Personal Morality Paper on Abortion

Morality and Abortion
The permissibility or impermissibility of abortion is a common argument in moral philosophy. Most arguments tend to be concerned with whether or not the fetus is considered a person. However, there are several well-respected essays that use other arguments to answer the question of whether abortion is permissible under most circumstances. One such paper, “Creation Ethics,” written by Elizabeth Harman argues that the likely future determines the moral status of the fetus, while Don Marquis’s “Why Abortion is Immoral,” disputes that the possibility of a future grants that abortion is prima facie immoral. The final article I will review in this paper is “A Defense of Abortion” by Judith Thomson, in which she takes a different route and argues that the status of the fetus has little to do with whether abortion is immoral at all. Her article is by far the most reasonable, and I will spend much of this paper arguing for why this is true. In this paper, I will attempt to illustrate that the moral status of the fetus does not affect the permissibility of abortion, and that abortion is permissible even if the fetus is a person.
One notable article that argues for the permissibility of abortion is “Creation Ethics” by Elizabeth Harman. In it, she argues that not all fetuses have the same moral status. According to her, a fetus that dies early in pregnancy has no moral status because it will never become a person. However, if a fetus will be carried to term, then it does have moral status because it will eventually become a person. This argument is part of Harman’s “Actual Future Principal” (Harman 311), which states that fetuses that die before becoming persons never have any “intrinsic properties that themselves confer moral status. But an early fetus that will become a person… will one day have the full moral status of a person, and that is a good reason to think it has some moral status now” (Harman 312). Using this reasoning, Harman makes the case that early abortion requires absolutely no rationalization. Her view also allows that it is appropriate to love fetuses and that some of them are morally significant beings that should not be harmed.
One flaw that I have noticed in this paper is that Harman spends a great deal of time arguing that the moral value of a fetus is dependent on whether the fetus will ever become a person, but she never gives an explanation of why a fetus is not a person to begin with. In order for her argument to work, it must be true that a fetus in itself has no intrinsic properties which give it moral status. In other words, if I were to make the claim that a baby has no moral status if it is murdered before it reaches adulthood, then most people who believe that infanticide is immoral would be outraged, because those individuals believe that there are properties which make infants deserving of life that are separate from those properties that make adults deserving of life. The only individuals who would approve of my argument are those that believe that infanticide is permissible, and those are not the individuals that I would be trying to convince. Accordingly, those people that would agree with Harman are those that already believe that a fetus in and of itself does not have moral properties. Those people, however, are not the individuals that the argument is aimed at, and thus, the argument falls flat. Her paper may have been redeemed had she addressed the question of why fetuses are not morally significant just by being fetuses. Harman, however, never asks nor answers this question. For if fetuses are persons, her argument is not reasonable and cannot be used, and yet she still gives no mention of this at all in her paper.
Don Marquis, begins his paper entitled “Why Abortion is Immoral”, by claiming that it seems impossible for either pro-lifers or pro-choicers to define the right to life in such a way that supports their stance adequately. Marquis attempts to resolve this problem by first questioning why it is wrong to kill a human in the first place. He considers several possibilities, starting with the brutalization of the killer and the “great loss other would experience due to [the victim’s] absence” (Marquis 189). He quickly discounts these arguments and comes to the conclusion that killing is wrong because it deprives the victim of something they would have otherwise had. He claims that when a person dies, they are deprived of all the experiences they would have enjoyed, and thus “what makes killing any adult human being prima facie seriously wrong is the loss of his or her future” (Marquis 190). Therefore, killing is wrong because it causes the loss of a valuable future. At this point, Marquis turns to some possible arguments against his paper that are in the form of different reasons why killing could be wrong. One of these arguments is the discontinuation account which states that killing interferes with a person’s “experience of living and wish for that valuable experience to continue” (Marquis 195). Another is the desire account, which states that what makes killing so immoral is the “fact that people strongly desire to live” (Marquis 195). Marquis argues with this account by arguing that some people do not desire to live, but it still seems wrong to kill them. He also makes the argument that people only desire life because of the good that is in it. Therefore, if “this were not so, the pain of one’s own premature death could be done away with merely by an appropriate alteration in the configuration of one’s desires” (Marquis 196). He concludes from this that a desire for life is not enough to make killing wrong. Thus, he argues, his account for the wrongness of abortion is the most reasonable.
