The moral and philosophical importance of abortion

Full text

The moral and philosophical
importance of abortion
John Reynolds-Wright
Fourth Year Medical Student,
The Medical School, University
of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
Correspondence to
Mr John Reynolds-Wright, The
Medical School, University of
Sheffield, Beech Hill Road,
Sheffield S10 2RX, UK;
jjrw1989@gmail.com
Received 12 July 2012
Revised 17 October 2012
Accepted 31 October 2012
To cite: Reynolds-Wright J.
Journal of Family Planning
and Reproductive Health Care
2013, 39,51–53.
INTRODUCTION
Access to safe abortion has been labelled
as a fundamental human right by the
International Women’s Health Coalition,
who stated that:
▸A woman should have the choice to carry
a pregnancy to term or not;
▸Abortion services should be part of a com-
prehensive sexual health programme;
▸Lack of funding and illegality do not
reduce the number of abortions, they only
serve to put the woman’s health in danger.
1
Despite this, abortion is illegal or diffi-
cult to access in many countries and has
recently come under renewed attack in
the Western world.
In the USA, certain states have introduced
lawsrequiringwomentolistentofetal
heart beat monitors or to undergo a trans-
vaginal ultrasound scan before being per-
mitted to proceed with an abortion, with
the thinly-veiled intent to discourage them.
Recently in the UK, MP Nadine Dorries
proposed an amendment to abortion
legislation that would have prevented
abortion providers, such as Marie Stopes
International and the British Pregnancy
Advisory Service, from offering pre-
abortion counselling to women on the
basis that their advice was ‘not independ-
ent’. They would instead be directed to
‘Crisis Pregnancy Centres’for supposedly
independent counselling. However, many
of these centres are run and funded by
religious groups with prominent anti-
abortion agendas.
2
The amendment was withdrawn due
both to lack of support and to a national
campaign against it. But the motives behind
the amendment, and the more extreme
pieces of legislation being passed in the
USA, call for the arguments of legality,
morality and access to be re-evaluated.
TRADITIONAL ARGUMENTS
Against abortion
A common argument against abortion is
that it is equivalent to murder –
specifically infanticide –and in this way
it is immoral and unjustifiable.
One of the best known philosophical
arguments to this effect is that of Don
Marquis, who claimed that murder is
illegal because it deprives the murdered
person of their potential future. Conse-
quently, abortion is murder as it deprives
the fetus of its potential future, and there-
fore abortion is morally wrong and should
not be allowed from the moment of con-
ception.
3
However, this does not take into
consideration that the zygote formed at
conception is a very different entity from
that which will ultimately be born and go
on to experience a future.
4
Therefore, it could be reasoned that
Marquis’s argument rather endorses a
policy of abortion up to the point of via-
bility, as once a fetus has reached this stage
it will be highly similar to a newborn child
that can go on to experience a future.
For abortion
There are two main arguments in favour
of abortion. First, that of Mary Anne
Warren, who argued that it is a person,
rather than simply a human being, that is
entitled to rights, including the right to
life. Abortion could therefore be deemed
acceptable, as while a fetus is undeniably a
human being, it is not a person. Warren
goes further by suggesting that intelligent
extraterrestrial beings could be regarded
as persons and therefore deserving of
rights, rather than rights being reserved
only for humans, and goes on to list
several criteria of personhood, including
consciousness, reasoning, activity, com-
munication and self-awareness.
5
This
argument is often objected to as it does
not take into account that people who are
temporarily comatose cannot fulfil her cri-
teria of personhood and therefore could
be killed with impunity as a result of her
argument. Similarly, infants up to the age
of 1 or 2 years can be incapable of fulfill-
ing these criteria and so her argument
could be used to justify infanticide.
MARGARET JACKSON PRIZE ESSAY 2012
Reynolds-Wright J. Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care 2013;39:51–53. doi:10.1136/jfprhc-2012-100427 51

