Does it matter to the abortion debate whether foetuses are persons?

The subject of abortion is prone to great confrontation of ideas as members of both the anti and pro abortion campaigns clash in a never ending battle, sometimes even leading to acts of terrorism by the anti-abortion pro-life lobby. In the US particularly it is extremely controversial with government pressured from both sides; the pro-life and Christian groups wanting to ban it and the pro-choice wanting to keep it legal (or in some states legalise it) or even relax the limits upon it.

The main arguments between both sides rest on the question of when a life becomes a person[1]. Some pro-lifers believe that embryos are people or at the very least the fact that they are potential persons means they should not be killed whilst many pro-choice campaigners see six months into the pregnancy as a standard limit to when abortion should take place. Others such as neo-utilitarian Peter Singer and Michael Tooley believe that infanticide is ok and that babies are not persons. But do these arguments of exactly when and where personhood begins matter? Indeed does personhood matter?

This essay will argue yes this part of the debate matters and indeed is vitally important despite problems leading from subjective disagreements. In order to show why personhood is important we must first attempt to define what it is to be a person is and indeed what others believe it to be. There are two further problems we must then examine: the first is how an argument that doesn’t rest upon the idea of personhood may be flawed, the second is the problem that once we define personhood on logical grounds the pro-choice advocate might be faced with problems of their own definitions of personhood excluding more than just foetuses with the common case of infanticide.

There are many varying opinions held amongst people over what a person is. Religious belief usually is based on the abstract idea of a soul and that a foetus or embryo gains a soul at a certain point, usually at conception and non-religious pro-lifers believe the all humans are people. Scientific and secular pro-choice opinion is based more on when a foetus can think or when it can feasibly live externally from the womb (usually at about 6 months of pregnancy as is the legal limit in this country). Other more extreme thinkers such as Peter Singer and Michael Tooley believe that babies are not yet people and that therefore infanticide is acceptable just as abortion is.

Pro-life campaigners often simplify humanity as being all on the same moral level of personhood. A zygote, embryo or foetus (which for the purposes of this essay will all come under foetuses) is to them as much a person as a fully grown adult in the maturity of their brain. Don Marquis, a leading anti-abortion thinker believes that foetuses are innocent humans and therefore it is wrong to kill them. However his attempt to identify is vague and based mostly on the fact that a being is genetically human. His argument takes the example of premature death to prove what personhood is:

“Premature death is a misfortune, in general, because it deprives an individual of a future of value. An individual’s future will be valuable to that individual if that individual will come, or would come, to value it... Thus killing someone is wrong, in general, when it deprives her of a future like ours.”[2]

In essence Marquis’ ‘Future Like Ours’ argument is saying that because foetuses could potentially have a future like ours we are unjustified in killing them, that they are potentially people. The idea that foetuses potentially have futures like ours, i.e. that of being a person is unsatisfying however. It broadens personhood to include clumps of cells no more complex than the mould on a stale loaf of bread. Marquis, and indeed other pro-life thinkers do not offer a detailed account of what personhood is, they try and defend their position merely by lumping foetuses into the vague concept of humanity.

Mary Anne Warren, a pro-choice thinker attempts to describe what makes a being a person. She gives the example of a space traveller finding another planet on which life exists, would need to decide whether the various species on that planet were ‘people’ or whether they could be a potential source of food. There are six criteria which make a person: sentience, emotionality, reason, the capacity to communicate, self-awareness, moral agency.[3]

She makes it clear that not all these criteria need to be fulfilled in order for a being to be a person she uses the example of Mr Spock the human-alien hybrid and Data the android from Star Trek neither of whom can feel emotions but are undoubtedly people. What she does say is that a being with few or none of these criteria is undoubtedly not a person even if they have potential to become one. A foetus up until seven months of pregnancy has none of these, it may have some consciousness of light and sound before, and at seven months it only gains sentience, not enough to make it a person. In fact, Warren argues:

“Even a late term fetus[4] is arguably less like a person than are many nonhuman animals. Many animals (e.g., large-brained mammals, such as elephants, cetaceans, or apes) are not only sentient, but clearly possessed of a degree of reason and perhaps even self-awareness.”[5]

While the precise details of how to judge what makes a person are missing Warren provides a firm basis on which to judge. After all, there are differences between moral beings and some lesser animals, and here is a basis on which we can draw the line. People have rights; beings which aren’t people do not or even if they do then they come below the rights of people.

So if we can define what personhood can we define what rights a person has and which ones might be more important than others? There are many rights which are commonly accepted today and some which are debated but for the abortion debate there are two important rights: The right to life, and the right to control one’s own body.

It is widely acknowledged that people have the right to life – pro-life and pro-choice supporters alike so the argument still lies on whether or not a foetus is a person. However Judith Jarvis Thomson argues that although the foetus has personhood and therefore a right to life – at least at some point after conception – it does not have the right to maintain its life by using someone else. She uses this analogy:

“You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with a… famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist’s circulatory system was plugged into yours, so your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood…”[6]

She goes on to say that if the violinist were to be unplugged from you anytime in the next 9 months he would die but asks if we should really be obliged to carry that burden. The analogy is fairly straight forward but it does have a very potent point. However as Don Marquis shows it cannot fully escape the personhood argument as it tries to.

Marquis turns Thomson’s argument on its head. Rather than saying that the foetus’ right to life does not go as far as leeching off the mother’s body as Thomson does he says the opposite, that the mother’s right to control her own body does not go as far as ending another life. Here we find the biggest flaw on Thomson’s argument. Because she assumes that whether or not a foetus is or isn’t a person is not important and takes the assumption that it is a person then it is very easy to switch her argument around convincingly as Marquis has done.

