On Abortion

The essential question regarding the issue of abortion is this: can the unborn be properly considered human and are we therefore under an obligation to protect them? If this can be answered, we can begin to consider the social and political issues surrounding abortion.

The Nature and Rights of the Unborn

Human rights are contingent on being human—something that has always been implicit, but never fully defined except in the sphere of philosophy or in a strictly biological sense. In the past, a clear definition wasn’t necessary, because no one was thinking about existence before birth or what makes us different from machines and so forth. As science has progressed, however, we’ve been forced to consider our own humanity because of how deeply we understand our biology, including our development from a fertilized egg, and of how frequently in science the lines between material and abstract existence are blurred.

Ethics in science aside, abortion is probably the most notable scenario in which a clear definition of a human being is required. Once we define something as human, individual rights and recognition of personhood must follow. The difficulty is defining a human being without being subjective or drawing on philosophy or religions that aren’t universally adhered to. This is precisely why science plays such an important role in politics, because, while it may not encompass all the elements of existence, it serves as a good baseline. For that reason, then, I will begin by focusing on the scientific definition of a human being.

In biology, different organisms are differentiated based on their genetic code. If we use that to define a human being, then a fertilized egg is human—i.e., once the DNA from the sperm and the egg combine, the resulting zygote is technically human. The DNA isn’t going to change anymore; it simply becomes a matter of carrying out the genetic instructions. If we took DNA from a fertilized egg and DNA from the adult human 30 years later, they would be the same and they would both be identified as human.

The argument has been made that genotype alone is not what makes us human (in a biological sense), but rather our phenotype—i.e., how those genes are expressed—since, if we look at genotype alone, humans and primates are about 98% similar (to name one example). But even if the DNA between humans and primates is only 2% different (which is still significant, biologically speaking), it is still a definable difference. The phenotype difference is certainly more definitive when comparing species, but ultimately, the phenotype is determined by the genotype. The genotype determines what kinds of RNA and proteins are produced, and these in turn determine the phenotype. Having human DNA, therefore, also means that the zygote will have a human phenotype.

If we try to define humanity based on stages of development, the definitions will always be subjective, especially since development can look very different from person to person. We could pick a stage of development that is universal and essential for life, like brain activity or heartbeat, but there are a million essential stages. Why brain activity? Why heartbeat?

Rather, since every stage of development in every human being is preexistent in the genetic code, it seems logical to use that code as the baseline for corporeal human existence. But rather than simply saying “anything that has human DNA is a human,” since that would mean a drop of human blood has human rights, I would say that “corporeal human existence begins when a zygote with unique human DNA is formed.”

In the question of human rights, it is crucial to have the most fundamental, most objective and indisputable definition as possible. Any subjective criteria for humanity can be changed and distorted to our hurt.

Still, simply equating a fertilized human egg with a human being is an incomplete definition. Think of a resonant bond in chemistry going in and out of different energy states constantly, or even the properties of light being both wavelike and particle-like simultaneously. We can zoom in and analyze a single state to help us solve a problem, but no one state can ever accurately depict the true state of being. Similarly, looking at any one stage of the development of a human being can’t be directly equated to the full existence of that human. However, we can define when it becomes a biologically unique organism and when it enters development as a unique member of the human species—i.e., when the zygote forms.

In terms of the philosophical definition of humanity, I generally concede that our self-awareness and ability to assess our own existence is what makes humans unique. The act of self-assessment as we experience it throughout our conscious life is contingent on the ability to formulate thoughts and intake sensory data, both of which processes require the hardware of our bodies. However, it is my belief that human consciousness, which is manifested by the functioning of our brains, is an artifact of a more fundamental form of existence, which is preexistent in our earliest state of being. I believe that humans have souls, and that there is a dichotomy between our physiological existence and our philosophical existence but, frankly, I don’t believe either politicians or scientists are in any place to say where the delineation lies. Rather, because we can state with relative certainty that the human zygote is on a trajectory to self-awareness as we experience it, to willfully intercept that trajectory is unethical. Because we cannot pinpoint the precise moment when the fetus becomes self-aware and certainly not the moment when it acquires a soul, we should simply begin to protect it when it acquires any definitive being at all—i.e., the zygote, or, more realistically, the moment we know the mother is pregnant.

In any other avenue of law, we adhere to the benefit of the doubt: if a person is accused of a crime, we presume innocence until guilt is proven. Any adverse action should not be taken as long as there is a reasonable doubt. By the same token, as long as there is a reasonable doubt as to whether or not the fetus has rights, we should assume that it does have rights. By the standards of our own law, we should assume that a fetus is human until proven non-human.

 

Philosophy aside, how is the developing zygote in the mother’s womb different from a frozen zygote in a petri dish? Why does the first have a right to life and the second does not? In the first case, the zygote in the mother’s womb will continue to develop unless prevented. Its natural state is life; it will continue to live unless it is prevented from doing so, just like any of us. In the second case, the frozen zygote will not develop unless aided. Its natural state is whatever the laboratory provides for it. The first zygote is on a trajectory to self-awareness, the second is on no natural trajectory at all.

