Abortion: A Defense of the Personhood Argument

1. Abortion: A Defense of the Personhood Argument Louis P. Pojman

2. Fetus and Personhood • When does the fetus become a person? • This is the million dollar question, and philosophers have tried to draw the line at may different places: at conception, after the possibility of twinning has passed, when the fetus has a functioning heart and brain, when fetus feels pain, when it is developed enough to live on its own (viability), when it is born, when it has first-person perspective, when it can reason, etc. • The reason for the search of personhood is obvious: if it can be shown and demonstrated that the fetus is a person, then we must grant to all fetuses the rights we grant to all persons, including the right to life!

3. Fetus and Personhood • It has been difficult and there has been little consensus about the issue of personhood. • To determine when a fetus becomes a person, we first need to know what it means to be a person. Philosophers have simply not been able to come up with a universal definition of personhood. • We also need to understand the fetus’s gestation period and our knowledge about this has increased significantly because of newer and more powerful technologies. • However, knowing more has not necessarily helped us discover when a fetus becomes a person. • Because the fetus develops gradually, determining personhood runs into a common version of a logical fallacy called the slippery slope fallacy.

4. Slippery Slope Fallacy • Pojman begins by demonstrating that drawing lines is not always a good way to determine the status or category to which a thing belongs. • For instance, when should we call a man bald? In other words, at what point of a man’s thinning scalp is it appropriate to call him bald? • If a man has 1 hair on his head could we properly call him bald? I believe so. • However, notice that it is also true that one more hair will make no difference. Therefore, if I add one hair every day, it should not make a difference from one day to the next. • However, it is also true that there will come a time when we will have to stop calling the man bald, even though we can never point to any specific day at which this happened!

5. The Gradualist Paradox • This happens for most things that change in a gradually. • The point of this and other examples like it is that we should not deny that a significant change is taking place just because we cannot point to any moment at which such change took place. This is the definition of gradual change. • This concept is important because the fetus develops gradually, and it goes through significant changes, from a one celled organism to a conscious, rational agent, i.e., person. • However, it also true that because the change is gradual, philosophers will never discover and agree upon a specific point in the gestation period of the fetus at which this change took place.

6. Nonperson to Person • Pojmanpoints out that, “Simply because we cannot discover a bright line separating a person from a nonperson does not rule out the existence of such a distinction.” • “Even though no perceptible difference might exist between any two successive stages, a real difference can appear between nonsuccessive stages.”

7. Liberal Position 4 common arguments supporting the liberal pro-choice position 1) Subjective Radical Relativism 2) Absolute Right to Privacy 3) The Quality of Life Argument (reproductive freedom) 4) The Personhood Argument

8. Subjective Radical Relativism • Ethical subjectivist claim that there is no transcendent, universal, objective conceptions of right and wrong. This view is not so much about abortion but more about ethics itself. • According to ethical subjectivist, morality is more like taste and some people simply like some things and others do not. • Therefore, abortion is really a personal choice, and no one can make a moral judgment about the actions of any other person. • This view of morality, while commonly held, has many difficulties and objections which I cannot address in this lecture.

9. Absolute Right to Privacy • A common argument made by feminist groups concerns a woman’s right to make decisions over her own body. • One’s body is the most intimate thing one has and what one does with it is one’s own business. • Outside parties, especially the government should not interfere and tell us how we can and cannot use our bodies.

10. Absolute Right to Privacy • A fetus is completely dependent on a woman’s body for its survival, and thus a fetus is not an independent autonomous being. • In some sense it is part of the woman’s body and so the woman should be the only person who decides whether it will or will not allow the fetus to use its body, especially if the woman has become pregnant without her consent. • Consider the case of rape or a woman who uses protection and gets pregnant. These cases might be different than a woman who intentionally gets pregnant and 6 months later changes her mind for some frivolous reason. • The success of these arguments depend on (or at least will be significantly influenced by) whether we consider the fetus to be a person.

