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Is Abortion Morally Permissble?
by AGinsberg
10-22-14 (UTC)

Although, I do come to a conclusion on this issue at the end of this
essay, the point of this essay is more to raise some questions than to
take a firm stance on the issue of abortion. This essay probably isn't
as inclusive as it should be. This essay does not raise questions
about father's rights, although if abortion is criminalised, that
doesn't matter much.

    A common argument amongst those who condone abortion is that a
woman has the right to do what they wish to their body. I agree that
people have the right to do what they wish to their body. I also
think, however, that people ought not do physical harm to someone
without their consent.

    If we say "All people have the right to do what they want with
their body.", then if we consider a fetus a person, we must say that
they have the right to their own body. The fetus's rights are often
ignored by the defenders of abortion, but I think it should be
addressed.

    For now, I will assume that a fetus is a person. Although, I don't
think it necessarily matters if it is a "person". [1] If the fetus is
a person and it has a right to it's body then does the simple fact
that is dependent on someone else or that fact that is is inside and
attached to the person mean the fetus forfeits it's bodily rights?

    Some might say that the fetus is nothing but a parasite and
because of this the woman has the right to kill it. I think we need to
address why the fetus is in this situation before we can answer the
question of it being justified murder because of it's parasitic
nature. Assuming that the woman was not raped and assuming that there
was not any form of birth control used, the reason the fetus is even
alive is because of what might be considered negligence.

    Birth control is fairly accessible and the risks of sex are fairly
well known, at least in the USA, so would it be reasonable to expect
that someone would use birth control if they did not want children? I
would think it is fairly reasonable. If the reason the pregnancy
occurred is simply because the parties involved simply do not like
birth control or were out of condoms, etc., I would say that this is
negligence.

    I think that the primary goal of any government should be to
secure the most amount of freedom for people. [2] It would be a
freedom for people to have sexual intercourse without any sort of
protection even when they don't want children, but what happens when
because of that act the woman becomes pregnant and wants to take away
the fetus's freedom by killing it? The alternative to killing it would
be to take care of the child once it is born or to give the child to
someone else to take care of them.

    Some people would say that if the child is born it might have a
bad life because the parents might not be able to take care of it and
the adopted parents might not be very good (or it may not be adopted
at all.) I too used to concern myself with this question, but I now
do not think this question is of much importance. Whether or not the
child might end up in a shitty life, it still did not consent to be
killed and therefore, if we were to treat the fetus like a normal
person, most would agree that it shouldn't be killed without it's
consent. If the fetus is born and really does end up having a bad
life, it could choose to kill itself. [3]

    In their essay ``A Defense of Abortion'', Judith Thomson addresses
the responsibility of the mother and says that one could say "by the
same token" that the women should get a hysterectomy or shouldn't
leave the house without an army because they could be raped. [4] This
is, however, quite a leap from the responsibility argument. It is not
an excessive burden to use protection, especially when you consider
the possible consequences, unlike an army or a hysterectomy is. We
could look at a very extreme example where the woman knows that going
to a certain part of town means you are likely to be raped and say,
that this woman doesn't have a need to go there, but does so for fun
(excluding the reason of wanting someone to sexually attack her.) [5]
Even in this extreme example, the rapist still did something to her
without her consent and is the real person responsible if she becomes
pregnant and I would consider it unreasonable to say someone does not
have the right to travel somewhere because of the possibility of them
being raped.

    Some might say that it doesn't matter whether killing the fetus is
wrong or not since the woman's right to her own body is more
important. This leads to some problems though, assuming the fetus is a
person, this would mean we are favoring one kind of person over
another kind, therefore leading to an inequality problem. Also, if the
fetus is a person, I would say that it is not simply a part of the
woman's body, it is attached to her body, but the fetus did not put
itself in that situation.

    Because of gross negligence, a being was created and the creator
(at least, one of them) wants to kill it, should they be allowed to? I
would say, no. The people involved could have taken some reasonable
steps to prevent the situation, and considering the stakes involved,
viz., the lose of someone's life, I would say they don't really have
the right to have the abortion. However, the question of whether or
not this should be illegal is more complex.

    There isn't negligence involved in cases of rape or in cases where
they used some form of birth control[6], so I would say in these cases
abortion should probably be permitted under the law, although, I
certainly wouldn't say it should be encouraged. A problem with
criminalizing abortion only when there was negligence involved is,
that I do not think the negligence would be easy to prove. The father
might testify that there was negligence, but in most cases, I do not
think there would be much other evidence to go off of. [7]

    In cases of rape or in cases where birth control was used, while I
still think the fetus's rights should be looked at, I think because of
lack of fault (negligence) of the person seeking the abortion, and
because of the parasitic nature of the fetus, it should probably not
be illegal. While, this does lead to a practical problem, there still
may be a possibility to establish that there was indeed negligence,
because of this I think it may be a good idea to at least have the law
on the books.

    So far, we have assumed that a fetus is a person and therefore
should have rights under the law. Arguing under this assumption will
probably not please many, so I will address the issue of personhood.
First, I think it's worth asking, why do humans (or "people") deserve
more rights in the first place? If we say that people should have more
rights because they are intellectually superior to non-human animals,
then we could say that killing some people, not just infants or
fetuses would be permissible because some animals are intellectually
superior to some humans. At a point of the pregnancy, the fetus could
live outside of the womb, so why are fetuses at the point not
"people"? The first appearance of brain waves in the lower brain is at
6-8 weeks of gestation, is the fetus a person then?

    I do not have a satisfying answer about whether or not a fetus is
a person. If a person is any human, then a fetus is certainly a
person. I am not aware of a good argument for certain humans
(including non-fetuses) being people, so I don't have much to refute.

    In conclusion, I think that fetuses conceived due to negligence
should be protected from the mother killing them, but this may be hard
to enforce. Because of lack of fault and because of a self-defence
argument, I think fetuses conceived due to rape or other non-negligent
reasons, should probably not be protected from abortions under the
law.

Notes:
[1] Personally, I think non-human animals deserve rights too.
[2] I wrote more about this in ``Dialectics of Freedom''.
[3] This statement may be controversial because people seem to think
they have the right to tell people whether they should be allowed to
kill themselves. If a person has a right to their own life and body
does it not follow that the person has the right to end it as well?
[4] From section 4 of ``A Defense of Abortion'', "Someone may argue
that you are responsible for its rooting, that it does have a right to
your house, because after all you could have lived out your life with
bare floors and furniture, or with sealed windows and doors. But this
won't do--for by the same token anyone can avoid a pregnancy due to
rape by having a hysterectomy, or anyway by never leaving home without
a (reliable!) army."
[5] If the woman goes there specifically so that someone will have sex
with her and knows that no protection will be used, I would group this
together will plain consensual sex in the context of abortion.
[6] One could argue that the people could maybe use more birth control
or something like that, but that's not negligence since they took
reasonable measures to prevent it.
[7] By assuming this is "normal" sex with only two parties involved, I
am not trying to condemn other sexual practices, but that kind of sex
does seem to be the most popular, which is why I'm making the
assumption.

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