The first zygote is a human life with a right to persist in its natural state of life. The second zygote, while still human in the strictly scientific sense, has no natural state of life except what the laboratory determines, thus eliminating our ethical obligation to protect its existence.

The philosophy that humans are unique in their ability to assess their own existence is critical, in that even the frozen zygote will have a right to life if it is allowed to develop to a stage in which we know, by scientifically measurable criteria, that it is self-aware and fully human. The reason that, in the case of abortion, we should protect the right to life from the moment of conception and not simply after we know that the fetus is self-aware is because that fetus is persisting in a natural state of life from the moment of conception. Further, the reason we cannot simply dismiss the elimination of such a fetus as the elimination of something non-human, is because the precise moment it becomes human—in terms of a soul, self-awareness, or whatever the metric may be—is not definite. In the case of a frozen zygote, an in vitro life, we have the freedom to make this delineation because we are already defining the terms of its existence. If we can define when it develops and under what conditions, we can define when it becomes human and when it has the right to live.

A zygote developing in the mother’s womb is defining its own existence. Physiologically, it is already aware. It is sensing its surroundings, taking in the nutrients it needs, adapting and surviving and living just like any one of us. Without any interference from us, it will make the most of its environment to survive. We haven’t defined it physiologically—its boundaries, what it can or cannot do to live—so how can we define it philosophically? We may eliminate it on the assumption that it is not human because it does not have a human’s self-awareness, but that simply begs the myriad of questions we still have about what really makes us human (i.e., the process of self-awareness as manifested by brain activity, or an intrinsic soul). If we eliminate it, there will always be the question: “what if it was human?”

In the lab, we have the right to dismiss that question, because in the lab, science is god. Science cannot measure a soul, so it assumes it does not exist.

In the womb, nature is god. A zygote, with human DNA, persisting in a natural state of life—over that we have no jurisdiction. To eliminate it is to kill something that is biologically human and may be philosophically human.

Whatever lays out the boundaries of existence is god and has the right to determine when to end and when to preserve life.

For the above reasons, I do consider a fetus a human being, and I do believe it has human rights—the most basic of which is the right to life.

 

The Social and Political Ramifications of Abortion

One of the most compelling arguments I’ve heard from the pro-choice movement is that “a right to life doesn’t imply a right to use someone else’s body to sustain that life.” This is from an article entitled “The Pro-Choice Argument” by Tanya Luhrmann, who argues that if someone broke into your house and began eating your food and using up your resources, but you knew that if you kicked the person out, he/she would die, you would still be within your rights to kick him/her out, whatever your moral obligations might be. On the same grounds, a mother is within her rights to choose not to sustain the baby’s life and that to legislate against that choice (i.e., against abortion) is to legislate morality.

The most glaring issue with this analogy is that it is not directly equivalent to abortion. The equivalent analogy is not “kicking the person out,” but killing them on the spot, which by current law would be a crime. Even if we assume that kicking the person out is an equivalent analogy, it seems obvious that such an action would be willfully negligent and immoral, whatever your legal rights may be. This value of legality over morality is self-defeating: the problem exists because such a value is allowed to exist. No advancement in human society has its foundation in the excusal of moral or ethical responsibility. Indeed, if we establish a solution to a problem on the basis of such an excusal, we can be certain the solution will fail. If we begin with a disregard for others and a dismissal of moral responsibility, we have already failed. In the case of abortion, it is already evident that it has failed to solve the systemic oppression of women and children.

Disregarding the accompanying analogy, let us revisit the idea that “a right to life doesn’t imply a right to use someone else’s body to sustain that life.” Even if we accept the purely legalistic approach and concede that moral responsibility is outside the jurisdiction of the state, the fact remains that no human being can live without first being sustained in the mother’s body. Human life is contingent on development in the womb and eventual birth. For that reason, if we believe that every human being has the right to life, we must believe that every human being has the right to be sustained in the womb and to be born. In other words, a right to life implies a right to be born.

Biology has stacked the cards against women, in that an unplanned pregnancy can go largely ignored by men, while women have no choice but to see it through, because choosing to terminate the pregnancy violates the child’s right to life. In that way, biology gives men an unfair advantage over women, but it doesn’t change the fact that the fetus is a person (and an innocent one) with a right to live.

In terms of the long-term commitment required for caring for a child, I don’t believe it is practical or ethical to demand unequivocally that mothers continue to care for the child themselves after giving birth. Rather, society has an obligation to pour our time and efforts into improving childcare resources and support for women facing unplanned pregnancies. This is something that many pro-life organizations are already doing on a private level. This is also something that we have the means to expand and improve considerably—it’s simply a question of resource allocation. Politicians will go along with whatever society is motivated towards; as long as abortion is viewed as an acceptable solution for unplanned pregnancies, other solutions won’t be given serious consideration, even if we have the resources to realize them. Realistically, the government isn’t going to care about finding better ways to protect women and children until society gives it a reason to care. Recognizing abortion as an unethical practice is the first step toward alternative solutions that will ultimately be more effective and rewarding for women and for society at large.

