Welcome friends!
I think I’d like to take a break from my usual topics this week and take a few moments to discuss my views on abortion, since it seems to be one of those high profile issues that tends to divide liberals and social conservatives. Yeah, I know, me too. But it had to happen some time, so let’s just focus for a few minutes and get through it together, shall we?
OK, well, let’s just start off the discussion by saying I think it’s pretty clear no one really likes the idea of abortion. I think everyone would probably agree in a perfect world there would be no abortion, no cost to not having an abortion, and no reason for anyone to ever have an abortion. Unfortunately, we’re not in a perfect world so this line of thinking doesn’t get us very far. In the real world an unwanted pregnancy can cause all kinds of hardships and difficulty for the woman involved and probably for other people as well, such as the husband or boyfriend, their respective families, etc. One can infer these difficulties can sometimes be quite serious because we know in the days before abortion was legal some women would risk their lives to have illegal abortions performed by people who didn’t really have the proper medical training to handle complications. Now don’t get all excited. I’m not saying I support people breaking the law. I’m just saying I think we can infer there is sometimes a significant cost to unwanted pregnancy.
I suppose the significance of this cost is the first point of difference between conservatives and liberals. Setting aside for the moment the issue of the morality of actually having an abortion, which I’ll get to in a moment, I have the idea many social conservatives view the costs associated with unwanted pregnancy as a just punishment for the crime of having sex for reasons other than procreation or perhaps for having sex without taking proper birth control precautions. I threw in the former because social conservatives are often quite religious and there seems to me to be a long standing anti-sex position in Western religion that basically suggests one should avoid having sex unless absolutely necessary. So, for example, priests and monks in some Christian sects are expected to be celibate, Jesus Christ is said to have been born without the usual human sexual process, etc. (Incidentally, I think this line of thinking is behind much of social conservatives’ famous animosity toward gay people: the idea that people are having “unnecessary” sex just sets them on edge.) As a humanist I find it all a little odd but there you are. Anyway, I think this anti-sex (except for procreation) sentiment is pretty strong in conservatives circles. Just as an example, a few years back I think there was some move to not teach teenaged kids about safe sex but instead simply insist they abstain from sex entirely. You know something funny has to be going on there. Since when is ignorance ever better than knowledge? Anyway, I think in some ways the issue of abortion might fit into this same general pattern. I mean, women who feel the need to have an abortion apparently have had sex for reasons other than wanting to have children. Maybe they enjoyed it, or maybe it brought them closer to their partners, whatever. Therefore, I think the conservative argument may be if they have an unwanted pregnancy then they’re only getting poetic justice in the form of divine punishment by baby. Oh course, this type of reasoning may only be relevant to extreme conservatives. I suppose some other conservatives are just saying, look, one can have sex for purposes other than procreation, knock yourself out, but we have sex control available, so if women can’t be bothered to take the necessary precautions they deserve to be punished by baby on that account.
So I suppose the first thing to establish is I don’t think I really agree with this whole idea of pregnancy as a just punishment for sexual wrongdoing. First of all, as a humanist, I don’t really share the anti-sex bias I see in much of conservative thinking. You know, life is short, sex is enjoyable, and it can help one connect with other people, which is so important and also often so difficult. So I certainly don’t think anyone deserves to be punished for having sex for reasons other than procreation. The argument about being responsible for using birth control if one is intending to have sex for reasons other than procreation seems a little stronger to me. I mean, how difficult is it to use precautions anyway? On the other hand, I recognize there are some practical difficulties involved. I don’t intend to make a catalog but here are a few things that occur to me off the top of my head. First, we’re talking about sex here, not buying a computer. Sexual feelings are funny: they come and go and they’re tied in with emotions and when you get that particular mix all types of funny things are liable to happen. Second, we have more than one person involved and when you have two people in a close relationship (well, at the time it must be rather close) then maybe one person does something to go along with the other person even if that isn’t what that person would normally have chosen to do. Third, birth control methods are generally not infallible even if one is trying one’s best. Fourth, if you’re operating under a regime like that espoused by many conservatives in which teenage kids don’t even have proper sex education they might not even know about the various birth control methods (or even about safe sex in general). So, yes, I agree people should be held responsible for their mistakes but I think we also have to acknowledge human nature and the peculiar features of the subject we’re talking about and just admit this is an area where people are probably unusually likely to make some errors of judgment.
