Long one, but unavoidable. Thought I’d write this as a Socratic dialogue between 2 discussants, A and B, similar to what I did in my book on religion, The Answer is Never Magic (now also available in paperback). Given that previous book, you won’t be surprised that the supposed wishes of the invisible overlord of the universe don’t play a role in this discussion, but you may be surprised where I think the ethical logic leads.

A: My body, my choice! I get to say what happens to my body, not you!
B: Seems reasonable. You mean, for example if you have appendicitis, you get to decide whether or not to have an appendectomy?
A: Well, yeah, but that’s a ridiculous example. It’s not like there’s really two options with appendicitis.
B: Actually, there are. Research has shown that at least a third of cases of appendicitis resolve with antibiotics and surgery isn’t needed. Surgeons nowadays often give people the option to have their appendix out right away or try a course of antibiotics and see whether that works. If it doesn’t, then they take the appendix out.
A: Hummph. Didn’t know that. Just goes to prove my point.
B: Which was…?
A: That it’s up to me whether I have an abortion or not.
B: Oh, right, abortion. But how’s that the same thing? As an appendectomy, I mean.
A: Pretty obvious. My appendix is part of my body and I get to say whether it goes or stays. Same with a fetus. It’s part of my body, so it’s up to me what happens to it.
B: So the fetus is like an appendix?
A: Well, it’s got different parts and all, but it’s the same idea…
B: Ok, not anatomically the same, but the same from an ethical or moral standpoint, then.
A: Right. You can’t tell me what I HAVE to do with my appendix. I can take it out or leave it in, even if YOU think I might die if it doesn’t come out. Your denying me the right to make that decision infringes on my bodily autonomy! Just like telling me I can’t have an abortion!
B: We’re probably pretty much in general agreement on the principle of bodily autonomy, which you clearly and succinctly expressed as “my body, my choice.” We certainly don’t want other people making us all get a certain kind of tattoo or not get our ears pierced. But what about the old saw that says, “Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins”? That seems to limit what you can do with your body, at least your fists.
A: I don’t see what that’s got to do with it. That’s totally different. That saying is talking about whether I can do something with my body that hurts ANOTHER person. That violates THEIR rights. My having an abortion or not doesn’t affect anyone else’s rights. It’s just about MY body and my right not to be pregnant if I don’t want to be.
B: Hmmm…that’s an interesting way to put it, but I wonder if you’re not smushing together two different (albeit related) ideas. Is there a difference between a right not to GET pregnant and a right not to BE pregnant?
A: Ummm, no. Seems pretty much the same to me.
B: Well, let’s see. You agree that you have a right not to be killed, don’t you?
A: Of course, that’s about as basic as human rights get.
B: So do you have a right not to be dead? That would mean a massive heart attack (and every other of the millions of natural deaths annually) was a violation of your inalienable human rights, which hardly makes sense. And also that everyone is obliged to do whatever it takes to keep every other human alive.
A: That does seem a bit odd.
B: And I’d point out that saying there’s no right not to be dead is equivalent to saying there’s no right to life. Here’s another illustration. I think we both agree that your autonomy means you have a right not to have children if you don’t want any, right?
A: Of course. That’s what we’re arguing about here.
B: Sort of but not quite. Now if you don’t have any children and don’t want any, no one can force you to have some. And if you DO want a child, that’s your right too. At least to try to have children.
A: That’s my whole point, duh.
B: But what if you already have a child and THEN decide you don’t want it? Mine were pretty annoying when they were toddlers and, shall we say, second thoughts were occasionally had. Would I have been entitled to get rid of them? And by get rid of them, I mean pitch them in the lake, not send them to their grandparents for the weekend.
A: Of course you can’t pitch your kids in the lake. But I definitely recommend calling on the grandparents.
B: So, someone who already HAS a child is in a different ethical situation than someone who doesn’t yet have any children. You can decide for any reason whatsoever not to have kids in the first place, and take whatever steps you deem necessary to keep from getting pregnant. But once you’ve got a child, your aren’t similarly entitled to free yourself from that child—and certainly not by killing it. So isn’t there the same difference between not BECOMING pregnant and not BEING pregnant? That maybe once you’re pregnant you’re constrained more than you were when you weren’t pregnant?