As it stands, rather than addressing the impoverished conditions that are unfit for bearing a child, we are content to give women a tool to terminate the child. Many women who have abortions would have kept their children if circumstances had been better, and in that light, we have robbed mother and child of a life by allowing abortion to continue as a solution rather than seeking to improve the circumstances that necessitate it.

In Jonathan Swift’s satirical work, A Modest Proposal, he addresses the impoverished conditions of the Irish lower class and proposes, as a solution, that the children of such families be sold for meat to contribute to the Commonwealth and prevent them from being a burden to their families. It is an economically sound remedy that eliminates the immediate, practical effects of the problem while ignoring the cause of the problem entirely. In the same way, rather than having enough empathy to solve the underlying issues that drive women to abortions, the 21^st century has simply chosen to provide a barbaric tool to eliminate the practical consequences of those issues.

 

A common argument of pro-choice advocates is the precedence of the woman’s life over the life of the unborn infant, who, by their reasoning, may or may not be entitled to full legal rights. If we establish the humanity of the unborn, however, we must consider the value of the life of the infant and of the woman as equal. We cannot rank one human life above another simply based on age or circumstances. The issue, rather, is determining when the life of the mother is so endangered by the pregnancy that choosing between preserving the life of the child and the life of the mother simply becomes a necessity. In other cases, too, choosing between the well-being of the child and of the mother can pose a challenging problem. But any solution for such problems must begin with the recognition that the lives of the mother and of the child are equal and not with the assumption that the unborn can be dismissed altogether.

Perhaps the most notable issue that drives women to abortions is, indeed, a medical need. There is invariably a certain degree of risk involved in pregnancy, but today’s medical technology is able to minimize that risk significantly. The primary concern, then, is more about making that technology accessible to everyone. But even in today’s world, there are times when the life of the mother is severely endangered by the child. In such extreme cases, I think the mother should be allowed to make an informed decision about terminating the pregnancy to save her life (analogous to family members choosing when to take a loved one off of life support when they can no longer make the decision themselves). Abortion as a form of euthanasia in extreme cases when the mother’s life is obviously severely endangered—or when the fetus is clearly suffering and past the point of salvation—circumvents many of the major medical concerns people commonly bring up in defense of abortion. But the institution of abortion clinics, where abortions may be performed with little to no consideration of the child’s rights, is just as unethical as the institution of euthanasia clinics where human beings may be euthanized on someone else’s terms and not their own.

Ultimately, we as a society need to adjust our perspective on abortion before we can bring about real change. Because it has for so long been associated with the women’s rights movement, saying anything against abortion seems heretical. Furthermore, because of its association with religious institutions, the pro-life movement has been largely dismissed as an unconstitutional merging of church and state and an attempt to legislate morality.

Both of those ideas are outdated. When abortion is analyzed independently, out of the context of the women’s rights movement or any religious affiliation, it becomes very clearly a question of ethics in science. We are faced with a human lifeform that nature created, not scientists. We may have the ability to eliminate that lifeform, but do we have the right? From a biological and philosophical standpoint, without considering the social issues surrounding it, it seems obvious to me that the act of abortion is blatantly unethical.

Reintroducing the social issues into it, association of abortion with the women’s rights movement has been allowed to persist because the act of abortion itself was never properly analyzed—something for which the scientific and medical communities are largely to blame—but only purported as a means to an end. Because the end itself was deemed noble—liberation of women, equality with men, etc.—the ethics of the means was not fully considered. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once stated that “the end is preexistent in the means” and that if the means are unethical, the end is already tainted. If we come to view abortion as unethical, we can then seek other, better means of achieving the same end: affordable healthcare, more reliable birth control, better sex education, and so forth.

In the case of the religious movement against abortion, much of the stigmatization against the pro-life movement has arisen from the fact that its proponents have repeatedly failed to provide fully scientific or unbiased arguments against abortion. But perhaps more egregiously, they have failed to provide legitimate solutions for the myriad of difficulties pregnant women face that drive them to abortion. Simply stating that abortion is wrong does very little to inform or help people. In California, the pro-life movement generally does a good job of providing resources and support for women, but in many states the movement is far less effective and often does more harm than good, by not only failing to provide resources but even shaming or criticizing women for circumstances outside their control. In either case, the pro-life movement is still undeniably religious in nature, which is why it has for so long been dismissed by the greater part of society.

Overall, abortion has become so deeply cemented into religious and social ideologies that it has almost ceased to be viewed as an independent issue at all. To come to any kind of useful conclusion, however, it is imperative that we analyze it as an independent issue. If society can first come to view abortion as unethical by scientific and philosophical standards, then we can begin to restructure society in a positive way, without the burden of unethical means. I believe this task falls largely to the scientific community.

It is certain, however, that continuing to view abortion as a right or even as a temporary fix while we wait for technology to advance or healthcare to improve will only perpetuate the debate and deepen the divide in our country. An unbiased ethical and scientific analysis should have been made decades ago; continuing to put it off will only make a useful analysis more difficult, as the social and political climate becomes more turbulent and polarized every day.