8 The Ethics of Abortion
8.1 Preliminaries
My ultimate aim in this chapter is to argue that abortion is immoral, at least in typical cases. But my broader aim is to show that those looking to defend the immorality of abortion need to be discerning. Not every argument against abortion is a good argument. With this end in mind, I begin by considering a number of common arguments—including an argument that proceeds from the assumption that the embryo has a right to life—and showing that they all fall short. Finally, I advance a more promising argument against abortion, which turns on the idea that killing an embryo is immoral because the embryo is thereby deprived of a future full of valuable experiences, projects, and activities.
Some preliminary points before we proceed. We should begin by noting that one can think that abortion is immoral in some cases but not others. For instance, one might think it’s permissible to abort a pregnancy after six weeks but not after six months. Or one might think it’s immoral to abort a healthy pregnancy but permissible to abort a pregnancy that is likely to kill the mother. To help anchor our discussion, it will be useful to focus on a specific case.
Take a moment to Google embryo at eight weeks to get an accurate picture of what Emm would look like. Why “eight weeks” if Emm is six weeks old? Because doctors count the number of weeks you have been pregnant starting from your last period, which is two weeks prior to ovulation and, so, two weeks prior to conception. That means that someone who is “eight weeks pregnant” is carrying an embryo that was conceived six weeks ago.
I focus on the case of Emm because it is both a typical case—a good deal of abortions occur within the first eight weeks and about half involve failed contraception—as well as being a case that parties to the debates typically disagree about. So, if we can resolve the question of whether it was immoral to kill Emm, we will have made significant progress on the morality of abortion.
I will use the usual labels of “pro-life” and “pro-choice” to characterize the different sides of the debate. A pro-lifer holds that it was immoral to abort Emm when she was six weeks old. A pro-choicer holds that it was morally permissible to abort Emm when she was six weeks old. But one must be cautious not to read too much into these labels. As I use the labels here, they’re specifically about Emm. One cannot infer that someone thinks that aborting a life-threatening pregnancy is immoral just because they are pro-life (in my sense), nor that someone thinks it is permissible to abort a planned pregnancy just because they are pro-choice (in my sense).
Additionally, I want to separate the question of whether abortion is immoral from the question of whether abortion should be illegal. One can think that abortion is immoral without thinking that it should be against the law, just as one can think that adultery is immoral without thinking that it should be against the law. So, one should not assume that those who are pro-life (in my sense) think that anyone should be legally prohibited from having an abortion. One can think, as I do, that abortion is immoral while also supporting the legal right to choose. More on this in Section 8.12.
Finally, notice that very minor transgressions are sometimes immoral, for instance shoplifting a pack of gum. Even pro-choicers may agree that aborting Emm is at least somewhat immoral, perhaps to a relatively minor degree. To sharpen the debate between pro-lifers and pro-choicers, then, I’ll focus on the question of whether aborting Emm is seriously immoral, by which I mean: approximately as immoral as killing a typical human adult.
8.2 Identifying Wrong-Making Features
A useful strategy for trying to make headway on the ethics of abortion is to try to identify some feature that embryos have or lack that seems relevant to the permissibility of abortion. The pro-lifer, for instance, tries to find some feature to fill in for X in this argument schema:
Emm is (or has) X So, it’s seriously immoral to kill Emm For instance, she may point to the fact that Emm is alive, or that she has human DNA, or that she has a beating heart.
The pro-choicer, by contrast, tries to find some feature to fill in for Y in this argument schema:
Emm isn’t Y So, it isn’t seriously immoral to kill Emm
For instance, she may point to the fact that Emm isn’t rational, or that she isn’t self-sufficient, or that she isn’t wanted.
We’ll need to evaluate each of these ways of developing the argument separately. But first notice that the argument schemas above aren’t yet complete. What’s needed is some moral principle that can take us from the observation that Emm has or lacks a certain property to the conclusion that it is or isn’t seriously immoral to abort her. What’s needed is a principle that tells us that being or having X makes killing wrong, or that lacking Y makes killing permissible. In other words, the complete schema for the pro-life arguments will look like this:
The complete schema for the pro-choice arguments will look like this:
Let us see, then, which (if any) of the various features that Emm has or lacks can yield a satisfying argument for or against the permissibility of killing Emm.