A: But HAVING a child is way different than being pregnant
B: For sure in a practical sense. But in an ethical sense, it’s pretty much the same because the physical location of an entity (ie, uterus vs cradle) should not generate a moral distinction. I mean, you have to follow different laws in different countries and some countries may not honor your rights, but you have those rights nonetheless.
A: But the thing is, the reason you can’t kill your kids is because THEY have their own rights. It’s not because of where they live, it’s because they have a right not to be killed.
B: Yes, children have rights, that is they are human beings. For ethical purposes, the status of “human being” means they qualify as rights-possessing entities. Of course the rights they possess are those we deem appropriate to their age—we don’t allow toddlers to marry or run a business, and, at least for the present, they’re not allowed to carry guns. But everyone must admit that at the very minimum, children have the right not to be killed, no matter how trying or inconvenient they might be.
A: I already said that.
B: Just making sure. But you DO think that if you’re pregnant, you’re allowed to kill your fetus?
A: Sure, because unlike children, fetuses are not “another person.” Like we said, a fetus is like my appendix, which has no rights of its own. And by the way, we don’t refer to an appendectomy as “killing” my appendix.
B: No, we don’t talk about killing your traitorous appendix when it becomes inflamed and puts your life at risk—unlike, say, killing a jihadist who becomes inflamed and puts your life at risk. However, we ARE causing living tissue to die.
A: But the question is whether that tissue should be considered a human being—in which case, causing its tissues to die counts as “killing.”
B: Fair enough. So since we agree children are human beings, then I guess your position is that a fetus becomes “another person” and gets its rights when it’s born and goes from fetus to infant? Is that when it becomes a human being?
A: Well, yes, I guess so.
B: That would mean then that if you were in labor with a full term 9 month fetus, you could kill it (“cause its tissues to die”) as long as it hadn’t come completely out of your vagina? If it was sticking partway out, you could cut off its head? But as soon as it was all the way out, you couldn’t harm it?
A: I don’t think you should kill a full term fetus right before birth. It’s just a baby that hasn’t quite come out yet.
B: So as far as you’re concerned, a full term but not-quite-delivered fetus should be considered a human being with rights—at least the right not to be killed.
A: Yeah, I suppose. And I also suppose now you’re going to ask “What if it’s a week before full term?” or 2 weeks before, or 3 and so on.
B: I have to admit I was. But YOU have to admit those are good questions, right? If, as we agree, a fetus that’s still in the uterus can be a human being at SOME point, even if it’s only very far along in the pregnancy, we really need to say WHEN that point occurs. And we should base that decision on some rational reasoning rather than just an arbitrary decree. I grant you, this might be a challenging distinction to make, as gestation is a continuum of development rather than a set of discrete steps. There’s really only one clear dividing line in the whole process and that’s the moment right after birth when fetal circulation from the placenta stops and blood begins flowing through the lungs and the newborn can start breathing air. THAT marks a definitive status change. But we already said that we didn’t think that birth was a reasonable start to human beings, that it had to begin sometime BEFORE that. But everything else before that point is a gradual but continuous progression without any clear boundaries.
A: Well, fetal viability is what most of us think is the dividing line. Abortion is morally acceptable before a fetus is viable.
B: And viability is…?
A: Obviously, the ability of a fetus to live outside of the womb. Once a fetus CAN survive outside the womb, even if it hasn’t yet left, it needs to be considered a human being for ethical purposes.
B: That does seem to be a dividing line of sorts, although viability varies significantly depending on the medical care available. A university NICU can stabilize and support an infant 2 months or more before it could survive as a developing world home birth. And it’s not a firm line with everyone on one side being nonviable and everyone on the other viable. There’s a probability of survival that decreases continually the earlier you go in gestation until you reach a point where that probability is zero.
A: True, but that doesn’t change the underlying point.
