Abortion must be one of the thorniest subjects one chooses
to argue for or against. Twenty years ago abortion was illegal in most
countries and nearly always hazardous: today it is legal in most developed
countries and a routine medical procedure.
Concern for the unborn and the Rights of the mother to
terminate the pregnancy on the basis she has the right over her body is what
concerns this article. I shall endeavour to discuss from a Moral and legal standpoint
and ethical Rights of Mother to be and the Rights of the Foetus, if any, and of
communities’ existing moral obligation to it.
I also stress, however, this piece will not involve arguments for or
against contraception or the broader picture for the containment of world population. Also, it will not touch on the religious
aspect of right and wrong conceptualised within any religious beliefs; as it so
often happens, such argument could take distinct political colouring.
We (as a society) need to see through the jungle of Rights
to seek the Truth. Truth can be
subjective and relativistic making it very hard to find in such a contentious
subject. So the next best thing is to seek justice, for both mother and infant,
which could be more universally accepted within all moralistic structures on
offer. Hence this contribution is rare,
to my knowledge, in qualifying its efforts from moralistic perspectives. Even here Justice can be elusive so perhaps
we would need to settle for legal definitions what society constitute an
acceptable stand to provide the guidelines that can eventually rhyme with the
universal acceptance if that can ever be possible for this highly emotive
subject.
Backdrop to our debate will be to ensconce in the meanings
of moral rights in contrast with Legal
rights; I would have thought there was a
theoretical difference between moral rights and legal rights. A moral right is an entitlement that someone
'ought' to have, whereas a legal right is an entitlement that is actually
enshrined in law. The two may coincide
but then again they may not either because a moral right exists but has not
been enshrined in law, or because a legal right exists which is not held to be
moral. Quite often, however, the legal rights
outline the course of our moral rights. It is important to grasp these points
especially for those who might harbour the terms of Killing, Murder and Infanticide
in the course of reading this article as justification to deter abortion. In contrast this argument argues for the moral
permissibility for abortion and whether a ‘wrong’ can be committed against a
foetus or mother to be or a mother.
So here is an opportunity to step back and look at the
issues, to disengage from the emotional and religious prejudices to allow for
rational analysis. The whole of my argument will circumscribe into its orbit
three major themes that must go to establish it: the division of cells
developing into a foetus, and the consequential transformation of the foetus
into a person. The three themes we will
briefly examine along the way; the inception of human Life, Consciousness and
how both can give ground to personhood.
We also need to bear in mind that everything that is conscious must be
alive; it will be impossible to try to explain consciousness without explaining
life.
One of the great powers of science is that it is able to
help clarify moral issues like this for us. At cell division there is no
difference between a human and some animals.
Although after conception and start of cell division the cells at this
stage although they are known as human cells there is no recognisable human life
or it’s potential. The division is no
different than a usually occurring cell division in any organism so at this
stage a human exist only in the genetic sense; human DNA which clearly at this stage lacking ‘moral standing’.
For an entity to be considered a person or for the human community to assign to
it moral obligation or moral standing we need first to know whether the foetus
is a ‘people’ before qualifying to it full moral rights. Central to personhood or evaluating humanity in
the moral sense according to M.A. Warren is to establish a non-ambiguous state of
being human. In her polemical ‘The moral and legal status of abortion’ she
outlines these criteria
a) Consciousness,
b) Reasoning, c) Self-motivation,
d) Able to communicate
e) Be self-aware.
If an entity that does not satisfy any one of these criteria
is certainly not a person. These
elements, therefore, by all accounts, must be central to the concept of
personhood and by definition that only People have full moral rights.
I will carry this argument a little further. Genetic humanity is neither necessary nor sufficient
for establishing that an entity is a person since community accepts that a – e are
the primary criteria of personhood. “A
man or woman whose consciousness has been permanently obliterated but who remains
alive is a human being which is no longer a person. Defective human beings,
with no appreciable mental capacity, are not and presumably never will be
people; and a foetus is a human being which not yet a person and therefore cannot
coherently be said to have full moral rights.” M.A. Warren.
The next question we need to ask is how far since conception
does a human being need to be before it begins to have a moral right – not
necessarily of being a fully person but of being like a person? This brings us to the argument that had recently
raged, between those for pro-life and those for pro-choice, in Texas, USA for
extending the termination limits from 20 weeks (early term) to 40 weeks (third
trimester). Some argue, however, that even if an eight-month foetus has features
that arouses in us our protective instincts but still can-not reason or
communicates or associates to it one of the criteria mentioned it would still have
no moral rights to life. It would still
feel pain at a rate of a tiny fish and on that scale can never override a woman’s
right to obtain an abortion.
If we were to turn this argument on its head and say that
new-born are no different to nine-month foetus at being people using the above
5 criteria we end up with the possibility of saying it is morally right to kill
new-born. Thus it might seem that if
late-term abortion is sometimes justified, then infanticide must also be sometimes
justified. Why should having been born make
a difference? According to the above both abortion and infanticide are morally permissible.
Not quite!
Because neonates are so very close to being persons it is very
difficult to morally justify its killing.
Other reasons why our society hold that infanticide is usually
wrong is that in cases where the parents
of a new-born do not want their infant for some reason there are people who may
wish to adopt it. Even if that infant is
considered unadoptable because of some defect society would still dictate it
would be wrong to kill it. As long as
society feels this way it has the moral prerogative to insist that it is wrong to
destroy any infant which has a chance of living a reasonably satisfactory life.
If we now accept that infanticide is wrong within the moral
precepts within this society (moral community) then we must also accept that
late term-term abortion is also wrong. There are, however, two crucial differences
between the two cases. On the one case
once the infant is born its continued life does not pose a threat to the life
of the mother. In contrast the pregnant woman, to protect her life, averting a
threat to her life caused by her pregnancy, must outweigh other people’s desire
for her to keep the foetus especially when that threat cannot be removed
without terminating the pregnancy. In
such cases the mother’s fate over rides the baby’s moral right to life whereas
the moment of birth does mark the end of the mother’s right to end its fate. Where there are no such threats to the life
of the mother we must therefore accept the moral disequilibrium and for a third
trimester abortion to be wrong because as we have shown such an abortion is
akin to infanticide. Having crossed over
into the moral community, abortion therefore, at this late stage, will be
morally impermissible.
