Sam asked:

I would like to know what the moral and philosophical view on abortion is.

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There is no "the" view. There are as many views on this as there are people to have them, almost.
This is, contrary to the seeming simplicity of the question, an enormouslycomplicated issue, and not
just from the social/cultural implications. Just what is"abortion", anyway? It has something to do with
stopping the development of a human fetus. Does it necessarily imply that the fetus is killed? What is
a human fetus? Is it the fertilized egg? The first two cells resulting from the initial division of that egg?
A three-month embryo? Six-month?

What are the ethical principles we should use to evaluate this issue, once we've decided what the
issue is? We certainly can't use religious ones, because we have no way of deciding whichreligious
ones to use... that would depend on some religion being "the" correct one, and which would that be?
So we have to use something else. Ok, what? Human life is sacred? Great... and just what does that
mean, exactly? Human babies are sacred? Ok... is a fetus a baby? But we don't even know yet what
a fetus is, do we. Howsacred? Enough to kill the mother for, if it came to that? Enough to continue
the pregnancy even though we can tell that the baby, once born, will die soon after?

I haven't even touched the social issues, etc., and probably even the minimal set of issues I've raised
above will anger many people. So how do you even approach this issue, much less "solve" it? Let me
demonstrate the difficulty.

Let us take my usual vague ethical criteria: the enhancement of life. That's what I'll use to evaluate
this issue, and I'll just assume we know what it means, even though we actually don't, with any clarity.
But I'm going to use it for simplicity. Let us say, in addition, that life has value. We don't know how
much (or even, really, what "how much" means), and how it depends on circumstances, etc., but
human life, I'll assume, virtually always has positive value. So, the first issue: is a baby human? Well,
we pretty much have to answer that positively, since we grant that children are human, and there's no
real boundary between a "baby" and a "child". So a baby is valuable. Next issue: is a fetus a baby?
Well, we've come to bomb number one, haven't we. How about a fetus just literally in the act of being
born? What distinguishes that fetus from a baby? Well, it's still attached to the mother by an umbilical
cord, and it hasn't started breathing yet. Now, are we to use these as criteria for distinguishing a
"human" from a "not-human", so that different ethical criteria apply? What arguments would support
this distinction?

There are two possible arguments I can see that might have any validity. One is that the more
"potential" or likelihood a fetus has of surviving, the more we should consider it human. That is, given
that there is risk in going through the birth canal, in removing the umbilical cord, and in starting to
breathe, an unborn (but in the act of being born) baby has somewhat less potential or likelihood to
survive to adulthood as a baby who has been born. There's no doubt that this is true, but should it
count as an ethical point? The second possible criterion for being human that seems at all reasonable
to me is the possession of a functioning human central nervous system (CNS). But this is an iffy one
also, because we don't really have a complete functioning nervous system, according to the latest
studies, until we're in our late teens/early twenties. That's how long it takes for the prefrontal lobes to
mature physically (never mind learning how to usethose faculties). Even earlier studies put a fully
functional physical CNS no earlier than puberty. So by that criterion, pre-teens (and now, teenagers)
are not fully human. Well, it's getting sticky, isn't it?

But first, what other argument could there be? The actof giving birth can't be used, or anyone born
through a Caesarean wouldn't be human, right? How about independence? A baby after being born is
independent of the mother? Really? That's absurd, as a moment's thought will show. The typeof
independence? A baby is no longer nourished by blood? Well, that's a bit weird, but true enough... but
most babies are nourished by another bodily fluid, i.e., the mother's milk. It seems a bit much to use
the typeof bodily fluid ingested to distinguish human beings from non-human. Breathing? A baby
breathes, and a fetus doesn't? Yes, true... so we're going to distinguish human from not-human on
that basis? But what if, in the future, technology improves to the point where a child could develop
and grow without breathing, using highly oxygenated blood or some other fluid? Would they not be
human, and thus have value? We could ask the same about any continuing physical connection to
the mother, or some technological substitute. After all, there are people on kidney machines, artificial
hearts, artificial lungs, and so forth. So that doesn't seem to work as a criterion. And I've run out of
alternatives. Maybe you can think of something, but I'm going to move on.

So what I'm going to try to do, then, is more-or-less wave my arms around and say that I'm combining
the two criteria above, just to give myself some ground to stand on. The better developed the CNS
andthe more likely to survive to adulthood, the more "human" a fetus is. Notice that I'm only putting
the likelihood of survival in terms of a fetus, its own development, the mother's womb, etc... not in
terms of wars going on around it, etc. Ok, so that means, that given somelikelihood of survival, and
someCNS development, we have to someextent a human being, with some "degree of" value. The
CNS starts developing at week 3, roughly speaking, and becomes progressively more differentiated
and developed. An embryo is termed a "fetus" at about week 8: two months, and that's really when
there begins to be real coordinated neural activity, although it's still primitive stuff. Meanwhile, there
are all sorts of things that can go wrong up to (and later than) then, and many spontaneous abortions
and losses of embryos and fetuses.

So what do we have? Well, given all the arguments above, before week three we've got at most half
of the criteria for a human being; that is, we have some potential for survival of the embryo, but no
CNS. Up to about week 8, it's still pretty weak. Not really a CNS, just neurons developing, and a
better chance of survival. After week 8, we've got something resembling a very undeveloped baby.
But there is no time when we can say that we have absolutely nocriteria for some degree of
humanness, given the above arguments. But does that mean aborting a 2-week embryo is immoral?
After all, we've legalized killing of adults, haven't we, in appropriate circumstances: war, self-defense,
murderous killers, and a few others. We (most of us, let us say, for simplicity) regard killing in those
circumstances as moral, so why can't we regard killing an embryo or a fetus, under appropriate
circumstances, as moral? All right... what circumstances? Risking the life of the mother sounds
reasonable to start the discussion, but then we have to ask questions like, how much risk?

Let's take another scenario: right now,with present technology, we can take an egg from a fertile
woman, artificially fertilize it, implant it into a host mother, and raise a baby. But if that's the case,
don't alleggs of allwomen have somepotential for becoming adults? Yes, they do; however
impractical that is for some woman in, say, a village in China vs., say, a rich woman in the States, it is
not impossible. So if we're taking potential as an absolutecriterion, then we have a moral obligation to
extract all the eggs of all fertile women,fertilize them, and raise all those babies. ...no? Why not?

You see the problems here? If we're taking anypotential as an absolutedeterminer of humanness,
we're stuck with setting up a huge host-mother program, extracting the eggs of all fertile women, etc.
But no one will seriously hold that position. So we can'ttake potential as an absolutecriterion. But
then we've got real problems. Just how muchpotential qualifies? We can get the CNS part pretty well
down to a reasonable time period (which assumes we're actually going to use that as a criterion,
remember)... but "potential"? And this argument eliminates, as far as I can tell, the position that
claims that a fertilized egg alone is enough to qualify as a human being, because anyegg can now be
fertilized. There isn't anything special, now, about that one sperm happening to hit that one egg... we
can take them all out, dump sperm all over them, and fertilize them all, if we want to badly enough
(and we're rich enough to afford it).

Um... have I mentioned the mother's desires and circumstances here? The father's? How do they
weigh in this?

Do I need to go on? Does this demonstrate the difficulties of the issues? Where does that leave us?
Certainly not with "the" philosophical position on abortion, I can tell you. My own position, for what it's
worth, is that one should take the above as a beginning and fumble through as best one can.

Steven Ravett Brown