Answering
Arguments for Abortion Rights
Part Four –
When Does a Human Become a Person?
by Francis J.
Beckwith
Christian
Research Journal, Summer, 1991, Page 28.
In this final
installment of my series on the arguments for abortion rights, I will continue where
I left off in the previous article with a critique of some "decisive
moment theories." In addition, I will make some brief comments about the
"gradualist" thesis. I will conclude with responses to common
questions about the pro-life view that full humanness begins at conception.
DECISIVE MOMENT THEORIES (CONTINUED)
Beginning of Brain Development
Some
bioethicists, such as Baruch Brody, believe that full humanness begins when the
brain starts functioning, which can first be detected by the electroencephalogram
(EEG) at about 40 to 43 days after conception. [1]
(Although Brody has moral problems with abortion on demand prior to brain
functioning, this is not because he believes the unborn is fully human.) Brody
maintains that in order to decide when something is fully human, "we must
first see...what properties are such that their loss would mean the going out
of existence (the death) of a human being." [2] He
concludes that since at brain death a human being goes out of existence (at
least in this mortal realm), the presence of a functioning human brain is the
property which makes one fully human. Hence, it would only follow that the start of brain functioning is the beginning of full humanness.
The fundamental
difficulty with this argument "is that brain death indicates the end of
human life as we know it, the dead brain having no capacity to revive itself.
But the developing embryo has the natural capacity to bring on the functioning
of the brain." [3] That is to say, an entity's irreversible absence of brain waves after the brain waves have come into
existence indicates that the entity no longer has the natural, inherent
capacity to function as a human being, since our current technology is
incapable of "reactivating" the brain. However, the unborn entity who
has yet to reach the stage in (his or) her development at which brain waves can
be detected, unlike the brain dead individual, possesses the inherent capacity
to have brain waves. She is like a patient with a temporarily flat EEG. "The two stages of human life are, then,
entirely different from the point of view of brain functioning. The embryo
contains the natural capacity to develop all the human activities: perceiving,
reasoning, willing and relating to others. Death means the end of natural
growth, the cessation of these abilities." [4]
Brody responds
to this criticism by presenting the following science-fiction case:
·
Imagine
that medical technology has reached the stage at which, when brain death
occurs, the brain is removed, "liquified," and "recast"
into a new functioning brain. The new brain bears no relation to the old one
(it has none of its memory traces, and so on). If the new brain were put into
the old body, would the same human being exist or a new human being who made
use of the body of the old one? I am inclined to suppose the latter. But
consider the entity whose brain has died. Is he not like the fetus? Both have
the potential for developing into an entity with a functioning brain (we shall
call this a weak potential) but we can conclude, it seems to me, that an entity
can go out of existence even if it retains a weak potential for having a
functioning brain, and that, analogously, the fetus is not a human being just
because it has this weak potential. What is essential for being human is the
possession of the potential for human activities that comes with having the
structures required for a functioning brain. It is this potential that the
fetus acquires at (or perhaps slightly before) the time that its brain starts
functioning, and it is this potential that the newly conceived fetus does not
have. [5]
I do not
believe that this response succeeds. First, unlike the potential of the
corpse's dead brain to be liquefied and recast as a new brain, the unborn's
potency to develop is within itself (intrinsic).
"As in the case of other organisms," philosopher A. Chadwick Ray
points out, the unborn's development "admittedly requires nourishment from
outside and an appropriate environment (consider parasites), but still, the
fetus has within itself the power to appropriate nourishment and grow." On
the other hand, the potential of Brody's corpse is utterly extrinsic. That is, "it can be acted upon from the outside and
brought to life, but without immediate surgery its life will not be restored,
and it will simply rot." [6]
Second, the
unborn has "interests of itself, in a straightforward, non-projective way,
that go beyond the interests of its component parts -- cells, tissues,
etc.," just as I as a living organism have interests that go beyond the
interests of my component parts -- ears, nose, teeth, etc. On the other hand, the
corpse "has no interests beyond those of its parts. The component cells
may have an interest in continuing to live, but the corpse itself has
none." For example, "there would be no loss in the corpse's organs,
all being donated to different patients (imagine donating every living cell if
you prefer), whereas in a living fetus's being chopped up for spare parts its own interests would be
sacrificed." [7]
In summary,
"the growth of the fetus is in its own interest and is the realization of
its intrinsic potential, in which realization its identity is preserved."
