The pro-life argument from substantial identity: A defence

Bioethics

Volumn 18, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 249-263

  Lee, Patrick ^a  

^a FRANCISCAN UNIVERSITY OF STEUBENVILLE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CONCEPTION; EMBRYOLOGY; ETHICS; FERTILIZATION; HUMAN; HUMAN RIGHTS; IDENTITY; LIFE; MORALITY; REVIEW; SOCIOECONOMICS;

EID: 2942616519     PISSN: 02699702     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8519.2004.00393.x     Document Type: Review

References (33)

1. Patrick Lee. 1996. Abortion and Unborn Human Life. Washington, DC. Catholic University of America Press.
2. Dean Stretton. The Argument from Intrinsic Value: A Critique. Bioethics; 2000; 14: 228-239.
3. Jeffrey Reiman. 1999. Abortion and the Ways We Value Human Life. New York. Rowman and Littlefield: 79ff.
4. See Lee, op. cit. note 1, Chapter 3. In identical twinning a second human organism is generated with the splitting off of part of the original embryo. If humans are ever cloned, a new human organism will be generated with the fusion, and activation (partly by electrical stimulus) of the nucleus of a somatic cell and the cytoplasm of an ovum.
5. I b i d.
6. He then equated this meaning of 'intrinsically valuable' with: valuable independently of other people's desires or wants. But this is not quite correct, since a thing may be able to promote or lead to something good in itself (and hence instrumentally valuable), but not be valued by anyone.
7. Judith Thomson. Abortion. Boston Review 1995; 20. Available at: bostonreview.mit.edu/BR20.3/thomson.html. See also: Ronald Dworkin. 1992. Life's Dominion: An Argument about Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom New York. Random House: 22ff.
8. Judith Thomson. Abortion. Boston Review 1995; 20. Available at: bostonreview.mit.edu/BR20.3/thomson.html. See also: Ronald Dworkin. 1992. Life's Dominion: An Argument about Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom New York. Random House: 22ff.
9. See: Patrick Lee. 1998. Human Beings are Animals. In Natural Law and Moral Inquiry: Ethics, Metaphysics, and Politics in the Work of Germain Grisez. Robert George, ed. Washington, DC. Georgetown University Press: 135-151.
10. Lee, op. cit. note 1, p. 26.
11. Ibid. pp. 26-27.
12. The point that we are not mere vehicles for what is valuable in itself but that we, that is, the things that we are, are valuable, is still important. Sometimes people view human life as a mere means to bring about pleasant and interesting experiences, so that absent such positive experience and life has no value. This point refutes that view.
13. J.P. Moreland & Scott B. Rae. 2000. Body and Soul, Human Nature and the Crisis of Ethics. Downers Grove, IL. InterVarsity Press: 203-204.
14. Eric T. Olson. 1997. The Human Animal, Personal Identity without Psychology. New York. Oxford University Press: 86.
15. One might object that having interests is not a matter of degree but is on the contrary a nonarbitrary line. But by 'interest' those who deny that embryos are persons could not mean every tendency in a being toward a fulfilled state, since all living beings have interests in that sense. So, they would have to mean a conscious tendency, that is, a desire. But, as I pointed out above, it will have to be not an actual desire but the capacity for a desire. Then, such capacities will be in the same boat as a capacity for any mental function; that is, there will be varying degrees of it. In other words, what is said above about capacities for higher mental functions in general will apply to interests as well.
16. Joseph Fletcher. Indicators of Humanhood: A Tentative Profile of Man. Hastings Center Report 1972; 2: 1.
17. Stretton, op. cit. note 2, pp. 238-239.
18. Most discussions of 'cerebrum transplants' do not envisage transplanting into a nonhuman animal.
19. Reiman, op. cit. note 3, p. 79ff.
20. Ibid. p. 81.
21. A new organism also can come to be with the splitting of an embryo in the case of monozygotic twins, or, in the case of cloning, with the fusion of a somatic cell and an enucleated ovum (an ovum with its nucleus removed).
22. Jeffrey Reiman. 1997. Critical Moral Liberalism, Theory and Practice. New York. Rowman and Littlefield: 197; Reiman, op. cit. note 3, p. 87ff.
23. Jeffrey Reiman. 1997. Critical Moral Liberalism, Theory and Practice. New York. Rowman and Littlefield: 197; Reiman, op. cit. note 3, p. 87ff.
24. Reiman, op. cit. note 21, p. 197. Cf. Reiman, op. cit. note 3, pp. 104-108.
25. Reiman, op. cit. note 21, p. 197. Cf. Reiman, op. cit. note 3, pp. 104-108.
