how to think about what is in the womb
thanks to everyone for the excellent comments and for making this a good discussion.
in thinking about the morality of abortion, i find myself wanting to say two things:
1) it is impossible to begin to think rightly about abortion without dealing with the question of what this thing is which that gets aborted. it is fairly obvious, i think, that an abortion destroys something, and also that the moral status of abortion depends heavily on the nature of whatever is destroyed. hence the conflict about what to call whatever is in the womb -to destroy a 'bunch of cells' or even a 'fetus' seems very different from destroying 'an unborn child' or a 'baby in the womb.
2) there is something wrong-headed and unproductive about centering our thinking about abortion on questions like 'when does a human life begin?' or 'when is a fetus a person?' these seem to me especially vexed questions, and i am skeptical of starting with the most difficult questions. moreover, these questions seem to take us into fairly abstract debates about personal identity, and to lead us away from some of our most helpful moral concepts -concepts such as virtue and vice, human activities and human goods.
a friend recently pointed out to me that these two points might stand in tension: how can we deal with the first issue -the status of what is in the womb- without dealing with precisely those questions of which i am wary? i offer the following line of thought as a response to that question, and as a suggestion for how we might begin to think about what is in the womb in a way that doesn't start with a question such as 'when does a human life begin?':
most people, it seems, feel that abortion is more objectionable the later it occurs in a pregnancy. the pro-choice case is much harder to make when what is in the womb is something that looks and acts so much like a baby, and perhaps could even survive outside of the womb. likewise, the pro-life case is harder to make when we are talking about the very early stages of a pregnancy, when what is aborted doesn't look or act much like a baby. so as not to start with a case that seems to stake the deck too much for either side, let us begin with a pregnancy at 8 weeks gestation. about 88% of abortion in american take place between 6-12 weeks gestation, and about half take place at 8 weeks or later.
at 8 weeks, this thing in the womb is about 3/4 of an inch long. it has a heartbeat and brainwaves. it has arms, legs, fingers and toes. and it moves around on its own. you can see a nice picture of it here.
now, what should we call such a thing? it seems fairly clear that, whatever it is, it is alive. it seems equally obvious that whatever it is, it is human -it certainly is not some other life form, such as a plant or non-human animal. is it a human person? is it a fully human? these are much trickier questions, in part because the nature of personhood and personal identity is much debated. let us set these question aside, then, and not insist either way about the question of personhood. what is plain, i think, is that this is a form of human life at the very early stages of development. whether we wish to refer to it as a 'fetus' or an 'unborn child', then, what is in the womb at 8 weeks is clearly a developing human being. this strikes me as an obvious and non-contentious way to get clear about what we are dealing with. after all, if it is not a developing human being, what else could it possibly be?
having said that what is in the womb is a developing human being, we have not had to answer any questions such as 'when does human life begin?' or 'what constitutes personhood?'. moreover, we have not yet said anything about how we ought to respond to a developing human being. nor have we said anything about the rights or interests of either developing human beings or pregnant women who are carrying them.
however, by recognizing that we are dealing with is a developing human being, i think we are now in better shape to start asking the right sort of questions, such as: what are our responsibilities to developing human beings? what place to human beings at the very early stages of development have in the community of other human beings? what is the proper response for an adult human being to have toward a developing human being?
likewise, we can ask: what virtues might come into play in helping us this about our posture toward developing human beings? how does our attitude toward developing human beings reflect our understanding of what does it mean to live well as a human being? how to it reflect and our understanding of the specifically human needs, capabilities, and excellences?
in thinking about the morality of abortion, i find myself wanting to say two things:
1) it is impossible to begin to think rightly about abortion without dealing with the question of what this thing is which that gets aborted. it is fairly obvious, i think, that an abortion destroys something, and also that the moral status of abortion depends heavily on the nature of whatever is destroyed. hence the conflict about what to call whatever is in the womb -to destroy a 'bunch of cells' or even a 'fetus' seems very different from destroying 'an unborn child' or a 'baby in the womb.
