I have always struggled with certain social policies, such as abortion and euthanasia. As a libertarian-leaning conservative, I do not think we should be preventing people from doing things to their body. If someone wants to kill themselves or take drugs, who am I say no? I do not agree with those actions, but it is their body. Does another individual, or even a group of individuals, know what is right for someone else? Even if they do, do they have any right to coerce that person into doing it?
This view is a bit harder to muddle through when discussing abortion. In one sense, a person has the right to do to their own body as they will, but, as libertarians say, your right to punch me in the face ends where my face begins.
What about those that cannot stand up for themselves? Does a woman's right to control her body trump the rights of an unborn child? How can a country that will not execute the most heinous of criminals condone the death of an unborn child?
Good questions all.
However, as Different River and The Hobbesian Conservative point out, this is going even further.
Peter Singer wrote in 1995 an article entitled "Killing Babies Isn't Always Wrong" in which he argued that there should be a ceremony some time after birth where the child is officially admitted into society as a person. The child could be killed before that and it would not be the same as killing a person. Among other things, he states that killing a seriously defective newborn is not wrong. Seriously defective is defined as one that can include lifelong medical treatment, but does not preclude one from living a productive and pleasant life. Is asthma a serious disability?
I bring these points forward to push for public debate on when life begins. The Europeans are already at this point. Should we define what our society is going to be like, or just leave it to some "experts" to decide?
I would be interested to see what The Monger has to say on this issue.
1 comment:
Hi MB,
I think abortion is the most difficult issue for principled people to contend with, because it seems to be the one situation where two people's rights are actually in conflict.
My position is that there should be no doubt once a baby is born, it is a person. Singer's position about acquiring personhood some time after birth, it seems to me, is mistaken. At the same time, I think it is reasonable to say that some human beings are so structurally ill and/or abnormal that letting them die is not wrong--e.g. an anencephalic baby (born without a brain), or an adult who is brain dead. Of course, then we enter the argument between killing vs. letting die... which I don't frankly feel like taking on at the moment!
My perspective on abortion amounts to this: human beings have rights, as we understand them, because of our capacity for free will. That capacity rests on the physical existence of a brain which is "physically" capable of exercising that free will (e.g. an adult who is asleep does not give up the right to life just because at the moment he is not exercising free will). The difference between capacity and potential is subtle: a newly sperm-fertilized human egg has the potential for free will, but not the physical capacity for it. In contrast, a newborn baby has essentially the same brain as an adult, stucturally speaking, so has the capacity for free will (even though it will not be materially exercised for a few years, in all likelihood). In my view, those organisms with the physical (brain) capacity to exercise free will have rights--the same rights for a baby as for an adult, for a stupid person as for a smart one, etc. "Capacity for free will" allows for the fact you may not be using free will right now (like the sleeper) or may make stupid free-will decisions (like the fool). If an organism does not have the physical capacity for free will, even if it has the potential, it does not have human rights as we understand them (which does not necessarily mean, by the way, that it would have NO rights at all--just not the same rights as an adult human).
The difference here, between potential and capacity, is basically the same as the difference between a box of computer components, and a fully assembled computer with minimal software. The first is not a computer, although it has the potential to become one. The second is a computer--if a very simple and basic one. If "computers" had rights, then the second one would have rights, but the first would not.
So, abortion. If, as I have argued, a baby has the same human rights as an adult, because the baby and the adult share the same capacity for the exercise of free will, at what point in gestation is that capacity established? Because it seems to me that once the fetus acquires the same rights as an adult, abortion ought not be legal except in the most extreme circumstances. The short answer is frankly that I don't know. It is probably somewhere in the late first trimester or early second trimester. For the sake of argument, let's say it is at 20 weeks gestation (mid-way through the 2nd trimester, given that a full gestation is about 40 weeks). If my argument holds, then abortion should be legal prior to 20 wks gestation (because the organism being killed does not have adult-type human rights), and illegal after 20 wks (because by that point the organism being killed should be treated morally and legally as if it is a human being with human rights).
There are probably a hundred things wrong with my analysis. Let me deal with one criticism right off the bat: aren't you being foolishly reductionist about human rights? Isn't it silly to say "I have rights because I have a brain"? My answer is: I am trying to define the essential quality or quantity that makes us "human". It is not the shape of our bodies, or the content of our thoughts (otherwise we risk disenfranchising perfectly intelligent and moral creatures who look different from us, or even human beings who are temporarily deprived of the use of their faculties). There is something about "humans" that obtains even if we are injured or ill, even when we are sleeping or drunk or impaired, even when we are children. It is not the current use of free will. I think it must be the capacity to use that free will. Hence, the brain. I believe this opinion is perfectly compatible with either a religious or secular "source" of rights, because whether our rights derive from God or from our nature as rational beings, they are "our" rights--and we have to define "us" somehow.
That's the short version of my personal perspective on the morality of abortion. It goes without saying that the political dimension is another matter entirely, and one that is for good or ill pretty much totally separate from the moral dimension.
best wishes, and good luck with the gf's ex.
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