Does a Woman Have a Right to an Abortion?

(Presented at the 7. May, 1997 meeting of the Lawrence University Students of Objectivism.)


DISCLAIMER: LU Students of Objectivism is not anofficial spokesmen of Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. While this essay is an attempt to apply Objectivist principles authentically and sincerely, any mistakes or misrepresentations are those of the writer alone.


Let me open by making the understatement of the century: Abortion is a controversial topic. So controversial is this topic, that many Americans have long since abandoned reason for violence in their attempts to persuade others of their view. Tonight I am going to argue that the abortion impasse is due, in large part, to inadequate theories on both sides of the abortion debate. After all, if the side which happens to be right fails to provide any adequate reasons for their case, there is little wonder as to why the side which is wrong fails to see it. In addition to critiquing the standard arguments for and against abortion, I shall provide the Objectivist alternative to both views. In doing so, I shall provide a rational case for a woman's right to an abortion.

Before I say anything else, I should like to add that the case I will present will be a rational one, not a rationalization. I have put a great deal of thought into this topic. I started out being pro-life, then became pro-choice, switched back to being pro-life, waffled for a year, and returned to pro-choice. In the end, I realized that these terms are not even very meaningful. The view that upholds a woman's right to an abortion recognizes that "pro-choice" is "pro-life". To affirm choice is to affirm life--the life of the mother.

I. THE CONSERVATIVE APPROACH

The American conservative movement has mounted the primary opposition to abortion rights. Conservatives are opposed to abortion on both moral and political grounds. They think not only that women should not have abortions, but also that women should not be allowed to have abortions. This is not a surprise. Politics is a branch of ethics. If one believes that abortion is wrong, there is little logical distance (some, but little) between this view and the view that abortion should be outlawed.

The ethical root of the conservatives objection to abortion is the philosophy of altruism. According to altruism, humans must sacrifice themselves to others in order to attain moral worth. On this view, the greatest of all evils is selfishness. To act in one's own self-interest, rather than acting as a means to the ends of others, is "crass", "callous", "inhumane", or any number of other adjectives which have been used in this context. There are no two ways about this issue: to have an abortion is a genuinely selfish act. Whether her reason is to save her life from the complications of birth, or merely to attain a better financial status, the woman who chooses to have an abortion is acting in her own self-interest. As a result, she is condemned by the conservative.

Politically, the conservative sees this selfish act as infringing on the "rights" of another entity: the embryo or the fetus. Because the conservative believes that the proper role of government is to protect rights (at least in this case), he or she believes that the government is justified in using coercive force to stop a woman from having an abortion. On this view, abortion laws which would imprison a woman for aborting a fetus amount to the retalitory use of force, rather than the initiation of it, since by having an abortion, a woman has allegedly initiated the use of force against the fetus.

Why does the conservative believe that the fetus has rights? The fetus or embryo has the same genetic code as humans, the same number of chromosomes; it is programmed by nature to become a human being. According to the conservative, the embryo or fetus is a potential person, who is equal in moral status to an actual person. Why does the conservative believe that human potentiality is sufficient to establish moral status? Ultimately, the justification is grounded by religious arguments. A potential in nature is said to indicate the design of a Creator. If God wills that intercourse result in procreation, then His will must be done. Sacred texts from the Torah to the Bible to the Koran are brimming with prohibitions against abortion. Ultimately, all aspects of the conservative case come down to the injunction that abortion is wrong "because God says so".

Aside from the obvious difficulty with their ultimate justification (divine revelation), the conservative case is frought with a large number of other problems.

To suggest that potential persons have rights equal to those of actual persons is to limit the rights of actual persons severely. For starters, late-term abortions must be ruled out, as the fetus is most certainly a potential person. The same goes for early-term abortions: the embryo could certainly become a human.

The preceding are the standard implications recognized by most conservatives. However, there are a number of others which are usually conveniently ignored. For instance, all forms of birth control must be ruled out if potential persons are the locus of value. After all, sperm and ovum are just as much potential persons as are embryos, even if they only contain half of the genetic material. According to this view, manslaughter occurs whenever a woman menstruates, and mass murder occurs when a man has a wet dream!

The "fun" doesn't stop here, though. Recognize that with the advent of modern genetics, scientists could extract the DNA of individual human cells in order to make clones. This capability means that the tiniest skin cell is a potential person. If potential persons must not be killed, then it is immoral and unjust for me to scratch my elbow, because doing so will result in the deaths of millions of potential persons.