B: No. But I think we agree we can’t deny that a viable fetus is a human being no matter whether we disagree on just when that viability occurs.
A: So there you have it. After viability, human being! Before viability, appendix! And if thy appendix offends thee, pluck it out! Abortion is ethically sound before fetal viability!
B: Let’s not be hasty. That sounds like an error in logic.
A: In logic? What are you talking about?
B: Well, just because viability confers rights of a human being, that doesn’t mean that inviability necessitates lack of rights. There might logically be OTHER reasons for having human rights besides viability, that is, that nonviable fetuses might still be human beings. The fact that all crows (all viable fetuses) are black (considered human beings) doesn’t mean that other animals (nonviable fetuses) might not also be black (human beings).
A: You’re getting a bit tricky here. But why should we consider an early-stage fetus, something that might be just a tiny blob of tissue that doesn’t look like anything, a human being?
B: Well, that’s the question we should chew over. We certainly shouldn’t just assert that a fetus is or isn’t a human being without some sort of rationale backing us up.
A: If it’s not clear, maybe that’s a reason to let individual women make the decision on their own?
B: Personal decisions are an unsatisfactory way to judge human rights.
A: How is letting people make their own ethical decisions unsatisfactory?
B: For some issues, personal decisions are fine. But rights by their nature are things that aren’t left up to each individual to decide for themselves. That’s why the Founding Fathers referred to “inalienable” rights. That is, we don’t let you “make your own decision” as to whether you can or can’t enslave or murder your neighbors. That isn’t simply a matter of “you say tomato, I say tomahto.” Certain things are wrong no matter what a given individual might think or a majority might vote—don’t you think Hitler couldnt’ve found 51% of Germans who would vote Yes on “Let’s get rid of all the Jews”? So we should try to be on the surest possible footing when deciding to whom rights apply—which in this case is when a collection of cells and organs should be considered a human being.
A: Well, viability still seems reasonable enough to me. As long as a fetus HAS to be part of the mother’s body, well then it has the status of any other body part. When it DOESN’T have to be part of the mother’s body, then it’s its own being—a human being.
B: That’s not a ludicrous suggestion, but it’s hardly a prima facie case. Are there any situations in which an INVIABLE organism is considered a human being.
A: How could that be?
B: I can think of a few examples. Take a 1 month old infant. How “viable” is it, really? You could give it everything needed to survive in modern society—put it alone on the floor in a furnished apartment, with a cradle nearby, along with a charge card, smart phone, a dresser full of warm clothes, and a refrigerator full of baby formula, and the poor thing would be dead within a day. It’s not in the least bit “viable” absent round-the-clock care by a parent—care that I might add is even more effortful and burdensome than what is needed for an 8 month fetus still in the uterus. Maybe an infant isn’t “viable” until it’s able to feed itself? Maybe it isn’t even viable until it can find its own food and shelter?
A: A 1 month old baby is plenty viable if you take proper care of it, feeding it and keeping it warm.
B: Exactly! But only in the same way a 6 week fetus is viable as long as it’s in the mother’s uterus being fed and kept warm.
A: Well…
B: And how about later in life? A sick adult in the ICU on a ventilator for respiratory failure would be dead in minutes if you turned off the machine. That person isn’t viable using the same criteria we do for fetuses. And of course we do consider ventilator patients “human beings” and do not permit their indiscriminate killing.
A: Well sometimes we turn off ventilators and allow ICU patients to die.
B: True, but not unless there is strong evidence that this was in keeping with the person’s pre-illness wishes and certainly not simply because keeping them alive was inconvenient. Another point; the sickest ICU patients—say, those with multi-organ failure who’ve been on a ventilator for more than a week—are more likely than not to be dead within a year, as compared to the average 6 week fetus, most of which ARE likely to be alive after 1 year—and those fetuses are statistically likely to live for 7 or 8 decades, unlike ANY adult patient on life support in the ICU.
A: But the 1 month old and the ICU patient are ALREADY considered human beings. Maybe the point is just they can’t LOSE their rights-bearing status because they’re at some point inviable.
