Life choices

22 August 2002, 920 words

The debate over abortion can get very complicated. But it really comes down to just two points. One side says that terminating a pregnancy is murder. The other side says that the woman should be free to terminate her pregnancy if she wants. But between these two points of views is encapsulated two entire philosophies on how the world should be organised.

These philosophies are reflected in the titles chosen by each side: Pro-Life and Pro-Choice. The pro-life position is based on the premise that conception is a sufficient definition of a human being. But this is not its first premise, only the one which is most explicitly stated. Behind that premise lies two more fundamental assumptions which, when voiced, are always conflated into one: first, that there is a Supreme Being and, second, that this Being is benevolent.

Without the latter assumptions, the argument that abortion is murder would make little sense. If God exists, then the creation of a human life carries His absolute authority. And, if God is good, then conception must also be good. So the termination of pregnancy involves a double offence: murder and contravening God's will.

Intuitively, the idea that human life begins at conception is a convincing one. This is because the human mind has been designed by evolution to take an essentialist view of living things. We seem to be born with concepts which ascribe a quality of "dogness" or "catness" or "treeness" to those organisms. Children do not need to be taught such differences and, again without being taught, they classify man-made objects quite differently. So we all accept that, at the moment of conception, some human essence is there.

But people also make an intuitive distinction between the zygote, the foetus and the baby. This is why, in the case of spontaneous abortion of the zygote, the woman may feel disappointment, or even sadness, and she may grieve if a miscarriage occurs in the third trimester: but the sorrow she feels is never the kind of grief that comes with the death of an infant.

The pro-lifers' slippery slope argument &endash; that sanctioning abortion sanctions disrespect for human life and therefore encourages violence and murder &endash; fails on this ground alone. And, whatever its intuitive appeal, their premise about conception also leads to logical absurdities. To say that a collection of cells is human because of its potential means that the sperm and egg must, as a matter of strict logic, also be considered human. It also means that attributes such a nervous system, consciousness and social relations are not essential definitions of being human.

The theological issues are also problematic. If a soul is not there at the moment of conception, then can the foetus truly be defined as human by the pro-lifers' own criteria? It wouldn't seem so. But, if the soul is there from the start, then what happens to it when the zygote is spontaneously aborted, as happens 50-80 percent of the time?

"God doesn't make mistakes," one pro-lifer confidently declared in a letter to the editor. Yet the Sookoo Siamese twins force the rationalist to one of three conclusions: (1) God does make mistakes; (2) God doesn't exist; (3) God exists and is cruel.

This brings us to the pro-choice position, which is based on this premise: that only the individual can determine what is moral for them. The argument here is that no person or group has such complete knowledge that they can make moral decisions for anybody else, once that individual's decision does not harm another human being.

In respect to the abortion, a second premise is contained within this argument: that it is not possible to determine whether the foetus is a human being. This leads to the direct argument for the legalisation of abortion: that since a moral action cannot be determined without a clear definition of what a human being is, moral logic dictates that decisions about abortion be left up to the woman.

The existing body of laws, which grants the foetus no rights as a person, is contradictory because it forbids the termination of a pregnancy. The abortion law does not even give the foetus a right to life in any significant sense, or else a woman who had an abortion, or a man who caused a miscarriage, could be charged with murder.

Interestingly, the basic premise of the pro-choice side &endash; the right of the individual to make moral choices &endash; runs counter to most of human history, where autocratic individuals and groups made choices for the majority and this was considered the natural state of things.

And this, really, is the central clash in the abortion issue. The pro-lifers do not believe in the right to self-determination, and they base this belief on premises which are both unprovable and self-contradictory. This is why, instead of moral suasion, they need to use the big stick of the law. The pro-choicers, by contrast, base their position on a moral premise which has demonstrably led to prosperity and social stability. They offer arguments which are empirical, non-contradictory, and which do not appeal to Divine authority.

So the debate over abortion really involves a wider debate about the kind of society we want to have: one ruled by superstition and autocracy, or one that is democratic, rational and secular. Which path we will take depends, I suppose, on which approach the politicians think will win more votes.