I have been involved in Internet discussions with pro-choicers for several years now. (Although I sympathize with those who wish to call them “pro-aborts,” I afford my opponents the courtesy of calling them what they prefer to be called.) I have developed an argument that cuts to the heart of the abortion debate. As you’ll see, it’s not really an argument but a question, one that has befuddled dozens of pro-choicers and forced many of them out of discussions with me. The argument goes like this:
Abortion is legal. Infanticide is illegal. If a woman wishes to terminate her pregnancy at any time before birth, she is said to have “exercised her right” to do so. If she wishes to terminate her child’s life at any time after birth, she is viewed as a killer and prosecuted as such. Why the difference?
The answer must be that there is a quality or set of qualities (let’s call it “x”) that all newborns have and no preborn infants have that makes newborns worthy of protection by the law and preborn infants unworthy of such protection.
So, the question is: What is x?
It is important to note that all pro-choice arguments assume that there is an x. All talk about “reproductive freedom,” “freedom of choice,” and “the right to privacy” presupposes that a newborn has something about him that makes him substantially different from a fetus and thus worthy of legal protection. (I use the term fetusbecause pro-choicers will not let you get away with calling it a “preborn infant” or an “unborn child.” In the context of this discussion I will acquiesce to their terminology, since the strength of this strategy isn’t dependent on the word used to describe the being involved.)
Likewise, all pro-life arguments assume that there is no x. All talk about “the dignity of human life,” “the slaughter of innocent children,” and “the rights of the unborn” presupposes that there is no distinction between a newborn and a fetus that makes the former worth protecting and the latter expendable.
Even the Supreme Court would agree. In Roe v. Wade, the Court said: “If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant’s [i.e., Roe’s] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’s right to life would then be guaranteed by the [Fourteenth] Amendment. The appellant conceded as much on re-argument” (Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 [1973], IX, emphasis added). For the Court, x is “personhood” as it relates to the Fourteenth Amendment. It proceeded to articulate its supposed “right to privacy” that allegedly can be read into the amendment, but it admitted that if “personhood” can be predicated of the fetus as much as of the newborn, then this putative right to privacy would be trumped by the fetus’s right to existence. And, as the Court noted, the pro-choice side conceded this point.
So if we just settle this one issue, if we can all agree on what x is (or if x exists to begin with), the entire abortion debate will be resolved, at least among all rational people. So is there an x, and, if so, what is it?
I have gotten numerous responses to this question, some of them contradictory (e.g., one will say that a fetus is human but not a person; another will say that it is a person but not human) and all of them logically untenable. What follows are some of the more common answers I get and my responses to them.
“X is the fact that a fetus is part of a woman’s body.”
This is by far the most common response. It seems that radical feminism has indoctrinated modern woman with the notion that, prior to birth, a fetus is indistinguishable from its mother, no different from any of her internal organs.
The first thing you should do is ask your interlocutor what he means by “part of the body.” Specifically, is ther e is a distinction between being < I>in the body and being part of the body? For example, I could put a bullet in your body, but does that make the bullet part of your body? Lots of other things (food, bacteria, viruses, etc.) enter into the body, but does that make them part of it?
The next thing to do is ask him when a fetus ceases to be a “part” of the woman’s body. Is it when it is partially outside the womb? Completely outside the womb? When the umbilical cord is cut?
This may seem like hair-splitting, but it is a crucial point. In October 2003, an Illinois judge overturned the murder conviction of a woman who killed her baby because the baby was still attached to her via the umbilical cord. Or take partial-birth abortion: If the abortionist performing the procedure pulls the baby out another two inches before killing him, he can be legally prosecuted for murder. If the pro-choicer wishes to defend this procedure, he must posit that x is a mere two inches. Most likely, he will not want to support the legality of partial-birth abortion. Ask him why.
Someone may say to you that a fetus is a mere “blob of tissue,” to which you can respond: Aren’t we all blobs of tissue? What’s the difference between a blob of tissue six months before birth and one six months after birth?
“X is the fact that a fetus is not alive.”
Many people think that the abortion issue revolves around the question “When does life begin?” There is a simple answer to that question: Never. At no point in the reproduction process does a nonliving thing suddenly become alive. All living organisms are generated from organisms that are already living. In the case of humans, a sperm (a living thing) unites with an ovum (a living thing) to form a zygote (a living thing).
