I wanted to write a little about this because I rarely do. I am also hoping that I can bring a somewhat “nuanced” viewpoint to a discussion that tends to be driven by pure emotion. Right off the bat, I will state that I do think there should generally be some legal right to terminate a pregnancy, with a recognition that there may be some legal “line drawing”, which I think reasonable parties can disagree on. If you disagree with me, please at least hear me out.
Biological evidence seems to show that a fetus does not have a rational capacity. In fact, it may be that even a newborn infant does not have a rational capacity, which develops some time after birth. This is because the cerebral cortex appears to be underdeveloped, even at birth. This feature of the human brain is responsible for most of what we think makes us human. It also appears to be the physical structure involved in what philosophers would call “the rational faculty”. The reason for this late development of the cerebral cortex has to do with how the fetal body and brain develops, which follows the path of evolution. For instance, human fetuses have gills and a tail at a very early stage. Since the cerebral cortex developed last in the our pre-human ancestors, it makes since this feature comes about last. It’s also necessary to keep brain size fairly small so thet the baby can pass through the mother’s birth canal. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100712154422.htm
The fact that a cerebral cortex is not fully developed even at birth is significant to me because rights are based in the fact that human beings can deal with each other on the basis of reason and persuasion, making the use of physical force against each other unnecessary:
“The source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A—and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind…” (Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand.)
However, the point at which a baby develops a rational faculty in biology is probably not fully understood, and I will move forward with the rest of my argument on this issue without reference to whether a baby or a fetus has a sufficiently developed cerebral cortex or not. My argument for some legal right to abortion for some period of time during pregnancy doesn’t stand or fall on the issue of when the cerebral cortex is sufficiently developed.
How are rights violated? Rights are violated by other’s use of force to deprive you of a value against your will.
“Man’s rights can be violated only by the use of physical force. It is only by means of physical force that one man can deprive another of his life, or enslave him, or rob him, or prevent him from pursuing his own goals, or compel him to act against his own rational judgment.” (The Virtue of Selfishness, “The Nature of Government”, Ayn Rand)
This does not mean that force can never be used. It just means the times that force can be used are limited to those in which you are not trying to deprive another person of a value. For instance, force can be used in retaliation or self-defense.
Of special note in this context, is that there are times a person can use force against others, and it isn’t just when they are defending themselves or using retaliatory force.
There are at least two types force you can use to protect yourself:
1. Self-defense from intentional murder or other crime.
2. Use of force to prevent an unintentional collision with another person. For instance, if you use force to stop someone who has tripped from falling into you and knocking you over.
My position is that terminating a pregnancy is like this second type of use of force. It’s not force used in self defense. It is force used to stop the purely reflexive act of a fetus in attaching itself to a mother’s body during pregnancy, or the act of removing it once it has reflexively attached itself to the mother’s body.
Why would a woman need to terminate a pregnancy? All pregnancies are inherently risky for a woman. Women still die in child birth in the first world.
If she becomes pregnant and decides that she doesn’t want to take that risk, then she cannot reason with the fetus to explain why she wants it to detach itself from her body. It’s a purely reflexive act, regardless of how developed a fetus’ brain is.
Abortion is analogous to self-defense. The minimum of force is being used to detach the fetus, similar to how the minimum of force is used to prevent someone from killing you.
Does it matter that the mother chose to have sex, while In the above scenario of someone tripping and falling into you, you didn’t choose to have someone fall on you?
I would note that this would still justify abortion in the cases of rape. Since a woman who is raped didn’t choose to have sex in that scenario, my analogy is “spot on”.
At this point we are dancing around whether the fetus has any rights. What are rights? Why do we need them? This is where I and a religious advocate of rights part ways. We have fundamentally different definitions of “rights” and their basis.
Rights imply an autonomous actor who needs to take action to gain the values necessary for living. A fetus, by its very nature is physically attached to the mother. Choice doesn’t play a role in its existence.
If the mother could somehow transfer the fetus to an artificial womb, with no health danger to the mother, that would be something to consider, but we don’t have that technology yet. That means, for now, abortion is the only option for a woman who doesn’t want to risk her health with a pregnancy.
Parenthetically, I think a woman shouldn’t be able to force a man who isn’t her husband to pay child support. If a woman wants the father of her child to pay for her child, she should enter into a contract with him. I also think a man should have no right to see a child or be a part of its life without a contract with the mother. This “contract” is basically what marriage is about -or should be under an ideal political system. (That, and the sharing of one’s finances and property with the other person.)
At this point the more wild-eyed will go with the ‘reductio ad absurdum ‘ argument: “If abortion is okay, then you must think killing newborn babies is okay, since they cannot take care of themselves and there is a health-cost imposed on the mother by that too. Furthermore, maybe science will show that the rational faculty doesn’t fully develop until age 2.”
My response is: 1) the baby is detached, biologically, from the mother after birth. 2) Given that fact of biological detachment, it makes sense to “draw the line”, legally, there and presume a baby is capable of rational thought, even if such capacity may not still arise for some time. These are the minimum criteria I hold for an organism being accorded individual rights: 1, A biologically distinct organism, that, 2, has a rational faculty or capacity of some sort, necessitating that you can deal with it on the basis of reason and persuasion, unlike the lower animals that you can only deal with by means of force.
Should the “line” for when abortion is legal be drawn somewhere before birth? Say, at seven months, or even six? Should some regulation of the types of abortions, or when abortions are allowed prior to 9 months, be in place? I am willing to entertain those sorts of arguments. (Assuming no unusually high level of health threat to the mother, or some massive birth defect is discovered, after the general prohibition date, in which case there should be a judicial exception of some sort.)
Would I personally want my wife or girlfriend to have an abortion? Assuming that: One, she hadn’t been raped, two, she had no unusually high level of health risk, and, three, the fetus had no birth defects, then I wouldn’t want her to do it. I’d ask her not to, and try to talk her out of it. But, at the end of the day, I recognize it’s not my body, it’s not my health risk, and it’s not my decision.
