My belief is that life and matter exist in a continuum, and we, living, conscious beings who also incorporate a material self (rather than only constituting a material self) can act either consonant with life or with matter, and that types of thinking which rightly apply in studies of matter, ie science (logic etc) lead to all sorts of distortions and wrong outcomes when applied to life.

I have read this sentence 3 times, and I quite simply have no idea what it means. If you are right, what would be different about the world?

I think Owen has comprehensively disposed of the points made by Peter Singer and quoted in your comment. The criteria for assessing the ‘moral worth’, or — to use a potentially tendentious term — ‘rights’ of a late-term foetus or a new-born baby are convincingly shown by Owen’s original post to have little or nothing to do with the mother’s pregnancy or lack of it, and nothing at all to do with dependency or viability.

Owen has answered my question in the only way that is consistent, I think, with his basic thesis (which I accept), namely that there is no appreciable change in the moral worth of the foetus/baby as between immediately before and immediately after birth, since the criteria for recognition of moral worth and qualified entitlement to protection are to do with ability to feel pain and individual consciousness, graduating into self-awareness, and not viability, the mother’s rights over her own body or lack of them, DNA, potential for becoming something or someone else, or any of the other red herrings repeatedly dragged across the trail. But I agree with his postscript about the utilitarian validity of the social taboo against killing humans, a social good that would need to be weighed against the case for terminating, either before or soon after birth, a life that because of radical deformity of some kind could never be anything but a burden to itself and those condemned to look after it. That taboo is damaged more by the killing of a new-born baby than by killing a late-term foetus, so to that extent the former carries a heavier penalty than the latter, although both could in principle be justified in exceptional circumstances.

I think this has been an unusually mind-clearing and therefore valuable set of exchanges.

Brian
http://www.barder.com/ephems/

But I have one problem with your case: how do you distinguish between an unborn baby (foetus) and a new-born baby? I’m not clear which of your arguments against attributing rights to a foetus don’t apply equally to a new-born baby. Or do you accept a woman’s (or a doctor’s, or the father’s) moral right to kill a new-born baby? If so, at what point and on what grounds does that right evaporate, if it does? Is the state of consciousness of a baby an hour after birth significantly more developed than one hour before birth? Isn’t it still markedly less developed than that of, say, an adult chimpanzee or even a cow (to go back to your analogies)?

Peter Singer, sort of, answers these points.
He accepts that the birth makes a difference “not so much to the fetus/infant and its claim to life, but to others who are affected by it.”
He then gives a couple of examples.
“ ….the woman is no longer pregnant….Thus her claim to control her own body and reproductive system is no longer enough to determine the life or death of the new born baby.
The second difference birth makes is that if the baby’s mother does not want to keep the child, it can be cared for by someone else who does. This reason for preserving infant life is strong in a society in which there are more couples wanting to adopt a baby than there are babies needing adoption.”
t

Perhaps because I am reasonably certain that in every mother and child pair there is one of them that does not wish the abortion to happen?

(Which is obviously begging the question I know.)

Owen replies: Tim – you know that is anthropomorphic tosh. The foetus does not “want” anything. It has a brain so basic that it doesn’t even feel pain. It is not sitting in there planning its future and saving for college. And even if it could feel pain, how does it differ from the pig that provided your bacon this morning, which almost certainly does not “wish” to go to the abbattoir?

Our philosphical conundrum for today comes from Owen Barder. On the subject of abortion he makes this comment: But we do not, in general, think that other people have a right to commandeer our bodies, even if their life depends

To return to being facetious:
“But we do not, in general, think that other people have a right to commandeer our bodies, even if their life depends on it.”
Owen, you certainly argue strongly at times that several billion people have the right to commandeer my body and its labour as their lives depend upon it. That is your argument in favour of tax-paid aid, is it not?

Owen replies Tim – I’ve replied to this on your blog. I was going to tease you with the opposite facetious point. I was wondering when you would get to the sentence I was expecting from a libertarian like you: “but the state is not your friend and these are individual choices so abortion should be legal for anyone who wants one, even if I personally do not agree”.