2) there is something wrong-headed and unproductive about centering our thinking about abortion on questions like 'when does a human life begin?' or 'when is a fetus a person?' these seem to me especially vexed questions, and i am skeptical of starting with the most difficult questions. moreover, these questions seem to take us into fairly abstract debates about personal identity, and to lead us away from some of our most helpful moral concepts -concepts such as virtue and vice, human activities and human goods.
a friend recently pointed out to me that these two points might stand in tension: how can we deal with the first issue -the status of what is in the womb- without dealing with precisely those questions of which i am wary? i offer the following line of thought as a response to that question, and as a suggestion for how we might begin to think about what is in the womb in a way that doesn't start with a question such as 'when does a human life begin?':
most people, it seems, feel that abortion is more objectionable the later it occurs in a pregnancy. the pro-choice case is much harder to make when what is in the womb is something that looks and acts so much like a baby, and perhaps could even survive outside of the womb. likewise, the pro-life case is harder to make when we are talking about the very early stages of a pregnancy, when what is aborted doesn't look or act much like a baby. so as not to start with a case that seems to stake the deck too much for either side, let us begin with a pregnancy at 8 weeks gestation. about 88% of abortion in american take place between 6-12 weeks gestation, and about half take place at 8 weeks or later.
at 8 weeks, this thing in the womb is about 3/4 of an inch long. it has a heartbeat and brainwaves. it has arms, legs, fingers and toes. and it moves around on its own. you can see a nice picture of it here.
now, what should we call such a thing? it seems fairly clear that, whatever it is, it is alive. it seems equally obvious that whatever it is, it is human -it certainly is not some other life form, such as a plant or non-human animal. is it a human person? is it a fully human? these are much trickier questions, in part because the nature of personhood and personal identity is much debated. let us set these question aside, then, and not insist either way about the question of personhood. what is plain, i think, is that this is a form of human life at the very early stages of development. whether we wish to refer to it as a 'fetus' or an 'unborn child', then, what is in the womb at 8 weeks is clearly a developing human being. this strikes me as an obvious and non-contentious way to get clear about what we are dealing with. after all, if it is not a developing human being, what else could it possibly be?
having said that what is in the womb is a developing human being, we have not had to answer any questions such as 'when does human life begin?' or 'what constitutes personhood?'. moreover, we have not yet said anything about how we ought to respond to a developing human being. nor have we said anything about the rights or interests of either developing human beings or pregnant women who are carrying them.
however, by recognizing that we are dealing with is a developing human being, i think we are now in better shape to start asking the right sort of questions, such as: what are our responsibilities to developing human beings? what place to human beings at the very early stages of development have in the community of other human beings? what is the proper response for an adult human being to have toward a developing human being?
likewise, we can ask: what virtues might come into play in helping us this about our posture toward developing human beings? how does our attitude toward developing human beings reflect our understanding of what does it mean to live well as a human being? how to it reflect and our understanding of the specifically human needs, capabilities, and excellences?
posted by micah at 8:20 AM
4 Comments:
Micah's idea that we should think about what is in the womb as a developing human, and that we should ask ourselves how we should think about developing humans, is an excellent one, I think. Whatever we think about `when life starts' (whatever that might mean), we can all agree that whatever it is that is in the womb is clearly a developing human. But I think we should, if we are going to think clearly about these issues, push the idea further back: unprotected sex is an action that can bring into existence developing humans.
