present" (p. 40) in the fetus is reason to think that all early fetuses have some moral status. But this fact gives us no reason to think that fetuses that will not become persons have some moral status. The person is not "already present" in one of these fetuses; there is and will be no person to be so present. The Actual Future Principle recognizes the moral status of early fetuses that will become persons; it is precisely these early fetuses in which persons can be said to be already present.
4. Eric T. Olson ("Was I Ever a Fetus?" Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57 [1997]: 95-110)
5. points out that contemporary philosophers commonly accept two incompatible views: that the criterion of identity for persons is psychological, and that we persons were once fetuses. It is clear that we do not bear the appropriate psychological relations to the fetuses that we commonly believe became us, so one of the views must give. I agree with Olson that it is the criterion of identity that must give. What we are is biological living organisms, with the same criteria of identity we would apply to other animals. Questions as to which future contingencies are as good as my own survival, and which future lives I should anticipate as my own, do turn on the appropriate psychological relations; but this is a distinct matter from the question what is identical with me. (See Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984].) A related point is this: it is a mistake to claim that I am essentially a person. I was once a fetus, and that fetus might never have become a person. Therefore, I am something that might never have been a person. I am something that is a person now, but I was not always a person - and I may well not always be a person in the future (i.e., if I end up in a vegetative state before dying).
6. It might be claimed that early abortion is wrong (or requires some moral justification) because the abortion deprives the fetus of its future. Peter K. McInerney ("Does a Fetus Already have a Future-Like-Ours?" The Journal of Philosophy 87 [1990]: 264-68)
7. defends against this claim by appealing to the fact that fetuses lack "mental life" and cannot plan or "control" their futures, unlike persons (p. 266). McInerney claims that fetuses bear a different relation to their futures from persons, such that a person "already has" (p. 265) a future, though a fetus does not; therefore, a fetus is not deprived of its future by an abortion. Contra McInerney, I think we must accept that abortion deprives fetuses of possible futures that would be good. In this sense, abortion can be seen as a loss for the fetus - as bad for the fetus. However, this badness need not matter morally, because the fetuses in question lack moral status. (Interestingly, the reasons McInerney gives in support of his argument are reasons to think fetuses lack intrinsic properties that themselves confer moral status.) By contrast, smoking during a pregnancy that will be carried to term, is bad for the fetus and therefore matters morally, because the fetus has some moral status. It might be claimed that early abortion requires some moral justification not because the early fetus that dies in the abortion has some moral status, but because the early fetus's life has intrinsic value. I take the following attitude toward this view I don't think we should make a claim like "life has intrinsic value" unless we are forced to, unless we have good positive reasons to make such a claim or we find such a claim necessary to explain everything we want to explain. Ronald Dworkin (Life's Dominion: An Argument about Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom [New York: Vintage, 1994]) claims than an advocate of a liberal view on abortion needs to posit that life has intrinsic value in order to explain why it is reasonable to regret an abortion; my argument for claim (13) below rejects Dworkin's argument.
8. It is consistent with the very liberal view on the ethics of abortion that some early abortions may require moral justification, when they have particular aspects that not every early abortion need have. The very liberal view merely claims that an action will never require moral justification simply in virtue of being an early abortion.
9. It might be objected that we cannot really love something, such as an early fetus, that we know so little about. I do claim that we can love early fetuses; I claim that this is very common. While our love for early fetuses cannot reach the depth and complexity of our love for persons, it is real love directed at a particular individual. The couple knows that there is a living being in the womb of the pregnant woman, and they have attitudes toward that being. They are not merely anticipating loving their future child. The fact that the fetus is itself the beginning of their child is reason to love it now. Furthermore, the couple does know some things about the fetus: depending on how long into pregnancy fetuses are early fetuses in my sense (a point I have left open), the couple may be able to hear the fetus's heartbeat, see ultrasound pictures of it, and even feel it move.
