FREEDOM SERIES. PART 1: ABORTIONS

FREEDOM SERIES. PART 1: ABORTIONS

Killing a baby or a woman’s right to decide ? Isn’t this a provokative question ? Type “abortions debate” in Google and you will get 2,030,000 search results. Just read one page, which is from the Wikipedia. It tells you about two major groups in the abortion debate. The Pro-choice movement, which generally supports access to abortion and regards it as morally permissible, and the Pro-life movement, which generally opposes access to abortion and regards it as morally wrong. 

To stay prudent, I am listing three links to the Wikipedia pages below this essay. All major arguments of both groups are discussed there. However, I going to stress the arguments of pro-choice group. By asking two simple questions, I identified myself as its supporter.

When does life begin ?  It depends what is meant by “life”. In my opinion,  life begins at the moment of birth.

 Who should decide ? The woman. Not her parents, boyfriend, husband, not the government, not the church.

There is also one more very important question, which is often overlooked because of the tension in the debate.

 And that is, is there anything that can be agreed on to make these hard choices better ?  I will cover this question as well.

The philosophical and ethical arguments about abortion are extremely complex. Let me go straight to the main arguments of the pro-life group and show the contra logic of the pro-choice group, which I belong to.

The major pro-life argument states that abortion is like killing a human being.”No one is allowed to kill a human being under any law, so why is it permissible in this case?” they ask. The best answer I know was given by Mary Anne Warren, in her famous article arguing for the permissibility of abortion. Pro-life opposition to abortion is based on the following logic:

1. It is wrong to kill innocent      human beings.
2. The embryo is an innocent human      being.
3. Hence it is wrong to kill the      embryo.

Warren, however, thinks that 'human being' is used in different senses in (1) and (2). In (1), 'human being' is used in a moral sense to mean a 'person', a 'full-fledged member of the moral community'. In (2), 'human being' means 'biological human'. To help make a distinction between 'person' and 'biological human', She thinks there is a series of properties that characterize a person:

1. consciousness (of objects and events      external and/or internal to the being), and in particular the capacity to      feel pain
2. reasoning (the developed      capacity to solve new and relatively complex problems)
3. self-motivated activity      (activity which is relatively independent of either genetic or direct      external control)
4. the capacity to communicate, by whatever means,      messages of an indefinite variety of types, that is, not just with an      indefinite number of possible subjects, but on indefinitely many      possible topics
5. the presence of the      concept of self,      and self-awareness,      either individual or racial, or both

The embryo has at most one consciousness (and this only after it becomes susceptible to pain—the timing of which is disputed), and hence is not a person.

Even more than that Judith Jarvis Thomson in her well-known article A Defense of Abortion argues that abortion is in some circumstances permissible even if the embryo has a right to live. Her central argument involves a thought experiment. Imagine, Thomson says, that you wake up in bed next to a famous violinist. He is unconscious with a fatal kidney ailment; and because only you happen to have the right blood type to help, the Society of Music Lovers has kidnapped you and plugged your circulatory system into his so that your kidneys can filter poisons from his blood as well as your own. If he is disconnected from you now, he will die; but in nine months he will recover and can be safely disconnected.

 Thomson takes it that you may permissibly unplug yourself from the violinist even though this will kill him. The right to life, Thomson says, does not entail the right to use another person's body, and so in disconnecting the violinist you do not violate his right to life but merely deprive him of something—the use of your body—to which he has no right. Similarly, even if the embryo has a right to life, it does not have a right to use the pregnant woman's body; and so aborting the embryo is permissible in at least some circumstances.

 Next is a thought that abortion deprives the victim embryo of a valuable future. However, this argument seems really odd to me. With that kind of logic, every spermatozoon has a future and using contraception can be considered murder. But we don’t really think that condoms are weapons of mass murder, do we ?

Besides the ethical debate, there are strong social reasons to allow the free choice of abortions, which do not really have an answer from the opponent’s side.

Steven D. Levitt and John Donohue in their famous book “Freakonomics” linked legalization of abortion to the subsequent drop in crime. Abortion was legalized in the

US

in 1973 after the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court Case. Than beginning in 1991, the

United States

experienced the sharpest drop in murder rates since the end of Prohibition in 1933. Crime began to fall roughly 18 years after abortion legalized and the decline was substantial.