B: I agree they shouldn’t lose their rights by virtue of their inviability. But all we’re trying to establish is whether it’s reasonable to think that inviability is compatible with status as a human being. And I think it’s pretty clear that it is. You can be both inviable and a human being.
A: I suppose so. But that doesn’t prove a nonviable fetus IS a human being.
B: True. But it does mean that simple nonviability doesn’t rule it OUT.
A: But the 1 month old and the ICU patient are not living inside their mother. Being unviable AND inside the mother is different, maybe some sort of ethical synergistic effect. As long as a fetus HAS to be part of the mother’s body and it actually is inside her body, well then it has the status of any other body part. As we said, like an appendix. When it DOESN’T have to be part of the mother’s body, then it’s its own being—a human being.
B: Why would where you live determine whether you had rights or not? Ok, so if you live in North Korea, you don’t have any rights. But otherwise, why would the location of a body have anything to do with its rights status? Maybe the appendix analogy we started with wasn’t the best. Now that I think about it, a fetus is not that much like one of the mother’s organs.
A: Don’t blame me. You’re the one who suggested it.
B: Ok, fine. But consider this. The fetus doesn’t participate in the functioning of the mother’s body, which is the role of all her other organs and tissues. A fetus also has its own set of organs, the same ones the mother has. And, critically, fetal tissue is so different from the mother’s that it has to be firewalled away from the mother’s circulation by the placenta to keep her immune system from attacking and destroying it. If the mother’s blood got into the fetus, it would likely die, which is never the case with her own organs. Maybe a fetus is better seen as a separate, distinct organism that is temporarily connected to ANOTHER separate, distinct organism. More analogous to a parasitic worm than an organ. Except the fetus always comes out on its own after a few months.
A: Wait till people hear you’re comparing fetuses to worms!
B: Just in terms of their physiologic relationship with their host/mother. Besides, you want to kill them, not just call them names.
A: In any case, how does the worm analogy help your argument?
B: Well, we’ve already allowed that the mother shouldn’t get to choose the death of a VIABLE fetus despite the fact that it’s living in her body.
A: Ok, yes, because it’s a separate entity.
B: Right. The worm analogy weakens the argument that the mother’s right to control her own body entitles her to life or death decisions about an inviable fetus—weaker because it’s not really her OWN body part, rather it’s a separate entity that’s temporarily connected to her (ie, by the umbilical cord) and could thus more reasonably be thought to have its own rights.
A: Doesn’t mean for sure it does. The worm is a separate entity too, and it doesn’t have any rights.
B: No, a worm doesn’t have rights, but it also never becomes a human being which, as we agreed, the fetus rapidly does. These factors both start to demand a stronger argument from you as to why this distinct entity (that is, not one of the mother’s organs) should not be considered a human being all along, rather than this status appearing at some point later in development.
A: Hmmm…This “temporarily connected” idea sounds like the hypothetical scenario presented by the philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson years ago in which she envisions a dying famous violinist who was surreptitiously connected by an IV to another person’s bloodstream (sort of like dialysis, I suppose) against their will in order to save the violinist’s life. The question is then whether the person is entitled to disconnect the violinist (because he is using the person’s body without their permission) despite that disconnection resulting in the violinist’s immediate death. Thomson has a long and convincing discussion concluding that the violinist (fetus) has no right to be connected to the person and thus that person may disconnect him (have an abortion) despite this resulting in his death.
B: Brief but accurate summary of 10,000 words of very detailed philosophical treatise. Well done! But most of those 10k words are beside the point. Thomson mistakenly frames the issue as being about whether the violinist has a right to be connected to you (and thus you have a duty to allow him to be). She frames this as the question of whether the violinist has a “right to life.” We already pointed out and agreed that the idea of a “right not to be dead” was nonsense, and since that is conceptually identical to “right to life,” that also is nonsense. So of course the violinist does not have the right to life and you do not have a duty to keep him alive. But that’s not the issue. That’s because in Thomson’s scenario, the violinist has ALREADY been connected to you and thus already violating your rights (and this IS the appropriate analogy for abortion because the fetus is similarly already growing in the mother). Note that BEFORE the violinist is connected to you, he cannot compel you to connect yourself to him, just as before you are pregnant no one can compel you to become pregnant. Thus, since the violinist is already connected, the real question is not what you’re required to do FOR the violinist, but rather to what remedies are you entitled after he has violated your rights.