I’m not entirely sure I agree with the idea that people who make errors involving birth control should be punished at all, but I’m definitely not on board with the idea that punishment, if necessary, should take the form of an unwanted pregnancy. As I suggested before the evidence seems to indicate the costs of an unwanted pregnancy can be very high, so much so that young women in the past have risked their lives to get illegal abortions. So if that’s the punishment, then it seems vastly disproportionate to the crime to me. Then we have the equity side of the issue. You know, in this type of case I would think the male would have equal blame or perhaps the lion’s share of the blame depending on the specifics of the case, but I believe the cost of an unwanted pregnancy typically falls mostly on the woman and maybe (if she’s lucky) the woman’s family, particularly in cases where the man and woman are not married. I might be wrong, but I think what tends to happen in the real world is the woman has the baby and the man runs for the hills. That hardly seems fair to me. If we’re talking about punishing people who don’t use birth control, well, both the male and female could have used birth control, so shouldn’t they both be punished? And then of course we have the whole idea of using a baby as a means to punish someone. Now to me, having a baby brought into the world to punish someone hardly seems fair to the baby at all. Babies and children should be brought into this world to be loved and cherished not resented as a form of penance or as a constant reminder of youthful mistakes. So, to me, if you want to discuss punishing people for having unwanted pregnancies then let’s talk about fining both parties involved, or even tossing them in jail for a few months or something like that, but let’s separate that out from the issue from the issue of the morality of abortion, shall we?
OK, well, having gotten the whole just punishment idea out of the way let me move on to what I really wanted to discuss in the first place: the morality of abortion. Now make no mistake about it, if I thought abortion were immoral then I wouldn’t really be very concerned about the costs of not having an abortion (that is, of an unwanted pregnancy) because I think people should do the right thing whether it’s costly for them to do so or not. So let me try to think through the morality of abortion. Now as I’ve discussed in many of my previous posts I believe the liberal ethos suggests one should be able to do as one pleases unless one’s actions have a significant impact on the welfare of other people, in which case you have to move on to some type of more specific moral argument to dispose of the resulting interpersonal conflict. So I suppose that’s the first issue: what does the liberal ethos say about this situation? Unfortunately, that’s where the issue gets complicated. Because in this case the implications of the liberal ethos are simply not entirely clear to me. The difficulty has to do with the standing of a fetus as a “person” for purposes of applying the liberal ethos and I don’t know about you but I find that issue to be a little tricky. It’s also rather unusual. Usually when one runs into conceptual difficulties trying to apply the liberal ethos the difficulties involve what we mean by significant impact. However, in this case the impact on the fetus is clearly significant. The problem arises at the relatively unusually point of determining the status of the fetus as a person.
I think we can all agree if a fetus is left to develop then it has a high probability of eventually emerging from the womb a living baby. I mean, it’s certainly not guaranteed. Things can happen during development or even during childbirth. But the usual case is that a fetus will at some point become what we call a baby. So no problem there. I think it’s easy to get bogged down in terminology at this point so I’d like to just say a few words about that. To me there’s a big difference between a fetus and a baby, which I suppose is why we have different words for them, but I guess you could also consider a fetus as an early stage of a baby and therefore think of it as a type of baby. That’s fine with me, but if you’re doing that then I think you can’t just lump all babies together if you think the characteristics of the type of baby you’re talking about have some bearing on moral issues involving that baby. I mean, some babies have the characteristics of a fetus and some do not. We get into similar issues with terms like “person” and “human being” or whatever. Again, I tend to think of a fetus as something that will develop into a person but if you want to consider it a special form of person that’s fine with me as long as we don’t lose sight of the fact it’s also a fetus. I mean, we can call it a person but it’s a person with the characteristics of a fetus.