11. The Quality of Life Argument • This argument can come in different forms. First, there are the cases that involve health problems of the fetus. • In cases where the fetus has very serious health issues (i.e. severely deformed or anencephalic), some will argue that it is in the fetus’s best interest for the woman to have an abortion. • In other cases the quality of life issues involves financial or personal problems, given the circumstances of the mother. It might be simply that the parents are poor and /or young with very little abilities to support a (or another) child. • The success of these arguments also depend on (or at least will be significantly influenced by) whether we consider the fetus to be a person.

12. The Personhood Argument • Many liberal positions argue that the fetus is not a person, and therefore, the pregnant woman has the right to an abortion. • Liberals argue that personhood requires more than just belonging to the human species; they draw a distinction between human organisms and human persons. • In fact, personhood entails consciousness, rationality and the ability to act autonomously, therefore, nonhumans can also be persons.

13. Personhood • Joel Feinberg describes personhood as follows: • “What makes me certain that my parents, siblings, and friends are people is that they give evidence of being conscious of the world and of themselves; they have inner emotional lives, just like me; they can understand things and reason about them, make plans, and act; they can communicate with me, argue, negotiate, express themselves, make agreements, honor commitments, and stand in relationships of mutual trust; they have tastes and values of their own; they can be frustrated or fulfilled, pleased or hurt… In the commonsense way of thinking, persons are those beings who are conscious, have a concept and awareness of themselves, are capable of experiencing emotions, can reason and acquire understanding can plan ahead, can act on their plans, and can feel pleasure and pain.”

14. Conservative Response to Liberal Personhood Arguments • One of the biggest problems with the liberal personhood argument is that it justifies the intentional killing of infants and other humans who lack the kind of rationality and intellectual abilities described above. • A second common conservative response is based on the concept of potentiality. While it might be true that fetuses do not have the cognitive capacities of a person they have the potential to develop these capacities if they are allowed to develop naturally.

15. Liberal Responses • First, liberals agree that their view does not prohibit killing infants and other kinds of non-person human beings based on a natural right to life. • However, some argue that while these non-persons might not have a natural right to life they might have a social right to life, and therefore should not be killed. • Since they are or have been part of a moral community of persons and some have already established relationships with this community, they might be granted a social right to life, especially if there lives are valued by other members of this community. • Fetuses are not members of this community and thus they do not have such social rights.

16. Why shouldn't we kill infants? • Joel Feinberg argues, • “It would be seriously wrong for a mother to kill her physically normal infant, [liberals] contend, even though such killing would not violate anyone’s right to life. The same reasons that make infanticide in the normal case wrong also justify its prohibition by the criminal law. The moral rule that condemns these killings and the legal rule that renders them punishable are both supported by “utilitarian reasons,” that is, considerations of what is called ‘social utility,’ ‘the common good,’ ‘the public interest,’ and the like.”

17. Liberal Response • In reference to the conservative argument from the notion of potentiality, liberals will respond that while potentiality might give the fetus some sort of status above non-potential persons, it comes no where close to giving them personhood rights because they are not yet persons. • Potentiality is simply not enough; although the fetus is a potential person it is not an actual one and thus it does not have the natural rights attributable to persons.

18. Potentiality • Schwarz holds that a single-cell zygote is identical with the adult human person it will become, and therefore that the single-cell zygote has the same natural rights as an adult human being. • Pojman responds to this argument as follows: • “If you believe that a single-cell zygote has a right to life, then you should refrain from washing, scratching, and brushing your teeth. Why? Because in doing so, you are killing thousands of single cells of exactly the same nature as the zygote.”

19. Moderate Position • Moderates disagrees with the conservative position because moderates do not support the robust right to life that conservatives attribute to the fetus, as if the fetus were identical to a full-fledged adult person. • Moderates also disagree with liberals because they do not support the absolute rights of the woman to their bodies, which would make morally permissible abortions for any reason and at any stage of the fetus’s development, as if the fetus had no value whatsoever. • Moderates consider important the quality of life issues, the rights of the woman, the value of a fetus as a potential person (probability argument), and the common sense view that as the fetus matures its intrinsic value increases as an organism that more closely approximates a person.