THE ETHICS THE ETHICS OF ABORTIONOF ABORTIONWhat is it to be a personWhat is it to be a person

Powerpoints prepared by Julie Arliss and Peter Vardy

54 countries allow abortion, representing about 61 percent of the world population.

97 countries, representing about 39 percent of the population, have abortion laws that make it illegal. (The pro-abortion Centre for Reproductive Law and Policy in New York.)

World wide there were 22 million legal abortions in 1987. (The Alan Guttmacher

Institute) Why is there such variation? The central issue is Why is there such variation? The central issue is

whether the fetus is a person or not.whether the fetus is a person or not.

Abortion in the world today

Consequences of the fetus being a person

If the fetus is to be legally regarded as a person the mother must be prevented from doing anything which might harm the fetus. Which activities might the mother be prevented from doing?

1. Smoking. 2. Taking illegal drugs. 3. Horse riding. 4. Netball 5. Abortion.

Equally there would be a whole list of things that she MUST do for the unborn child – take exercise, eat fruit and vegetables, drink lots of milk

HOW WOULD THIS BE ENFORCED? WOULD THERE BE PREGNANCY POLICE?

USA - South Carolina In the 1980’s and 90’s the MSUC hospital in

Charlestown, South Carolina tested pregnant women for drugs without their knowledge. If the tests were positive they were arrested and taken into police custody.

In 1997 in South Carolina there was a ruling against Cornelia Whitner, a pregnant woman who was a drug addict. She was found guilty of child neglect for failing to provide proper medical care for her unborn child: she gave birth to a healthy child but was jailed for 8 years for the damage her drug addiction might have caused.

If a viable fetus is a person acts which endanger fetal health can be prosecuted under child abuse laws.

Abortion in Australia In TASMANIA it is a criminal offence – but

the law is untested… In VICTORIA, NS WALES, THE AUTRALIAN

CAPITAL TERRITORY, QUEENSLAND it is legal at any stage in pregnancy if necessary to preserve the woman from danger to her mental or physical health and proportionate – an abortion must be proportionate to the danger to be averted.

In WESTERN AUSTRALIA, THE NORTHERN TERRITORY AND IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA there are time limits – up until 20 -28 weeks abortion is permitted. And conditions must be met

South Australia Legally induced Abortion must be justified and agreed by

two medical practitioners under one or more of the following grounds:1. The termination is necessary to prevent grave

permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman (no time limit)

2. The continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman (22-23 weeks)

3. The continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated of injury to the physical or mental health of any existing children of the family of the pregnant woman (22-23 weeks)

4. There is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped (22-23 weeks)

5. The pregnant woman must be resident in South Australia for 2 months prior to the abortion. The abortion must be performed in a prescribed hospital by a qualified doctor.

Northern Territory 1974 legislation was enacted along the

lines of South Australia legislation. Abortion permitted only up to 14 weeks on

the grounds of ‘maternal health’ or ‘foetal disability’.

Abortion is permitted up to 23 weeks if necessary to prevent grave injury to the physical or mental health of the woman.

Abortion is permitted at any stage if the woman’s life is at risk.

Western Australia In 1998 changes were made to the legal position. Abortion is permitted up to 20 weeks PROVIDED:1. The woman has been counselled by a second

independent medical practitioner.2. The woman will suffer serious personal, family or social

consequences if the pregnancy continues3. The woman’s physical or mental health will be at serious

risk if the pregnancy continues After 20 weeks two doctors must agree that the foetus or

the woman has a sever medical condition justifying the abortion. The doctors must be part of a panel appointed by the minister for this purpose.

The abortion can only be done in a facility approved for this purpose.

A doctor who performs an illegal abortion can be fined $50,000, a non medical abortionist can be imprisoned for 5 years

Law and Ethics are not the same.

Adultery is widely regarded as wrong. But in most western countries is not a criminal offence.

Abortion is widely regarded as wrong. But in many countries it is not illegal.