Some pro-choicers will challenge you on this point, saying that if a gamete is as much a living thing as a zygote is, then, according to your logic, it would follow that killing a gamete would qualify as murder. This charge misses the simple fact that a zygote is substantially different from a gamete, whereas it is accidentally different from a newborn baby. Here we must explain the Aristotelian concepts of substance and accident.
Is Socrates the same as Socrates sitting? Answer: same substance, different accidents. Simply put, a substance is what a thing is in itself (for instance, Socrates), while an accident is what a thing happens to be at any particular moment (e.g., sitting or not sitting). Aristotle names nine accidents: quality, quantity, relation, action, passion, time, place, disposition, and rainment.
A zygote is a different substance than any other cell in that it has the potential to become a fully grown human being. If the two were substantially the same, then it would be possible to take a cell from the inside of your cheek, put it in a woman’s uterus, and in nine months a baby would be born. That not being the case, it is clear that a zygote is substantially different from a sperm or egg.
On the other end of the spectrum, a zygote is different from a newborn only accidentally. The differences are matters of time, place, etc. The differences between a zygote and a newborn are similar to the difference between Socrates and Socrates sitting. If you simply changed the accidents of a zygote—in this case, if you waited a certain time—it would not differ from a newborn.
Obviously, the distinction between something that is worthy of legal protection and something that is not would have to be a substantial difference, not an accidental one. For instance, if we wanted to explain why A is worthy of legal protection but B is not, we would have to posit that A is a different substance—an entirely different thing altogether—from B, and something inherent to that substance is what makes it worth protecting, not the fact that A is over here while B is over there. Thus, in order to justify abortion, pro-choicers must posit a substantial difference between fetuses an d newbor ns, not accidental ones.
“X is arbitrary. Our society chooses to make birth the dividing line, but that’s just as good as any other point.”
Aside from the obvious dangers of granting the state unlimited ability to define human life (after all, the U.S. once decided that a black man is three-fifths of a person), the answer to this argument is simple: Conception is not at all arbitrary.
Recall the distinction between substance and accidents that we made above. All of the changes that occur between conception and birth—and after birth, for that matter, all the way until death—are merely accidental changes, not substantial ones. Conception, though, is a substantial change, because at that point the sperm and egg become a zygote, which, as shown above, is a different substance from anything else in the body. Thus, conception is not an arbitrary point in the gestation process: It is the point at which the new substance of a human person emerges.
“X is the fact that a fetus is not a person.”
This is what some philosophers call “moral personhood.” It consists of an ever-changing hodgepodge of qualities that supposedly distinguish a person from a non-person. Self-awareness, the ability to interact with others, the ability to perceive, the ability to choose, being part of the social contract—all or any of these characteristics may be included in your opponent’s list.
Unless he is a disciple of Peter Singer (who holds that infants up to twenty-eight days old can be killed justifiably), your interlocutor will be unable to defend the view that all newborns have moral personhood and all fetuses do not. A single counterexample will demolish his position.
Your strategy should be like this: If x is, say, self-awareness, then it would follow that all newborns have self-awareness, right? If they don’t, then they are not persons, and are thus not entitled to legal protection? And if any fetus has self-awareness, then it necessarily would be worthy of protection, right? And if any other living thing—a chicken, a dog, a worm—is self-aware, wouldn’t that make it a person too? And wouldn’t that mean that all humans who are not self-aware (including those who are comatose or mentally ill) should not be legally protected?
“X is viability.”
If you do a Google search for “viability,” you’ll get more legal documents than medical ones. That’s because, basically, the Supreme Court invented the concept and then forced doctors to define it. As a result, both medically and legally, the notion is so nonsensical that it is difficult for any intelligent person to defend it. Even the pro-choice writer Gregg Easterbrook has noted that the concept of viability is “so vague it [is] impossible to make heads or tails of it” (Gregg Easterbrook, “Abortion and Brain Waves,” The New Republic, January 31, 2000, 24).
The legal status quo is that, prior to viability, states may not prohibit abortion; after viability, states may pass laws that protect the unborn, but only if they contain an exception for “the life or health of the mother.” (Health is given a broad definition by the courts, including emotional, psychological, and mental health, but that’s another discussion altogether.)
