2.4.3: Arguments that abortion is often not wrong

Finally, we turn to arguments that abortion is generally not wrong.

No good arguments that it is wrong

A first argument depends on the discussion so far. If you are familiar with the most important arguments given to believe that abortion is wrong, and believe with good reason that they are unsound, then that gives a reason to think that abortion is not wrong. In general, a good reason to think that an action is permissible is that there is no good reason to think it’s wrong. How this general strategy is applied to this issue depends on your evaluation of the arguments discussed above, and any other arguments against abortion that you think are worth critically evaluating.

Early fetuses aren’t conscious & feeling: personhood and harm

The next positive argument in defense of abortion depends on the scientific facts about early fetuses that we have emphasized over and over: they are not conscious, are not aware of anything, cannot feel anything, and so on: they are and have been entirely mindless so far. The proposal is that beings like this are very different from beings like us and babies and children, who are conscious: despite being the same kind of beings, we are also different kinds of beings.

These observations motivate these principles:

If a being is and has always been completely unconscious, it’s definitely not a person. And if something is definitely not a person, then it’s not wrong to kill it.

This proposal is supported by, among other sources, the idea that if someone permanently ceases to be a person, it can be OK to bring about their death, perhaps even by killing their body, since their being alive is doing them no good. This is related to this proposal:

If a being is and has always been completely unconscious, it really cannot be harmed, which requires some “turn for the worse” for that being. There is no “for that being,” yet, so things can’t get worse for it. So killing doesn’t harm it.

Given the fundamental moral significance of consciousness and all that results from that, that early fetuses lack it is highly relevant to how they can be treated.

The right to life & the right to someone else’s body

Finally, suppose much of the above is mistaken and that fetuses indeed are persons with the right to life. 

Some think that this clearly shows that abortion is wrong. Philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson famously argued in 1971 that this isn’t the case. She observes that people often have a naive understanding of what the right to life is a right to. She makes her case with a number of clever examples. First, the violinist:

You wake up in a hospital, “plugged in” to a famous violinist, who needs to use your kidneys to stay alive. You were kidnapped for this purpose. If you unplug, he will die. But it’s only for nine months.

Does the violinist have a right to your kidneys? Do you violate his right to life if you unplug, and he dies? Most would say ‘no’, which suggests that the right to life is not a right to anyone else’s body, even if that body is necessary for your life to continue. This suggests that fetuses, even if they were persons with the right to life, would not have a right to the pregnant woman’s body. So until there is a way to remove fetuses and place them in other wombs, women have a right to abortion. This even suggests another definition:

Abortion is the intentional withholding of what a fetus needs to live, to end a pregnancy.

Some respond the violinist case is somewhat like a pregnancy that results from rape, since there’s no consent involved, but that pregnancies that don’t result from rape do give fetuses the right to the woman’s body because, they argue, the woman has done something that she knows might result in someone existing who is dependent on her.

While Thompson had cases to address this type of concern – if someone falls in your house because you opened a window, they don’t have the right to be there, even though you did something that contributed to their being there – we should notice that the response appears to be question-begging. Compare doing something that results in the existence of a new plant that is dependent on you: you wouldn’t be obligated to provide for that plant. To assume that things are different with fetuses is, well, to assume what can’t be merely assumed, especially if we don’t already believe that early fetuses are persons with the right to life.

It should be made clear that even if the fetus doesn’t have a right to the pregnant woman’s body, there could be other rights or other obligations that could make abortion wrong nevertheless: e.g., if pregnancy were just 9 hours perhaps women would be obligated to be Good Samaritans towards them, even if fetuses didn’t have a right to the woman’s resources and assistance. What’s important though is the right to life and personhood are not the “slam dunk” against abortion that people often think they are.

“What ifs”: Rape and later-term abortions

We are now in a good position to address some of the “what if” situations regarding abortions.

First, rape: if early abortions are generally not wrong, then abortions due to rape are especially not wrong. While people sometimes consider rape a special excuse that justifies abortion, if abortions generally aren’t wrong, no special excuse is needed. (It is worthwhile to notice that those who think that all fetuses are persons and so argue that abortion is wrong should think abortion is wrong in cases of rape also, since a person is a person, irrespective of their origins).

Second, later-term abortions: these might affect conscious and feeling fetuses badly, but fortunately these abortions are rare and evidence suggest that they are done only for justifying medical reasons (Google for harrowing personal stories of women having later abortions, due to medical difficulties, including fetal abnormalities incompatible with life). But if any far later abortions are done for frivolous reasons, they could be morally wrong, since it’s wrong to cause serious pain for no good reason.

Should laws be created to ban any potential later abortions done for trivial reasons? Again, not all wrongdoing should be illegal, but – most importantly – a ban on these potential abortions would surely have a negative impact on actual later abortions done for legitimate medical reasons. If the justifiability of any later abortions had to be proven in court, or people had to go through the criminal justice system to approve an emergency medical procedure, that would have very bad effects, given the speed, inefficiency and occasional incompetence of courts. Involving the police and the legal system in private medical decisions would also be very bad for all, especially vulnerable groups: people of color, immigrants, and poor people.