I suppose it’s obvious where I’m headed with this but let me spell it out anyway. I think there are some characteristics of a fetus at certain stages of its development that make it a little difficult for me to determine its moral standing. Those characteristics have to do with things like having a brain, consciousness, self awareness, etc. Those types of considerations seem morally relevant to me even when thinking about a fully formed adult human. For example, if someone is brain dead and being kept alive artificially do I consider stopping treatment murder? Well, no, I guess I don’t think so because to me having a functioning brain is important in this case. That is to say, I suppose I don’t think a person without a functioning brain has the same moral standing as a person with a functioning brain. So why shouldn’t the same considerations apply to a fetus? Actually, the case seems even stronger in the case of a fetus because I think a fetus at some point does not yet even have a brain. So I guess to me a fetus at some early stage of development just doesn’t really have the same moral standing as a fully developed human being. If left to develop and with a bit of luck it might get there but we’re talking about when it’s a fetus not when it has developed into something else. Now of course at some point even a fetus will indeed develop a rudimentary brain and may begin to have some thought or self-awareness and then I guess to me its moral standing becomes rather different and more in line with that of anyone else with a functioning brain, and I would think we would then have to get into more complicated moral discussions about the rights of this more fully developed fetus and the rights of the woman carrying the fetus. You know, that issue isn’t necessarily clear cut either. For example, what if the mother’s life is in danger and the fetus is not viable outside the womb? Well, I don’t know. That’s a tough one. But that’s not what I’m discussing here.
Now I understand some other people don’t really think about this issue this way. For example, some people don’t think it’s important for someone to have a functioning brain when they consider that person’s moral standing, so I suppose they would consider stopping life support for a brain dead person to be a form of murder. One line I’ve heard is that every human life has the same moral standing and human life begins at conception so there you are. I understand that might make perfect sense according to certain theologies or whatever but as I’ve already suggested it just doesn’t make a huge amount of sense to me. And then some people focus on characteristics other than having a functioning brain. For example, I seem to recall at one point hearing people talking about stopping a beating heart. I don’t know but that seems a little bit off base to me. If ever I’m brain dead please feel free to go ahead and stop my beating heart. It’s OK. I don’t think it’s necessary to spend valuable medical resources on behalf of my beating heart if my brain is no longer there to appreciate it. And when we get into the non-human realm we seem to be stopping beating hearts all over the place so really I think we’re going down a bit of a blind alley here. (I know in Western religious thought there’s a huge chasm between humans and other animals in terms of one’s moral responsibilities so maybe not all beating hearts are equally significant but I’ve never really followed that either, unless we’re talking about beating hearts in conjunction with human brains and consciousness and self awareness and that type of thing. Otherwise we’re just saying human hearts are special because we say they are, which doesn’t seem all that convincing to me. Anyway, I wouldn’t want to try to explain it to an intelligent and self aware non-human extraterrestrial, if there is any such thing. I suppose I’ll have to discuss that some other day.)
So, to sum up, I think the liberal ethos suggests women should be able to choose to have an abortion or not at some early stage of the development of a fetus before it has developed the characteristics I think give it standing as a person with competing interests. We have good indirect evidence that the costs associated with an unwanted pregnancy can be quite high and I don’t believe there is a compelling case that the woman’s decision affects other people in a significant way (keeping in mind I just addressed the issue of the fetus itself). I appreciate the decision to have an abortion might offend the religious sensibilities of other people but I don’t think an affront to one’s sensibilities rises to the level of significant harm that would invalidate the liberal argument for personal liberty in this case. Then at some point I think a fetus develops sufficiently to take on the characteristics we associate more with fully developed babies, that is, at some point it develops a sort of brain and possibly consciousness or even self awareness. In that case the situation becomes a much more complicated one involving a conflict of interest between those of the mother and the fetus and that conflict lifts it out of the realm of personal liberty and choice and into a whole other realm of moral discourse relevant to resolving interpersonal conflict. However, I appreciate other people may think about these issues differently, including other people who feel they are also following the liberal ethos. So I suppose I should add in a case like this, where it just isn’t clear what the liberal ethos really implies, I think it’s better to leave the decision up to the people involved. I feel a lot more comfortable jumping in and restricting personal choice when I think the situation is a little more clear cut and I think this issue is anything but clear cut.
Well, we made it through. I suppose this post wasn’t as light hearted and amusing as usual. Sorry about that, but it’s just not a very humorous subject. Anyway, there’s always the next post, so we always have that to look forward to.