However, "the implanting of a new brain into a brainless corpse would
constitute the genesis of a new organism with its own new telos and interests where there were none." [8]
Therefore, since the prebrain-functioning unborn entity has a natural inherent
capacity for brain functioning while the corpse does not, they do not have the
same kind of weak potential that Brody claims they have.
Viability
As I noted in
Part Three, viability is the time at which the unborn human can live outside
her mother's womb. Some have argued that prior to this time, since the unborn
cannot survive independent of her mother, she is not a completely independent
human life and hence not fully human.
Bioethicist
Andrew Varga points out a number of problems with the viability criterion.
First, "how does viability transform the
nature of the fetus so that the non-human being then turns into a human
being?" That is to say, viability is a measure of the sophistication of
our neonatal life-support systems. Humanity remains the same, but viability
changes. Viability measures medical technology, not one's humanity.
Second,
"is viability not just an extrinsic criterion imposed upon the fetus by
some members of society who simply declare that the fetus will be accepted at
that moment as a human being?" [9] In other words,
the viability criterion seems to be arbitrary and not applicable to the
question of whether the unborn is fully human, since it relates more to the
location and dependency of the unborn than to any essential change in her state of being. This criterion only tells
us when certain members of our society want to accept the humanity of the unborn.
And third,
"the time of viability cannot be determined precisely, and this fact would
create great practical problems for those who hold this opinion." [10]
For example, in 1973, when the Supreme Court legalized abortion, viability was
at about twenty-four weeks. But now babies have survived 20 weeks after
conception. This, of course, puts the pro-abortionist in a morally difficult
situation. For some health care facilities are killing viable babies by
abortion in one room while in another room heroically trying to save premature
infants (preemies). It seems only logical that if the 21-week-old preemie is
fully human, then so is the 28-week-old unborn who can be legally killed by
abortion. This is why philosopher Jane English, who is a moderate on the
abortion issue (i.e., her position does not fit well into either the pro-life
or pro-choice camp, although she seems closer to the latter), has asserted that
"the similarity of a fetus to a baby is very significant. A fetus one week
before birth is so much like a newborn baby in our psychological space that we
cannot allow any cavalier treatment of the former while expecting full sympathy
and nurturative support for the latter...An early horror story from New York
about nursers who were expected to alternate between caring for six-month
premature infants and disposing of viable 24-week aborted fetuses is just that
-- a horror story." English writes that "these beings are so much
alike that no one can be asked to draw a distinction and treat them so
differently." [11]
Many who defend
the viability criterion argue in a circle. Take, for example, Supreme Court
Justice Harry Blackmun's use of it in his dissenting opinion in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services
(1989):
·
The
viability line reflects the biological facts and truths of fetal development;
it marks the threshold moment prior to which a fetus cannot survive separate
from the woman and cannot reasonably and objectively be regarded as a subject
of rights or interests distinct from, or paramount to, those of the pregnant
woman. At the same time, the viability standard takes account of the undeniable
fact that as the fetus evolves into its postnatal form, and as it loses its
dependence on the uterine environment, the State's interest in the fetus'
potential human life, and in fostering a regard for human life in general,
becomes compelling. [12]
Blackmun first
tells us that viability is the time at which the state has interest in
protecting potential human life because the fetus has no interests or rights
prior to being able to survive outside the womb. But then we are told that
viability is the best criterion because it "takes account of the
undeniable fact that as the fetus evolves...and loses its dependence on the
uterine environment, the State's interest in the fetus' potential human life...
becomes compelling." In other words, Blackmun is claiming that the state
only has an interest in protecting fetal life when that life can live outside
the womb. But why is this correct? Because, we are told, prior to being able to
live outside the womb the fetus has no interests or rights. But this is clearly
circular reasoning, for Blackmun is assuming
(that the fetus has no interests or rights prior to viability) what he is
trying to prove (that the fetus has
no interests or rights prior to viability). This argument is no more compelling
than the one given by the political science professor who argues that democracy
is the best form of government because
the best form of government is one run by the people (which, of course, is
democracy). Such arguments are circular because they provide no independent reasons for their
conclusions.