8.3 Some Bad Pro-Choice Arguments
We’ll begin by examining some ways of generating pro-choice arguments from the Y-schema, starting with the observation that Emm isn’t rational. In other words, she isn’t capable of conscious self-reflection or using reason and logic. The argument would go like this:
YR1 is clearly true: Emm is a very simple creature indeed. But, just as clearly, YR2 is false. After all, a healthy newborn infant also lacks rationality in this sense. So YR2 entails that it isn’t seriously immoral to kill such an infant. But obviously it is. So YR2 is false, and the argument fails.
Other instances of the Y-schema fail for the same reason. You might think that it isn’t seriously immoral to kill Emm because Emm isn’t selfsufficient: she is entirely dependent on Taylor and wouldn’t be able to survive on her own. This yields the following argument:
But YS2 is open to the same counterexample as YR2: healthy newborn infants also aren’t self-sufficient, and yet it clearly is seriously immoral to kill them. The same goes for some elderly and severely disabled people. YS2 is false.
Nor is the fact that Taylor doesn’t want to have a child sufficient to show that it isn’t seriously immoral to kill Emm. Here’s what that argument would look like:
This one fares a little better than the previous arguments. YU2 doesn’t entail that it’s okay to kill just any healthy newborn infant. But consider a healthy newborn infant who isn’t wanted by her parents, and let’s suppose no one else even knows about her. In that case, no one in the whole world wants her. YU2 entails that it wouldn’t be seriously immoral to kill that infant. But it would be seriously immoral. Counterexample. (YU2 also has the absurd consequence that it wouldn’t be seriously immoral to kill an extremely annoying, friendless adult who everyone hates having around.)
What pro-choicers need is some wrong-making feature that licenses killing Emm without also licensing killing healthy newborn infants. Accordingly, they need to find some difference between Emm and an infant, and exploit that in their defense of aborting Emm. One difference that immediately springs to mind is that, unlike an infant, Emm is physically attached to someone (namely, Taylor). Putting that to work in the argument:
YA2 says that it can’t ever be seriously immoral to kill something when it’s attached to another human. To get a counterexample to that, we need an example of something that it is seriously immoral to kill and that is physically attached to some human. Healthy newborn infants—even unwanted ones—aren’t physically attached to other humans, so they are no counterexample to YA2. Well… except for the ones being carried around in a baby wrap. That’s a way of attaching an infant to your body. So YA2 implies (absurdly) that it is okay to kill infants in baby wraps.
You might object that I’ve been unfair here. The obvious difference between Emm and the infant in the baby wrap is that there’s a body part connecting Emm to Taylor, namely an umbilical cord. They are, let’s say, “bodily-attached.” The idea then would be to revise the Argument from Attachment as follows:
The infant in the wrap isn’t a counterexample to YA2*, since that’s the wrong kind of attachment. But one needn’t look far for other counterexamples. Take a healthy newborn who has just entered the world and whose cord still hasn’t been cut. Certainly, it would be seriously immoral to kill that newborn. Or take conjoined twins. Since they’re attached to one another, YA2* says that it isn’t seriously immoral to kill one of them. But clearly that would be seriously immoral.
Finally, the pro-choicer might try a different tactic, pointing to the fact that Emm is not conscious. That’s true: Emm won’t become conscious until five months into the pregnancy at the earliest. Moreover, this avoids all the
counterexamples we have seen thus far. After all, even healthy, unwanted conjoined twins in baby wraps are conscious. So, we get what might seem to be a more promising argument:
Alas, there are counterexamples to YC2 as well. Normal human adults in deep, dreamless sleep or who are heavily sedated aren’t conscious. But it is seriously immoral to kill such people. So YC2 is false.
We have examined a number of pro-choice arguments and found them all to be inadequate. Let us turn now to some of the usual pro-life arguments and see whether they fare any better. (Spoiler: they don’t.)
8.4 Some Bad Pro-Life Arguments
Arguments from the pro-life position can be constructed by identifying some features that Emm has, and filling it in for X in the X-Schema (from Section 8.2). Let’s begin with the proposal that killing Emm is seriously immoral because Emm is alive:
This perhaps captures the common pro-life slogan, “life begins at conception,” which is meant to serve as a reason to think that aborting an embryo like Emm is seriously immoral. Is this a good argument?