Logically, the reverence for the potential person implies utter contempt for the actual person. If any rights are granted to potential persons at all, then the only result can be the total and complete erosion of the rights of actual persons. They very process of living entails the need for humans to shed skin, menstruate, have wet dreams, etc. Actual human life entails the death of potential persons. To implement the logical requirements of a reverence for potential persons is to ecclipse actual human life. It makes little sense to treat potential entities as worthy of more respect than actual ones.

To dispense with these objections, the conservative could "bite the bullet" and concede that restrictions on actual persons are justified for the sake of potential ones. To make this concession would be to highlight the blatant altruism of the anti-abortion position. As with most calls for sacrifice, it is the greater which must be sacrificed to the lesser. In the case of abortion, the altruism is so other-oriented that it demands that the actual sacrifice for the non-actual, that is, for the non-existent. There could be no greater sacrifice.

To fully topple the conservative case requires a refutation of the ethics of altruism. This refutation shall come in due course.

II. THE LIBERAL APPROACH

The liberals are, of course, the leading defenders of the woman's right to choose an abortion. Regardless of its morality, liberals claim, abortion must be permitted. What's more, it must be available on demand: Taxpayers should foot the bill for the woman who cant afford to have an abortion.

Unfortunately, the liberals' case for abortion rights is also rooted in the morality of altruism, although not nearly as firmly as the conservatives' case is. According to them, society must serve women by permitting them the right to an abortion. That the liberals' is an altruistic motive is highlighted by the fact that they frequently appeal to the plight of poor, underpriveleged women when making their case. Doing so is part and parcel to their method of advocating the altruistic welfare state. On their view, the guage of a society is the welfare of the least well-off.

There are more problems with the liberal defense of abortion rights than there are with the conservative attack. Thus, there is little wonder that most abortion debates are reduced to pathetic screaming matches on sidewalks in front of reproductive health clinics. Most liberals simply dont have a very good case for what they believe. Heres why:

First of all, the liberals' concession to an altruistic motive undercuts their case tremendously. If altruism is the moral ideal, then conservatives are probably the the most consistent defenders of it with respect to abortion. After all, altruism demands sacrifice. A sacrifice is a surrender of a greater value for a lesser value. Anti-abortionists demand the sacrifice of the actual to the potential. This is a far greater sacrifice than that which the liberals demand, a sacrifice of certain actual persons (those who would stop women from having abortions) to certain other actual persons (who would have abortions). Liberals cannot concede the ethics of altruism and expect to get away with abortion rights. They simply don't come with the territory.

The liberals' political case is undercut by their inability to apply the concept of rights to abortion properly. For instance, many liberals do not attempt to address the question of whether or not the fetus has any rights. If the fetus did have any rights, then the liberals' appeal to freedom of choice would not provide adequate justification. A proper theory of rights tells us that one person's rights end where a second person's rights begin. If abortion did constitute a rights violation, then the woman would have no right to excercise her freedom in this respect. Because many liberals do not choose to address this question by addressing the question of the nature of the fetus, they are implicitly telling the world, "We know were baby killers, and we're proud of it". This is not a persuasive position.

A second instance of the liberals' improper application of the concept of rights to the subject of abortion is found in the example of Judith Jarvis Thomson. Dr. Thomson is a prominent feminist philosopher at MIT who has written one of the most well-known philosophical defenses of a woman's right to an abortion. Her argument runs as follows: A woman has a right to an abortion because abortion is not killing. Rather, it is merely the cessation of the provision of sustenance for the fetus. The difference here is the same as the difference between stealing someone's wallet and not giving someone your wallet. Thomson's argument is seemingly innovative. However, by reducing the concept of individual rights to the right not to be killed, she undercuts the concept of rights in general. The fetus might not be able to claim the right not to be aborted, but the woman is also not able to claim the right to the abortion. She only has the right not to be killed. As we shall see later, the concept of individual rights must be less bare-boned than this to justify abortion rights.

To bolster the case for abortion rights requires a much more thorough job than the liberals have done. More than anything, it requires a complete rethinking of ethical philosophy.

III. THE OBJECTIVIST APPROACH

Objectivism attacks the very root of the anti-abortion position. It rejects not only the religious conservatives' mysticism, but also self-sacrifice, which is the staple of the conservatives' justification and the fatal flaw of liberals' attempted rebuttal.

