Moral and legal case against abortion

Dependent, yes, but still of incalculable worth

That an educated American should say that he has not heard or read a proper presentation of the moral case against abortion is a surprising statement to make, but it indicates how our understanding of important issues can be clouded by the assumptions and beliefs arising from the cultural silo in which we tend to live.

That statement admitting to ignorance of the moral case against abortion was made by Yascha Mounk, 40, a West German-born American political scientist. He is currently Associate Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington D.C. 

He said in a podcast discussion:

One of the things that it strikes me about my upbringing as a nonreligious person in Europe, and about my intellectual circles in the United States for the last 15 or so years, is that the pro-choice case is so fundamental an assumption that I have barely ever heard the pro-life case. I would love for you to state for me and for my listeners why we should have a deep moral concern about abortion, and why the law may get involved in regulating whether or not women are entitled to getting one.

He was speaking to David French, 53, a columnist for The Atlantic and senior editor at The Dispatch. His books include Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation and The Rise of ISIS: A Threat We Can't Ignore. French received a Bronze Star for service during Operation Iraqi Freedom and, as an attorney, litigated cases surrounding issues of religious and personal liberties.

So, for the sake of all who have never had the opportunity to weigh the arguments supporting a pro-life stance on abortion, here is much shortened version of the discussion between Mounk and French.

French opens his comments on why we should have a "deep moral concern about abortion" this way:

It revolves around a very simple concept: that an unborn child is a human life. It is not the mother, it is not the father. It is a separate human being and quite entire—quite dependent on the mother, of course, and exclusively dependent on the mother prior to viability. But it is a separate human being and as a separate human being a just nation does, in fact, protect innocent life from intentional killing.

The argument that an unborn child is a separate human being isn't just faith-based. From the moment of conception, you're talking about a human being that has separate DNA from the mother and the father; it's not a sperm, and it's not an egg. It's a separate human entity that has the same separate DNA from conception until birth and natural death. A separate human being should receive protection from the law and that status of being dependent on another does not deprive it of worth and value.

A baby is not like a tumor or a toenail or another sort of extension of a person's body. It is a separate body—completely dependent, yes—but another human being. As another human being, why does it have no protection from intentional killing? That's the fundamental argument of the pro-life movement. It's not that women should have no rights over their bodies. It's just that science teaches us it is not, in fact, merely another part of the woman's body; it's a separate living human being.

Mounk picks up on some of those points:

Here, I am torn in two different directions. If I look at a fetus that's five or six months old, and I look at pictures of that fetus, it's very easy to feel that it is, in fact, a different human being. It looks like a kind of little baby. There are complicated scientific arguments about whether or not it is capable of feeling pain at some particular stage of development, but it is clear that it is capable of doing so well before natural birth.

When I look at what a fetus looks like at three weeks or four weeks, I'm starting to be torn in the other direction, which is to say that, yes, I recognize that it is potentially human life, I recognize that it has a unique set of DNA that will remain the same though its natural death, but it does present as a clump of cells. It does not appear to have brain functions. And so at that point, I see there is some moral value there, some reason for moral concern, but it appears to be a lot less than it would be a few months later. 

French stays with the point about the instincts that Mounk owned to where people feel that it is right that a limit should be set on when abortion is allowed. French says:

From where the baby is recognizable as a baby, a lot of moral instinct starts to lock in. What's the scientific basis for this sort of consensus, middle position? I don't know. What's the moral basis for it? Well, it just seems more like a baby then. A lot of the compromise position is really based a great deal on a particular sort of sentiment about the child more than it is a scientific understanding. 

That the fetus is human biologically speaking is accepted by Mounk, but he raises the question of the child's "personhood":

Let's investigate for a moment this question about when the fetus is human, because in some biological sense, it seems obvious to me that two or three weeks in, the fetus is in fact, human; that is, a human entity that has DNA. It can grow to be a full adult human. Biologically speaking, it is human. But I guess the question is, “Is it human in the relevant ways that normally give us moral consideration towards humans?”  

He expands on that question:

I think some of the arguments for why we shouldn't have moral concern for a fetus at six or seven months are bad, precisely by analogy to that question, because you might say, “Well, they can't fend for themselves!” Sure. But nor can a lot of adult humans who we nevertheless want to treat with consideration, right? “They're not capable of rationality.” Alright, so again, if you make that the criterion for how we treat human beings, then you're going to have to treat a number of mentally disabled people in extremely cruel ways. 