You are honest enough to say that post birth terminations are acceptable. This is in line with your view that terminations have no moral significance. When I accused you of avoiding the issue, I was thinking that you do not explain how (or when) a person acquires rights. I would appreciate your clarifying how a older child gains the rights denied a younger child.

Owen replies: John – thanks. I didn’t say quite say that terminations have no moral significance. I don’t think the foetus has significant moral worth, though as it develops and acquires the ability to feel pain I think it does have some moral claims as full term approaches. (I realise this is a more nuanced position than I set out above. In retrospect, I should have made this clear.) But I don’t think those change significantly at birth (which is just a change of address, with no moral implications). I think the foetus (and then baby) steadily acquires greater moral claims as it develops the ability to feel pain, consciousness, and eventually self-awareness. I would say that it is several (perhaps 6) months old before it has the same moral status as an adult. This does not mean that I am in favour of infanticide of 3-month old babies. I think there are sound utilitarian reasons for maintaining a taboo on killing people, which would be weakened by allowing people to kill 3-month old children, and I don’t believe that there is any good reason to commit infanticide of 3-month old babies sufficient to offset that damage to the public good. But I would allow the infanticide in limited circumstances of new-born babies born with very significant deformities, yes.

Your test for controlling one’s own body is misleading
I do not believe that people should be compelled against their will to give away a kidney or undergo a bone marrow transplant to save the life of another person.

As a philosophy graduate you know the difference between passive and active euthenasia. Your example is not applicable.

A man shooting people with a gun is controlling his own body. We accept that his control has to be limited for society’s good. In other words he does not have absolute right of control.

Moving to the rights of the child:

We accept that an adult has the right not to be killed upon the whim of another. Sperm do not have a right to be joined to an egg. Therefore, at sometime during the period between conception and adulthood, that right is acquired. I might be mistaken but you seem to place that at the point of birth. This is more extreme than mainstream society which seems to place it earlier at a point immediately prior to “viability”. Indeed it would seem odd to permit the killing of a viable infant the day before it’s natural birth, when premature babies can live unaided. This is what has motivated the move to reduce the limit – technological advance has now changed the point of viability.

But viability is itself a dubious method of determining rights. An unhealthy baby kept alive by technology is no more viable than a 24 week old foetus or a adult on a kidney machine.

In fact there is no obvious reason why any of the major physical mileposts of confinement should be seen as the point at which rights are somehow magically acquired. We may be forced to admit that any limit is somewhat arbitrary but agree nevertheless, that rights are acquired somewhere in those 9 months.

That means the limited rights of the woman to control her own body need to be balanced against the uncertain rights of the foetus. In this scenario one evil – forcing women to carry unwanted babies has to be balanced against another evil – terminating a foetus.

I’m prepared to defend abortion on this basis. It fits better with the historical reasons as to why abortion laws were liberalised in the UK – ie. the evil of back street abortion was seen to be worse than the evil of state sanctioned terminations that desperate young girls would have secured illegally in any case.

Nevertheless, the huge number of abortions that are performed today makes me very uncomfortable, particularly as sex education is now compulsory (inc. opt-out), contraception is freely available and the shame of illegitimacy has gone. To coldly regard such events as of no moral significance is pretty repellant, regardless of your position on abortion.

Furthermore, the absolutist case that you propose gives us no basis to oppose infanticide. The young child is no less dependent upon the mother (right to control) and no less capable of being looked after by outside interventionist parties. It’s hard to see why dependence prior to birth differs morally from that after. If the mother’s rights are primary, it follows that termination is morally okay. In fact the secretary of one of the Abortion advocates admitted as much on BBC’s the moral maze.