A: Well, you’re entitled to have your rights restored! Or your situation or whatever.
B: In general, yes. If someone steals your car, you’re entitled at minimum to the return of your car (and probably damages too). But can your property rights be restored at any cost whatsoever? If a hobo has moved into your garden shed and refuses to leave, you’re certainly entitled to have him dragged out and prosecuted, but are you entitled to kill him? Of course not. Do your property rights outweigh his right not to be killed? You could hardly hold these two rights have the same import.
A: Well, no. But what if killing him was the only way to get him out?
B: Thomson would say it’s fine then; he has no right to be there but you DO have a right to your shed. Enter the SWAT team. Bang! End of story. Most everyone else in the world would hold that trespassing does not warrant the death penalty—despite however much you prefer a hobo-free shed.
A: But what if he had a gun and was shooting at your house?
B: Well then, go ahead and kill him. That’s a different situation, quite analogous to a pregnancy that endangers the mother’s life. A person’s general right not to be killed is not completely unqualified. For example, that right can be forfeited if someone poses an immediate threat to life (eg, a school shooter). In that case, as well as the case of a life-endangering pregnancy, the rights, duties, and risks for all parties are considered in attempt to come up with a fair solution.
A: That would be hard!
B: True, and probably more than we could get into here. But the real question is regarding simple, elective abortion, done not because lives are in danger but for the varied, mundane reasons for which people (rightfully) feel they do not wish to have children.
A: It’s not so mundane for a woman, or even worse a 12 year old girl, who was raped—maybe even by her father—and became pregnant! Surely SHE shouldn’t have to bear such a child.
B: Of course those horrible misfortunes aren’t mundane. But would you say you’re entitled to kill a 3 year old child born of rape or incest? Even if the mother is reminded of the rape every time she looks at the child, can she kill it?
A: Well, no. She could put it up for adoption.
B: Probably a better solution for the child than killing it. Similarly, if you already had children, you couldn’t kill them for any of the other many and good reasons you might have had for not wanting to have children in the first place—for example wanting to finish school, get a job, or just not wanting children at that point in your life. If you can’t do something to a 3 year old child, why can you do it to a 3 month fetus?
A: Look, that’s all well and good, but I just can’t get past the fact that I have the right not to be pregnant! That’s got to be up to me if ANYTHING is. If I don’t want to be pregnant, I shouldn’t have to be!
B: As we said before, you certainly have a right to choose whether or not to BECOME pregnant (recognizing of course that sometimes circumstances such as infertility or birth control failure may keep you from getting your choice). That’s clearly a matter of your bodily autonomy. But just as your right not to be killed doesn’t mean you have a right not to be dead, you right not to become pregnant doesn’t mean you have a right not to BE pregnant—anymore than your right not to have kids allows you to simply discard a child you already have.
A: Hmmm…well, I guess so. But just because SOME nonviable entities are human beings and SOME fetuses living in the mother’s body are human beings I’m still not convinced that an unviable fetus is.
B: Let’s think about the physical and temporal continuity of our life
A: The what?
B: Just some shorthand terminology referring to the fact that every adult human has come about through a continuous process of development from a fertilized egg, to an embryo, to a fetus, through birth, to being an infant, a child, and then an adult.
A: Of course. So…?
B: So weren’t you YOU even when you were a newborn infant? Despite not knowing or even being able to know who and what you were? Were the baby pictures your dad took actually of someone else?
A: No, that was me. I was always me, even as a baby.
B: And as a fetus at term, or after viability? Wasn’t that still you?
A: Sure.
B: And going back to the embryonic stage, wasn’t THAT embryo still you?
A: Maybe…What are you up to?
B: Well, it doesn’t make sense to say the embryo WAS your mom, does it?