10. Rosalind Hursthouse ("Virtue Theory and Abortion," Philosophy & Public Affairs 20, no. 3 [Summer 1991]: 223-46) argues that "proponents of the view that deliberate abortion is just like an appendectomy" run into inconsistency when faced with miscarriage: "to react to people's grief over miscarriage by saying, or even thinking, 'What a fuss about nothing!' would be callous and light-minded" (p. 238). My argument for claim (8) shows that proponents of the very liberal view need not react this way.
11. Suppose a woman, Julie, smokes during pregnancy, intending to abort and reasonably believing that she will be able to obtain an abortion. Then things occur such that Julie would have to go to extraordinary means to obtain an abortion. It might seem that Julie is obligated to go to those extraordinary means because otherwise she will have done something wrong: i.e., harmed the early fetus by smoking. I deny this. What Julie ought to do in this situation is no different from what she ought to do if the fetus had been similarly harmed by some accidental process (I am not here taking any stand on whether we have any obligations to abort damaged fetuses). The worry seems to presuppose the following principle: our present actions are constrained by the condition that we make it such that none of our earlier actions in fact caused morally relevant harm. I am not convinced of this principle.
12. Some may worry that the Actual Future Principle attributes implausible "godlike" powers to us, in that we can determine the moral status of other beings. However, there is nothing godlike about our ability to determine the future, so the worry must be that the future should not be relevant to something's moral status. I respond to this worry in discussing claim (10), but two further points are relevant. It may seem that all beings have their moral statuses simply in virtue of their present intrinsic properties. However, human beings at the end of their lives may plausibly be said to have their moral statuses in virtue of their pasts as well as their present states. Furthermore, some early fetuses (those that will become persons) are unusual in that their present intrinsic properties are much less morally significant than the intrinsic properties they will come to have; this is not true of persons, and it can explain why the moral statuses of early fetuses and persons would be determined differently.
13. Dworkin (in Life's Dominion) makes the very argument I have described (and will now reject). He poses the following rhetorical questions as challenges to the claim that nothing bad happens in an abortion: "Why should abortion raise any moral issue at all. . . . Why is abortion then not like a tonsillectomy? Why should a woman feel any regret after an abortion? Why should she feel more regret than after sex with contraception?" (p. 34).
14. Sarah Stroud ("Dworkin and Casey on Abortion," Philosophy & Public Affairs 25, no. 2 [Spring 1996]: 140-70) criticizes Dworkin's claim (in Life's Dominion) that the state has an interest in fostering moral deliberation and a recognition of moral responsibility for morally weighty actions such as having an abortion. Dworkin thinks this implies that the state can require women to think about alternatives to abortion, by imposing waiting periods and required distribution of information about such alternatives. Stroud points out that the same rationale could justify the state's legally mandating parental or spousal consent of the continuation of a pregnancy or requiring that pregnant women read about the arguments for abortion. My claims go further than Stroud's. She merely points out that the moral weight some people stress about abortion also exists in the failure to abort; I deny that this moral weight is present in abortion.
15. Hugh LaFollette ("Licensing Parentsm," in Morality and Moral Controversies, ed. John Arthur [Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997], pp. 442-49) suggests that "the state should require all parents to be licensed" (p. 442). He argues that we presently regulate "any activity that is potentially harmful to others and requires certain demonstrated competence for its safe performance" (p. 443) such as driving a car or being a surgeon, and that parenting meets this criterion. LaFollette never comments on a central assumption of his suggestion: that creating a child is something that is chosen, that can be avoided, and that is thereby a candidate for regulation. His suggestion presupposes exactly what I here claim: that creation is something we choose, for which we arc morally responsible.
16. I here deny the following claim: whenever someone has an early abortion, she ought to both deliberate seriously and recognize her moral responsibility for aborting. I am not myself making the stronger claim that it is never the case that one ought to deliberate seriously or recognize one's moral responsibility for a particular early abortion. This may be true of an abortion that has some features that not every early abortion need have. (See footnote 5.)