No doubt XL1 is true: Emm is a living organism. But what about XL2? To show that it’s false, one would only need to identify a case in which it’s permissible to kill a living thing. Pro-choicers might be tempted to reach for cases in which it’s morally okay to kill a person, like the death penalty or physician-assisted suicide. But, in fact, we can see that XL2 is false without even touching such controversial cases. The fact that it’s not seriously immoral to kill a living blade of grass is already enough to show that XL2 is (hopelessly) mistaken. Thus, the pro-choicer can resist the Argument from Life without having to take a controversial stance on the death penalty or euthanasia. She doesn’t even have to deny that life begins at conception. She can grant that it does, but then deny XL2.
The pro-lifer might instead point to the fact that Emm has human DNA:
XD2 is immune to the previous counterexample: blades of grass don’t have human DNA. Human skin cells do, though, as do human cancer cells. So, if XD2 is true, then it’s seriously immoral to kill those things. But it obviously isn’t seriously immoral to kill human skin cells or cancer cells. So, XD2 is false.
Next, one might point to the fact that Emm has a beating heart. This suggests another line of argument:
XH1 is true: like most six-week-old embryos, Emm does have a beating heart. And XH2 avoids the previous counterexamples. Neither blades of grass nor human cells have beating hearts, so XH2 won’t wrongly entail that it is seriously immoral to kill them. But you know what does have a beating heart? A worm! XH2 therefore implies that it is seriously immoral to kill worms. And surely that’s not seriously immoral. So, XH2 is false.
Finally, let’s consider the suggestion that it’s seriously immoral to kill Emm because she has the potential to become a person:
XP1 is true. It’s a healthy pregnancy and, if brought to term, Emm will be a full-fledged person. Additionally, since neither worms nor skin cells nor blades of grass have the potential to become people, XP2 is immune to all the previous counterexamples. Indeed, it is hard to think of any uncontroversial counterexample to XP2.
Still, it is unclear why we should accept XP2. Even supposing that it’s always seriously immoral to kill a person because (say) they have a right to life, it’s hardly obvious that something that merely has the potential to become a person has those same rights. I have the potential to become a US president, but that doesn’t mean that I now have all the rights of a president (the right to pardon criminals, veto legislation, etc.). Likewise, there is no reason to think that Emm has all the rights of a person simply by virtue of potentially becoming a person. Furthermore, as we are about to see (in sections 8.5–8.7), even if Emm does have same moral right to life as an adult human, that may not be enough to establish that it’s immoral to kill her.
None of these arguments for the immorality of abortion is successful, and no one—pro-lifers included—should be convinced by them. One must look elsewhere for a satisfying argument against abortion.
8.5 The Right to Life Argument
Let’s turn now to a somewhat different pro-life argument. Here the idea is that it’s seriously immoral to kill Emm because she’s a person with a right to life. We can frame the argument like this:
Since abortion deprives Emm of Taylor’s womb, it follows trivially from RL3 that aborting Emm is seriously immoral.
What’s nice about the appeal to a right to life is that it avoids the problems that plagued the arguments from sections 8.3–8.4. Worms, skin cells, and blades of grass clearly don’t have a right to life, while infants, conjoined twins, and heavily sedated people do all have a right to life. Plus, at least on the face of it, it seems obvious why something’s having a right to life makes it wrong to kill that thing, while it is somewhat obscure why merely having a beating heart or a certain kind of DNA makes it wrong to kill something.
Still, there are two major problems with the argument. The first (which I won’t pursue here) is that pro-choicers are likely just to reject RL1 out of hand. “Sure,” they’ll say, “Emm potentially has a right to life, but why think she has one already?” More would need to be said in defense of RL1 if the argument is to have any hope of persuading pro-choicers.
The second problem is that even if the pro-lifer is correct that Emm has a right to life—and even if she can somehow convince the pro-choicer of this—the argument still doesn’t work. Or so I shall argue. And if I’m right about this, then the pro-lifer must again look elsewhere for a viable argument against abortion.