Owen replies:

Owen

I agree that the questions (rather than arguments) that I have posed above are closely related to the points you address in your linked post. Where I think I differ from you (with considerable diffidence) is in regarding the right to life, as you define it, as different in kind and not just in degree from the other kinds of right that you mention (such as the right to marry, to drive, to drink, to vote, etc.). The latter category of ‘rights’ is surely more akin to legal permissions related not to one’s human condition, and by no means ‘inalienable’ (or ‘unalienable’ — as in the Declaration of Independence), but rather determined by society’s judgement of when it is safe to allow the activity in question, and when the growing human is likely to be capable of performing it in a rational and responsible way. In other words, these rights are not to be seen as a continuum with the right to life at one end, and the right to buy cigarettes at the other. There are surely few rights comparable with the right to life: the rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness (Jefferson again) probably covers the field quite well although Jefferson quoted them as examples, not as a complete catalogue. Of those three, the right to life is the only one that a baby is capable of enjoying, plus of course the right to be allowed to enjoy the other two when the capacity to enjoy them has developed. Even then, the right of a child of, say, eight, to liberty, may be considerably circumscribed!

It’s arguable, and indeed often argued, that the whole language of ‘rights’ is misconceived and that we should think more in terms of what behaviour is morally and socially permissible or desirable in relation to oneself and (especially) others. On that basis it would seem to me manifestly more undesirable to kill a new-born baby than to abort an unborn one, especially an unborn one in the first weeks or months after conception. But that’s really a circular argument, merely re-phrasing the original question: is abortion ‘wrong’ and if so why? And I return to my subordinate question: if abortion is not, or not necessarily, ‘wrong’, as argued by Owen, by the same token is killing a new-born baby wrong, and if not (or not necessarily), what exactly is the difference? — apart of course from the factor of the possible effects of the birth on the mother’s physical health, since once the baby is born, killing it (him, her) won’t any longer affect the mother’s physical health. But the implications for the mother’s physical health are not by any means always the key factor in the abortion argument or in abortions as such, so that can’t be the determining factor.

Brian

“So we seem to think that there is some positive correlation between moral status and consciousness or self-awareness… a foetus at an advanced stage of development would not have the level of self-awareness of a cow or a dog.

“So perhaps there is something else about what a foetus is that might be the basis of a moral status, even though it has a low level of consciousness and limited ability to feel pain? Some people take the view that it has status because it consists of human DNA. But so do sperm, and we don’t generally think that sperm has moral status, so it can’t be that.”

First, the argument from consciousness leads to an extremely slippery slope, especially once you justify killing animals on the basis of inferior consciousness. If the standards are ‘better than animal’ then basically you’re going to allow (1) enfanticide; and (2) euthanasia of large numbers of disabled (but otherwise functioning, i.e., not Schiavo-like) cases. This is the Peter Singer view, I know, but do you really hold to that? Would you really be indifferent to, say, the way Romans used to leave their babies for dead if they decided they didn’t look right?

Second, sperm do contain human DNA, but they ain’t playin’ with a full deck, as Andrew pointed out (23 chromosomes rather than 46). When a sperm fertilises an egg (and only then, short of cloning) is a human person formed. We can say that consciousness isn’t there, but the potential for consciousness is; it isn’t there in the case of a sperm. We can also point out that there’s a material difference between the consciousness of humans (existential angst, for one) and that of animals, and that the potential for this consciousness, however achieved, is something to cherish.

Further, we can say that the scale of the potential for this consciousness isn’t determined in the womb prior to most abortions. When we compare that to a person with chronic mental disabilities, your argument for consciousness probably provides stronger support for euthanasia than otherwise. So, the consciousness argument isn’t that strong either, unless we say that its current non-actuality forfeits the right to life; but in that case, can you kill somebody who’s KO’d on the floor?

“There is no general duty to sacrifice your own rights to control your body to save the life of another person.”

Not quite so clear-cut. The common law principle of necessity would seem to apply here – that the foetus has no choice but to draw life support from the mother; this could take a private form (self preservation) or a public form (social reproduction). The mother would have a consequent claim to just compensation, but that’s all.