Before anything can be said about the Objectivist position on abortion, I must pause to present a brief overview of the Objectivist theory of ethics and politics. Only then will we have a foundation on which to build a case for abortion rights.

According to Objectivism, the only means of human knowledge is reason. This automatically rules out any reliance on faith or divine revelation. In short, claims to know the mystical will of God are not admissible arguments. If the conservative, for instance, wishes to justify the claim that the actual must be sacrificed to the potential, "because God says" so will not work as an valid explanation.

Just as reason is the only means of knowledge open to a human, so it is the only means of survival. Therefore, if one wishes to live, then one ought to be rational. Why should one wish to live, you might ask? In her essay, "The Objectivist Ethics" in The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand writes that, it is only the concept of life which makes the concept of value possible. To ask for a justification for living on the basis of some greater value is a contradiction in terms. The only reason for which values exist at all is that they serve as means to the end of life. Life--the process of self-sustaining, self-generated action--is an end in itself, an ultimate value. One's own life is one's ultimate value. If one is a human, then Man's life is ones standard of value. As said before, one must use reason to survive.

Because the choice to live is the only choice which can ground a series of ethical "oughts"--if ones life is ones highest value--the only justified code of ethics is an egoistic one. Each of us must live in accordance with our rational self-interest, neither sacrificing ourselves to others, nor sacrificing others to ourselves.

In the political sphere, refraining from sacrifice means the prohibition of physical force from human relationships. In other words, humans must respect each other's rights. To what do humans have rights? Just as the value of life is the source of all values, so the right to life is the source of all rights. Recall that life is a process of self-sustaining, self-generated action. This means that the right to life is the right to engage in such action. The right to life is not merely to right not to be killed, as Thomson might suggest.

So: not only is it right for a woman to be selfish, but she has a right to be selfish. This pulverizes the altruistic claims of the conservatives and gives abortion rights the support they lacked due to the liberals' concession to altruism.

"What of the rights of the fetus?" you might ask. After all, I said that a proper theory of rights would not permit one person's right to infringe upon that of another. For the answer, I shall turn directly to Ayn Rand, who gives the answer in her essay, "On Living Death", in The Voice of Reason :

An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not yet living (or the unborn).

Abortion is a moral right--which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved (59-60).

There is simply no basis on which to assign rights to the unborn. Individual rights can only be possessed by individual entities. The fetus is a physical part of the body of a woman. Thus it is she that has the right; she is the actual, individuated entity.

Individual rights can only be possessed by individual living entities. Life is a process of self-sustaining, self-generated action. The fetus does not sustain itself, the mother does. She is the only living entity to speak of.

Furthermore, rights are possessed by individual living humans--humans by virtue of their rationality, not their genetic code. Rational creatures need rights because they need to think to survive, and they need to be free to think. While a fetus may have the physiological structure necessary for conceptual thought, and perhaps even a certain degree of neural activity, the fetus isn't using this capacity--it can't use this capacity. By virtue of being a fetus, an entity which is closed off from much of the sensory world, there is literally nothing about which a fetus can think. Even if science were somehow to permit a fetus to grow to its full physical size within the womb, it would still not have a reasoning mind, by virtue of its being encased in darkness.

This might leave you wondering, "Well, if rights are possessed because of the necessity to think, then it doesn't seem like newborn infants would have any rights either". It may seem this way. However, several points are relevant here: First, our standard of ethical truth is facts, not babies. The fact that a logical theory might seem to imply an unpleasant thought (infanticide) does not dispute the logic of the theory. To say that such a position might justify infanticide is not to say that the position's justification of abortion rights is flawed.

Furthermore, this position does not justify infanticide. The tiny difference between the womb and the outside world is literally the difference between day and night --to the child. The mere introduction of the child to the world unleashes a torrent of activity within the child's mind. From day one, the brain begins to integrate percepts. After a number of months, the child forms its first concept. All of this activity is explained by the emergence of the child from the womb.

But you might press further and ask, "Well, it looks as if being born is certainly a necessary condition for being rational and having rights, but it doesn't seem to be a sufficient condition." I respond: It has to be a sufficient condition, because there is no other point at which a line between rational and non-rational can be drawn. The scale of a child's cognitive development is a scale of degrees. There is no specific point at which the child suddenly becomes rational. Rather, the change is gradual. Rationality must exist in some quantity but may exist in any quantity. Thus, as a matter of principle(*), we must draw the line at birth, the point at which that gradual ascension begins. The degree of rationality is proportional to the degree of rights possesed by the child. From the beginning, it has the right not to be killed. As time goes by, it gradually acquires other rights to liberty and property.