8.6 The Violinist Argument
To see the problem, let’s take a closer look at RL2 and at why we are supposed to accept that premise in the first place. If we were to unpack the reasoning behind that premise, it would presumably go something like this:
RQ1, at least at first glance, seems fairly plausible: having a right to life would seem to entail having a right to such basic necessities of life. RQ2 is uncontroversial. For a six-week old embryo like Emm, remaining in the womb is a basic necessity of life. RQ4 is plausible as well: if Emm not only needs Taylor’s womb but, moreover, has the right to use it, then killing her by depriving her of it is plausibly seriously immoral.
Surprisingly, though, RQ1 is demonstrably false. To see why, consider the following two cases:
No doubt, it would have been morally praiseworthy of Riley to remain plugged into Maurissa, or for The Rock to drop what he was doing and come visit you in your sickbed. And place his cool hand on your fevered brow. But do you have a right to The Rock’s hand? Suppose you managed to get ahold of his hand and, as he tried to pull it away, you said, “Give that back! It is my right to have this hand on my forehead!” Surely that’s not true. As much as you may need it, you are not in any position to demand the hand. Nor, however much she may need it, does Maurissa have a right to the blood in Riley’s veins. Were she to awaken, she could plead with him, but she isn’t in any position to demand that he stay plugged in.
These cases are therefore counterexamples to RQ1. You have a right to life and The Rock is depriving you of something that (strange but true) you need in order to survive, but you do not have a right to that thing. Maurissa has a right to life, and Riley is depriving her of something she needs in order to survive (his blood), but Riley does not have a right to that thing. We can make the latter argument against RQ1 explicit, as follows:
One might point out that there are disanalogies between these cases and UNWANTED PREGNANCY. Riley’s predicament, for instance, arose without his consent, whereas Taylor’s resulted from consensual sex. We’ll see momentarily how that might be relevant. But, analogous or not, THE VIOLINIST and THE ROCK are enough to show that RQ1 is false, and without RQ1 we are left without any argument for RL2, a crucial premise of The Right to Life Argument.
8.7 Risk, Consent, and the Right to the Womb
What we have just seen is that the right to life does not guarantee a right to everything one needs in order to survive. One cannot argue directly from Emm’s having a right to life to Emm’s having a right to use Taylor’s womb. But if one can find some other way of establishing that Emm has a right to use Taylor’s womb, then perhaps one can argue directly from there to the conclusion that Taylor’s abortion was seriously immoral.
Why else might one think that Emm has a right to Taylor’s womb? One might suggest that Emm has this right because Taylor, in one way or another, consented to Emm using her womb. If I offer to let you use my spare sleeping bag, I can’t then demand it back from you when we reach the campsite. When I consent to you using it, you acquire a right to it. Or suppose Riley had volunteered to be plugged into Maurissa, knowing that prematurely unplugging himself would kill her. In that case, he consented to her using his blood, and she thereby acquired a right to it.
So, if the pro-lifer can establish that Taylor consented to Emm using her womb, then we can arguably use that to establish that Emm has a right to use her womb. That said, Taylor didn’t exactly volunteer to have Emm in her womb. Quite the opposite: she took deliberate steps to avoid it by having protected sex. So what reason could there be to think that Taylor consented to Emm using her womb? One might suggest that Taylor consents to it by freely choosing to have sex, which is something she knew might lead to pregnancy (even with the precaution of a condom). Even though she didn’t want to get pregnant, she knew the risk she was taking.
Putting the pieces together, the argument that Emm has a right to Taylor’s womb, and that the abortion was therefore seriously immoral, would go something like this:
You might worry a bit about KR4. Just because Taylor at one point consented to Emm being in her womb, perhaps she can later withdraw consent, thereby depriving Emm of the right to her womb. (Clearly, one can withdraw consent in other cases, for instance after initially consenting to sex.) But whatever one thinks of KR4, there is an even more glaring problem with the argument.
The problem is that KR2 is a ludicrous theory of consent. To see this, consider the following case:
Astrid freely chose to open the windows and knew this could lead to hooligans entering her house. Certainly they don’t have any right to be in there and certainly she did not consent to them being in there just by opening her barred windows. But KR2 absurdly implies that she did consent to them being in there.
