The Fetus’ Moral Value

One of the arguments that people on the pro-life side tend to use is that a fetus, or even the one-cell zygote that is formed after fertilization, is a distinct human life. It contains the genetic material that allows it to be a part of the human species. It also ticks all the boxes that would label something as alive, such as the ability to grow, adapt, and respond to its environment. Due to this, the people on the pro-life side are correct to say that the fetus is a human life. However, just because something is a human life doesn’t mean that it has any moral value. A person in a permanently vegetative state is a human life but I think everyone can agree that it is perfectly fine to kill them.

So, what gives someone or something moral value? Most people say consciousness or the capacity to feel pain. However, someone in a coma, from which they will inevitably awake, does not fit any of these criteria but I assume most of us can agree that it is morally wrong to kill them.

Jamie is 25 years old and recently had a wedding. Unfortunately, a fire broke out at his wedding, causing everyone he knows to die and leaving him in a coma for 9 months. When he awakes, Jamie will have no memory of his past life. During the 9 months, when Jamie is in his coma, is it perfectly ok to kill him? Why? Why not?

The reason that murder is wrong is because you are depriving someone of the goods of their future. The same thing happens to Jamie in the above scenario. Does the same thing not happen when we abort a fetus? Are we not depriving it of a future that it will inevitably have (unless something goes wrong during the pregnancy)? Therefore isn’t killing a fetus the same as murdering a human being that has been born?

A common rebuttal to this is that it also means that contraception or even abstinence is morally wrong. However, in these cases the entity that is going to have a future has not been created. When using contraception, you are preventing the formation of the entity that will have a future but in an abortion you are destroying the entity that will have a future. It’s similar to the difference between choosing not to give someone $100 and stealing $100 from them.

The Bodily Autonomy Argument

Some people on the pro-choice side may concede that the fetus has the same moral worth as a baby or an adult. However, they will say that the fetus has no right to use the mother’s body to preserve its life.

Judith Jarvis Thomson has famously proposed a thought experiment that is frequently used to defend the bodily autonomy argument. In this thought experiment, you randomly wake up next to a violinist. This violinist has a problem with his kidneys, so the Society of Music Lovers kidnapped you, as you have the same blood type as the violinist, and plugged the violinist’s circulatory system into yours. You will have to be hooked up to the violinist for 9 months and if you unplug yourself before that amount of time, the violinist will die.

However, this scenario only justifies abortion in cases of rape, where the woman played no part in the child-making act. In the vast majority of cases, the woman has voluntarily chosen to do the deed that for millions of years has led to the creation of an offspring. A similar scenario would be one where you got paid $50 to put your name into a raffle where if you got selected you had to hook yourself up to the violinist. In this scenario, if the individual was selected, should they be allowed to detach themselves from the violinist? It is also worth pointing out that there is also a moral difference between killing and letting something die, so to make this thought experiment analogous to abortion, the individual would also have to stab the violinist with a knife and kill them instead of just detaching from them.

When Is Abortion Justified?

There are only 3 cases where abortion is justifiable. As in cases of self-defense, if the mother’s life is at risk, abortion is not only justified, but is a moral obligation. Abortion is also justified in cases of rape, which can be argued for by Thomson’s thought experiment. The final case where abortion is justified is if the child will be born with a deformity that will cause it immense suffering. In this case, abortion was done as it is best for the child and is therefore justified.

Poverty is not a justifiable case for an abortion as being born into poverty does not mean that the individual will live in poverty for the rest of their life. The baby can also be put up for adoption. It is true that for older kids, it is hard for them to find families that will take care of them but this is not true for babies. Plenty of families will be willing to adopt a baby.

Consequences Of Abortion Bans

One argument against abortion bans is that abortion legalisation reduces crime. After the introduction of Roe v Wade in America in 1973, by the 1990s, there was a reduced crime rate. The same association can be seen when the communist Romanian government banned abortion in 1967. The reason abortion legalisation reduces crime is most likely because poor people will be more likely to get an abortion and individuals that grow up in more poverty are more likely to become criminals than those that do not. However, does this justify taking a human life? If removing all poor people from society was proven to reduce crime, would it be morally acceptable to murder them all?

Another argument is that banning abortion will not lower abortion rates as women will just get abortions from other means. Data shows that after Roe v Wade was introduced, abortion rates rapidly increased until the 1990s. The abortion rate then declined year after year but is still higher than it was before the introduction of Roe v Wade. So, the argument that abortion bans will not lower abortion rates is completely false.

Conclusion

The taking of millions and millions of human lives every year is a complete tragedy. This stands as one of the most egregious atrocities ever perpetrated by our species. These humans could’ve become successful entrepreneurs, teachers, politicians, and athletes. But it doesn’t matter what they would’ve become because each life mattered and was undeservingly taken.