Abortion Little, The Morality of Abortion Noonan, An Almost Absolute Value in History

An Almost Absolute Value in History Noonan

Noonan and Little’s articles are attempts move forward the abortion debate without getting into issues of what personhood is Noonan suggests an alternative way of showing that abortion from conception is wrong Little proposes a project – how to further the abortion debate by examining a host of notions ignored in the abortion debate

Noonan Several ways to characterize personhood. The idea being that once this is done, we can straightforwardly know whether a fetus is a person or not. If it isn’t then abortion is permitted. If it is a person then abortion is wrong Characterizing personhood is more difficult than initially appears. Traits that are characteristic of persons (independence, experience, sentiments, social visibility) and shows that all are inadequate Note: Noonan's article has religious overtones, so he often speak of a ‘soul’ instead of personhood, but for our purposes we can treat the two notions as equivalent

Independence Soul/Personhood: x is a person just in case x can exist independently (i.e. at the stage of viability; until then life of fetus entirely dependent on mother) Problem: artificial incubation can make the fetus viable at any time – by we wouldn’t say that a zygote is a person Problem: dependence not ended by viability – new born still dependent on someone’s care in order to exist.

Experience A being who has lived, suffered, possesses memories is more human than one who is not Fetus unformed – has not lived life, so not human at all Problem: suppose a normal human with a lively history loses all memories – we wouldn’t say at that point that they are no longer a person. So, life experiences are not relevant to personhood.

Social Visibility The fetus is not socially perceived as a human It cannot communicate with other, so it is not a member of society Entail rejecting fetus is human Historical problems: alienations of clearly human individuals throughout history 1984, Communist China – landlords lost status as persons under the law Slavery etc.

BUT Even though each of the above conceptions of personhood is inadequate, there must be some conception of personhood that we have not yet discovered Suppose there wasn’t Then one could not make moral judgments at all E.g. it is wrong to kill individual X. Suppose that this is a true moral judgment. Why would it be true? Because individual X is a kind of thing which have moral worth – and so, persons. So, there must be some conception of personhood, otherwise we couldn’t say that killing individual X is wrong. All of this assumes that one is not a moral subjectivist

How can we say what personhood will likely be without getting into the personhood debate, which seems to be at a standstill? Noonan’s thinks that he has a good reason to think that a zygote from conception onwards is a person The reason has to do with the probabilities of survival Consider what the probability of survival is of each individual sperm. The estimate probability that it will develop into adulthood is 1 in 200 million Now, consider what the probability of survival is a zygote (a fertilized egg). The estimated probability is 4 in 5. The extreme jump in probability of survival, Noonan suggests, is indicative of where personhood begins This does not tell us what feature consists in personhood; we are not told whether it is independence, sentience, etc. This is enough to settle the abortion debate – since personhood begins at conception we should not abort from conception onwards

Objection: Are the probabilities representative of some feature of personhood, or is it really just a probability that reflects how we normally mate. Consider artificial insemination. In this case, we know that the sperm and egg separately have a high probability of survival, perhaps just as high as a fertilized egg. So, there is no discrepancy in probability in these controlled environment, yet the end result is also a fully developed person So, probability indication of this sort are not reliable guides for personhood

The Morality of Abortion Margaret Olivia Little

Outline of Her Project Abortion debate focuses on whether abortion is permissible (difficult and important debate) What about is it honorable? Monstrous? Responsible? Decent? Respectful? Suggesting that we can’t just decide abortion (im) permissible – and think we have settled the debate She presents her own view tentatively, but her article should really be seen as an outline of a project whose details haven’t been worked out

Suppose no person Missing in debate: gestation ethics What is means to play a role in creating a person how to assess responsibilities that involve sharing, not just risking, one’s body and life? what follows from the fact that the entity in question is or would be one’s child? Assessing the importance of impending relationship the practical identity that the mother takes on when becoming a mother

Suppose Fetuses are Persons Wrongful interference Examines Thomson Violinist cases In removing the assistance, you are not violating the person’s right to life All killing are tragedies, but not all are alike: some killings share the crucial “formal” feature of letting die, which is that they leave the person no worse off than before she encountered you

Car Analogy and Thomson Violinist Case Little tries to supplement Thomson cases with further detail so that it is clear that Thomson cases do not just apply to cases of rape Critics of Thomson say that Violinist Case only applies to rape cases The person who keeps the violinist on life support was kidnapped and so has a right to disconnect But, a mother in normal cases chose to have sex – the pregnancy was not forced upon her So, she doesn’t have the right to abort Consider the ‘Car Accident’ Analogy: The woman caused the baby to have the need, so she is responsible for introducing the need She is not like someone happening by an accident on the highway who knows CPR; she is like the person who caused the accident Her actions introduce a special duty to lessen vulnerabilities and repair harms we have inflicted on others Little Defends Thomson on this point Disanalogy: causing the accident causes harm to other drivers; procreation does not cause harm to fetus, the fetus would not have existed without procreation – and the mere fact of being brought into existence is not a bad thing Creating a human means creating a being with needs, but that does not mean that you are inflicting a need onto someone, the fetus did not exist prior to the pregnancy so, its needs could not have changed Point: Even if fetus is a person, abortion is not murder – it is not a species of wrongful interference