Consent requires something more robust than simply taking actions that open one up to the risk of some consequences. Accordingly, there would seem to be no way of getting anything like the present argument for KR3 off the ground. It would be a different story if Taylor had “invited” Emm into her womb, for instance if she hadn’t used protection and had been trying to get pregnant. Perhaps in that case an argument from consent could be made to work. But it seems hopeless in cases like Taylor’s, where the pregnancy is the unwanted consequence of protected sex.
8.8 The Future Like Ours Argument
Not all pro-life arguments are created equal, and we have seen that a number of common arguments are fatally flawed, including the Right to Life argument. Let us turn now, finally, to what I take to be a successful argument for the pro-life position.
This superior argument turns on the idea that, if the pregnancy were carried to term, Emm would have had a future filled with valuable experiences, including valuable activities, relationships, projects, achievements, and pleasant sensations. She has a future like ours, or “FLO” for short. That doesn’t necessarily mean exactly like ours, but like ours in that it’s filled with valuable experiences.
Aborting Emm deprives her of FLO and this, I contend, is what makes the abortion seriously immoral:
I call this “The Simple FLO Argument” because, as we’ll see in Section 8.11, we will need to complicate it a bit in order to handle a certain range of objections. But for the moment, it will be useful to focus on this somewhat oversimplified version of the argument.
SF1 is initially quite plausible. To see this, ask yourself why it is wrong to murder a normal, healthy human adult. Why is killing someone one of the worst things (if not the worst thing) you can do to a person? The natural answer is that it’s because one thereby deprives them of all the things that make life so valuable. That’s why it seems even more horrific to kill an infant, for one thereby deprives them of a whole life’s worth of valuable things. SF1 seems to put its finger on precisely the thing that makes these other killings seriously immoral.
How about SF2? Even supposing that her life gets off to a rocky start as a result of being put up for adoption or being raised by an overworked single mom—Emm still would have had a full lifetime of achievements, friendships, and other such valuable experiences.
You might wonder how I know that Emm would have had FLO, and won’t for instance be born with some terrible birth defect and die before she’s a year old. The short answer is that it’s my example: I can fill in details however I like, and I’m telling you that she would have had a happy, fulfilling life had she not been aborted. Of course, for any actual pregnancy, we can never be 100% sure that the embryo has FLO, even if medical tests suggest that it’s a healthy pregnancy. Still—with some exceptions, which we’ll discuss in Section 8.11—you can usually be reasonably confident that the embryo will have FLO. That, together with SF1, tells us that you can be reasonably confident you’d be doing something seriously immoral by aborting the pregnancy. And if you can be reasonably confident that an action is seriously immoral, you shouldn’t do it—even if there’s some small chance that what you’re doing isn’t actually immoral.
(I’m reminded of a scene in a movie you’ve never heard of called Adam’s Apples. One character shoots another in the head. Not only does the gunshot victim survive, the bullet also obliterates his brain tumor and saves his life. This could in principle happen in real life too. But that doesn’t mean it’s okay for you to go around shooting people in the head. Why not? Because, even though there’s some small chance you’ll actually be helping them, you can be reasonably confident that in fact you’d be killing them and doing something seriously immoral.)
For these reasons, it’s no use challenging SF2, and critics of the argument should focus instead on SF1. Let’s turn, then, to four objections one might raise against SF1: three that won’t work at all (Section 8.9) and one that does work but that can be avoided by revising the argument (Section 8.10).
8.9 Bad Objections to the FLO Argument
First, one might think that the following sort of case is a problem for SF1:
What Nadja did seems to be seriously immoral, and yet she didn’t deprive Guillermo of FLO. Guillermo’s future would have contained only a few hours of horrible pain and no valuable experiences.
Here is why this is not a problem for SF1. SF1 says that depriving someone of FLO always makes it seriously immoral to kill them. In other words, depriving someone of FLO is sufficient for a killing to be seriously immoral. SF1 doesn’t say that depriving someone of FLO is the only way for a killing to be seriously immoral. That is, it doesn’t say that depriving someone of FLO is necessary for a killing to be seriously immoral. Since SF1 leaves it open that there are other ways for a killing to be seriously immoral—perhaps by failing to respect the victim’s desire to stay alive— HOPEFUL GONER is no counterexample to SF1.
