I am somewhat surprised that I have come to talk about this topic, but I feel like it needs to be discussed. Given how contentious the issue is, I am surprised to see so many people assume that it has a trivial answer. I've seen people group questions of abortions in the same category of questions of racism, or homophobia, when their fundamental basis is quite different. Perhaps a close link can be made with sexism, and I think there are certainly some interesting arguments in this area. Whether they are sufficient is another question, and I certainly don't think it is as obvious as people make it out to be.
Whilst this post is largely reactionary against 'pro-choice' supporters, I think I'm going to try and respond to both sides. The reason is that I think this issue is a lot more philosophically complex than people make it out to be, certainly not to the point that an answer could be thought obvious. Compared to an essay, in this blog I'm not really going to take a specific side, my aim is simply to show that these questions are hard and that we should be considerably more sceptical about how think about them. Note that I'm only going to discuss the morality of abortion, as opposed to whether it ought to be legal (I think it should be, but these questions are quite different).
First, let us consider the pro-choice side, which I take to be the prevailing consensus at the moment (and the main target of this post). Philosophically, I think the most interesting arguments are those that discuss the autonomy of the mother over own body. It is commonly argued that the mother has a right to her own body, and thus she can choose how she ought to use it. Whilst a certainly appealing rhetoric, this claim is not enough to justify their cause. Suppose that we think a foetus to be a person, that has a much value as you and I. Should a mothers right to her own body automatically override said child's right to life? Taking it another way, is it trivial to think that my right to own body is a significant enough moral factor to override another's right to life? There are certainly some sophisticated arguments supporting this, but I certainly don't think this is obvious.
Due to this, a number of pro-choice arguments focus around stripping the foetus person-hood away from it. If the foetus lacks said person-hood, then it seems to lack this right to life and thus there does not seem to be anything morally troublesome about aborting it. Now this process is also quite difficult. Some poor arguments revolve around claims about the difficulties in 'drawing a line'. Whilst I certainly agree, this in itself is not enough to claim that no such line exists. Many would think it permissible to abort a 8-cell zygote, whilst few would think it permissible to abort an 8 month old foetus. A reasonable claim is to think the foetus becomes a person at the point it can feel pain. Whilst it is not obvious how this line is justified, we might think at least that a foetus aborted before this point will not suffer. One should still note that under this argument, it might be justified in aborting older foetuses as long as we used anaesthesia.
The strongest argument from the pro-life side seems to be this presumed right to life of the child. One might think that a person's right to life ought to have greater moral weight than a woman's right to her body, and hence abortion is simply a discussion of whether the foetus is a person. A fantastic paper from Judith Jarvis Thomson argues that even if a foetus is a person, in certain conditions the mother may still be permitted to have an adoption. Her central argument is based around an issue of consent from the mother. If the mother gave consent to the child to use her own body then it seems she has waived her own right to the body and thus it is impermissible for her to have an abortion. On the other hand, if the mother was forced into pregnancy (or took significant efforts against it but was very unlucky) then an abortion is allowed. In certain cases (for example in self defence) we are justly able to take the life of a person. The difficulty here is in showing that abortion is such a case.
Of course Thomson's claims are not without flaws, and one might make arguments towards a special relationship between a mother and her child. It might be argued that due to said relationship she has an obligation to protect the life of said child, even if she did not initially give consent to it. Still, the existence of arguments of this form is very significant as it further shows that the issue is non-trivial. Even when we grant the foetus the rights of a person, it still seems there are cases where abortion is morally permissible.
As I said, I'm not really trying to argue for one side or the other. I just want people to be a bit sceptical about these sort of things. Whilst I think it women do have a right to their own body, I don't think that this necessarily implies that an abortion is permissible. It is an important factor to be sure, but the question is much deeper than that. Please stop thinking that someone who is against abortion is simply against female autonomy. There are very valid reasons to be either.
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