A: Not really. But maybe it’s not her and it’s not me either. Maybe some kind of, I don’t know, intermediate, indeterminate thing or something.
B: Getting a bit convoluted here when maybe we don’t need to be, although it’s probably just that you’re worried I’m setting some sort of debating trap. Look, although we’re profoundly different at these various stages of existence—you and I are as different from a newborn infant as it is from a 3 month fetus—we’re considered to be ourselves and be human beings all throughout the often 80 year process of our life, even when we’re demented and in a coma on a ventilator just prior to death. AND we pretty much seem to agree that “human being” includes the last few months of gestation. So doesn’t the temporal and physical continuity from conception to death we just agreed on, the fact that embryonic you is still you, make it sensible to hold that status as a human being goes along with that continuity? Why do we exclude a few months right at the beginning during which we’re allegedly NOT human beings? Why should that status appear only in the later part of gestation?
A: Well, I suppose I have to agree about temporal and physical continuity.
B: So your point seems to be that you’re YOU before viability but you’re not a human being for just that brief period of time. Isn’t it more rational simply to say you’re always a human being?
A: It might be simpler, but that doesn’t mean it’s right. Yes, there’s continuity between an embryo and a viable fetus (and an infant, etc). But just because there’s continuity between a baby and an 18 year old it doesn’t mean a baby should also have the right to vote.
B: True. But there are rational reasons why persons are denied the right to vote before a certain age. Are there similar rational reasons why personhood itself should come only at a certain age? We’re taking a continuous, 9-month process that begins with the union of a sperm and egg and ends with a crying baby, and marking out a boundary on one side of which is a human being and the other side of which is not. Since human rights are the question, shouldn’t we be as sure as possible that we’ve marked that boundary fairly and based on reasons other than our desire to freely dispose of fetuses?
A: Look, I still just have trouble thinking of an embryo as a human being.
B: Remember, it’s “human being” for the purposes of rights, not for the purposes of being someone to have a conversation with or watch a video together. I mean, we could instead say “rights-bearing entity” instead of “human being” but that seems pedantic. But if it would make you feel better…
A: Ok, but…
B: Let’s look at it from a little different angle, how people actually DO think of embryos. Do they THINK of them differently than they do other things in the mother’s body. Do they SEEM different to people?
A: How do you mean?
B: Aren’t many people sad when they have a miscarriage? Even when it’s early in gestation and the fetus isn’t viable?
A: Well, I’d be sad if I lost my leg too. But that doesn’t mean my leg’s a person. It’s the mother’s choice whether to be sad or relieved after a miscarriage.
B: That’s true, but your leg has importance to you for quite practical reasons. Ok, let’s go back to your appendix, which I presume is of much less importance to you than your leg (yes, I know it probably has some sort of minor role in the immune system).
A: No, I’m not particularly attached to my appendix (other than physically 😊)
B: So, suppose there are 2 pregnant women, both in early pregnancy, say about 6 weeks, and both are intending to keep their pregnancy. Someone kidnaps them and does surgery on both of them. In one, they remove her healthy appendix. In the other, they remove her healthy fetus. Do both women feel the same way about this assault? What would people say on social media?
A: Well, the one whose pregnancy was terminated would be much more upset, of course. But like I said before, that’s the person’s choice about how to feel about their pregnancy—and you had postulated that she wanted it.
B: So would YOU feel the same about both cases? That there’s no difference between how the women were wronged? Do you feel this is just the same as if one had her left kidney removed involuntarily and the other her right kidney?
A: Hmm. Well…
B: Your hesitancy suggests to me that you DO have at least a little discomfort with the scenario. Maybe you DO have some sense that a fetus is different from an appendix.
A: Or it could just be that I know the WOMAN herself would feel more wronged at losing a pregnancy she wanted than losing her appendix. And I have respect for her feelings.