Second, one might object that SF1 absurdly implies that ordinary contraception is seriously immoral. After all, the idea goes, when one uses condoms or spermicide, one is depriving millions of sperm cells of FLO. The argument would go like this:
The problem with this argument is CC1. No sperm cell has FLO, not even a sperm cell that successfully fertilizes an egg. It is not as if the sperm cell enters the egg and then grows into an embryo. Rather, it enters the egg, releases a tiny amount of genetic material, and then the sperm cell dissolves and ceases to exist altogether, never to have any valuable experiences. (How about the egg? It’s an interesting question whether it has FLO, but it is not a question we need to answer. After all, SF1 only prohibits killing things with FLO, and using a spermicide-coated condom doesn’t kill the egg.)
Even if sperm cells don’t have FLO, what is true is that the spermicide prevents a being with FLO from coming into existence. Is that enough to cause trouble for SF1? The argument would have to go like this:
We have merely moved the bump in the rug, for now the problem is the second premise, CC2*. SF1 doesn’t say that it’s seriously immoral to prevent things with FLO from coming into existence. It only says that it’s immoral to take an already-existing thing with FLO and deprive it of FLO by killing it. So CC2* misrepresents what is implied by SF1.
Let’s look at one more unsuccessful objection to SF1. Recall that SF1 was motivated by the idea that it provides the best explanation of what makes seriously immoral killings—like killing a normal human adult—seriously immoral. One way of challenging SF1, then, is to reject the proposed explanation of the serious immorality of killing an adult. But one would then need to provide some alternative explanation of why it is seriously immoral to kill an adult.
Here’s an initially attractive proposal: what makes it seriously immoral to kill normal human adults is that they desire a future full of valuable experiences. If that’s right, then all that is supported by the proper explanation of the immorality of killing is the weaker premise SF1*:
- SF1*. It is seriously immoral to kill something (or someone) if killing it deprives it of a future like ours that it desires.
But unlike SF1, SF1* does not imply that it is seriously immoral to kill Emm. Emm is a very simple creature, which does not even have a brain, let alone desires. Killing her does deprive her of FLO, but it does not deprive her of anything she desires.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that the proposed alternative explanation of the wrongness of killing human adults is deeply flawed. Consider a heavily sedated adult, who (like Emm) has no desires, or any other conscious mental states for that matter. Or consider an overwhelmed teenager experiencing his first heartbreak: he genuinely doesn’t want to go on living, but these feelings will pass in a week or so. It is seriously immoral to kill these people, and the original future-like-ours account has no trouble explaining why: because they have FLO. By contrast, the competing account that we are now considering fails to explain why it is seriously immoral to kill them. After all, they do not desire a future like ours. The desire account of what makes killing wrong that underwrites SF1* is therefore inferior to the FLO-account that underwrites SF1. Accordingly, we should reject SF1* and stick with SF1.
8.10 FLO-Overriding Factors
There is, however, a more serious style of objection to SF1, one that will require us to revise the argument. Suppose that someone is trying to kill you and you can save your own life only by killing them first. One can imagine having qualms about killing them, but certainly it’s not seriously immoral to do so. Or take the following case.
Given the circumstances, what Okoye did isn’t seriously immoral, despite the fact that Shuri has FLO. Unlike HOPEFUL GONER, this is a genuine counterexample to SF1. So, the Simple FLO Argument must go.
What cases like CRUEL GAME demonstrate is that, in certain situations, there are factors in play that can justify killing normal adults—even innocent adults—who have FLO. Let’s call these FLO-overriding factors, which I’ll define as follows: a killing involves a FLO-overriding factor if and only if that killing involves the sort of factors that could justify killing a normal human adult with FLO. So, a FLO-overriding factor is a special kind of mitigating factor.
Here is one example of a FLO-overriding factor: that killing a person is necessary for preventing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. That’s a FLO-overriding factor because, as reflection on CRUEL GAME reveals, it’s the sort of factor that can justify killing Shuri, a normal human adult with FLO. But the following would not be a FLO-overriding factor: that a person is incredibly annoying. If I want to kill someone with FLO, the fact that they are incredibly annoying is not reason enough to kill them. Being incredibly annoying is not the sort of factor that could justify killing a normal human adult.