In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court defined viability as being “potentially able to live outside the mother’s womb, albeit with artificial aid,” adding that a viable fetus must be capable of “meaningful life outside the mother’s womb.” The Court never defined meaningful in that context but rather made it clear that a fetus’s viability is to be determined by the attending physician. Thus, for all intents and purposes, any woman who wants an abortion at any time during her pregnancy can obtain one. All she needs to do is find an abortionist who is willing to attest to the fetus’s non-viability.
To ma ke matters worse, th ere is confusion even in the medical establishment about what constitutes meaningful existence outside the womb: “The court said a fetus is generally considered viable at about twenty-eight weeks’ gestational age, but that viability sometimes comes as early as twenty-four weeks. It drew its estimates from generally accepted medical practice. But the authors of two basic obstetrical textbooks, on which much of this practice is based, testified at the trial to their own uncertainty about the age at which a fetus can survive. They and other doctors also pointed out that ‘survival’ itself is a disputed concept: Does it mean life for a minute, for twenty-eight days, or for a lifetime of contribution to society?” (Seth Mydans, “When Is an Abortion Not an Abortion?” The Atlantic Monthly, May 1975).
Moreover, even if viability could be defined precisely, it would still be relative with respect to time and place. A non-viable infant a hundred years ago would be viable today, and an infant that is viable today in a large U.S. city would not be viable today in rural Nigeria. In fact, it is not inconceivable that biomedical technology someday will produce an artificial womb, enabling a fetus to live “outside the mother’s womb” from conception until birth, making the viability point conception itself.
“X is the fact that a fetus is a symbiont (parasite).”
As always, you should first ask your interlocutor to define his terms. Is he using symbiont in the scientific sense or a more general sense? In either case, there are several strategies you can use.
First, the term symbiosis is generally defined as a relationship between two or more organisms of different species in which one or more benefit from the interaction. Note that it refers to different species. Mother-child relationships—whether prenatal or postnatal—are not regarded as symbiotic in the strict sense of the term.
Second, there are four types of symbiosis:
- mutualism, in which both partners benefit;
- commensalism, in which one member benefits while the other is unaffected;
- parasitism, in which the parasite benefits while the host is harmed; and
- amensalism, in which one member suffers while the other is unaffected.
If a fetus is a symbiont, which of the four categories does it fit into? Not mutualism—ask any nine-month-pregnant woman if she has benefited from being pregnant! Not commensalism or amensalism, because it cannot be said that either the fetus or the mother remains unaffected.
But does parasitism fit the bill? The mother certainly experiences discomfort (morning sickness, aching back, etc.), but do these inconveniences qualify as being “harmful”?
If he is creative, your opponent may choose another gambit: creating a fifth category of symbiosis. But it would be apparent that anyone who did this was doing it for the sole purpose of justifying abortion.
Furthermore, if a fetus is a parasite before birth, does it continue being one after birth? Your opponent will be forced to say no, because if a newborn is a symbiont, then newborns would be as expendable as fetuses are. Why is an infant not a symbiont? How has the relationship changed, beside the fact that it is now outside the womb rather than inside it?
Furthermore, even if it could be established that a fetus is a symbiont, it is not clear why a symbiont is expendable but a non-symbiont is not. Does symbiosis somehow degrade your status as a living being? Are symbionts necessarily of less worth than other living things?
Of course, your opponent could be using the term symbiosis in a general sense, arguing merely that a fetus is similar to a symbiont, to which you can respond: Yes, that’s very observant of you. But it does not follow that a fetus is expendable simply because it exhibits traits similar to symbionts. After all, newborns are also symbio tic in man y ways, but we protect them from being killed nonetheless.
Conclusion
Pro-choicers have great difficulty defining exactly what x is. That is why our discussions with them should center on this question. There is no need to lament the “decline of morality in Western civilization,” no need to debate the existence of a “transcendent moral order,” no need to ponder when the soul “enters” the body. You don’t even need to bring up the Ten Commandments or Evangelium Vitae. All you need to do is ask one simple question: What is x?
The fact is, of course, that there is no x, and thus no substantial difference between abortion and infanticide. Needless to say, I have never gotten a response to my question that is both rational and logically coherent. But challenging pro-choice thinkers to answer this question reveals the inherent absurdity of being pro-choice and the inherent logic of being pro-life.