However, Warren has responded that from the point of
birth a child does not need to biologically rely on its
mother any longer as it can be cared for by anyone;
thus if the mother did not want the child, killing it
would not be her only option.
5
The second argument is that of Judith Jarvis
Thomson in ‘A Defence of Abortion’. Her essay gener-
ates several ‘thought experiments’, the most discussed
being that of ‘The Violinist’. The world’s top violinist
falls ill and the Society of Music Lovers kidnaps you and
hooks him up to you to make use of your kidneys for
the next 9 months until he recovers. If you are parted
any sooner, he will die. The essay then goes on to con-
sider several assumptions and reasons that would make
it permissible or impermissible to detach the violinist
and leave him to die before the 9 months are over.
6
The central principle of the argument is that even
though the violinist has a right to life, that right does
not supersede your right to choose whether or not to
remain connected to the violinist for 9 months.
Thomson considers the stance that in this instance
you have been kidnapped by the Society for Music
Lovers and have not chosen to participate, equating
the whole thought experiment to pregnancy as a
result of rape, and she accepts that this does not
necessarily hold for a pregnancy resulting from con-
sensual heterosexual intercourse. However, this argu-
ment relies on the assumption that pregnancy is a
foreseeable consequence of heterosexual intercourse.
First, if a heterosexual couple engaging in sexual
activity make use of one or more methods of contra-
ception it can be said that while pregnancy is a fore-
seeable consequence, it is an unlikely one and the
woman in this scenario does not morally or philo-
sophically have a responsibility to give life to some-
thing that she took so much effort to avoid.
Second, a person may not necessarily associate the
act of sexual intercourse with pregnancy; that is to say,
when a person meets a member of the opposite sex to
whom they are attracted, it is unlikely that their inten-
tion is to ‘have a baby’with them, whereas they may
intend to have sexual relations with them. This high-
lights a psychological separation between sex and
‘making babies’that may lead to sexual behaviour that
makes pregnancy more likely (not using contracep-
tion), as pregnancy is no longer a ‘foreseeable’
outcome. This is especially true for young people who
are reaching sexual maturity, yet have not reached
emotional maturity.
Related to this is the concept of ‘normalised devi-
ance’, where an incorrect or unsafe action is carried
out, but no negative consequence results, and so the
incorrect or unsafe action becomes viewed as being
correct and safe. This can be applied to having unpro-
tected sex, but not getting pregnant. It can also apply
to smoking a cigarette but not getting lung cancer.
However, the greater the number of times the
‘deviant’act is committed –be it unprotected sex or
smoking cigarettes –the greater the likelihood that a
negative consequence will result.
We do not condemn to death those who have con-
tracted lung cancer due to smoking; rather, we offer
them help and treatment. Similarly, it can be reasoned
that a woman would be within her rights to terminate
a pregnancy on the basis of not considering the out-
comes of unprotected sexual intercourse, in other
words, making a mistake.
A NEW ARGUMENT
Access to safe abortion is not only a human right; it is
a measure of a society’s development with regard to
women.
Western society has a strong patriarchal basis, which
has at least in part emanated from the influence of
Christianity: the Bible and the teachings of the
Church historically emphasise a woman’s role as being
the property of a man and to be subordinate to him.
Gender equality only began to take steps forward in
the UK as recently as 100 years ago and our society
still retains many patriarchal features and influences,
as can be seen in another bill proposed by Nadine
Dorries, who wished to make abstinence education
compulsory in the UK, but only for young girls.
7
The ideology behind singling out young women as
being responsible for saying no to sex is born out of
the patriarchal notion of hegemonic masculinity:
8
that
it is a male’s prerogative to be sexually driven and
experienced and that it is natural for him to ‘sow his
wild oats’, whereas a female should be modest and
restrained lest she become pregnant, a condition that
would have an irreversible effect on her life. Herein
lies the importance of contraception and abortion.
First, contraception theoretically liberates women
from the fear of falling pregnant, so allowing a differ-
ent sexual culture to develop in which women are
able to explore their sexuality, experiment and have
multiple sexual partners in a way that had previously
been the preserve of men. Second, and more import-
antly, abortion allows women to reverse what used to
be an irreversible event in their lives. This comes into
a greater degree of conflict with patriarchy and hege-
monic masculinity than contraception does and is thus
a more controversial issue.
Contraception can be viewed in a positive light by
patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity as it can be seen
to encourage women to engage in sex as they will not
need to worry about the consequence, namely preg-
nancy. Abortion, however, is less acceptable as it is the
act of removing and rejecting the sperm of a male. This
goes against hegemonic masculinity and patriarchy,
which emphasise the importance of virility and fertility
of men. As such, a patriarchal society will be more
inclined to oppose access to abortion as it is seen, by
extension, to be an act of emasculation.
It is for this reason that access to abortion is such an
important measure of progress. A society that permits
Margaret Jackson Prize Essay 2012
52 Reynolds-Wright J. Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care 2013;39:51–53. doi:10.1136/jfprhc-2012-100427

abortion recognises that women are more important
than the ‘seed’of a male that they may be carrying.
CONCLUSION
As politicians and lobbying groups of varying back-
grounds seek to restrain the rights of women in terms
of access to abortion it must be remembered that:
abortion is justifiable morally and philosophically;
that abortion is a way for an individual woman to
correct a mistake that she and her partner have made
and avoid an otherwise unavoidable future; and that
for women and society as a whole it is part of our
further social evolution towards equality.
Funding None.
Competing interests None.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned;
externally peer reviewed.
REFERENCES
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2 Quinn B, Curtis P, Strattton A. Anti-abortion bid in disarray as
critics rally. The Guardian, 2 September 2011. http://www.
guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/02/
anti-abortion-critics-nadine-dorries [accessed 21 March 2012].
3 Marquis D. Why abortion is immoral. J Philos
1989;86:183–202.
4 Stone J. Why potentiality matters. Can J Philos
1987;17:815–830.
5 Warren MA. On the moral and legal status of abortion. Monist
1973;57:43–61.
6 Thomson J. A defense of abortion. Philos Public Aff
1971;1:47–66.
7 Shepherd J. MPs to debate sexual abstinence lessons bill. The
Guardian, 20 January 2012. http://www.guardian.co.uk/
education/2012/jan/20/mps-debate-sexual-abstinence-bill
[accessed 21 March 2012].
8 Hyde A, Drennan J, Howlett E, et al. Young men’s
vulnerability in constituting hegemonic masculinity in sexual
relations. Am J Mens Health 2009;3:238–251.
Margaret Jackson Prize Essay 2012
Reynolds-Wright J. Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care 2013;39:51–53. doi:10.1136/jfprhc-2012-100427 53