Using the notion of a FLO-overriding factor, we can patch up the Simple FLO Argument as follows:
MF1 has all of the plausibility of SF1, without being open to counterexamples like CRUEL GAME. And MF2 is the same as SF2. But now that we have included an additional condition for a killing to be classified as seriously immoral, we need to include an additional premise, MF3, affirming that killing Emm meets that condition.
To evaluate MF3, we have to consider various candidate FLOoverriding factors that might be present in the case of Emm. To check whether a factor is FLO-overriding, remember, we have to check whether it’s the sort of factor whose presence could justify killing a normal human adult. So let’s look at some possible candidates.
One might point to the fact that seven more months of pregnancy places a major burden on Taylor—financially, physically, and emotionally. That’s true. But is it a FLO-overriding factor? To answer that, we need to ask whether such burdens would justify killing a normal human adult. And certainly they wouldn’t. Some parents who would rather not continue to care for their broke, freeloading adult son can’t just kill him, regardless of the financial, physical, or emotional toll it takes on their life. This is not to say that that case is entirely analogous to the case of Emm. It’s not. But it does demonstrate that such burdens do not meet the conditions for being FLO-overriding factors.
Relatedly, one might point to the way in which keeping the pregnancy would have seriously disrupted Taylor’s life plans, perhaps forcing her to quit her job or drop out of school. But this too is no FLO-overriding factor. To see this, consider the following case.
Having Jacqueline around was severely disruptive to Krystal’s life plans and was depriving her of significant opportunities. Still, that was not enough to justify killing Jacqueline, even supposing that Jacqueline’s presence completely derails and ruins Krystal’s life. So the disruption to Taylor’s life plans, substantial as it is, is no FLO-overriding factor and no reason to reject MF3.
8.11 Making Exceptions
I have argued that, in typical cases, aborting an unwanted but healthy embryo early on in the pregnancy is seriously immoral. I also argued that a pro-lifer must be discerning: some pro-life arguments are utterly unconvincing, including those that turn on the idea that life begins at conception, that the embryo has a right to life, or that the mother is responsible for the pregnancy by choosing to have sex in the first place.
What about less typical cases of abortion? Can pro-lifers allow that, in certain cases, abortion isn’t seriously immoral? Yes, but they must do so in a principled way. We have only been able to find one good argument for the immorality of abortion. Those who oppose abortion in typical cases on the strength of my FLO argument—let’s call them “FLO-lifers”—will have to check which exceptions the FLO-account permits them to make. Let’s see, then, what the FLO-account says about three potential exceptions:
- unhealthy embryos, life-threatening pregnancies, and pregnancies resulting from rape.
Can the FLO-lifer make an exception for an unhealthy embryo? That depends entirely on how unhealthy the embryo is and, in particular, whether it has FLO. An embryo that is certain to die in the womb or to die within a year after being born does not have FLO, and the FLO-lifer can allow abortion in such cases compatibly with the FLO-account. What it won’t allow is the abortion of an embryo that is known to have some serious disability, like blindness or Down syndrome. Such embryos certainly do have FLO. Perhaps they don’t have a future exactly like ours, but it’s still a future full of valuable experiences.
Can the FLO-lifer make an exception if it is known that keeping the pregnancy will kill the mother? Certainly she can make an exception if the unborn child will die as well, for in that case the child has no FLO. But suppose the mother is expected to die during childbirth, while the baby can be saved. In that case, the embryo does have FLO. So, by MF1, the abortion is permissible only if the threat to the mother’s life is a FLO-overriding factor, the sort of factor that would justify killing a normal human adult.
And, indeed, there is reason to think it is FLO-overriding. Consider the following case:
What Omar had to do may be horrifying, but it is not seriously immoral. The fact that Ahmed’s continued existence is a threat to Omar’s life justified him in killing Ahmed. Accordingly, the fact that a certain embryo’s continued existence is a threat to the mother’s life is a FLO-overriding factor, and the FLO-lifer can consistently grant that abortion is permissible in such cases.
