(EDITOR'S NOTE: The following article is lifted from Contemporary Issues In Bioethics, authored by Tom L. Beauchamp and LeRoy Walters, pp. 215-221. The article tries to present an ethical analysis on the issue of Abortion and Personhood as well as theoretical basis (grounding) for any moral judgment about the matter in question. As many would expect, a purely philosophical approach to the morality of abortion will have its own limitations. It would seem that such controversies surrounding the issue such as human life, person, and right "to take human life" will continue to persist, and debates involving opposing views of ethicians, more often than not, could not find "full rest," so to speak. If, however, any Christian-inspired theories can help bring about more appropriate ways of understanding the morality of abortion and its social implications, then they should be presented in a contextualized manner.)

     

ABORTION

THE PROBLEM OF JUSTIFICATION

Among the many reasons why abortions are commonly sought are cardiac complications, a suicidal condition of the mind, psychological trauma, pregnancy caused by rape, the inadvertent use of fetus-deforming drugs, and many personal and family reasons such as the financial burden or intrusiveness of a child. Such reasons certainly explain why abortions are often viewed as an available way to extricate a woman or a family from difficult circumstances. But the primary ethical issue remains: Are any such reasons sufficient to justify the act of aborting a human fetus? An ethicist concerned to defend abortion seeks a principled justification where ethical reasons are advanced for one’s conclusion. It might be decided, of course, that in only some of the above mentioned circumstances would an abortion be warranted, whereas in others it would not be justified. Even so, such a decision presupposes some set of general criteria that enables one to discriminate ethically justified abortions from ethically unjustified ones.

The central moral problem of abortion may be stated in woman to the following general form: Under what conditions, if any, is abortion ethically permissible? Some contend that abortion is never acceptable, or at most is permissible only if abortion is required to save the pregnant woman’s life or for some other similarly serious reasons. This view is commonly called the conservative theory of abortion. Roman Catholics have traditionally been among the leading exponents of the conservative approach, but they they are by no means its only advocates. Others hold that abortion is always permissible, whatever the state of fetal development. This view is commonly termed the liberal theory of abortion and has frequently been advocated by those adherents of women’s rights who emphasize the right of a woman to make decisions that affect her own body, but again the position is advocated by others as well. Finally, many defend intermediate or moderate theories, according to which abortion is ethically permissible up to a certain stage of fetal development or for some limited set of moral reasons that is sufficient to warrant the taking of fetal life  in this or that special circumstances.

FACTS OF HUMAN BIOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT

Pregnancy does not begin with intercourse, since the earliest point at which it can be dated is during the fertilization of the female egg (the ovum) by the sperm of the male. Once fertilization has occurred, a new genetic entity results from the combination of the genetic contributions of the male and the female. This new unit is a single cell capable, under normal conditions, of a constant process of alteration and growth. This single cell has twenty-three pairs of chromosomes (each parent contributes one chromosome in each pair). It quickly divides into two cells, four cells, then eight cells – reaching sixteen at approximately the third day after fertilization. Organ systems gradually appear before the eighth week of growth, roughly the point at which brain waves can be detected. Between approximately the nineteenth and twenty-eighth week of growth, the fetus reaches the stage known as “viability,” the point at which it is capable of survival outside the womb.

There exists a small but useful body of terminology frequently used by embryologists and others who discuss human biological development. Conception is said to occur when the male sperm and the female egg combine; during this process, the resultant entity is spoken of as a conceptus and is referred to in this way until its implantation, at the wall of the uterus. It is also referred to as a zygote until the completion of implantation, which occurs roughly two week after conception. Thereafter the term embryo is used to designate the developing entity, until about eight weeks, when it is referred to a fetus. However, the term “fetus” is frequently used to designate the unborn entity in any state of development.

THE ONTOLOGICAL STATUS OF THE FETUS

Recent controversies about abortion focus on ethical problems of how we ought and ought not to treat fetuses and on what rights, if any, are possessed by fetuses. But a more basic issue is that of what kind of entities fetuses are. Following current usage, we shall refer to this as the problem of ontological status. An account of what kind of entities fetuses are will, of course, have important implications for all issues of the permissible treatment of fetuses. But the two issues are distinct, and we must first attempt to resolve the preliminary question.

Although there is no single problem of ontological status, several layers of questions may be distinguished: (1) whether the fetus is an individual organism, (2) whether the fetus is biologically a human being, (3) whether the fetus is psychologically a human being, and (4) whether the fetus is a person. Some who write on problems of ontological status attempt to develop a theory that specifies the conditions under which the fetus can be said, under which the fetus is in some sense human, and still others are concerned to explain the conditions, if any, under which the fetus is a person. It would be generally agreed that one attributes a more significant status to the fetus by saying that it is fully human being rather than simply saying that it is an individual organism, and also that one enhances its status still further by claiming that it is a person.

Many would be willing to concede tha an individual life begins at fertilization without conceding that there is a human being or a person at fertilization. Others would upgrade the fetus’s status by claiming that the fetus is a human being at fertilization, but not a person. Still others would grant full personhood at fertilization. Those who spouse these views sometimes differ only because they define one of the other of these terms differently, but most of the differences come from serious theoretical disagreement about what constitutes either life or humanity or personhood, including disagreements over which category correctly applies to the fetus.