Comparisons to a person needing a kidney having no claim to yours are bogus: there are lots of people who have kidneys, and normally a period of time during which the person can survive until an arrangement can be found. In the case of a foetus, it has been created and will not survive without drawing support from the mother’s body; there is no other way for it to stay alive, and the likely downside to the mother (bad though it can be) is not of the same magnitude as the likely downside to the foetus in case of an abortion.

The argument is all the more pointed where the mother’s agency created the pregnancy; either by intentional conception or taking actions that carried a known risk of such. In that case, the foetus (if it has personhood, and pro-lifers tend to think it does, if you’ll forgive that) is in a life-threatening emergency whereby (1) he/she can only stay alive by drawing sustenance from the person who put him/her into that situation; (2) the support is uncomfortable, painful, and potentially injurious, but is unlikely to result in death of permanent disablement. If the foetus could hire a lawyer, it’d win that case.

Re your last, the argument for abortion (or the right to it) depends on some arbitrary categorisations which, if pursued consistently, would allow the strong a brutal power over the weak.

It might be argued that this is one of those cases of taking arguments to their logical conclusion whose absurdity is then exposed, the process which Andrew doesn’t welcome but which you (I think rightly) see as legitimate. And indeed killing a new-born baby can in some circumstances be treated as morally distinguishable from killing an adult or a child that is no longer a ‘baby’ — the law treats infanticide differently from the way it treats murder, or at any rate used to do so, and whatever the law might say on the subject, few would blame a doctor who quietly disposed of (i.e. killed) a new-born baby with no possible chance of living a tolerable life, e.g. because of a terrible deformity, and whose survival would impose an appalling burden on the parents or future carers. So perhaps there isn’t after all a sharp distinction between the rights, or absence of them, of the foetus and those of a new-born baby? Yet the intuitive moral position surely contradicts this: one’s instinct is that once born, a human does have rights, whether or not he or she had already acquired them in the womb.

I think there must be a good answer to this problem but I don’t immediately see what it is. Perhaps that’s because I foolishly read classics at university, not philosophy, although I did have to spend some pretty unproductive time on Plato.

Brian

Owen replies: Right. I don’t think that there is a morally significant change at birth. Whatever moral worth a foetus has immediately before birth does not change at birth. In cases of extreme handicap which would lead to low quality of life for both child and parents, I would be in favour of permitting euthanasia after birth.

Andrew at the Sharpener and Owen Barder comments on….yes, you’ve guessed it, abortion. Rather than go into the debate point by point a quick recap of my position. I’m agin it in all but the most limited circumstances. Despite a

On a couple of your specific points:

Taken literally, this is an argument not only against abortion but also against contraception and against chastity or sexual abstinence.

That’s what I meant when I said I didn’t want rebuttals of the form ‘if you take that argument to the extreme, you’d be condoning x’, when they are self-evidently ridiculous. My view is that the moment of conception is indeed special, because it is when the potential for life is realised. We don’t view a sperm or an egg in the same way, as you suggest above, not because it has human DNA, but because it doesn’t have a complete set of human DNA. For this reason, I don’t think I slide between the two separate points, as you suggest. I think the two are linked, but that’s just a statement of personal belief as well. I certainly don’t see myself as more right than you.

There is no general duty to sacrifice your own rights to control your body to save the life of another person.

No, but I think that most people would recognise that pregnancy is a special case. The foetus is dependent on the mother. There is no clear medical analogy with that, and certainly not to organ/blood donation.

I do think it is important to try to articulate the principles that seem to guide our judgements, and then to ask whether those principles make sense, including by considering whether we would want them applied more generally.

Yes, I agree, although I think there are limits. I’m always wary of this form of argument because I know as a scientist that there are cases where rules apply in very specific conditions. To assume that a rule is universal because it seems to hold in one place is a leap of faith. Morality, for me, needn’t necessarily be different. Indeed, this is one case where we do make a very arbitrary distinction between murder and abortion (the 24 week law). I wanted to avoid the debate degenerating into namecalling and pettiness, which is why I wrote a fairly lengthy appeal for people to keep it rational. Thankfully, they’ve done just that.

Owen replies:
Andrew

Owen