26. Don Marquis makes this point in: Don Marquis. Reiman on Abortion. Journal of Social Philosophy 1998; 28: 143-145. Reiman replied that Marquis had confused his position. His claim, he said, was not that consciously cared-about lives are to be valued, for these, Reiman concedes, can be valued symmetrically. Rather, said Reiman, 'I contend that we must value that beings who consciously care about the continuation of their lives get what they care about.' Jeffrey Reiman. Abortion, Infanticide, and the Changing Grounds of the Wrongness of Killing: Reply to Don Marquis's 'Reiman on Abortion.' Journal of Social Philosophy 1998; 28: 168-174, at 169. Yet, rather than finding an object that by its nature guarantees asymmetrical value, Reiman has simply defined the content of a valuing in such a way as to build into it the idea that its object is valued asymmetrically and so has begged the question. Moreover, it is clear that we value the continued living of a person (whether aware or not), and not just that a person get what(ever?) he cares about, because we obviously value the same thing that a conscious person desires for himself, and what a person desires for himself is simply his continued living, which is his very being.
27. Don Marquis makes this point in: Don Marquis. Reiman on Abortion. Journal of Social Philosophy 1998; 28: 143-145. Reiman replied that Marquis had confused his position. His claim, he said, was not that consciously cared-about lives are to be valued, for these, Reiman concedes, can be valued symmetrically. Rather, said Reiman, 'I contend that we must value that beings who consciously care about the continuation of their lives get what they care about.' Jeffrey Reiman. Abortion, Infanticide, and the Changing Grounds of the Wrongness of Killing: Reply to Don Marquis's 'Reiman on Abortion.' Journal of Social Philosophy 1998; 28: 168-174, at 169. Yet, rather than finding an object that by its nature guarantees asymmetrical value, Reiman has simply defined the content of a valuing in such a way as to build into it the idea that its object is valued asymmetrically and so has begged the question. Moreover, it is clear that we value the continued living of a person (whether aware or not), and not just that a person get what(ever?) he cares about, because we obviously value the same thing that a conscious person desires for himself, and what a person desires for himself is simply his continued living, which is his very being.
28. Ibid. p. 192.
29. Ibid. p. 196.
30. Reiman also argues that the foetus cannot be valued as an individual because it only has, or we are only aware of, 'a negative particularity.' He claims there is no reasonable ground for valuing a particular embryo asymmetrically, 'because, until the embryo develops recognizable distinctive traits, its particularity is purely negative. We simply know that it has a distinct genetic code that is different from other ones. We do not know the positive content of this difference.' (Reiman, ibid. p. 171.) Yet it is not necessary to know what a person's uniqueness consists in in order to know that she is unique. Persons hitherto unknown to me obviously deserve as much respect as anyone I know. Moreover, some of the positive unique traits of this embryo or foetus are known: that she was born of these parents, at this moment, with these unique opportunities and history. But perhaps Reiman means that there is no uniqueness, except of a purely physical sort. But to appeal to this idea to support his position begs the question, since it would presuppose precisely what is denied, namely, that only conscious traits can have a significant role in making one unique or valuable.
31. Thomson, op. cit. note 7, p. 194. The use of the term 'fertilized egg' is inaccurate. Once fertilisation has occurred, what exists is simply not an egg any longer, but a distinct, actively developing, whole (though new and immature) human organism.
32. Human beings with brain damage still have the basic constitution oriented to developing the immediately exercisable capacity for such acts, which is why they are rightly recognised as human beings and persons. An organic defect may prevent them from ever (in this life) developing the capacities they do have in virtue of the kind of entity they are.
33. Someone in a reversible coma has an internal defect, not just an unsuitable environment, preventing her from actualising her capacities for higher mental functions; so she lacks precisely what Stretton, Thomson and others claim one needs in order to be a person.