There seems to be a background set of assumptions that we want to treat human lives with consideration if they are capable of having feelings, of feeling pain, of having a set of interests and so on. And though this is a very complicated and fraught question, it doesn't seem to me to be obviously wrong to say that in those relevant senses, a fetus at three or four weeks is not human in the way that a fetus becomes human at five or six months.

This is recognised by abortion opponents, says French, and that is why they do not advocate pressing a charge of murder or infanticide against the woman who aborts her baby:

There is an understanding of the large gulf that exists in the state of mind [of the woman] regarding an unborn child at different stages of development. 

Therefore, this discussion has come to a point where there is a common acceptance of the moral status of the fetus, based on the entity being human, even "two or three weeks in", with the heart starting to beat about five weeks in.  

Accordingly, the legality of killing the human entity inside the woman comes into focus. As for the catchcry, "It's my body. I can do what I like with the fetus!" Mounk sets out the areas where difficulty arises:

[We] have a clash of two sets of interests: the interest of a woman to have control over her own body, to be self-determined; and the interest of a fetus which is dependent on her for its survival. It appears that you have two very significant interests clashing with each other. The law deals with clashing interests all the time, but this clash in interests seems to be particularly stark. What does that imply to you for how we can recognize those legitimate interests and try to mediate within this really strong clash of legitimate interests?

Which brings French into the sphere of his most prominent expertise, the law. He says:

This is not an argument that just started with Roe in 1973—America has had abortion laws for a very, very long time that were decided through the democratic process. And I think that the procedural answer to that is that those competing interests should be resolved through the democratic process. And the injury of Roe v. Wade was that it removed those interests from the democratic process. 

Then it becomes incumbent upon pro-life citizens to convince the public of a couple of things. One is that the unborn child in a mother's womb is a life of incalculable worth, and the woman who is carrying the child is a life of incalculable worth. Rather than pitting the interests of child and mom against each other, what healthy public policy should do is harmonize them as much as humanly possible.

Now, public policy is not going to be able to solve everything. But we know why people get abortions, and one of the principal reasons is financial insecurity. That's something that public policy can do something about, along with, for example, private philanthropy. So a holistic pro-life movement knows that it cannot rest its argument solely by talking about the baby, because of the powerful and legitimate interests of the mother.

That's why a holistic pro-life movement is not one that's just simply running around trying to develop evermore creative ways of punishing people who either provide or aid and abet in providing abortions, or evermore creative ways to limit travel out of the state. It needs to be pouring energy into creative ways to be supportive. I'm worried about the state of the “pro-life” right at the moment, because I think it's very focused on one piece of that puzzle, and not nearly as focused on the other. 

I agree with French that not enough has been done to build a public structure that is clearly seen as supporting those in need, especially those who are have a practical difficulty while pregnant. The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute states that 93 per cent of women who have had an abortion in the United States did so because they had social or economic concerns, with only seven per cent, therefore, having health concerns relating to mother or child.

The government has a role here, in giving practical support to healthcare, childcare, and adoption services; private philanthropic organisations, Church organisations, and community groups, must also coordinate their efforts to ensure every pregnant mother can recognise that the "village" is with her. 

But to return to the matter of putting abortion into a legal category, it is important that the whole of society agree that the human being carried by the mother must be protected. The democratic process is key—which was the thinking the Dobbs/Roe decision promoted. However, French is despondent about the prospects for a healthy outcome in the immediate term especially. 

He finds great significance in the fact that 1980-81 saw the peak of the US abortions and that rates fell steadily until 2017, when they began to rise again. "...[F]or the first time in 40 years in the United States of America, [the] culture of life is under measurable decay."  

However, if society can rebuild solidarity out of the mess that the aggressive individualism in the West is creating, then there is hope for renewed appreciation of life over money, fame, and the bogus self-invention that attracts so many young people these days.  

A final point: When people have a wish to solve the "problem" of the new life that they are responsible for producing, they may clutch at the straw which is the argument that this life is not a person, and so can be got rid of without moral reproach. However, we need to remember that what is legal is not always morally right or just. Just take the example of the belief that owning humans as slaves is a morally blameless act, a belief held acceptable in the US for a couple of hundred years, but which is now seen clearly as a crime against humanity. 

💢See also:

                  Women will thrive without abortion, but work is needed

                  Legal does not mean ethical

                 Modern slave owners rail against Roe ruling

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