A little logic on the topic of abortion
Article One: that abortion is murder.
Murder is the unjustified killing of a human being;
Children are human beings, differing from adults only by their youth, that is, by their pending natural development;
Children in the womb are children, differing from children only by their youth, that is, by their pending natural development;
Abortion is the unjustified killing of a child in the womb; therefore, abortion is murder. QED.
The justifications for killing a human being that would place the killing outside of the definition of murder, are, an act of self-defense or the defense of others. Killing another to defend property rights is usually not recognized as a justification. Killing another out of necessity (as when a sailor who kills a cabin boy in a lifeboat, in order to preserve his life by cannibalism) is not recognized as a justification. Killing another in the heat of passion (as when a man comes upon his adulterous wife in the arms of her lover) is sometimes a mitigation, for the murder is done without malice aforethought, but this usually diminishes the severity of the punishment, rather than excusing the crime. Killings performed as military actions against military targets are justified to the degree that the war itself is just; civilian casualties are excused only where unavoidable or accidental.
Objection 1. Children in the womb do not have the characteristics normally associated with humanity, namely, intelligence, speech, motion, passions and affections, and so on. At an early period in the womb, children have not developed hearts, nerves, brain, and are no more than a cluster of cells; earlier still, a child is merely one cell. Hence, a child in the womb is not a child properly so called.
Objection 2. Giving birth always entails a risk to the life of the mother, and killing another to preserve one’s own life is justified.
Objection 3. Even granting for the sake of argument that the child is human, the mother’s natural ownership of her own body and her own health overrides any right of the child to live.
Objection 4. Children in the womb, not yet born, cannot properly be said to be alive, hence, to abort them it not to kill them.
Reply to Objection 1. A thing can be human without displaying to an outward observer those characteristics normally associated with humanity, if those characteristics are still an essential and natural part of his being, such as, an idiot, a mute, a cripple, a sociopath, might lack the thought, speech, motion, passions and affections we normally associate with human beings, but they are no less human in their nature than one who presently enjoys and exercises those characteristics. A man in a dreamless sleep displays no outward sign of his human nature; but, in due time, when he wakes, he does. Likewise, a baby who has not yet learned speech, locomotion, and human passions displays no outward sign in human nature, but, in due time, when he develops, he will.
The same argument applies to an earlier stage of development as to a later. A child with a brain who does not speak because he has not yet learned speech, is human even before the age of reason, because he has the natural capacity for reason; an embryo who does not have a brain because he has not yet grown a brain, is human before the development of his nervous system, because he has the natural capacity for growing a brain, learning speech and reason. Stage of development is an accidental rather than an essential property of membership in a species: hence, an acorn is the same species as a oak tree.
Furthermore, assuming the child in the womb is not a human being leads to an absurdity. Since the baby has a sex from the moment of conception, he is either a “he” or a “she”; he cannot be an “it”. He is not a dog nor a cat nor a lizard, but neither is he an object, like a lump of tissue, that has no membership in any species. The child is not inanimate: therefore he must be alive; all living things are members of a species; he is not a member of any nonhuman species; therefore he is a human.
While it is irrelevant to this argument proper, it cannot pass without notice that ordinary experience confirms that parents treat unborn children as children. Expectant mothers name their babies, buy cribs, and decorate nurseries for the sake of the baby, not for the sake of an unnamed inhuman cluster of cells. No proud father puts his hand on the swollen stomach of his pregnant wife and exclaims with joy that he felt the “product of conception” kick.
Reply to Objection 2. The question here is one of degree of risk, and access to safe alternatives. In all but a few cases, the risk to the life of the mother should she carry to term is slight, whereas the risk to the child should the abortion be carried out is absolute. Where the abortion procedure entails more risk to the life of the mother than carrying to term, this argument does not apply. In any case, this argument merely justifies the murder, it does not change its nature.
In all cases but rape, the woman consented to the sexual act, and hence consented, in the eyes of the law, to the natural by-products or offspring of the act. Unless some unexpected new risk arise, the merely natural risks of childbirth cannot be avoided by one who consented to those risks at the time when the consent was called-for.
Reply to Objection 3. The woman’s natural ownership of her own body is limited by her natural duties as mother. In the same fashion that killing a trespasser, merely because he is on your property, is not justified, nor is throwing a stowaway overboard, so too the mother’s ownership of her own body does not justify nor excuse abuse, mistreatment, neglect, or murder of her own children, whether inside the womb or out of it.
Reply to Objection 4. This argument is merely definitional. The same reality obtains no matter what terms are used to describe it. The purpose of abortion is to kill the products of conception, no matter whether the term “child” or “fetus” is applied. A fetus is not composed of nonliving tissue. It is an organism.
Article Two: that abortion is an dereliction of the natural duty of parents to care for their young.
Granting for the sake of argument that children in the womb are not human, due to their incomplete development, I say that there is a natural duty of parents to care for their children, and that this duty obtains from the moment of conception, i.e. from the moment the child exists as an entity.
For, if not, then there is a period before which the duty does not obtain, such as, for example, before birth. But, if that where the case, then it would be permissible for a mother to do anything it pleased her to do to damage the child, so long as he were in the womb, such as ingesting smoke or dangerous drugs, or doing anything that might cause a birth defect, or, by surgical intervention, causing a birth defect deliberately. For example, a mother could hire a surgeon to wound or maim or blind or lobotomize or castrate or dismember her child, and, provided only that it was done in the womb, the mother would be held blameless for any suffering or loss endured by the child after he was born, and for the rest of his life, even though her actions were the direct cause and only cause of the suffering or loss. This result is absurd. Therefore there is no point during the existence of the child before which the duty to care for the child does not obtain. QED.
Objection 1. There is not natural duty of parents to care for their children.
Objection 2. The duty to care for the child only obtains after the birth on the grounds that the child’s rights vest only after that time, so that, in other words, a mother maiming her child in the womb only is wrong retroactively, due to the loss suffered by the child after his birth; but if he is killed, and not born, then there is no loss suffered by the child.
Reply to Objection 1. That children cannot nurse, shelter, and protect themselves without the care of an adult is beyond dispute. While, from time to time, other relatives or even strangers can adopt the parental duties the natural mother and father cannot or will not carry out, it is merely a matter of fact that mothers and father cause their children to be born, and moral responsibility follows causal responsibility. Were it not the case that children are the duty of the parents to rear, then it would be the case that no neglect of children, not even allowing one’s child to starve, would be cause for condemnation.
Reply to Objection 2. By definition, duties cannot be retroactive. Mothers who do not take reasonable precautions to save their children from birth defects fall under a proper moral condemnation at the time when they fail to take the steps to safeguard their children, since this is the only time when such failure can be corrected. A mother who decides to have her child maimed in the womb is in moral error at the time when she makes the decision, not at the time when the child is born.
A child who is murdered suffers a loss in the sense that his rights have been invaded, whether or not he is aware of the invasion. Likewise, a murdered man suffers the loss of his life: it is absurd to argue that a murdered man suffers no loss because he does not exist any longer, and therefore he cannot suffer nor feel loss. The wrongness of murder comes from the fact of the loss, not from the victim’s present awareness of it.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