I'll get back to that in a moment. I want to connect it to another idea. I've always been instinctively squeamish about the abortion issue for the following reason: I don't like the idea of me, as a man, telling millions of women, that what they are doing is wrong, and that they should do something else (these themes: a man's role in abortion, telling other people that they are doing wrong, have come up before). But what does that squeamishness come to? It might turn out, I think, that abortion is wrong: I am open to be persuaded by argument on this issue. In which case, millions of women are, in fact, doing something wrong. But we are all familiar with the idea that women who decide to have abortions have found the decision very hard indeed. Part of the reason this decision must be hard is that they weigh the idea that inside them is a developing human, perhaps they think about whether or not it is wrong to destroy a developing human, but still take themselves to have other reasons which outweight the wrongness of destroying a developing human. That is: even if we were all to agree that it is wrong to destroy a developing human, is it clear that the wrongness of that action always (or, nearly always, I don't care about stupid, extreme life of the mother versus life of the foetus discussions) outweights other considerations? I think that in any case, there are a lot of considerations that (at least look like they) count as reasons to abort. So, my squeamishness to tell women they are making a wrong decision rests not so much on how I feel about abortion (it might turn out it is wrong, and they are, under that description, doing something wrong) but on what other considerations are employed - perhaps, in some cases, aborters are pursuing the lesser of two wrongs (and that is why the decision is so hard).
For example, Laurie brings up considerations: in some cases it doesn't look like single mothers have a particularly easy time of it. I can imagine a mother deciding that she has so little potential to give her child a good upbringing, so little chance to bring her child to a position where that child can be a flourishing human being, that it is better (though still wrong) not to bring that child into the world at all, than to bring a child into a sitution where she feels there is no chance that that human being will flourish (I submit this looks like a case where she chooses the lesser of two wrongs, unless we have that further argument why abortion is usually the wrongest of a set of wrongs). (Although, parenthetically, I take it that a lot of pro-lifers will not accept this argument, because bringing a potential human being into the world is always better than not bringing that child into a hopeless situation. Because, I take it, of the characteristic American idea that no situation is truly hopeless. Which bleeds into the idea that when the kid, ill-educated and hopelessly poor winds up in prison or facing the death penalty, he is there not because of the hopeless situation he was born into but because of his own poor choices, and deserves society's punishment. And I emphasize, his own poor choices: the (say) hideous poverty he is born into is no responsibility of the typical pro-lifer either. This parenthetical remark illustrates, I take it, why Europeans feel so perplexed by the standard American pro-lifer. But it also illustrates why I think we need some clear discussion on the question whether abortion is always the wrongest of a set of wrongs (barring extreme cases of course), and, further, what we can do about the other wrongs.)
But now I want to bring back that idea about sex. In my example, some of the considerations that weigh on the potential mother have to do with the attitude of the father of the child, in particular, what he feels responsible for given the unprotected sex he has engaged in. In my example, perhaps the woman might not have had to choose abortion if the man in question had been a `stand up guy'. And this, I think, is the most interesting reason why abortion is a feminist issue: why should the woman be saddled with all the hard responsibilities that follow on unprotected sex? As a man, I am far more comfortable with asking the following question: `How can we encourage men to think more clear headedly about the responsibilities they undertake when they have sex?' than asking the following question: `How can we persuade fewer women to have abortions?' While a lot of men behave like jerks, I hardly think asking the latter question is going to get us far - since, in at least the case I imagined, it is the jerkiness of the man that put the woman in the horrible postion of having to choose one wrong over another. And I think that if we focus attention on the former, we might find the number of abortions actually going down. This isn't to say that discussing abortion itself isn't valuable. It is very interesting, and, as I say, I am open to persuasion that abortion might turn out to be wrong. But I think we should be clear headed about a number of things: first, deciding that abortion is wrong is different from deciding that abortion is the wrongest of a set of wrongs that a woman might find herself facing. That has to be a separate conversation. Second, even if we were to decide that abortion is wrong, and that abortion is, in fact, wronger than other wrongs, we won't get very far in reducing the number of abortions unless we change how men think about sex. Which I think is implicit in Micah's plea that we discuss as a society how we value the status of a developing human being.
Tom.
