Abortion: Should it be Illegal, and Should it be Considered as Genocide - Essay Example

Abortion: Should it be Illegal, and Should it be Considered as Genocide? Abortion is one of the most decisive issues in American politics. Unfortunately, however, it tends to rip people apart across the party lines, furthering the gap between “liberal” and “conservatives”. The abortion debate, in fact, can be said to illustrate as a microcosm a clear picture of contemporary American politics. The debate itself steals time away from other, more important issues including but not limited to healthcare, education, and the environment. It is also unfortunate that the debate will never be settled until more fundamental theoretical disagreements are identified, discussed, and settled upon. Liberals and conservatives, by arguing from completely different points-of-view, simply talk past each other, unable to recognize the other’s position or what exactly it entails, resulting in a stagnation where the debate cannot move forward. The failure to understand these dynamics in the debate emerges not because one side is right and the other refuses to think the correct way; but because both cannot adequately justify the theoretical baggage their claims about abortion carry. Conservatives cannot justify why we should believe what the Bible says and liberals cannot justify the ethical system known as utilitarianism. In what follows, we will consider why (independent of any religious teaching) abortion is a morally condemnable act—producing what is essentially the murder of a human life, and therefore ought to be subject to legal restraint. First, we need to recognize why abortion is ethically wrong. Pro-choice advocates try to distinction between “human in the moral sense” and “human in the genetic sense” (Warren). The “moral” sense of being human is that which is a human person, according to Warren, and abortion applies only to those beings that are not instances of this particular category. This makes it excusable to end the life of a human being which is only so in the “genetic” sense. However, this rests on the assumption that we can metaphysically separate the properties of single beings into dichotomous categories like those that Warren proposes. We cannot because, for a human being, having a certain set of biological properties is a necessary condition of having a certain set of moral qualities. Warren says, however, that it is not a sufficient condition. She bases this conclusion on the thought that the “potential capacity for rational thought” (a biological property) does not allow us to make the jump to moral properties for the fetus (because it has this potency). She claims, “The potential capacity for rational thought can at most show that an entity has the potential for becoming human in the moral sense”. At this point, Warren seems to confuse potentiality with mere possibility (Manninen). This is where an ethical issue becomes one of metaphysics and physical differences. A member of a natural kind, like a fetus, has a particular essence (the full expression of its human genetic code) towards which it strives and grows. The potentiality of being a developed human being is inherent to a fetus’ nature as a fetus. If that fetus is not allowed to actualize that potential for personhood, it will cease to exist, as it is part of its nature to become something else. Something like a fetus is by its nature something becoming something else, and therefore needs to change in order to persist. Therefore, although the fetus does not have personhood in situ, it has it potentially, or by its nature. The so-called “essence’ of a fetus is the human aspects of its genetic code. This “essence” gives the embryo a particular nature that specifies what it is striving toward (a developed human person). If we treat potentially properly, and in this way (as a matter of something’s nature and not as a matter of mere possibility), the ethical issue becomes quite clear: the embryo is by nature human and to interfere with its process of actualization is morally wrong. Secondly, Warren’s arguments rest on the thesis that the “genetic sense” of being a human being is less than worthy of moral considerations by virtue of its nature. However, it is wrong to believe that simply because something is at this moment merely genetically human (and not a human person), that this allows (or morally compels) us to use the false distinction between the genetic human and the moral human to kill the former and save the latter from destruction. The distinction is ultimately false: it is essentially the same as that between a “fetus” and a “child”, language that is used to mask the fact that a fetus is a developing child, only slightly more dependent on its mother now than it will be after being born. The absurdity of the distinction is apparent when considered in light of the following situation. Suppose two pregnant women are waiting for the bus, talking about prenatal personhood. While one believes that her fetus was a person at conception, the other says hers will not be a person until birth. Both fetuses were conceived the same day. Suddenly, a drunk driver hits them both, killing both