Can a FLO-lifer grant that abortion is permissible in the case of a healthy pregnancy that results from rape? In such cases, the embryo does have FLO, so the FLO-lifer can and should make this concession so long as such cases involve a FLO-overriding factor. What might that FLOoverriding factor be? Here is a plausible candidate: that the embryo’s dependence on the mother was the result of violent actions that she was not able to control. To see that this counts as a FLO-overriding factor, recall THE VIOLINIST from Section 8.6. As praiseworthy as it may have been for Riley to stay plugged in, it does strike me as permissible for Riley to unplug himself, thereby killing Maurissa (a normal human adult). And one plausible explanation of why it was permissible for Riley to kill her is that her dependence on him was the result of violent actions (by the kidnappers) that he was not able to control.
What we have just seen is that the best argument against abortion cannot be used to show that aborting pregnancies resulting from rape or pregnancies that threaten the life of the mother are seriously immoral. Prolifers who do not want to make an exception even in these special cases must look elsewhere for an argument to support this position. And it is hard to see what such an argument would look like, since the obvious candidates—for instance that such embryos have a right to life or are potential people—were shown above to be deeply flawed.
8.12 Making Laws
I have argued that abortion is seriously immoral, at least in cases like UNWANTED PREGNANCY. But it would be a mistake to think that this settles the question of whether it should be legal. For, as we saw in Section 8.1, there are plenty of things we take to be immoral that no one thinks should be illegal, for instance cheating on your boyfriend.
My own view is that, despite being seriously immoral, abortion should be legal in cases like UNWANTED PREGNANCY. It is one thing to think that, in deciding to abort a healthy pregnancy, Taylor did something seriously immoral. It is quite another to think that it would have been permissible for government officials (or anyone else for that matter) to force her to remain pregnant, or to punish her for terminating the pregnancy. The government would arguably have a role to play if Taylor were violating Emm’s rights by terminating the pregnancy. But, as we saw in sections 8.6–8.7, aborting the pregnancy doesn’t violate Emm’s rights—including Emm’s right to life since Emm never had a right to use Taylor’s womb in the first place. The reason that it was seriously immoral to abort Emm is because Emm had FLO, not because it violated Emm’s right to life.
It may be illuminating to compare UNWANTED PREGNANCY with the following variation on THE ROCK:
Even if The Rock’s refusal is morally monstrous in this case—and I would agree that it is—surely it should not be illegal. He shouldn’t be legally required to assist you, and the police should not have the authority to forcibly prevent him from withdrawing his hand. It’s his hand, and since you have no right to it, he should not be legally required to share it with you.
Similarly, even if you think Taylor was morally required to keep the pregnancy—because you think Emm was a person, with a right to life, with a valuable future ahead of her, and with interests that aren’t outweighed by Taylor’s own interests in wanting to terminate the pregnancy—you shouldn’t think she should be legally required the keep the pregnancy. One can (and should) be pro-life without supporting forced birth.
8.13 Reflection Questions
- Can you find a way to rescue the rights-based arguments in sections 8.5–8.7 from my objections? For instance, can you find a more promising way to argue that the embryo has a right to the womb?
- Can the case of THE VIOLINIST from Section 8.6 be used to resist MF3 of the Modified FLO Argument in Section 8.10?
- In Section 8.8, I considered a competing account of what makes killing wrong. Can that account be defended against my objections?
- We saw that the Modified FLO-argument cannot be used to show that abortion is immoral in the case of rape or life-threatening pregnancies. Can you think of an argument that does cover these cases, and that does not fall victim to the objections raised in sections 8.4–8.7?
- Consider the key idea behind the FLO-arguments: that the embryo would have had a future full of valuable experiences had it not been killed. What does this assume about personal identity? Is the Psychological Descendant Account (discussed in Chapter 3) compatible with the idea that fully-grown people used to be embryos? Is your preferred response to the Too Many Thinkers Argument (discussed in Chapter 4) compatible with the idea that we used to be embryos?
Sources and Resources
I am still working on reorganizing this section.
The Violinist argument and the critique of the Right to Life argument are drawn from Thomson (1971). The FLO argument is drawn from Marquis (1989), as are many of the criticisms of bad pro-life and pro-choice arguments discussed in sections 8.3 and 8.4.
Boonin (2019) Boonin (2003) Cudd (1990) English (1975) Callahan (1986) Harman (1999) Harman (2003) Harman (2021) Harris (1986) Little (1999) Norcross (1990) Tooley (1972) Warren (1973)