may therefore want not merely that the child be detached from her, but more, that it die. Some opponents of abortion are inclined to regard this as beneath contempt – thereby showing insensitivity to what is surely a powerful source of despair. All the same, I agree that the desire for the child’s death is not one which anybody may gratify, should it turn out to be possible to detach the child alive.
At this place, however, it should be remembered that we have only been pretending throughout that the fetus is a human being from the moment of conception. A very early abortion is surely not the killing of a person, and so is not dealt with by anything I have said here.
Notes
1 1 I am very much indebted to James Thomson for discussion, criticism, and many helpful suggestions.
2 2 Daniel Callahan, Abortion: Law, Choice and Morality (New York, 1970), p. 373. This book gives a fascinating survey of the available information on abortion. The Jewish tradition is surveyed in David M. Feldman, Birth Control in Jewish Law (New York, 1968), Part 5, the Catholic tradition in John T. Noonan, Jr., “An Almost Absolute Value in History,” in The Morality of Abortion, ed. John T. Noonan, Jr. (Cambridge, Mass., 1970).
3 3 The term “direct” in the arguments I refer to is a technical one. Roughly, what is meant by “direct killing” is either killing as an end in itself, or killing as a means to some end, for example, the end of saving someone else’s life. See note 6, below, for an example of its use.
4 4 Cf. Encyclical Letter of Pope Pius XI on Christian Marriage, St. Paul Editions (Boston, n.d.), p. 32: “however much we may pity the mother whose health and even life is gravely imperiled in the performance of the duty allotted to her by nature, nevertheless what could ever be a sufficient reason for excusing in any way the direct murder of the innocent? This is precisely what we are dealing with here.” Noonan (The Morality of Abortion, p. 43) reads this as follows: “What cause can ever avail to excuse in any way the direct killing of the innocent? For it is a question of that.”
5 5 The thesis in (4) is in an interesting way weaker than those in (1), (2), and (3): they rule out abortion even in cases in which both mother and child will die if the abortion is not performed. By contrast, one who held the view expressed in (4) could consistently say that one needn’t prefer letting two persons die to killing one.
6 6 Cf. the following passage from Pius XII, Address to the Italian Catholic Society of Midwives: “The baby in the maternal breast has the right to life immediately from God – Hence there is no man, no human authority, no science, no medical, eugenic, social, economic or moral ‘indication’ which can establish or grant a valid juridical ground for a direct deliberate disposition of an innocent human life, that is a disposition which looks to its destruction either as an end or as a means to another end perhaps in itself not illicit. – The baby, still not born, is a man in the same degree and for the same reason as the mother” (quoted in Noonan, The Morality of Abortion, p. 45).
7 7 The need for a discussion of this argument was brought home to me by members of the Society for Ethical and Legal Philosophy, to whom this paper was originally presented.
8 8 For a discussion of the difficulties involved, and a survey of the European experience with such laws, see The Good Samaritan and the Law, ed. James M. Ratcliffe (New York, 1966).
3 The Wrong of Abortion
Patrick Lee and Robert P. George
Much of the public debate about abortion concerns the question whether deliberate feticide ought to be unlawful, at least in most circumstances. We will lay that question aside here in order to focus first on the question: is the choice to have, to perform, or to help procure an abortion morally wrong?
We shall argue that the choice of abortion is objectively immoral. By “objectively” we indicate that we are discussing the choice itself, not the (subjective) guilt or innocence of someone who carries out the choice: someone may act from an erroneous conscience, and if he is not at fault for his error, then he remains subjectively innocent, even if his choice is objectively wrongful.
The first important question to consider is: what is killed in an abortion? It is obvious that some living entity is killed in an abortion. And no one doubts that the moral status of the entity killed is a central (though not the only) question in the abortion debate. We shall approach the issue step by step, first setting forth some (though not all) of the evidence that demonstrates that what is killed in abortion – a human embryo – is indeed a human being, then examining the ethical significance of that point.
Embryos and Fetuses are Complete (though Immature) Human Beings
It will be useful to begin by considering some of the facts of sexual reproduction. The standard embryology texts indicate that in the case of ordinary sexual reproduction the life of an individual human being begins with complete fertilization, which yields a genetically and functionally distinct organism, possessing the resources and active disposition for internally directed development toward human maturity.1 In normal conception, a sex cell of the father, a sperm, unites with a sex cell of the mother, an ovum. Within the chromosomes of these sex cells are the DNA molecules which constitute the information that guides the development of the new individual brought into being when the sperm and ovum fuse. When fertilization occurs, the 23 chromosomes of the sperm unite with the 23 chromosomes of the ovum. At the end of this process there is produced an entirely new and distinct organism, originally a single cell. This organism, the human embryo, begins to grow by the normal process of cell division – it divides into 2 cells, then 4, 8, 16, and so on (the divisions are not simultaneous, so there is a 3‐cell stage, and so on). This embryo gradually develops all of the organs and organ systems necessary for the full functioning of a mature human being. His or her development (sex is determined from the beginning) is very rapid in the first few weeks. For example, as early as eight or ten weeks of gestation, the fetus has a fully formed, beating heart, a complete brain (although not all of its synaptic connections are complete – nor will they be until sometime after the child is born), a recognizably human form, and the fetus feels pain, cries, and even sucks his or her thumb.
There are three important points we wish to make about this human embryo. First, it is from the start distinct from any cell of the mother or of the father. This is clear because it is growing in its own distinct direction. Its growth is internally directed to its own survival and maturation. Second, the embryo is human: it has the genetic makeup characteristic of human beings. Third, and most importantly, the embryo is a complete or whole organism, though immature. The human embryo, from conception onward, is fully programmed actively to develop himself or herself to the mature stage of a human being, and, unless prevented by disease or violence, will actually do so, despite possibly significant variation in environment (in the mother’s womb). None of the changes that occur to the embryo after fertilization, for as long as he or she survives, generates a new direction of growth. Rather, all of the changes (for example, those involving nutrition and environment) either facilitate or retard the internally directed growth of this persisting individual.
Sometimes