Because the fetus has no rights, disposing of it is well within the right of the woman. She has a right to live, which means the right to engage in any actions conducive to her life. This is why the "pro-choice" position is really the only "pro-life" position. It is in favor of the woman's life.

One additional point is necessary. The right to an abortion does not entail the right to a free abortion, as many liberals might argue. An analogy can be made here between abortion rights and free speech rights: The right to free speech permits one to make any statements one can, as long as doing so does not infringe on the rights of others. The right to free speech does not mean that society must provide you with a bullhorn, an auditorium, or even an audience. The same goes for abortion. A woman has the right to purchase the services of an abortion clinic, if such a clinic is willing to engage in such an act. A woman also has the right to accept voluntary donations if she cannot afford her own abortion. However, society has no obligation to provide her with one. To suggest otherwise would be to recommend the coercion of others through taxation to supply the woman's ends. But other people have rights to their own property for the same reason that the woman has a right to her own body. To suggest otherwise would also be to appeal to altruism, which is the ethical code at the root of the rejection of abortion rights.

If you embrace this position in favor of abortion rights, I must hasten to say that I hope you are doing it not because of a previous bias in favor of abortion rights, but because you find this position to be rational. If you find this position to be rational, then there are certain implications of this belief which you cannot avoid. For instance, a woman's right to an abortion has been justified on the basis of the morality of selfishness and the justice of being permitted to act on selfishness. These are the same principles which justify laissez-faire capitalism. You cannot be an authentic advocate of abortion rights and an enemy of capitalism. The two are justified by the same principles.

To close, let me say that only when advocates of abortion rights begin to make arguments based on a rational ethics will they begin to turn the tide in favor of a woman's right to choose. They will not succeed if they appeal to emotions or economic statistics, and they will certainly not succeed if they concede their opponents' ethical premises: the ethics of altruism. The proper defense of the right to abortion requires a comprehensive defense of reason, egoism, and individual rights. In short, it requires the philosophy of Objectivism.


(*) The following is a brief essay written to clarify this point about the newborn. It was written for Objectivist Study Group e-mail list:

Nature doesn't draw any lines for us. We have to draw them for ourselves. However, this doesn't mean that concept-formation is a subjective affair. The best illustration of this point of which I can think is Harry Binswanger's oft-quoted "turkey" analogy. Our Thanksgiving turkey isn't endowed with dotted lines from nature telling us where to cut. However, this doesn't mean that we should cut just any old place we like--certain approaches just won't work (such as trying to cut through major bones). Rather, we must divide the turkey--and nature--at its joints.

This analogy seems to follow quite well from the principle of unit-economy. Because of the crow epistemology, there is a constraint upon the number of units which a person can hold in their perceptual field. The process of concept formation enables unit-reduction, which enables man to hold knowledge of the abstract. Dividing nature at its joints aids in concept formation through unit-reduction: It allows us to use the facts which nature provides for us to find the obvious differences between kinds of entities.

One of the implications of an epistemology guided by unit-reduction is an ethics based on the need to act on principle. Objectivists don't make moral compromises. For instance, when asked to live most of our lives selfishly but just one day altruistically, we would say "no" on principle. Even the tiniest amount of altruism spoils the deal. To think otherwise would be to fall victim to a pragmatism which would "kill the crow", requiring us to multiply our need for new judgments beyond necessity. At every given moment of our lives, we would need to approach each decision as an unconnected concrete. (I have in mind Dr. Peikoff's discussion of the pandemonium of a congressional hearing on protectionism in "Why Should One Act on Principle?")

Is the decision to draw the line between rights-bearers and non-rights-bearers at birth a similar matter of principle--epistemological principle? Is it a judgment we would make due to the existence of the _tiniest_ degree of rationality in the fetus--no matter how small--just as we would reject the tiniest degree of altruism in ethics?

When he speaks of a different subject, the matter of individuation and Siamese twins, Mr. Gray seems to say that the obvious fact of the living, breathing woman means that the fetus has no rights. I agree with him. The only problem I have is seeing why the obvious fact of the living, breathing woman doesn't similarly justify infanticide. I think that the answer has to be one based on acting on epistemological principle.


Revised: 3. June, 1997 a.D.
Comments:lu_objectivism@yahoo.com

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