[Peace-discuss] Whose life is it, anyway? (fwd)

[C. G. Estabrook]

[At tonight's meeting, Lisa took exception to my not mentioning the "March
For Women's Lives" in my notes on this week's "War on Terrorism."  She and
I would probably disagree on how they're related, so to keep the ball
rolling I include here a (slightly hostile) summary of a a famous article
on the subject, Don Marquis' (U. of Kansas) "Why Abortion is Immoral,"
Journal of Philosophy, vol. 86 (1989).  These are selections from notes on
that article prepared by one Allen Stairs and copyright to him, but they
make the argument (one I agree with) fairly clearly, I think.  --CGE]


The debate about abortion often centers around premises about the nature
and moral status of the fetus. This can lead to enormous frustration and
seemingly irresolvable disagreement. For some people, it is obvious that
the fetus is a full-fledged human being, in the richest moral sense, from
the moment of conception. For others this is more or less unintelligible;
that is, for some people, the idea that a newly conceived embryo is a
person makes no sense at all.

Don Marquis makes a very distinctive contribution to the abortion debate.
He argues for a strong pro-life position without appeal to the notion of
personhood. And he also does without appeal to religious premises.

Marquis makes a very strong claim: "abortion is, except possibly in rare
cases, seriously immoral ... it is in the same moral category as killing
an innocent adult human being."

This is not to say that abortion is always wrong; Marquis simply sets
certain hard cases to one side. He does not discuss abortion before
implantation, abortion to save mother's life, abortion in case of rape.

In spite of the fact that Marquis does not rely on the notion of
personhood, he shares a major assumption with those who do: whether or not
abortion is wrong, in his view, depends on something about the fetus; it
depends on "whether a fetus is the sort of being whose life it is
seriously wrong to end." He believes the fetus is such a being, and he
offers an analysis of why.

Framed in its usual terms, Marquis believes that the abortion debate
results in a stand-off between the two sides. In section I, he attempts to
demonstrate this by reviewing certain typical features of the debate. At
the most general level:

      Pro-lifers point to facts that seem to count in favor of the
humanity of the fetus. Then they conclude that abortion is not acceptable.

      Pro-choicers point to facts that seem to count in favor of the
non-personhood of the fetus, and go on to conclude that abortion is
acceptable.

As Marquis points out, neither side can rest on such facts alone. Moral
conclusions require moral premises. And indeed, each side can add
plausible sounding premises.

Pro-lifers offer: it is always prima facie wrong to take a human life.

Pro-choicers offer: personhood is what matters for moral worth; killing a
person is what's prima facie wrong.

Each side misses the mark. The pro-life principle is too broad. It might
well show that killing a cancer-cell culture is immoral, or so Marquis
claims. (Here we might note: the pro-lifer means that it is wrong to kill
a human being; not a human cell. But if a newly-fertilized ovum counts as
a human being, then the distinction is not so clear after all.) On the
other hand, the pro-choice argument is too narrow. It doesn't show that
killing infants or retarded individuals is wrong.

Again, each side can add to its position. The pro-lifer can shift to talk
of human beings. But then it isn't clear that a fetus is a human being;
"human being" doesn't mean "is human and is alive." "Human being" means
something like "full-fledged human person." But then the pro-lifer is
begging the question -- is assuming a premise that the pro-choicer would
simply deny.

Pro-choicers, on the other hand, have to find a way of broadening their
conclusion to deal with the cases of infants, children and the mentally
retarded. These beings don't count as persons by typical pro-choice
criteria. The pro-choice advocate can appeal to considerations of the
consequences, but this will make the argument rest on delicate
calculations that might not turn out the way the pro-choicer thinks they
will. Most of us who think killing infants and retarded people is wrong
would still think so even if it turned out that there are some overall
"benefits" to such practices.

More generally, Marquis points out, the pro-lifer tends to rely on a
biological category: something like "genetically human" or "conceived by
human parents." This leaves us with the problem of explaining the moral
relevance of the biological facts...

The pro-choicer avoids biology and typically appeals to psychological
characteristics. This, again, creates a need to explain why these are
morally relevant. The philosopher Joel Feinberg offers an explanation. The
psychological characteristics are what make moral responsibility and moral
reasoning possible. They also explain why we can value certain things,
make plans, and care about our own futures. They "make sense out of rights
and duties." But Marquis points out: the psychological characteristics
that pro-choicers appeal to may be necessary conditions for having duties;
it is much less clear that they are necessary for having rights --
especially such basic rights as the right to life.

Now a being who never will have these characteristics might well have no
rights. (Thus, unconscious people get rights, since they once were
conscious and may well be again.) But this won't help the pro-choicer,
since the fetus typically will be conscious if it's allowed to develop.
And if we insist that someone must already have had these characteristics
to get rights, this may seem like a cheap trick tailor-made for ruling out
fetuses.

II Marquis proposes a different way of approaching the problem. His
strategy: examine what it is that makes killing wrong in the first place.
Then look at abortion in light of that more general discussion

He begins with two wrong answers:

   1. Killing is wrong because it brutalizes the killer; and
   2. Killing is wrong because of the effects on the people left behind.

The first answer gets things the wrong way around. People who kill are
brutes because killing is a terrible thing. The second doesn't deal with
the case of people who live in isolation or whose friends are superficial
and won't miss them. It is still wrong to kill such people. A better
answer is this: killing is wrong because it deprives the victim of all
possible future experience. "When I die," says Marquis, "I am deprived of
all the value of my future."

Marquis offers two bits of intuitive evidence for this:

   1. It explains why we regard killing as an especially evil crime: it
deprives the victim of more than virtually any other crime.
   2. It explains the regret and sense of loss felt by people who know
they are dying.

He also points to four implications of this analysis that help make it
plausible.

   1. It allows that other -- even alien -- creatures may have a right to
life as strong as ours; it doesn't rest on a merely biological basis.
   2. It doesn't prejudge the animal rights debate; some animals might be
sufficiently like us that it is wrong as things stand to kill them.
   3. It doesn't prejudge the euthanasia debate; it allows that for some
people, death may not be an evil compared to continued life.
   4. It straightforwardly deals with the case of infants and children.

Notice that potential personhood isn't the issue. A fetus is the sort of
being whose life it is normally wrong to end. But the reason for this is
that it has the capacity for a valuable future like ours. If this amounts
to saying it is a potential person, so be it. The point is that Marquis
does not rely on an unanalyzed notion of "potential person." He spells out
exactly what it is about the being that is morally relevant.

Marquis uses another case as a sort of test for this general approach. We
believe it is wrong to inflict pain on other people wantonly. He suggests
that there are strong parallels between what he -- and, he thinks, we --
would say about this and what he has to say about abortion. We believe it
is wrong not because of some extrinsic considerations, such as what it
does to the character of the person inflicting the pain, but because of
its effects on the victim -- because the suffering of the victim is an
evil. This is like what he has to say about killing; killing is wrong not
because of its effects on the killer, but because of its effects on the
victim -- the loss of all potential for value in his or her future...


	***