The Attainment of Sentience
Some ethicists
argue that the unborn becomes fully human sometime after brain development has
begun, when it becomes sentient:
capable of experiencing sensations such as pain. The reason for choosing
sentience as the criterion is that a being that cannot experience anything (i.e.,
a presentient unborn entity) cannot be harmed. Of course, if this position is
correct, then the unborn becomes fully human probably during the second
trimester and at least by the third trimester. Therefore, one does not violate
anyone's rights when one aborts a nonsentient unborn entity. [13]
There are
several problems with this argument. First, it confuses harm with hurt and the
experience of harm with the reality of harm. [14] One
can be harmed without experiencing the hurt that sometimes follows from that
harm, and which we often mistake for the harm itself. For example, a
temporarily comatose person who is suffocated to death "experiences no
harm," but he is nevertheless harmed. Hence, one does not have to experience harm, which is sometimes
manifested in hurt, in order to be truly harmed.
Second, if
sentience is the criterion of full humanness, then the reversibly comatose, the
momentarily unconscious, and the sleeping would all have to be declared
nonpersons. Like the presentient unborn, these individuals are all at the
moment nonsentient though they have the natural inherent capacity to be
sentient. Yet to countenance their executions would be morally reprehensible.
Therefore, one cannot countenance the execution of some unborn entities simply
because they are not currently
sentient.
Someone may
reply that while these objections make important points, there is a problem of false
analogy in the second objection: the reversibly comatose, the momentarily
unconscious, and the sleeping once
functioned as sentient beings, though they are now in a temporary state of
nonsentience. The presentient unborn, on the other hand, were never sentient. Hence, one is fully
human if one was sentient "in the past" and will probably become
sentient again in the future, but this cannot be said of the presentient unborn.
There are at
least three problems with this response. First, to claim that a person can be
sentient, become nonsentient, and then return to sentience is to assume there
is some underlying personal unity to this individual that enables us to say
that the person who has returned to sentience is the same person who was sentient prior to becoming nonsentient. But
this would mean that sentience is not a necessary condition for personhood.
(Neither is it a sufficient condition, for that matter, since nonhuman animals
are sentient.) Consequently, it does not make sense to say that a person comes
into existence when sentience arises, but it does make sense to say that a
fully human entity is a person who has the natural inherent capacity to give
rise to sentience. A presentient unborn human entity does have this capacity. Therefore, an ordinary unborn human entity
is a person, and hence, fully human.
Second, Ray
points out that this attempt to exclude many of the unborn from the class of
the fully human is "ad hoc and
counterintuitive." He asks us to "consider the treatment of comatose
patients. We would not discriminate against one merely for rarely or never
having been sentient in the past while another otherwise comparable patient had
been sentient....In such cases, potential counts for everything." [15]
Third, why
should sentience "in the past" be the decisive factor in deciding
whether an entity is fully human when the presentient human being "is one
with a natural, inherent capacity
for performing personal acts?" [16] Since we have
already seen that one does not have to experience harm in order to be harmed,
it seems more consistent with our moral sensibilities to assert that what makes
it wrong to kill the reversibly comatose, the sleeping, the momentarily
unconscious, and the presentient unborn is that they all possess the natural
inherent capacity to perform personal acts. And what makes it morally right to
kill plants and to pull the plug on the respirator-dependent brain dead, who
were sentient "in the past," is that their deaths cannot deprive them
of their natural inherent capacity to function as persons, since they do not
possess such a capacity.