Warren on the other hand takes Thomson’s argument along with her definition of what makes a person, making the pro-choice case much stronger.

“the basic rights of an actual person outweigh the rights of a merely potential person.”[8]

We might go even further than this to say that because the foetus is not a person it has no rights at all. It has no concept of itself, what it is, what death is, and therefore it would not know if it were to die.

However, there are problems with relying on the idea personhood in the abortion argument.

Warren’s definition of personhood which we will take to be a standard pro-choice definition[9], narrows down personhood to exclude not only foetuses but infants and people in a permanent unconscious vegetative state or mentally inactive state. An extreme view in this case would be a justification of infanticide.

One proponent of infanticide[10] Michael Tooley bases his argument on refuting all commonly conceived ideas about where the cut-off point should be which he states as: “(a) conception; (b) the attainment of human form; (c) the achievement of the ability to move about spontaneously; (d) viability; (e) birth.”[11] He argues in great length about why each one cannot be a viable cut-off point based on his definition of what personhood is. For the purposes of time I will not delve into this. His conclusion however comes to the claim:

“I believe, that a new born baby does not possess the concept of a continuing self, anymore than a new born kitten possesses such a concept. If so, infanticide during a time interval shortly after birth must be morally acceptable.”[12]

Infanticide to almost all people must seem like an extreme to condone. But if we accept that babies aren’t people in the same way that foetuses aren’t people and that it is ok to abort foetuses, can we really say that infanticide is wrong? Warren thinks that we can.

Warren argues that infanticide is wrong because there is no need to kill a new born baby; there are adoption and fostering services available in the modern world. If the mother doesn’t want the baby she can put it up for adoption or foster care (either of willing semi-parental carers or the state) even if it is seriously ill or handicapped. There is no longer any risk to the mother’s health in keeping the baby alive and she need not go through the pain of childbirth once the child is born because obviously she already has.[13]

Warren also points out that babies and indeed foetuses late in their development have features that arouse powerful protective instincts. This is also an argument against late abortion as it is emotionally traumatic for the woman as well as extremely painful as expelling the foetus would be very much like giving birth.[14]

We have examined various ideas as to what personhood is. Thinkers on both sides of the argument have thought that it is impossible to define what personhood is. Judith Thomson for example sought to defend abortion on grounds which ignored the question of whether a foetus was a person. This however we showed to fail because leaving the personhood of a foetus open to question it became extremely easy to present the foetus’ right to life above the right of the woman to control her body for nine months. We then saw that problems arose from the logical defining of personhood, that infanticide could be justified by people such as Tooley and Singer in extreme cases. However we saw that lines could be drawn against infanticide regarding the availability of other sources of care – that it is not necessary to destroy an already born baby. Lines could also be drawn against late abortion too because of the physical and psychological effects on the mother.

In conclusion. The debate over foetal personhood is important, nay crucial to the abortion debate because the abortion debate cannot be won without it. Moreover, it is extremely possible to define clear grounds as to what personhood is without having to go as far as Singer and Tooley and justify infanticide or even late abortion.

Word Count: 2,099

Bibliography:

(In order of use)

- Don Marquis, An Argument that Abortion is Wrong, published in Ethics in Practice: An Anthology, Hugh LaFollette, 2002, Blackwell Publishing

- Mary Warren, On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion, published in Ethics in Practice: An Anthology, Hugh LaFollette, 2002, Blackwell Publishing

- Judith Thomson, A Defense of Abortion, published in Ethics in Practice: An Anthology, Hugh LaFollette, 2002, Blackwell Publishing

- Michael Tooley, Abortion and Infanticide, published in Philosophy and Public Affairs, page 50 Princeton University Press, 1972 taken from JSTOR: link

[1] For the purposes of this essay, the word person or people will refer not only to human beings but any creature that fulfils the criteria offered by Mary Warren, see below. The word personhood will mean the quality of fulfilling most of the criteria.

[2] Don Marquis op cit. An Argument that Abortion is Wrong, published in Ethics in Practice: An Anthology, Part 1, page 87 Hugh LaFollette, 2002, Blackwell Publishing.

[3] Mary Warren, On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion published in Ethics in Practice: An Anthology, Part 1, page 76 Hugh LaFollette, 2002, Blackwell Publishing.

[4] The American spelling of foetus

[5] Mary Warren, op cit. On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion published in Ethics in Practice: An Anthology, Part 1, page 78 Hugh LaFollette, 2002, Blackwell Publishing.

[6] Thomson op cit. A Defense of Abortion, published in Ethics in Practice: An Anthology, Part 1, page 64 Hugh LaFollette, 2002, Blackwell Publishing.

[7] Marquis op cit. An Argument that Abortion is Wrong, published in Ethics in Practice: An Anthology, Part 1, page 84 Hugh LaFollette, 2002, Blackwell Publishing.

[8] Warren op cit. On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion published in Ethics in Practice: An Anthology, Part 1, page 79 Hugh LaFollette, 2002, Blackwell Publishing.

[9] Other definitions by members of the pro-choice side of the argument are different but they still focus on various similar criteria, Tooley for example focuses on self-awareness as the defining criteria. For the purpose of simplicity Warren’s definition will be employed on behalf of those with similar viewpoints.

[10] Infanticide I will take to mean the killing of a new born baby at a point before it gains the criteria of personhood as set out either by Warren or Tooley.

[11] Tooley op cit. Abortion and Infanticide, published in Philosophy and Public Affairs, page 50 Princeton University Press, 1972 taken from JSTOR: link

[12] ibidem. Page 63

[13] Warren op cit. On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion published in Ethics in Practice: An Anthology, Part 1, page 80 Hugh LaFollette, 2002, Blackwell Publishing.

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