B: Yes, it wouldn’t speak well of you if you felt the woman’s feelings didn’t matter. So…let’s try to think of a hypothetical in which the woman’s feelings were on YOUR side of the issue, where she didn’t think fetuses were human beings. Ok. Suppose a woman is similarly 6 weeks pregnant and an evil scientist asks her to help test a drug designed to cause birth defects for the purposes of chemical warfare. The drug is given as a single dose and is harmless to anything aside from 6 week fetuses, in which it is intended to cause permanent brain damage but not death. The mother, however, will be fine if she takes this drug. She agrees (she’ll be paid a lot of money).
A: Well that’s really creepy. I hope nobody’s thinking of trying anything like this.
B: Not that I’ve heard of. But the way some people are these days…
A: So she CERTAINLY should have an abortion then.
B: Oh no, you see the deal with the scientist is that she has to go on and have the baby and raise it so the exact amount and nature of its brain damage can be studied during infancy and childhood. The scientist thinks the drug will cause enough damage that the child will never learn to walk or talk but they’re not sure so they need to test it.
A: That’s even creepier! But this imaginary nonsense is unethical because they’re causing damage to a baby and child!
B: That’s the thing, they’re not. They’re damaging only a 6 week old fetus. She’s not taking the drug later in pregnancy when the fetus is viable (and has its own rights as we agreed). The woman and scientist, just like you, think a 6 week fetus has no more rights than an appendix, as it’s simply another of the woman’s body parts, which she is entitled to treat as she wishes. Certainly you agree a person is free to take a drug that might damage their appendix even if you yourself think that’s unwise. It’s hardly unethical, is it?
A: Baloney! I call BS on that!
B: How so?
A: Obviously, it’s because that fetus BECOMES an infant who suffers the harm! And you CAUSED that harm.
B: Me?
A: Well, the woman and the scientist. You know what I mean! What they did ended up ultimately causing harm to an actual human being!
B: Absolutely. So then you clearly agree that a mother is not entitled to harm even a very early-stage fetus even though she COULD harm one of her own organs should she wish. AND, if intentionally deforming a nonviable fetus is wrong because it causes harm to a future human being, why isn’t destroying it harmful to that same future human being —and similarly wrong?
A: Because if it’s destroyed, that future human being doesn’t exist to be harmed! Oh…rats. I don’t know. You’re twisting things up in knots.
B: Well it is a knotty issue. I’m just trying to show that at least in the back of your mind you have some feelings that suggest pre-viability is not the definitive boundary you said at first. I mean, if you really, truly thought a fetus was no different than an appendix, these thought experiments wouldn’t trouble you in the least, but it seems like they do.
A: All right. But my not liking it doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
B: True. But shouldn’t your discomfort with these various scenarios suggest the need to reexamine your gut feeling that a fetus is simply a maternal body part? As that of course is the justification for abortion; “My body, my choice.”
A: I still think that should be my right.
B: Well, we have made a lot of different points, most of which you ended up agreeing with (reluctantly). Maybe the proper conclusion got lost in the weeds. Let’s try to sum things up: There seem to be 3 possible ways in which abortion might be within a person’s rights. The first is that the fetus is simply a PART of the mother’s body (“my body, my choice”) and thus not a human being and thus has no rights, so she gets to do whatever she wants to it. The 2nd is that although the fetus is a separate entity from the mother, it’s not a rights-bearing one (ie, not a human being) so the mother gets to do whatever she wants to it. And the 3rd is that even if the fetus IS a rights-bearing entity (a human being), the mother is still allowed to kill it because it is a case of justifiable killing of a human being (the chief rationale for which is the Thomson argument, that she has not given it permission to use her body—an invasion of her autonomy to which it is not otherwise entitled). ONE of these must be true for abortion to be an ethically legitimate act. Is there anything else conceptually?
A: What about when the mother’s life is endangered by the pregnancy? You punted on that one.
B: I did, but that’s because if I’m refuted regarding elective (ie, non-endangered) abortion, then abortion would obviously also be permissible in a life-endangering situation, so the issue becomes moot. And even if non-endangered abortion is impermissible, a case of life-endangerment would have to be considered under the 3rd proposition that abortion to save the mother’s life might be a justifiable killing, and that, like other potentially justifiable killings, would have to be judged on the specifics of each case—hence my punt.