Lots of research and pro-life activists argue that there is no relationship between the two events and cast doubt on every single figure from Levitt’s research. It is obvious that numbers and correlations can be viewed from a different prospective. But Levitt’s logi is hardly disputable: unwanted children have an increased risk of growing up to be criminals, and legalized abortion reduces the number of unwanted children. Consequently, legalized abortion will lower crime in the future.

The second social argument is very down-to-earth and quite simple. However, I believe it is the most powerful one. If you make something illegal, it will never disappear. It will still exist illegally.

 It is easy to model the situation when abortion is fordidden in one area of our global world.  For instance, imagine abortion would  be prohibited in

Ukraine

. In such a situation, rich women would go somewhere in

Europe

and have it there. Poor women, of course, couldn’t afford Swiss or Spanish clinics. They would be forced to do abortions at home under unsafe conditions, paying a risk premium to doctors, risking their own lives and future maternity.

I can’t understand what an anti-abortion activist would do in order to address a such risk. As a matter of fact, pro-life activists know it can not be fully answered.

Just to mention the medical arguments, I would like to quote an extract from a Time magazine article, “The Grassroots Abortion War” by Nancy Gibbs (

Thursday Feb 15 2007

issue):

Despite restricted access, abortion remains one of the most common surgical procedures in the U.S. for women and, according to the Guttmacher Institute, fewer than 0.3% of patients experience a complication serious enough to require hospitalization. First-trimester abortions in particular are considered extremely safe. After years of debate about breast cancer and abortion, the U.S. National Cancer Institute in February 2003 gathered the world's leading experts to review the data and assess the risk. They stated that their conclusion that "induced abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk"was "well established," the institute's highest rating for research findings.

The same Time magazine quotes a nurse who does abortions an every working day “Abortion is a reality. For me, I feel it can be a lifesaving choice for a woman. But decreasing abortion is a goal we all strive for."

The future solution to the abortion debate is right there, described in the same Time article. It called

Pregnancy

Support

Services

Center

. They are located all over US. They advertisement says: “PREGNANT AND SCARED? 1-800-395-HELP. WE'RE HERE 24/7”. Currently a lot controversy exists about the work of such centers. But nothing works perfectly from the very beginning. In this case, it just needs a lot of social agreement to be improved.  

In my view the best available option for the abortion problem is a network of such help centers. Their mission would be to help a woman face an unplanned pregnancy. The center must offer true and fair information about reproductive options. Given a choice, a women has an option to talk with representatives of both groups. And to be honest, I know that pro-life activists will do a great job to try to save a life, like they are doing it now in Asheville Pregnancy Support Services in

Asheville

,

North Carolina

, one of the thousands of crisis pregnancy centers in the

U.S.

 

The CEO of the center tells “When we do the ultrasound, we ask the girl how she's feeling," I ask what she would like to put on the picture for her baby book. One girl put ANGEL. Some put the name they've picked out for the baby." She points to the translucent image on the screen. "One put little miracle!!!!"

 I am absolutely sure that if a pregnant woman does see an angel in the picture no anti-abortion laws would be required. But if she does not see a miracle, it is her right to face reality”.

 

Links to Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_debate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_aspects_of_abortion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_aspects_of_the_abortion_debate

 

Comments

[a_ladybird]

"The embryo has at most one consciousness (and this only after it becomes susceptible to pain—the timing of which is disputed), and hence is not a person."
It seems that, according to such approach, a newborn baby is not a person. An insane or mentally deficient human is not a person either. Well, do we have the right to kill an infant or a mental patient?

[Sofiya Huzenko]

I found "thought experiment" especially objectionable. It should have been mentioned that the woman herself was one of those (the other one was her boy-friend) who caused "the violinist" to have a "fatal kidney ailment" in the first place. Then it is quite logical that she should be responsible for her own actions and deal with the consequences accordingly. Overall, apart from "killing" issue, I don't like pro-choice position because it promotes irresponsibility. Woman should have right to choose BEFORE she is pregnant, not AFTERWARDS...