women’s fetuses. Indeed, if we are to be consistent, and if it is a mothers choice whether a fetus is a person, then the death of one fetus is a homicide while the other’s death is merely destruction of property. Considering both fetuses were objectively the same kind of being when alive, this end-result is absurd. In addition, this is the absurdity Warren is committed to here with her distinction between two senses of being human. There is no distinct state of being human based on personhood. Whatever one chooses to classify a fetus as, whether “human in the genetic sense”, “human in the moral sense”, a “child”, or a “fetus”, they are all objectively the same. Only a morality of extreme ethical subjectivism would allow one to make a seemingly meaningful distinction between them (Gordon). Thus, it seems as though the moral support for abortion by its advocates rests on shaky ground. However, there remains a problem in questioning whether the act of abortion should be made illegal or not. To hastily assume that we ought to enforce laws against the practice ignores the lesson from history saying that it is not the responsibility of government to enforce a moral code. It is the responsibility of government to protect individual rights, as Thomas Jefferson declared in the Declaration of Independence. These individual rights, according to him, include one’s rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The most common strategy of those who support abortion is to deny that a fetus is a person, or recipient of such rights. Therefore, they believe there is no right to life for a fetus. However, this premise is doubtful based on the previous considerations. Consequently, if it is the responsibility of a government to protect individual rights, and a fetus has such individual rights, then it is the responsibility of that government to protect them by whatever means. Simply by virtue of being human, the fetus is entitled to such natural rights to be free from interference and death, especially from the arbitrary whims of his or her mother. Philosophically, scientifically, and medicinally, an anti-abortion stance is the most tenable given the arguments for other positions. There is also the question of whether it is legitimate to compare the extermination of fetuses to the exterminations of nations and races in genocide. Genocide may be informally described as the measured obliteration of a particular group seen as unwanted by the exterminators. The analogy of unborn children compared to genocide victims works, much to the chagrin of pro-abortion advocates, because the unborn are being destroyed arbitrarily at a ratio of one to three in a vast network of clinics throughout America. This is made possible because of the outdated Roe v. Wade ruling that allowed abortion through all nine months of pregnancies. Indeed, the similarities between genocide like the Holocaust and the aborting of fetuses are too grave. In both cases, there is dehumanization of “unwanted” persons, which results in these individuals having no value at all to society. In both cases, some are held to be sacrificial lambs to the benefit of others, and those lambs are destroyed for arbitrary reasons. In both cases, a society concludes that the judicial murdering of the innocent is a necessary practice for the well-being of all. In both cases, human beings are denied status as human beings to assuage the guilt of killing them (Cunningham). The conclusion we are supposed to reach with such headlines as “Study suggests link between crime drop, legal abortion” is that only the best citizens deserve to live. Apply this position to any group other than fetuses and it will be considered monstrous; but, as the previous discussion showed, a fetus is a human being. Thus, “monstrous” is perhaps most fitting. Abortion is categorically wrong, both morally and legally. We bridge the gap between moral and legal law by pointing out that a fetus is a human being, entitled to certain inalienable rights such as those to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The purpose of a government is to protect these rights and to see to it that they are not violated. Clearly, then, it is the responsibility of a government to make abortion illegal insofar as it violates the inherent rights of the unborn. Additionally, abortion ought to be seen as and readily compared with genocides perpetrated against certain ethnic and religious groups throughout history, based on an agreeable definition of that term. Support for abortion relies on ethical subjectivism and the thought that values can make human life an irrelevant consideration whenever convenient. There is no “choice” to murder a fellow human being. A violation of a natural right is a violation of a natural right, and must be guarded against. Works Cited Cunningham, Gregg. Why Abortion is Genocide. 2003. 2009 . Gordon, Doris. Abortion and Rights: Applying Libertarian Principles Correctly. 1995. 2009 . Manninen, Bertha Alvarez. "Revisiting the argument from fetal potential." Philos Ethics Humanit Med. 2:7 (2007): 1-16. Warren, Mary Anne. "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion." The Monist 57:4 (1973): 43-61. Read More