A: All right, so what about these 3 ways?
B: Regarding the 1st proposition, the physiologic distinctiveness of the fetus, including the facts that it has its own complete set of organs, its tissue is immunologically distinct from that of the mother, and then it rather quickly separates from the mother and becomes autonomous, makes it unreasonable to consider a fetus simply one of the mother’s organs, despite its (temporary) location within the mother’s body. This point is strengthened by the fact that, at least when abortion is not being considered, people don’t really think about a fetus the same way they do, say, an appendix. It’s clear the fetus is a separate entity that is temporarily located within the mother.
A: Well I suppose that’s reasonable.
B: That then leads to the 2nd proposition, which holds that although the fetus is distinct from the mother, it does not possess rights (is not a human being), specifically the core right not to be killed. We agreed that viable fetuses had that right but that the question remained regarding inviable fetuses. We identified several situations in which personhood exists despite inviability, thus concluding that inviability per se was not a barrier to having rights, PARTICULARLY when the inviability was possibly temporary as in an infant or a brain-injured person. Since inviable fetuses almost always BECOME viable (and thus human beings) during the continuous process of development from fetus to infant to adult, it seemed more reasonable to consider them human beings all along the process rather than starting at some midway point. This conclusion was bolstered by our revulsion at the hypothetical scenario in which an inviable fetus was injured in a way that led to permanent brain damage of an infant, raising the question of why damaging a fetus might be impermissible when killing it was allowed.
A: That doesn’t PROVE it.
B: Well, there’s really no indisputable logical proof since there’s no indisputable, concrete definition of human being. But if we keep looking at the question from different angles and scenarios and consistently find a rational case for considering each of them as human beings, it becomes harder and harder to think that it is not the case.
A: So if we’re looking at hints and squishy things, what about the very strong hint that a great many people think abortion of an inviable fetus is NOT a rights violation. How does that not weigh on the other side?
B: Simply because it’s circular. To answer the question of whether abortion is ok we ask whether an inviable fetus has personhood, and then answer that by saying that because many people think abortion is ok, the fetus must not have personhood. Circular.
A: Hmmm…
B: So we’re left with the 3rd proposition, that it is sometimes permissible to kill a rights-bearing entity (ie, a human being), in this case a fetus. The strongest case for this is Thomson’s, which holds that by occupying her body against her will, a fetus violates the mother’s right not to have her body coopted for another entity’s purposes and thus she is entitled to remove it. Removal of an inviable fetus is by definition killing it. However, we had agreed that mothers were not entitled to kill their existing children despite their obviously similar violation of her autonomy (eg, thwarting her desire to finish school, take a job, simply not have children at that point in her life). Thus, a violation of autonomy by a fetus should similarly not entitle the mother to put it to death.
A: All right, I don’t have a good refutation of any of those specific points, but I’m still left feeling that this is all sophistry and trickery. Word games to show that embryos are human beings.
B: I understand. I think maybe it’s because of the difference between everyday thinking about commonplace situations and rigorous thinking that has to take every situation and possibility into account. I agree with you in a sense. The “human beings” we see normally everyday—you, me, our friends and neighbors and children—are sentient beings. They’re awake, they walk around and talk and go to school or work, they eat breakfast and go to bed at night, and generally look and act pretty much like us, or younger or older versions of us. Most of the time, this way of looking at things is just fine. But to talk seriously, we also have to consider the edge cases, the unclear, nonobvious situations, for example humans who do not seem conscious of their environment (eg those in a coma, or with brain damage or severe dementia), and similarly those who don’t communicate or look much like us, such as infants—and what we are considering here, fetuses. But we need to take a rigorous approach to these edge cases when trying to make the very serious decision on whom to confer or remove rights.
A: Well, yes I suppose there’s some sense to that.
B: Because of the literal life and death implications, I think it’s reasonable to err on the side of granting rather than withholding rights (and thus status as human being).
A: So fetuses, even at the earliest stages have a right not to be killed?
B: That would seem to be the case