The moral issue INFORMS but is independent of the legal issue. And the moral issue is vital. One One in three women in Australia will have an abortionin three women in Australia will have an abortion (100,000 abortions are done each year. There are 2 abortions for every 5 live births ) and more women than this will have to face decisions over an unplanned pregnancy.

At its simplest the moral position against abortion can be expessed as follows:

A simple syllogism:A FETUS IS A PERSONA FETUS IS A PERSONKILLING PERSONS IS WRONGKILLING PERSONS IS WRONGTHEREFORE ABORTION IS THEREFORE ABORTION IS WRONGWRONGTHIS IS A PIECE OF INDUCTIVE LOGIC. THIS IS A PIECE OF INDUCTIVE LOGIC. THE PREMISES MUST BE TRUE FOR THE PREMISES MUST BE TRUE FOR THE ARGUMENT TO BE GOOD. THE THE ARGUMENT TO BE GOOD. THE CONCLUSION WILL NEVER BE CONCLUSION WILL NEVER BE LOGICALLY NECESSARYLOGICALLY NECESSARY

THE EMBRYO

First premise: A Fetus is a person.When does a fetus become a person?When does a fetus become a person?

The egg in the fallopian tube

The egg descends into the Fallopian tube. All a woman’s eggs are present from the time she is a 16 week foetus. Women have half a million eggs - normally only one descends each month

The beginning of the 6 inch race

A million or more sperm line up for the race to the egg. The fastest swimmer may win the prize but the odds against success are huge

SEEKING ACCESS

A few hundred sperm reach the egg and drill with their heads trying to get in by lashing their tails trying to penetrate the craters in the wall of the egg

The winner!

One sperm enters the egg and the egg then puts up a barrier preventing any other sperm from entering.

30 hours later

The nucleus of the egg and the sperm have fused and the genes of the fetus have been fixed. Is this when it becomes a person? In Tasmania it is a criminal offence to abort at any stage in pregnancy

Embedded

The fertilised egg, now divided into 200 cells, embeds in the lining of the womb. The embryo has a good chance of success now. It can no longer divide and become twins. But is it a person?

4 Weeks Old

Quarter of an inch long, the foetus has a beating heart, the first beginning of brain cells and backbone. Cells have specialised and are developing into what will be different organs. A person yet?

Six weeks old

Half an inch long. Almost every organ is in place, arm and leg buds are visible and as bones are not formed the tiny brain can be seen. Recognisably human but is it a person?

Eight Weeks

Eyes are now formed. In every cell of the eye there are 100000 genes – specialisation is far advanced and hands and legs are developing.

Twelve weeks

The fetus is now fully formed. It can move its body, flex limbs and even hiccup. The mother still cannot feel anything.

Fifteen weeks

The eyes are closed but they react to light (If a light is inserted into the womb the foetus will shield its eyes and frown). The mother may soon feel the first movements – this is called quickening. Is this the moment it becomes a person?

Twenty weeks

Ears are now functioning and the fetus can hear. It will turn its head towards a voice – more usually to a female rather than a male voice. The heart will be stopped before an abortion at this stage.

Twenty two weeks The foetus is covered in

downy hair possibly to prevent it becoming wrinkled in the amniotic fluid. In some hospitals it could live outside the womb. From now on it may not be aborted in South Australia, The Northern Territory or Western Australia unless the mothers life is in danger.

Twenty eight weeks

The foetus actively moves its arms and legs. When the thumb touches the mouth the baby will begin to gently suck its thumb.

Thirty six weeks

The baby is running out of space. In four weeks it will be born. In some territories it may still be aborted if there is a proportionate reason.

Into the world

The baby is born and takes its first breath. It is legally a person with the right not to be killed, even if it is disabled.

When is it a person? This is a key issue in the debate. There is no clear point, other than at conception, at which

biologically a person is made. When all the genes are in place life has biologically begun.

If we say that life or personhood starts at any other point we are making a JUDGEMENT. That judgement is based on beliefs about WHAT it is to be a person.