THE CONCEPT OF HUMANITY

The concept of human life is an especially perplexing one, for it can mean at least two very different things. On the one hand, it can mean (a) biological human life, that set of biological classificatory characteristics (e.g., genetic ones) that set the human species apart from nonhuman species. (This sense may be coextensive with “individual organism.”) On the other hand, “human life” can also be used to mean (b) life that is distinctively human – that is, a life that is characterized by those properties which define the essence of humanity. These are largely psychological, as contrasted with biological properties. It is often said, for example, that the ability to use symbols, to imagine, to love, and to perform various higher intellectual skills are the most distinctive human properties, those that define humans as human. To have these properties, we sometimes say, it is to be a “human being.”

To illustrate the differences between these two sense. Infants with various exotic diseases are often born and die after a short period of time. They are born of human parents and certainly are classified in all relevant biological ways as human. However, they never exhibit any distinctively human traits, and do not have the potential for doing so. For such individuals it is not possible to make human life in the “biological” sense human in the “distinctively human” or “psychological” sense. We do not differentiate these two levels of life in discourse about any other animal species. We do not, for example, speak of making feline life feline. But we do meaningfully speak of making human life human, and this usage makes sense precisely because there exists in the language the dual meaning just discussed. In discussions of abortion, it is imperative that one be specific about which meaning is being employed when using an expression like the “taking of human life.” A great many proponents of abortion, and opponents as well, would agree that while biological life is taken by abortion, human life in the second or psychological sense is not.

THE CONCEPT OF PERSONHOOD

Personhood may or may not be different from either the biological sense or the psychological sense of “human life” just discussed. That is, one might claim that what it means to be a person is simply to have some properties that make an organism human in one or both of these senses. But other writers have suggested a list of rather more demanding criteria for being a person. A list of conditions for being person, similar to the following, is advanced by Mary Anne Warren in this chapter and has been put forward by several recent writers:

(a)    consciousness

(b)   self-consciousness

(c)    freedom to act on one’s own reasons

(d)   capacity to communicate with other persons

(e)   capacity to make moral judgments

(f)     rationality

          Sometimes it is said by those who propose such a list that in order to be a person an entity need only satisfy one criterion on the list – e.g., it must be conscious (a) but need not also satisfy the other conditions (b-f). Others say that all of these conditions must be satisfied in order to be a person. We shall see that it makes a major difference which of these two views one accepts. But the dominant and prior question is whether one needs to accept anything like this list at all – a question raised in the present chapter by Philip Devine and (at least elliptically) by Baruch Brody.

          Two issues have emerged concerning the proper analysis of the concept of person. First, there is considerable dispute concerning the range of factual characteristics an entity must possess in order to be a person. One might analyze personhood n terms of a rather abbreviated list of factual, though not necessarily biological characteristics – e.g., in terms of physical characteristics such as genetic structure, characteristics of consciousness such as rationality and free choice, and perhaps characteristics that can at present be applied only to human developmental histories such as having learned a language. If personhood can be explicated in this way by listing only elementary properties, such as genetic structure, then fetuses might well qualify as persons. But one might also analyze personhood in terms of a more demanding list of presumably factual properties, such as b-f above. Clearly one would be under a heavy burden of argument to show that a fetus is a person if criteria such as these must be satisfied. In any event, the first controversy is over precisely this issue of whether any of these more demanding properties must be present in order to be a person, and if so which such properties.

          A second dispute has emerged in connection with the first one. Several writers have suggested that the concept of personhood must be analyzed in terms of properties bestowed by human evaluations well as in terms of fatual properties possessed by persons. For example, it has been argued that in order to be a person one must be the bearer of legal rights and social responsibilities, and must be capable of being judged by others as morally praiseworthy or blameworthy. The central question in this controversy is whether ftuses are the sort of entity that it is appropriate to value in this way. This issue is closely related to what we shall discuss momentarily as the moral status of the fetus.

  It is certainly not self-evident that a fetus either is or is not a person in any of the above senses. Anyone who claims to have resolved these controversies about persons must be prepared either to defend a particular theory of personhood or to show that these issues have somehow been wrongly conceived.

          The problem of ontological status is complicated by a further factor related to the biological development of the fetus. It is important to state at what point of development an entity is to be distinguished as fully individual, or fully human, or fully person. This involves specifying at what point full ontological status and only indirectly concerns what status they have.

THE MORAL STATUS OF THE FETUS

          The notion of moral status might be explicated in several ways but probably is most easily understood in abortion contexts in terms of rights. Accordingly, to say that a fetus possesses moral status is to say that it possesses rights. But which rights, if any? Conservatives hold that unborn fetuses possess the same rights as those who are born and therefore have full moral status. Devine and Brody hold such a thesis for at least most stages of fetal development.          At least some moderates contend that fetuses have only some rights and therefore have only a partial moral status. Liberals, on the other hand, maintain that fetuses possess no rights and therefore no moral status, as Warren maintains. If this liberal account is accepted, then the unborn have no more right to life than a bodily cell or a tumor, and an abortion would seem to be no more morally objectionable than surgery to remove the tumor. On the other hand, if the conservative account is accepted, then the unborn possess all the rights possessed by other human beings, and an abortion would appear to be objectionable as any common killing – except perhaps those killings committed in self-defense.

          Theories of moral status are usually closely connected with theories of ontological status. The conservative holds that since the line between the human and the nonhuman must be drawn at conception, the fetus as full ontological status and therefore full moral status. The liberal may contend that since the line between the human and nonhuman must be drawn at birth, the fetus has no significant ontological status and therefore no moral status.