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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2010
Voluntary Abortion involves the preventable destruction of an unformed or partly formed human organism. It is disagreement about the moral significance of this fact which sustains the controversy over abortion. This disagreement derives from a dispute about the sanctity, or morally protected position, of the destroyed organism, which in turn results from conflicting opinions about the basis or criterion of sanctity rather than any uncertainty over how they may apply. The thesis of this paper is that this last disagreement about the criterion of moral sanctity cannot be settled by rational, i.e. non-circular, argument; and hence, that there is no rational method of resolving the controversy over the morality of abortion.
1 This conclusion is not drawn from a general position of moral scepticism but is based upon features specific to the issue of abortion.
2 S.I. Benn makes a similar point in “Abortion, Infanticide, and Respect for Persons,” when he suggests that “there may be morally relevant reasons” against abortion which do not take the form of ascribing a right to the unborn fetus. See The Problem of Abortion, edited by Feinberg, Joel, (Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1973), 9203.Google Scholar
3 Michael Tooley, “A Defence of Abortion and Infanticide,” in The Problem of Abortion, edited by Joel Feinberg, p. 74.
4 John T. Noonan, “An Almost Absolute Value in History,” in The Problem of Abortion, edited by Joel Feinberg, p. 15.
5 In a recent article Hare makes the same point. “The single, or at least the main, thing about the fetus that raises the moral question,” he says, “is that, if not terminated, the pregnancy is highly likely to result in the birth and growth to maturity of a person just like the rest of us.” See Hare, R.M., “Abortion and the Golden Rule,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 4 (1975), p. 207.Google ScholarPubMed
6 Engelhardt, H.T., “The Ontology of Abortion,” Ethics, 84 (1974), p. 229.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
7 Tooley, “A Defence of Abortion and Infanticide,” in The Problem of Abortion, edited by Joel Feinberg, p. 59.
8 Benn, “Abortion, Infanticide, and Respect for Persons,” in The Problem of Abortion, edited by Joel Feinberg, p. 100.
9 Tooley, “A Defence of Abortion and Infanticide,” p. 63.
10 Tooley, “A Defence of Abortion and Infanticide,” p. 64.
11 A formidable attempt to demonstrate by means of an alleged formal “generalized potentiality principle” that anyone opposed to abortion must also be opposed to contraception, has been made by Tooley. If his argument were to succeed, it could also be used against liberal positions which make sanctity conditional upon a more developed potentiality. However, the argument does not succeed because it fails to differentiate between the physical possibility of growth which is attributable to reproductive cells prior to fertilization, and even to non-reproductive cells (e.g. cloning), and the genetic capacity for growth which is only attributable to a genetically complete fertilized ovum. As a result, Tooley goes beyond the generalization of the conservative's principle to introduce substantive considerations a conservative need not accept.
12 Brandt, Richard, “The Morality of Abortion,” The Monist, (1972), p. 517.Google Scholar
13 This is an argument which Tooley suggests that conservatives might use to oppose abortion even in the case where the mother's life is endangered. “Two moral principles lend support to the view that it is the fetus which should live,” he claims. “First … should not one give something to a person who has had less rather than to a person who has had more? The mother has had a chance to live, while the fetus has not. The choice is thus between giving the mother more of an opportunity to live while giving the fetus none at all, and giving the fetus an opportunity to enjoy life while not giving the mother a further opportunity to do so. Surely fairness requires the latter.” (Tooley, “A Defence of Abortion and Infanticide,” p. 53). The argument is hypothetical, however, since it rests on the presumption that the fetus is a person, which Tooley goes on to dispute.
14 Another example would be the Golden Rule which Hare in an ingenious re-formulation brings to bear on the problem of abortion. According to Hare, “we should do to others what we are glad was done to us.” The need for a re-formulation is indicative of the fact that the rule was not devised with abortion in mind. In order to know whether the rule remains as good as gold after re-formulating it, we have to know whether fetuses are included among “others” or not. This we can never find out from the rule itself, since it needs interpretation in the respect which is in question.
15 This is one of the versions of a Rawls-type validation-procedure which Brandt employs in his attempt to settle the abortion issue; although he prefers a different formulation of (c), according to which partiality is to be avoided not by keeping the moral voter in the dark about his personal fate, but by having him keep in mind that whatever he advocates must be acceptable to all, i.e. a rule of unanimous assent.
16 Green, Ronald, “Conferred Rights and the Fetus,” Journal of Religious Ethics, 2 (1974), p. 60.Google ScholarPubMed
17 Childress, James, “A Response to Ronald Green,” Journal of Religious Ethics, 2 (1974), p. 81.Google ScholarPubMed
18 Green, “Conferred Rights and the Fetus,” p. 59.