Criteria of Personhood
Several
ethicists, such as Michael Tooley, [17] Mary Anne
Warren, [18] James Rachels, [19] and
Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, [20] have put forth
criteria that a being must fulfill in order to be considered fully human. For
some these criteria apply to any entity, whether before or after birth. In
fact, according to Tooley, birth has no bearing on the moral status of the
newborn. [21]
Those who
defend criteria for full humanness make a distinction between "being a
human" and "being a person." They argue that although the unborn
are part of the species homo sapiens,
and in that sense are human, they are not truly persons since they fail to
fulfill a particular set of personhood criteria. Although the defenders of
personhood criteria do not agree on everything, their underlying philosophical
assumptions are similar enough that it is safe to say that if I can show that
these assumptions are significantly flawed then no personhood criteria theory
can succeed in supporting the abortion-rights position. Since Mollenkott's view
is the most clear and succinct example, I will use her article as my point of
departure to critique the personhood criteria position. Although much of my
critique of this view can be found in my criticisms of the other decisive
moment and gradualist theories, its underlying philosophical assumptions, which
are oftentimes not addressed by the proponents of this view, are deserving of a
separate critique.
In order to
fully grasp Mollenkott's position, let me quote her at length:
·
Kay
Coles James of the National Right to Life Committee claimed that fetal
personhood is a biological fact rather than a theological perception. But in
all truthfulness, the most that biology can claim is that the fetus is
genetically human.... The issue of personhood
is one that must be addressed through religious reasoning. Hence, the
Mollenkott's
argument can be put in the following argument-outline:
·
(Premise
1) A person can be defined as a living being with feelings, awareness, and
interactive experience. (I assume she means some sort of consciousness.)
(Premise 2) An
unborn entity does not possess the characteristics of a person as defined in
Premise 1.
(Intermediate
Conclusion) Therefore, an unborn entity does not possess personhood.
(Final
Conclusion) Therefore, killing an unborn entity is not seriously wrong.
Others, such as
Tooley and Warren, give more elaborate criteria of human personhood. For
instance, Tooley claims that a being "cannot have a right to continued
existence unless he possesses the concept of a subject of experiences, the
concept of a temporal order, and the concept of identity of things over
time." And since "the concept of a right is such that an individual
cannot have a right that p be the case unless the individual is capable of
desiring that p be the case," it follows that a nonself-conscious being with
no desire for its own continued existence has no right to life. [23]
Hence, the unborn do not have a right to life. In any event, the philosophical
assumption behind both Mollenkott's and Tooley's arguments, as well as the
arguments of others such as Warren and Rachels, is that only an entity that functions in a certain way (e.g., in
the case of Tooley, "is capable of desiring that p be the case") is a
person with a full right to life (i.e., fully human). I maintain that this
position has several flaws.
First, it does
not seem to follow from the intermediate conclusion (that an unborn human is
not a person) that abortion is always morally justified. Jane English has
pointed out that "non-persons do get some consideration in our moral code,
though of course they do not have the same rights as persons have (and in
general they do not have moral responsibilities), and though their interests
may be overridden by the interests of persons. Still, we cannot just treat them
in any way at all." [24]
English goes on
to write that we consider it morally wrong to torture beings that are
nonpersons, such as dogs or birds, although we do not say these beings have the
same rights as persons. And though she considers it problematic as to how we
are to decide what one may or may not do to nonpersons, she nevertheless draws
the conclusion that "if our moral rules allowed people to treat some
person-like non-persons in ways we do not want people to be treated, this would
undermine the system of sympathies and attitudes that makes the ethical system
work." [25]
Second, one can
question why one must accept a functional
definition of personhood to exclude the unborn. It is not obvious that
functional definitions always succeed. For example, when the Boston Celtics'
Larry Bird is kissing his wife, does he cease to be a basketball player because
he is not functioning as one? Of course not. He does not become a basketball player when he functions as a basketball player,
but rather, he functions as a basketball player because he is a basketball player. Similarly, when a person is asleep,
unconscious, or temporarily comatose, or a newborn, he (or she) is not
functioning as a person as defined in premise 2. Nevertheless, no reasonable
person would say that this individual is not a person while in this state. [26]
Therefore, since a person functions as a person because he is a person and is not a person because he functions as a person, defining personhood strictly in terms of
function is inadequate.
Of course, the
abortion-rights advocate may want to argue, as was argued in the case of the
sentience criterion, that the analogy between sleeping/unconscious/comatose
persons and the unborn breaks down because the former at one time in their existence functioned as persons while the
latter, the unborn, did not. Although this point is worth noting, the
abortion-rights advocate fails to grasp the significant flaw in defining
personhood strictly in terms of function.