I really appreciated Tom’s comments on sex and abortion, particularly his two comments: “why should the woman be saddled with all the hard responsibilities that follow on unprotected sex?” and “we won't get very far in reducing the number of abortions unless we change how men think about sex.” I think that there is definite correlation between society’s attitudes about sex and abortion. Both men and women want to have sex without creating children/developing human beings (and the development of birth control in the last 50 years has brought about the staggering change that makes this possible). But it is the inescapable fact that it is women who become pregnant and give birth that puts the hard issues more on their side of the court. Men have the luxury of choosing whether to be a “stand-up guy,” as Tom put it, or a “jerk.” Obviously, if you don’t want to produce a child (or contract disease), responsible sex = protected sex. Most of our society agrees on this, whether or not they practice it, take responsibility for it themselves, or leave it to the other person. But people are careless or dislike some forms of protection, and even protected sex sometimes results in pregnancy . . . And even given a fairly positive situation (in my opinion as a pro-lifer) in which both man and woman feel responsible for their offspring and don’t see abortion as a good option, what do you do when you don’t want to live or spend your life with the father or mother of your child? Traditional and religious views promoting abstinence/monogamy provide an easy answer (don’t have sex until you’re married and stay faithful and married to that person), but prescribe a lifestyle that most people in our society are not willing to accept. So should a post-sexual revolution pro-life sexual ethic be developed that provides for responsible sexual freedom and the potential for children to be emotionally well cared-for by both parents even if those parents don’t live together? Of course I’m making the assumption that children need two actively involved parents. I feel strongly that this is the case, but I also think that many, if not most, people would agree on that. In fact I would wager that many abortions occur because the women having them don’t see single motherhood as a good/desired lifestyle for themselves or their child, and either they don’t want to be with their child’s father for life or vice versa.
hopeless, hopeless, hopeless. there is no headway to make on this topic. ever. that's my philosophically considered opinion. so there.
DG
since joel's comment takes issue with some specific claims of my last post, i thought i'd comment on it directly:
joel: first, i think i have probably failed to be clear about what i'm trying to do. my aim (at this point) is not to make any kind of legal or policy argument. i did not intend my last post to say anything of substance about whether or not a woman has certain privacy rights or the state has certain interests. i take it that, based on everything in my last post, one might well think that abortion ought not only to be legal, but that it is in fact morally ok. that is, one might think that in some cases its just fine to destroy a developing human being. and one might think that for any number of reasons -that it hasn't developed far enough to be especially valuable, that it hasn't developed far enough to have interests, etc. in addition, one might think that it isn't morally ok to have an abortion, but nevertheless it ought to be legal to do so. and one might think that for a variety of reasons -because of something about the constitution, or something about the nature of democracy, or because of the divine right of kings or whatever. in any case, my point about what is in the womb is separate from those sorts of claims. and my point also doesn't pre-judge those claims, though it might help us to think rightly about those issues.
as far as your other points go, i think we can distinguish between attempting to answer a certain question, and answering another question that might have entailments for the first question. we might not know when a pile of toothpicks becomes a 'big pile of toothpicks', but know that a million toothpicks is a big pile and bigger than other big piles. the later point entails that if you start from zero and add a toothpick at a time, you will get a big pile of toothpicks before you get to a million. but it doesn't tell us precisely when a pile becomes a 'big pile of toothpicks.' likewise, you are right to point out that, if at eight weeks what we have is a human being, then this might have entailments for a variety of questions. but that claim itself is not an attempt to answer 'when does life begin?' and, in fact, it does not give an answer to that question.
i'm not sure what to make of your insistence on the word 'fetus' over the notion of 'developing human being.' i suppose my point is simply that a fetus is a developing human being, and the value of recognizing that is that we are then in a position to bring a number of other helpful concepts on board -concepts such as human nature and human capabilities, or development and activity and telos.
as for the point about the chimpanzee fetus, i would just say it is a developing chimpanzee. this is a fact about its genetics, as you suggest. but also, i think, a fact about its nature, which is different from a human nature.
hope that clarifies a bit. i certainly don't mean to avoid your original point, which i'm now thinking was more of a legal/political point. rather, i'm trying to think through some of the concepts before even getting to legal/political question. you are, i suppose, further down the road than i am, and you may have to wait a bit for me to catch up.
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