For my part, I am undecided about abortion. The issue seems to me to hinge significantly on whether a developing fetus is to be accorded all the rights of a human being. At the very least, it seems absurd to me that a non-human thing can become human by simply exiting a woman's uterus, but there are plenty of complications that I am either unqualified or just unable to answer at the present time. However, the other day, a friend of mine expressed an idea about abortion that I think is worth considering.
My friend's point is simply that abortion is, ultimately, the violent and premature ending of a human life. Without this act, a fetus will naturally grow and develop into a human being. The mother thus has a responsibility to make decisions about the future of this human being whether she wants it or not. While my friend did not say what he thinks the mother should ultimately decide, he strongly objected to referring to an abortion as "terminating a pregnancy," or "aborting a fetus." It is killing a person, plain and simple.
There is a libertarian argument in favor of abortion, presented by Murray Rothbard and Walter Block. The argument goes thus: the mother's body is her property, so if she decides that she does not want to carry the child any more, then she is within her rights to expel it. If the only way to expel the child from her womb is to kill it, then she is justified in doing so. This certainly seems rather harsh, but it is simply an extension of the idea that you can kick trespassers off your land and shoot them if they don't comply. While I have to accept this by the rule of logic, I have some qualifications that make me wonder about the conclusion.
In the first place, I'm not quite sure the trespasser analogy holds. For one thing, a fetus is an innocent in the broadest conceivable sense of the term--it has done absolutely nothing that amounts to any criminal act. To illustrate how this is significant, suppose the following situation. A man is kidnapped by a person with a helicopter and is then dumped out by that person's henchman, landing unceremoniously on your property and breaking enough bones that he can barely move. Has he committed any aggression against you? No, the people who dumped him out of a helicopter did. Still, what may you do with respect to the man on your land? Well for one thing, you may not simply kill him as a trespasser--he didn't trespass. You also may not demand that he leave your property and kill him if he does not comply--he can't move and ought implies can. You certainly may help him in various ways, and you may simply leave him be--libertarianism itself does not demand charity--but you may not take any aggressive action against him. May you pick him up and move him off your property? Not without his consent. You're really just stuck with him. This seems to vitiate the "evictionist" thesis that a mother may simply expel a fetus since the fetus is in exactly the same position as the man on your property.
Things become even more complicated when you consider the fact that pregnancy isn't something that just happens all on its own, but is the result of conscious action on the part of at least one person. To analyze this factor, let's split they ways pregnancy can arise into three categories--rape, consensual without intent to conceive, and consensual with intent to conceive. (I'm sure one could devise more categories than these, but I'm keeping things simple and sane.)
In the case of rape, a man has forced a woman to carry a child without her consent, even for the act that brought her pregnancy about. My earlier thought experiment still holds, but I want to start afresh with a new one to help accentuate some features of this analysis. So, instead of a man being dropped onto your property, imagine a baby or other suitably helpless person simply popping into existence in your living room. After overcoming the shock of this even happening, and having the circumstances somehow transmitted to you from an authoritative source, you have to figure out what to do with this child. The situation is exactly the same as before, so you still may not expel or kill the child. However, we can ask, "does it matter how the child appeared?" Maybe it was created by a supervillain (who James Bond will be thwarting in an upcoming movie), who is inflicting this child upon you. On the other hand, what if there were no such villain and the child simply appeared through a sequence of incredibly unlikely quantum processes? Is there any difference? Yes--in the first case, you may exact justly compensation from the supervillain. Otherwise, the situation is exactly the same as the earlier experiment, as is the result. You're stuck with the child, at least for now.
Moving on the the second option, consensual without intent to conceive, a man and a woman have had sex and the woman is now pregnant as a result, but they didn't intend that to happen. To go back to our imaginary scenario, suppose you have a button somewhere in your house that will cause babies to magically appear in your living room and you accidentally push it one day (what were you thinking?!). Are you off the hook? No more than you would be if the child appeared without you pushing the button. And since sex involves a bit more conscious effort than accidentally pushing a button does and the expecting parents knew that this could result before they had sex, they are if anything more responsible in this case (though their range of responsibilities doesn't increase).
The final case really addresses a common claim among pro-choice people--that the decision is the mother's alone and the father has nothing to contribute. That claim would be reasonable in the first two situations, but in the third it fails. The case is consensual with intent to conceive--a man and woman have sex intending to produce a child and raise it. In our experiment, you and a friend jointly agree to push to button and deal with the consequences. Now suppose you (the mother), wants to get rid of the child. The problem is that you (her) have entered an implicit contract with your friend (the father), and so even if you (she) could get out of deal, you (she) need his permission to do so. On the other hand, he can't weasel out without your (the mother's) consent either--you're both bound to your earlier decision. Given the stipulation, this also means the parents have to raise the child to adulthood as well. That has the potential for opening up a whole other can of worms, though, that I do not wish to explore right now.
There are, of course, other aspects of the public debate about abortion--specific types, required procedures, etc. I'll deal with a couple more. One, there is the idea of requiring parental permission for children to get abortions. This seems to me like a simple extension of the parent's natural authority over their child and the "my house, my rules" principle. I don't know if they still do this, but I remember that schools had to get parental permission for students to go on field trips. An abortion seems like a much more important decision, and even more within the scope of parental authority than a school field trip, so parental permission should be required for a child to get an abortion. This is, naturally, assuming that abortion is permitted, which I've argued above it shouldn't be...hmm. Two, what about abortions to protect the health of the mother? This is very much like the situation in which a person hands you a gun and tells that if you will not kill someone you will be killed. The correct choice in that case is to refuse and die. In the case of a doctor potentially performing an abortion, he is no more justified in killing the child than the mother is. The moral choice is not always the happiest one.
Well, when I wrote above that I'm uncertain about abortion, I meant it. In writing this post, I've walked myself through the arguments as much as I've tried simply to express them, so I now seem to be driven by the inescapable laws of logic to the strong pro-life position--no abortion, no exceptions. All of this still depends, however, on the notion that a fetus has the rights of a human being, which to me is still uncertain. In theory, I guess I'll leave it an open question, but in practice, I have to go with the pro-life position. In my fondness for Plato, I'll use one of his arguments to illustrate this point. In the Laws, Plato argues that drinking parties can be useful in allowing a person to relax their unconscious inhibitions and so teach them better conscious self-control. However, he says that he has never seen any party held in this manner, and so if such conditions cannot be assured, he argues that prohibition of alcohol is the second-best option. I'm taking a similar approach--technically, it's still an open question as to whether a fetus has the same rights as a human being, but if they do have those rights, supporting abortion would be tantamount to countenancing mass murder, something I do not support. Furthermore, there is my friend's sagely point that abortion does involve the premature and forcible ending of a human life, which strikes an indecisive blow on the theoretical side against abortion. If you ought to treat a fetus as a human life, then you ought not to take it without just cause, which I have painstakingly explained is never so. This is a strong argument, even if it doesn't prove the case.
Even after all this, I still think that my chose title of "Abortion, A Moderate Perspective" is applicable. I've given my reasons here, and they're very careful, non-emotional, and even non-theological reasons. I'm also open to critiques, if you think I've gone wrong somewhere in my analysis. However, if your problem is with Rothbardian libertarianism, which informs all my arguments, I suggest you find another occasion to comment.
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