As I pointed
out in my criticism of the sentience criterion, to claim that a person can be
functional, become nonfunctional, and then return to a state of function is to
assume that there is some underlying personal unity to this individual that
allows us to say that the person who has returned to functional capacity is the
same person who was functional prior
to being in a nonfunctional state. But this would mean that human function is a
sufficient but not a necessary condition for personhood. Consequently, it does
not make sense to say that a person comes into existence when human function
arises. Rather, it does make sense to say that a fully human entity is a person
who has the natural inherent capacity to give rise to human functions. And
since an unborn entity typically has this natural inherent capacity, (he or)
she is a person.
As John
Jefferson Davis writes, "Our ability to have conscious experiences and
recollections arises out of our personhood; the basic metaphysical reality of
personhood precedes the unfolding of the conscious abilities inherent in
it." [27] Therefore, an ordinary unborn human
entity is a person, and hence, fully human. In other words, because the unborn
human is a person with a certain natural
inherent capacity (i.e., her essence), she will function as a person in the near future, just as the reversibly
comatose and the temporarily unconscious will likewise do because of their
natural inherent capacity. The unborn are not potential persons but persons
with much potential.
Along the same
lines, Ray has made the observation that the view of human person as a natural
"kind" which provides a ground for certain functions, rather than as
an emergence of certain functions, is more consistent with our general moral
intuitions. For "the recognition of the rights of the young is less
dependent on their actual, current capacities than on their species and
potential [i.e., their natural inherent capacity]."
For example, no
one doubts that day-old human children have fewer actual capacities than
day-old calves. Human infants, in terms of environmental awareness, mobility,
etc., are rather unimpressive in comparison to the calves, especially if one
calculates their ages from conception. But this comparison does not persuade us
to believe that the calves have greater intrinsic worth and an inherent right
to life. For if human infants were sold to butchers (let us suppose for the
high market value of their body parts) in the same way that farmers sell calves
to humane butchers, we would find such a practice deeply disturbing. Yet if
intrinsic worth is really contingent upon current capacities rather than
natural inherent capacity, we should have no problem with the selling of human
infants to butchers. But Ray points out why we do find such a practice morally
repugnant: "The wrongness would consist not merely in ignoring the
interest that society might have in the children, but in violating the
children's own rights. Yet if those rights are grounded in current capacities
alone, the calves should enjoy at least the same moral status as the children,
and probably higher status." What follows is that "the difference in
status is plausibly explained... only with reference to the children's humanity,
their natural kind." [28]
THE GRADUALIST THESIS
Those who
defend the gradualist thesis, such as Daniel Callahan and Robert Wennberg, [29]
argue that the unborn entity increases in value as it develops physically.
Unlike the theories critiqued above, in this view there is no one decisive
moment at which the unborn entity moves from nonperson to person. For example,
the one-celled zygote has less value than the three-month fetus while the three-month
fetus has a lesser right-to-life than the eight-month fetus.
There have been
a number of critiques of this position which space does not permit me to
articulate here. [30] However, our critique of the major
decisive-moment theories in Parts Three and Four of this series is sufficient
to refute gradualism. That is to say, since none of the decisive moments we
have already gone over can be shown to eradicate the full humanness of the
unborn entity at any stage of her development, it follows that there are no
philosophical, scientific, or moral grounds by which to say that the unborn gradually becomes fully human. For she
would still need to achieve full humanness at some decisive moment. That is,
someone who is fully human cannot gradually become more fully human. Certainly it is true that the unborn human physically develops gradually, as is
true of humans at later stages (e.g., infancy, childhood, adolescence). But it
does not follow from this fact that the unborn human is any less human than the
infant, the child, or the adolescent. They are nonetheless fully human although
they are gradually developing.
COMMON QUESTIONS
In my critique
of the decisive moment theories, I dealt with a number of objections to the pro-life
position. However, there are other common objections which should be answered.
In this final section, I will briefly respond to five common questions asked
about the pro-life position.