In the Christian tradition is not just their genes and so conception is not the only point at which personhood can begin.

A person is not just a physical organism but is also a spiritual person. There are two basis ideas about what it is to be a person:

1) A DUALIST. Dualists maintain that human beings 1) A DUALIST. Dualists maintain that human beings are made up of a SOUL and a BODY. The two are are made up of a SOUL and a BODY. The two are separate substances and they interact.separate substances and they interact.

2) A MONIST. Monists maintain that a human person is 2) A MONIST. Monists maintain that a human person is a human person and cannot be divided into soul and a human person and cannot be divided into soul and body.body.

CHRISTIANITY and DUALISM The early Christian Church saw God as

having a central role in conception – hence the idea that God implanted souls. (TRADUCIANISM is the heresy – formally condemned by the Catholic Church - that human souls are naturally generated by the physical process of sexual intercourse without any intervention by God.)

God was held to implant souls 40 days after the man implanted the ‘homonucleus’ in the woman’s ‘nest’ if it was a boy or 90 days afterwards if it was a girl. (see second set of Powerpoint slides).

If a person is both a body and a soul the moment of ensoulment will be the moment a person is formed, which is not necessarily the moment of conception.

St. Thomas Aquinas Aquinas in the C13th followed Aristotle

and maintained the 40/90 day male/female distinction as to when souls were implanted.

Abortion before these dates was not treated in the middle ages same way as murder as a soul was not held to be present.

BUT Christianity has not traditionally maintained dualism. Jesus is held to have risen EMBODIED and not, therefore, as a disembodied spirit. The idea, therefore, of God implanting a soul was in some tension with the idea of a human being representing a unity.

Christianity + MONISM Karl Rahner SJ in ‘Hominisation’ explored the idea the God

immediately creates human souls. Matter and spirit, he argued, are not separate things, but a unity. If God, who is spirit, created matter there is a unity between the two:

‘ the spiritual soul, of course, as spirit , and as form of the body does not possess two completely different functions but in both its partial functions it has only one, namely to fulfil its unitary nature as spirit….matter is in a certain way ‘ solidified’ spirit’

This means that an embryo in the earliest stages is not just a lump of cells. The matter it is made up of is itself spirit. The matter is partly soul and the soul is partly matter.

The man and the woman create the whole human person BUT are the agents and instruments of God. God does not need to give the fetus an extra magical ingredient - a soul - the complete person is caused by the parents BUT God is acting through them.

RAHNER IS EFECTIVELY REJECTING THE IMPLAMANTAIN OF SOULS BY GOD.

Moving from any idea of implantation of souls.

Although the early Church, Augustine, Aquinas and Church teaching for 1700 years talked of God implanting souls – this is no longer the case.

The issue today is when a person is formed and this is not related to any idea of souls being implanted.

This is closer to the MONIST position that Christians have traditionally held

In the 1975 Declaration on Abortion, the Roman Catholic 'Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith' said that ‘if the infusion of the soul [at conception] is judged only as probable, to take its life is the same as incurring the danger of killing…it is certain that even if one were to doubt whether the result of conception is already a human person, it is objectively a serious sin to incur the risk of committing homicide.’

IF THE FETUS IS A PERSON FROM CONCEPTION…

.. Then there must be virtually NO abortion – not even for gang rape of a 12 year old or pregnancy as a result of child abuse or incest;

there must be no post-coital contraception, (the coil or the ‘morning after pill’) since the coil in the second half of a woman’s cycle and the ‘morning after pill’ work by preventing a newly fertilised egg from implanting;

there must be no IVF as this produces spare embryos;

there must be no research on embryos. All of these are condemned by the Roman

Catholic Church on the basis that since it is not known when a fetus becomes a person the life of the fetus must be respected from conception.

