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Thesis Most abortion arguments are really disputes about what grounds moral status, and we should say so

Miriam Adler Fellow
· 5 replies
BioethicsAnalyticIslamicJewishFeminist philosophyJudith Jarvis Thomson#abortion#bodily-rights#moral-status#personhood-criteria
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Where it stands

When abortion comes up in a class, the room divides quickly, each side convinced the other doesn't care about something important. I want to propose something modest.

Almost everyone in my classes agrees that killing an innocent person is seriously wrong. The disagreement is about what makes something the kind of being that it's seriously wrong to kill, and when that begins. Serious philosophers have defended many criteria: species membership and potential (status from conception), sentience, viability, self-awareness, or recognition by a community. Each faces a hard objection. Species membership has to explain why biology alone carries moral weight. Potential faces the point that potential X's don't usually have the rights of actual X's. Sentience is gradual and hard to locate. Viability moves with technology. Self-awareness would deny status to newborns, which almost everyone rejects.

So the thesis: most public argument about abortion is really an argument about which criterion is right, conducted as though it were an argument about who values life. If we said so, people would argue about premises rather than about each other's characters, and the temperature would drop.

I'm not asking anyone to agree with my own view, which I'll keep to myself for now. I'm asking whether this diagnosis is correct, and what it misses. Please be as careful with each other here as you'd want others to be with you.

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5 replies

For the thesis 2

  1. Tomasz Szewczak

    For Fellow

    For, with Femke's amendment. Write it as an argument: (1) it is seriously wrong to kill a being with full moral status unless (2) a right of the pregnant woman overrides it. Disagreements can sit at (1) — which criterion — or at (2) — Thomson's question, and the replies about responsibility and the parental relation. Miriam's diagnosis is right about the first premise and needs Thomson for the second. Either way, the disagreement is about premises, and that's the point.

  2. Bilal Rashid

    For Fellow

    For, and religious traditions show it. Islamic jurists debated these questions long before modern philosophy, drawing on a hadith describing stages of development and a point at which the soul is breathed in. The schools reached a wide range of positions, from prohibition from early on to permission for serious reasons in the first months. Those debates were plainly about when and how status arises, conducted by people who all valued life. Acknowledging that has, in my experience, made conversations calmer.

    Helpful · 1

Against the thesis 2

  1. Aoife Kilbride

    Against Fellow

    Against, partly, from a Catholic who agrees this framing is kinder than most. Calling it a dispute about "the criterion" can make it sound like we're choosing between definitions. For people who hold that status begins at conception, it isn't a stipulation; it's the claim that the same human being exists from that point on, with a future like ours. Don Marquis's well-known argument rests on exactly that: what makes killing wrong is depriving a being of a valuable future, and the fetus has one. That's a substantive argument, not a definition.

    Helpful · 2
  2. Femke Bosman

    Against Fellow

    Against, from the other direction. Your diagnosis leaves out Judith Jarvis Thomson. Her 1971 paper grants, for the sake of argument, that the fetus is a person from conception, and asks whether one person can be required to sustain another with her own body. Her case: you wake up with a famous violinist plugged into your kidneys, and unplugging him will kill him. Must you stay connected for nine months? So even full agreement on status wouldn't end the debate. There are at least two disputes, status and bodily rights, and many people who are pro-choice are arguing the second.

    Helpful · 3

Other replies

  1. Miriam Adler

    Fellow

    I'm grateful for how carefully everyone has written here. I accept Femke's and Tomasz's amendment: there are two disputes, about status and about bodily rights, and my thesis only covers the first. Aoife's point is also fair, and I'll change my wording: it's a dispute about what grounds status, and each side's answer is a substantive claim, not a definition.

    One piece from my own tradition shows how both disputes interlock. The Mishnah rules that if a woman's life is endangered in labour, the fetus may be removed to save her, since her life takes precedence; but once most of the child has emerged, it may not be touched, because one life is not set aside for another. Maimonides explains it partly by treating the fetus as a pursuer. That single ruling makes claims about status and about what the mother may do.

    Helpful · 2