1. Why don't sperm and ova have a right to
life since they are also genetically human? Sperm and ova do not have a right to life because they are not
individual genetic human beings, but are merely parts of individual genetic human beings. They are only genetically
human insofar as they share the genetic codes of their owners, but this is also
true of their owners' other parts (e.g., hands, feet, kidneys, etc.). Sperm and
ova cease to exist at conception when the zygote, an individual genetic human
being, comes into existence.
2. Doesn't this view "absolutize"
biological human life? Not
at all. Although the pro-life advocate believes that biological human life is
important, he or she certainly does not believe that it is absolute. For
biological human life without the natural inherent capacity to function as a
person is probably not fully human. And it is questionable whether the taking
of such a life or the permitting of such a life to die can be classified as
homicide. For example, I do not think it is homicide to pull the plug on a
respirator that is biologically sustaining a brain-dead patient. Such a
patient's natural capacity for personal acts is simply not present. Of course,
other questions surrounding the problem of the withdrawal of certain forms of
health care are much more complex and fall outside the scope of this series. [31]
In any event, the pro-life advocate does not absolutize biological human life
and is willing to apply his principles critically and to think reflectively in
morally challenging situations.
3. Aren't you absolutizing the unborn's right
to life? No, for there could
be times at which abortion is justified. The pro-lifer is fully cognizant of
the fact that we live in a world in which moral conflicts can occur. Take, for
example, the case in which it is highly likely that a woman's pregnancy will
result in her death, as with a tubal pregnancy. Because it is a greater good
that one human should live rather than two die, the pro-lifer believes that in
this case abortion is justified, since otherwise both unborn and mother would die. However, as I
argued elsewhere in this series, abortion is not justified by appeals to
reasons such as financial burden or the child's potential handicap, because if
the unborn entity is fully human, one must respect her life as one respects the
lives of those who are already born.
4. Wouldn't your position mean that some
forms of artificial birth control result in homicide? Yes. For example, forms of birth control
that result in the death of the conceptus, such as the IUD and the "morning-after"
pill (RU-486), would logically entail homicide if the pro-life position is
correct. However, not every form of birth control results in the death of the
conceptus. For example, the condom, diaphragm, some forms of the Pill,
spermicides, and sterilization would not logically entail homicide if the
pro-life position is correct, for they merely prevent conception.
This is why the
pro-life advocate makes a distinction between contraception and birth
control. Contraception literally means "to prevent conception."
Therefore, all contraception is a form of birth control, since it prevents
birth. But not all forms of birth control are contraceptive, since some forms
-- such as the ones cited above -- preveent birth by killing the conceptus after conception. Hence, the pro-life
advocate as such finds no problem with contraception
as a form of family planning.
5. Isn't it true that some zygotes do not
have forty-six chromosomes?
Yes. Although the normal number of chromosomes is 46, some people are born with
less (e.g., people with Turner's syndrome have 45) and some people are born
with more (e.g., people with Down's syndrome have 47). But don't forget that my
case for the unborn's humanness does not rest necessarily on the number of
chromosomes an individual may have, but on the fact that the entity in question
has a human genetic structure.
Consequently, a human genetic structure can still subsist in an abnormal number
of chromosomes (genes are contained in the chromosomes within the nuclei of a
person's cells). That is to say, the Down's or Turner's syndrome child with human genes and an abnormal number of
chromosomes is no more nonhuman than a child with an abnormal number of more
obvious parts. For example, a person born with six fingers is human, as is a person
born with one arm or one leg.
SUMMING IT UP
In this
four-part series I critiqued four basic types of arguments that have been put
forth in defense of both liberal and moderate positions on abortion rights: (1)
arguments from pity (Parts One and Two); (2) arguments from tolerance (Part
Two); (3) ad hominem arguments (Part
Two); and (4) arguments from decisive moments (Parts Three and Four). In the
process of critiquing these arguments I gave a defense of the pro-life position
that full humanness begins at conception (Parts Three and Four), which included
a detailed presentation of fetal development (Part Three).