A simple syllogism:A FETUS IS A PERSONA FETUS IS A PERSONKILLING PERSONS IS WRONGKILLING PERSONS IS WRONGTHEREFORE ABORTION IS THEREFORE ABORTION IS WRONGWRONG

EVEN IF THE FETUS IS A EVEN IF THE FETUS IS A PERSON, IS KILLING A PERSON PERSON, IS KILLING A PERSON ALWAYS WRONG?ALWAYS WRONG?

THE EMBRYO

Second premise: Killing people is wrong

Even if a fetus is a person, could killing it be right?Even if a fetus is a person, could killing it be right?

Being and being treated as a person

Richard McCormick, in an article in 'The Tablet' on 10th March 1990, draws a distinction between an embryo:

a) BEING a person, and b) BEING TREATED as a person.

There is an assumption in the current RC Church position that if the embryo is to be regarded as a person it MUST be treated as such. It is possible to respect the fetus as a person but to decide that there were morally justifiable reasons for terminating its life. This line of thinking is similar to that employed in the Just War tradition where the enemy soldiers are to be respected as people but killed for morally justifiable reasons. Equally the death of non-combatants may be regarded as acceptable collateral damage such as in NATO’s attack on Kosovo. This is a challenge to the second premise:

The Church of England (1)Once the distinction between being respected as a person

and being treated as a person is acknowledged the variation in response to abortion and related issues between Christian Churches is easier to understand:

The Church of England, in a 1965 report prepared shortly before the legalisation of Abortion (Abortion an ethical discussion) recognised that abortion could not be prevented and that the consequences of back street abortions were terrible. They:

1. Confirmed that the fetus is in general inviolable although it should not properly be spoken of as a ‘person’ in the earliest stages of pregnancy.

2. BUT accepted that there might be cases where these rights were in conflict with the needs and rights of the mother – whose rights had a higher claim to recognition. They said that the burden of proof in such situations lay firmly on those who would wish to extinguish the life of the fetus.

The Church of England (2) The report agreed that in a case where there was a risk of

deformity to the unborn that to abort because it would be ‘in the interest of the unborn child’ was unacceptable.

1) Firstly because the degree of risk is not always known – healthy children could be aborted.

2) Secondly because those who have been born disabled would not agree that it would have been better if they had not been born

3) Thirdly because if the argument that it is not in the interests of a disabled fetus to live, why not argue that it is not in the interests of a disabled PERSON to live?

The only grounds for aborting a fetus with a risk of disability would be if it could be shown that the mothers health or the health and well being of her family would be harmed by the continuance of the pregnancy. This would mean a complex job of assessment before the abortion of a disabled fetus was permitted.

British law allows abortion if there is a risk of deformity, and the law as it stands is accused of discrimination against disabled people.

Abortion and Conscience Many Christians hold that the place of individual

conscience should be the deciding factor in matters of abortion. It is not up to the law or the church to decide. (A group that supports the central role of conscience in the Catholic tradition are Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC))

It is argued that the individual answers personally to God for what that individual has done and that they must have the freedom to act on their deeply held reflected beliefs.

Women as competent moral agents in good conscience should be able to decide for themselves about abortion.

The argument from conscience within Catholicism is:1. That the position within the Catholic church on when the

fetus becomes a person is only based on probability2. The rule of probabilism holds that where the church can

not speak definitively on a matter of fact (in this case on the personhood of the fetus) the consciences of individual Catholics must be primary and respected.

3. Therefore Catholics should have the right to take a position that differs from the church on the legal and moral status of abortion.

The key Questions in the abortion debate:

What is a person? – Body and soul (dualism) OR Just a set of genes? Are people here purely by chance or are they made in the image of God for a relationship with Him? Is life meaningless or does it have a divine purpose? If we are just our genes, here by chance, and life has no purpose then the abortion issue will be discussed in very different terms than if we start with the assumption that life is sacred and purposeful.

When does an embryo become a person and get the moral status of a person? If not at conception then when, and what is the philosophical basis for that decision? It is no longer a question of fact but of informed judgement.

Even when personhood status is granted, can a proportionate reason justify abortion?

The following Powerpoint slides deal with these issues.