Abortion Essay

I wrote the following for my medical ethics class. Nothing in here is original. There were footnotes, but they don't transfer over in a copy-paste. 

In this paper, I will argue that abortion is morally impermissible. I will begin with narrowing down questions that need to be answered in the debate. From there, I will examine what it is that I am, then explore why I have moral status, and argue that I am numerically identical to the fetus. Throughout all this, I will be contrasting it with the personhood view, which I take to be the strongest opposing view. 

Suppose one day you are washing dishes, and your child comes up behind you and asks, “Mommy, can I kill this?” It would be foolish to answer without turning around and seeing what “this” refers to. If it is a worm on a fishing hook, it’s probably permissible to say, “Sure. Go do it outside.” However, if you saw your child was holding a knife to a puppy’s throat, you probably would not respond the same way. This shows that whether it is permissible to kill something does in part depend on what it is that we are killing. 

It seems obviously true that what abortion does is kill a living thing. But mere killing is not sufficient to settle the matter. We need to know what it is that we are killing. If abortion kills an innocent human being, and killing innocent human beings is wrong, then abortion is wrong. Both premises have challenges worth considering. 

It is popularly argued that abortion does not kill a person. The fetus killed may be a human being, but it is not a person. Personhood is what is morally relevant, not mere humanity. What then is personhood and why does it confer moral status? The common answer is that consciousness is necessary for what personhood is. We are obviously conscious and have rights, while people who have died are not conscious and plausibly don’t have rights, and so that is a morally relevant difference. But this is too quick, for we can distinguish between type and tokens of consciousness. I am either a type called consciousness, or I am a token of consciousness, and both are problematic. If what I am is a type called consciousness, then I would be an abstraction, like triangularity or the number 3. The problem with this is that it is on its face implausible. We don’t consider ourselves as universal abstractions, but as concrete particulars. Abstract entities don’t stand within causal relations of things, but we do. The number 3 doesn’t cause anything, but we do, so there is a fundamental difference between the kinds of things that we are and what abstract universals are. Further, if I am the universal “consciousness”, then anything else that is identified with consciousness I must also be identical to. So I would be identical to you, who is identical to your dog, who is identical to Trump. But obviously there are differences between us, so we cannot be identical, and thus cannot be identified with the type consciousness. 

What then of consciousness tokens? This runs into modal problems, which has important consequences too heavy for an ethicist to carry. If I were a token of consciousness, then I instantiate this type of conscious activity, say, calculating a math problem. But we also think it is true that I could have instead contemplated some piece of art rather than contemplate a math problem. If that were true, then I would then instantiate a different kind of token, which wouldn’t be the same token that is instantiated when I contemplate math, and so wouldn’t be me, but someone else entirely. So it would be impossible for me to do otherwise. However, doing otherwise seems necessary for being morally praise or blameworthy and to have moral debates, which abortion finds itself in. So, if we have no modality, we have no free will, and without free will, we have no use of having moral discussions, which is contrary to the entire project of this paper. So types and tokens of consciousness are not viable options for understanding what it is that we humans are. What then are we? 

What gives the consciousness answer some plausibility is that it isn’t too off the mark. Traditionally, we are defined as rational animals. That is to say, we are a certain type of animal, homo sapiens, with the distinguishing trait of being rational. On this view, it is rationality that gives us moral status, not mere consciousness. Why does rationality give us moral status? We have moral status when we can make moral choices. Rationality is the power to grasp forms and the good therein. Every act we do is for the acquiring of some good, so rationality is what presents to us the good, to which the will can act upon or not. So long as we have the power to grasp the good, we have moral status. Now, how do we know we have the power to grasp goods? In most cases, by simply observing other people exercise that power through conscious activities. So, while certain conscious activities can be a sure sign of rationality, or a natural fruit or consequence of rationality, conscious activity is not strictly identical to rationality. 

If what I am is rationality, then wouldn’t I run into the same type-token problem of consciousness? But I am not rationality. I am a rational animal, and that conjunction is essential to what I am. We can distinguish between our rationality and our animality, but we cannot separate them any more than we can distinguish between the sides of a triangle and then have the same triangle if we completely removed the sides from one another. The triangle-ness cannot be found in just one side, but in the conjunction of them. Likewise, our humanity is not just found in our animality alone or our rationality alone, but in the essential conjunction of both. Thus, we can maintain my purduring participation in the universal form of humanity as a substantial form but say that it inheres or is instantiated in the changing principle of matter, or animality, which change is properly predicated to. This is, in short, a hylemorphic dualism of the Aristotelian-Thomistic kind. 

Why do we say that the conjunction is essential? Because the contrary leads to certain absurdities. Take the a plausible alternate view of identity, Cartesian dualism. This is the view that what I am is the mind or thinking substance, and there is a separate material substance, the body. The mind and the body are thus separable. This view is important because it seems to be the working assumption of the first common objection we considered, that the fetus is a human being (a certain animal) but not a human person (a certain kind of thinking thing). If the views assumption is false, we have good grounds for thinking that the view itself is false. But Cartesian dualism is fraught with many difficulties. In the medical field, we often speak of treating a person, not the persons animal. If we heal the person’s liver, we have healed the person. If we kiss our spouse, we don’t merely kiss their lips, we kiss them the person. If we harm our spouse, we harm them, not just their separate body. The identity with the body is what make such actions significant. Further, under Cartesian dualism, you have interaction problems. If the mind and body are separate substances, what exactly is their relationship and how does it work? Under the Aristotelian-Thomistic view, the answer is easy, the soul is formal cause of the body. For Descartes, the body, or matter, is just extension. But an extension of what? What is informing the matter if not form itself? It isn’t as though you are going to go out for a walk and bump into some extension simpliciter like you would bump into a tree. But if there is a form and formal cause there is substantial unity between the two, and not two distinct substances. So Cartesian dualism, which is assumed by the most plausible argument arguing that abortion does not kill an innocent human being, is false. Humans are a substantial unity of form and matter, of rationality and animality, and while they are distinct, they are not separable. 

With these metaphysics in place, we can make a positive argument that what I am is numerically identical to a fetus. If the right to life is essential to me now, and I am identical to the fetus, then the right to life is also essential to the fetus. And if the fetus has the right to life, then it is prima facie impermissible to kill it if it is innocent. 

Whatever it is that the fetus is, it either exists now, or it does not. It seems by all scientific accounts that the fetus is an organic being. So, if it exists now, that organic substance has developed. But developed into what? Granting that there is no external interference in the natural course of things to cause substantial change, it has developed into every physical part that I am. So if the fetus is organically identical to my body, and my body and rationality are inseparable as argued above, then the conjunction of what I am now is identical to what I was then. So I am substantially identical to the fetus. One can object that I am not identical with the fetus because I don’t have the function of rationality or consciousness, but that has already been dealt with above. Being the type of thing that engages in rationality, even if I don’t immediately exercise that power, is consistent with my presently being identical to a fetus some twenty odd years ago, and identity is what is necessary and sufficient for the argument. 

If what the fetus is no longer exists now, the burden then lies on the person to tell a story which explains what exactly happened to it. Did it die, like the umbilical cord? If so, where is the corpse? Did it undergo substantial change? If so, what kind of substance is the fetus, and what kind of substance am I now if I’m distinct, and what is the cause of that substantial change? It seems as though it will be difficult to tell this story without being ad hoc. So, it is implausible that the fetus no longer exists. But if the fetus does still exist, then I am identical to it. And if I am identical to it, then the fetus also had the right to life.