Despite the
number of arguments covered in this series, some readers will be disappointed
that I did not deal with some theological arguments [32] or
lesser known philosophical arguments. [33] But since even
a four-part series has its limitations and since Justice Harry Blackmun (who
wrote the majority decision in Roe v.
Wade [1973]) has argued that the morality of abortion is completely
contingent on the full humanness of the unborn, [34]
what has been covered in this series is more than sufficient. For this series
has clearly established the following conclusions: (1) the popular arguments
for abortion rights either beg the question as to the full humanness of the
unborn or ignore the question altogether; and (2) both sound philosophical and
scientific reasoning clearly establish the full humanness of the unborn from
the moment of conception.
NOTES
[1] Baruch Brody, Abortion
and the Sanctity of Human Life: A Philosophical View (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T.
Press, 1975).
[2] Ibid., 102.
[3] Andrew Varga, The
[4] Ibid., 62.
[5] Brody, 113-14.
[6] A. Chadwick Ray, "Humanity, Personhood, and
Abortion," International
Philosophical Quarterly 25 (1985):238.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Varga, 62-63.
[10] Ibid., 63.
[11] Jane English, "Abortion and the Concept of a
Person," in Biomedical Ethics,
ed. Thomas A. Mappes and Jane S. Zembatty (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981), 430.
[12] Webster v.
Reproductive Health Services (1989) in
[13] For a defense of this view, see Richard Werner, "Abortion: The Practice 3 (1974):201-22.
[14] See Joel
Feinberg, "Grounds For Coercion," in Ethical Theory and Social Issues, ed. David Theo Goldberg (New
York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1989), 307-15.
[15] Ray, 240.
[16] Peter Kreeft, "Human Personhood Begins at
Conception," in Journal of Biblical
Ethics in Medicine 4 (Winter 1990):11.
[17] Michael Tooley, Abortion
and Infanticide (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983). in Biomedical Ethics, 417-23.
[19] James Rachels, The
End of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). For a critical
analysis of this book, see J. P.
Moreland's review in The Thomist 53
(Oct. 1989):714-22.
[20] Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, "Reproducive Choice:
Basic to Justice for Women," Christian
Scholar's Review 17 (March 1988):286-93.
[21] See Tooley.
[22] Mollenkott, 291.
[23] Tooley, 167. In rebuttal, see David Clark, "An Evaluation of the Quality of Life
Argument for Infanticide," Simon
Greenleaf Law Review 5 (1985-86):104-8; and Richard A. McCormick, S.J., How Brave a
[24] English, 429.
[25] Ibid., 430.
[26] Some philosophers, such as Tooley (Abortion & Infanticide), "bite
the bullet" and say that infanticide is not a form of murder since the
newborn is not a person.
[27] John Jefferson Davis, Abortion and the Christian
(Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1984), 57.
[28] Ray, 240-41.
[29] Daniel Callahan, Abortion:
Law, Choice, and Morality (New York: Macmillan, 1970); and Robert Wennberg,
Life in the Balance: Exploring the
Abortion Controversy (Grand Rapids, MI: Williams B. Eerdmans Publishing
Co., 1985).
[30] Philip Devine, The
Ethics of Homicide (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979); Robert E.
Joyce, "Personhood and the Conception Event," The New Scholasticism 52 (Winter 1978):104-9; J. P. Moreland and
Norman L. Geisler, The Life and Death
Debate: Moral Issues of Our Time (Westport, CT: Praeger Books, 1990),
31-34.
[31] See
Moreland and Geisler, The Life and Death
Debate.
[32] See my
"A Critical Appraisal of the Theological Arguments for Abortion
Rights," Bibliotheca Sacra
(July/September 1991).
[33] Judith Jarvis Thomson, for example, argues that
abortion is morally justified even if
the unborn are fully human. I critique this argument in "Personal Bodily
Rights, Abortion, and Unplugging the Violinist: A Critical Analysis," International Philosophical Quarterly
(March 1992) (forthcoming).
[34] Justice Harry Blackmun, in "The 1973 Supreme
Court Decisions on State Abortion Laws: Excerpts from Opinion in Roe v.
Wade," in The Problem of Abortion,
2d ed., ed. Joel Feinberg (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1984), 195.