Marquis’s essay is a valuable argument since it does not waste its time trying to prove that fetuses are persons. Rather, it chooses to point out the fact that fetuses are worth moral consideration because they will potentially become persons and have a valuable future, which is indisputable. In this aspect, his paper is solid. However, he never really considers the mother in any of his arguments, and although he proves that a fetus’s life has worth, he never explains why that life should be valued over the rights or choices of the mother. He talks about an individual’s right to a valuable future, but does not reach a point where he mentions that the mother’s future may be less valuable if she is forced to carry the child to term. Additionally, he never speaks of women’s rights, only of the rights of an unborn child who is inhabiting a body that is not his. This is too important a point to miss, therefore providing a very weak spot in his paper.
J.J. Thomson’s paper diverts from the traditional argument regarding whether a fetus is a person or not and instead makes the argument that even if a fetus is truly a person, abortion is still permissible. To begin her argument, she mentions the fact that while many will argue that a fetus is a person, almost no one has explained why it is thus wrong to abort such a fetus. To explain her point, she fabricates an analogy of a famous violinist who requires the use of another person’s kidneys for a certain period of time in order to survive. She then explains how a certain group of individuals has kidnapped someone and hooked them up the violinist in order that he may survive. In this scenario, she argues, no rational agent would claim that the person plugged into the violinist is morally required to stay there. She then furthers her argument by giving another scenario, in which a person is trapped in a house with a rapidly growing child. The person cannot escape the house, and if the child continues to grow, then the child will crush her. Thomson argues that this person has every right to kill the child, although in this case, it is appropriate for bystanders to claim that they cannot choose between the life of the woman or the child, and thus will not kill the child for the sake of the woman’s life. Thomson, however, does not leave it at this. The previous scenario does not take into account that the woman owns her body and thus a third party has reason to intervene on her behalf over the child’s. To illustrate this, she gives the example of Smith and Jones, who will both die without the use of a coat. However, the coat belongs to Smith, which ultimately leaves any bystander unable to say that they cannot choose, since the coat is Smith’s in the first place. The same goes for a mother who will die if she carries a child to term. Her body belongs to her, and just as Smith should be allowed his coat in order to survive, the mother should be allowed the use of her body to survive.
After establishing that it is acceptable to abort a fetus if the mother is pregnant from rape or if the mother will die if her fetus is not aborted, Thomson then takes her argument further by stating that abortion is permissible even if the mother engaged in intercourse willingly. The example she uses to support this argument is that of an individual who opens a window in their house. Should a burglar happen to come in through this window, no one would say it was the fault of the individual that this person had come into their house, nor would anyone blame them for taking measures to get rid of said burglar. Another example involves “people-seeds” that can potentially drift into one’s house and take root and grow. In this case, and especially if one had taken measures in order to prevent the seeds from getting in to the house, the author deems it appropriate to remove the seeds even if it is partially the fault of the owner of the house that they rooted in the first place.
Thomson concludes at this point, that in most cases, it is not morally unjust for a person to have an abortion. She does allow that there are certain circumstances where a person ought to carry a pregnancy to term. However, she takes the time to differentiate between what someone ought to do, and what they are morally required to do. She returns to the example of the violinist, and changes the requirements so that the individual only has to remain attached to him for one hour, and the health of the individual will not be adversely affected. In this case, Thomson claims that it would be indecent for the individual to detach himself from the violinist. However, she points out that the individual would not be doing something morally wrong, because the individual still has a right to his body, and the fact that it would be easy for him to save the violinist’s life, does not make it a requirement to do so.
The final point made by Thomson is that although it is within a person’s right to detach himself from the famous violinist, it is not within his right to ensure that the violinist dies as a result. The same goes for any mother who has an abortion. She is not allowed to assure herself that the child is dead when aborted. If for some strange reason, the child survives the abortion, then the mother has no right to kill the child, for the child is no longer dependent on her body for its life.
My final conclusion on the permissibility of abortion is that it is permissible in nearly all circumstances. This is denied by Marquis, but I disagree because his only consideration is that killing is wrong. He never once takes into account that it is wrong to force a woman to use her body in a way that she does not want. My conclusion is supported by Harman, but not for the same reasons. She believes that fetuses in and of themselves do not have any intrinsic values that make them worth consideration. I disagree. The article that agrees most with my opinions is that of J.J. Thomson, because she argues that a person’s right to life does not give them the right to use someone else’s body. My belief is that abortion is permissible simply because a mother has a right to decide what should be done with her body. Even if the choice is made for selfish reasons, it is still not justified that any individual should prevent a woman from doing what she pleases with her own body. Therefore, by supporting and opposing several articles I have delivered my argument that abortion is permissible nearly all the time.