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I have often remarked in this column that philosophy gets an unfair
bad wrap on the ground that it doesn’t solve problems. Indeed, the
point of philosophy is more to clarify concepts, ideas, and their
consequences, then to solve practical issues. However, it would
seem that clarifying things isn’t much of a goal if in turn it doesn’t
help us make some progress. So, let us consider one particularly
sensitive debate -- the one about the very idea of abortion -- where
philosophy, by claryfying our thoughts, can help reasonable people
come to a compromise (philosophy can do nothing for unreasonable
people, so if you are among those who scream “murder!” at the thought
of someone masturbating, get a life, and while you’re at it, make
a point of watching Monty Python’s Meaning of Life).
Much of the debate on abortion hinges upon what seems to be a scientific
question: when does a fertilized egg become a human being? Of course,
the answer cannot be entirely scientific, since it depends in part
on objective facts about the biology of human development, and in
part on what we mean by “human being.” Which is where philosophy
comes into play. Does a foetus become a human being when the heart
starts beating? When there is a recognizable central nervous system?
When it can react to external stimuli? When it can feel pain? Any
of those answers would put the boundary between unacceptable and
acceptable abortion practices at different times during pregnancy,
but it seems rather arbitrary to pick one of these developmental
milestones and use it as a universal yardstick for moral decisions.
After all, many other animals have a nervous system, a heartbeat,
respond to external stimuli, and can feel pain, but most of us (vegetarians
excluded -- but most abortion opponents included) don’t seem to
have too many qualms about killing such animals.
No, the crucial point must focus on something else that characterizes
human beings. Plenty of philosophers, for example Julian Baggini
(in his excellent collection Making Sense: Philosophy Behind the
Headlines) have suggested that the important facts in the debate
on abortion (and the parallel one on euthanasia) are not found in
the biology of humans, but rather in our (philosophical) concept
of personhood. In other words, some of us think a foetus should
be protected because it is becoming a person, i.e. an entity that
can eventually feel not just pain, but suffering; that can have
not just the urge to have sex and reproduce, but may fall in love;
a being that could one day write a sonnet, a song, or a philosophical
essay.
If the problem is actual or potential personhood, not the developmental
biology of our particular species of primates, then we have moved
from biology to philosophy, a much more tricky terrain to navigate.
Being a person is tightly linked to having the ability to lay down
and recover memories (which make up our “identity” as a person),
as well as to experience emotions (like love and suffering) and
not just feelings (like sexual urge and pain). These characteristics
are in turn dependent on being a member of a society, interacting
with others, communicating one’s thoughts and receiving and understanding
information about other people’s thoughts and emotions. Yes, all
of this is also a matter of biology (after all, these things are
made possible only by the presence of certain biological essentials,
like a functional body, and especially a complex brain), but taken
together they mean that personhood is most of all a question of
psychology and sociology.
The problem is that there are plenty of circumstances in which
a human being is not, in fact, a person. Foetuses are not persons,
and neither are people who survive in a vegetative state induced
by a coma. Other cases are more difficult to determine, but one
can make a reasonable argument that very young children are only
on their way to become persons, while patients affected by advanced
stages of some mental diseases like Alzheimer are well on their
way out of full personhood. So, while there is very little question
that by performing an abortion we are in fact killing a biological
being that belongs to the human species, it is an entirely different
-- and much more difficult to defend -- proposition to say that
we are killing a person.
Abortion opponents may shrug all of this philosophical quibbling
as irrelevant on the ground that the procedure -- at whatever stage
it is practiced -- kills a potential person. But this is a rather
odd argument, with far reaching consequences that should be seriously
considered by whoever proposes it. For example, the mass of cells
in question will become a person only if many conditions other than
biological development are fulfilled, including being raised in
a proper physical, psychological and social environment. It is ironic,
therefore, that we spend so much energy debating abortion while
most of us are much less passionate about more apparently mundane
issues such as, say, health care and education for all those non-aborted
foetuses.
Even more radically, if a fertilized egg is a potential person,
so is every single unfertilized one, and every sperm as well. After
all, the egg or sperm only needs a gamete of the opposite type to
begin the developmental process that will lead to the generation
of another person. I suppose that is why the most rabid religious
fundamentalists (including the current Pope) are against masturbation
or sex that doesn’t have the goal of reproduction. But it is hard
to see what these people could do to avoid the natural “waste” of
unutilized human eggs. Should we explant them from every woman and
fertilize them artificially? If your intuitive answer was “no,”
and yet you are against all types of abortion, you may want to consider
the consistency of your philosophy.
Do I have a better and clearer solution to offer that can help
us settle the abortion debate once and for all? No, as I acknowledged
at the beginning, that isn’t the point of a philosophical discussion.
Quite the opposite, I hope that people reading this column will
feel a bit less sure of their own positions because they have understood
that the issue is much more complex and difficult to settle than
a simple slogan, or even an introductory course on human developmental
biology, allow. And please do check out that Monty Python movie
I mentioned in the beginning.
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