Peter Singer: Abortion, the dividing lines

Article from: Herald Sun

Peter Singer

August 25, 2007 12:00am

Should abortion be a crime? Peter Singer and others in the fields of psychology and faith pass their verdicts on whether the Government is on the right path with its plans to decriminalise the practice

FOR a woman who does not want to have a child, pregnancy and birth is a severe hardship.

To force anyone to endure an avoidable hardship of that kind is contrary to our general belief in promoting individual freedom and choice. Such a denial of freedom could only be justified if there was a very compelling reason for it.

Opponents of abortion think there is a very compelling reason for denying freedom in these circumstances. They regard abortion as murder. Killing an embryo or fetus, they say, takes an innocent human life.

  • Susie Allanson's opinion
  • Archbishop Denis Hart's opinion
       

  • Defenders of a woman's right to choose sometimes challenge this claim. They deny that the embryo or fetus is a human life. The abortion debate then focuses on the question, "When does a human life begin?"

    I think this is the wrong question to ask. In a strictly biological sense, the opponents of abortion are right to say that abortion ends a human life.

    When a woman has an abortion, the fetus is alive, and it is undoubtedly human – in the sense that it is a member of the species homo sapiens. It isn't a dog or a chimpanzee.

    But mere membership of our species doesn't settle the moral issue of whether it is wrong to end a life. As long as the abortion is carried out at less than 20 weeks of gestation – as almost all abortions are – the brain of the fetus has not developed to the point of making consciousness possible.

    In that respect, the fetus is less developed, and less aware of its circumstances, than the animals that we routinely kill and eat for dinner.

    That is why the fetus is "innocent". It doesn't have the capacity to do anything wrong – or anything right.

    Even when the fetus does develop a capacity to feel pain – probably in the last third of the pregnancy – it still does not have the self-awareness of a chimpanzee, or even a dog.

    When this is pointed out, some opponents of abortion respond that the fetus, unlike the dog or chimpanzee, is made in the image of God, or has an immortal soul. They thereby acknowledge religion is the driving force behind their opposition.

    But there is no evidence for these religious claims, and in a society in which we keep the state and religion separate, we should not use them as a basis for the criminal law, which applies to people with different religious beliefs, or to those with none at all.

    Other opponents say the fetus has the potential to become a person, that is, a thinking, rational being, like ourselves, and the dog or chimpanzee do not have that potential. But why should mere potential give a being a right to life?

    The world already has more than six billion people. We are heading for more than nine billion by 2050. The more people there are, the greater the pressure on the Earth's environment and the greater the difficulty in giving them all even a minimally decent life. Do we really want every potential person to become an actual person?

    In fact, with modern medical technology, the argument from potential rapidly leads to absurdity.

    Scientists have shown, in many different species, including monkeys, that it is possible to clone an animal by taking the nucleus of an ordinary cell, and implanting it in an egg from which the nucleus has been removed.

    There is no biological reason to suppose that this would not work for human beings. This means that billions of our cells have the potential to become an actual person.

    Yet no one thinks that we have an obligation to "save" all these cells and turn them into people.

    Arguably, the fetus first becomes a being of moral significance when it develops the capacity to feel pain, some time after 20 weeks of gestation.

    We should be concerned about the capacity of fetuses to suffer pain in late-term abortions. On the rare occasions when such abortions are necessary, they should be performed in a way that minimises the possibility of suffering.

    Admittedly, birth is in some ways an arbitrary place to draw the line at which killing the developing human life ceases to be permissible, and instead becomes murder.

    A prematurely born infant may be less developed than a late-term fetus. But the criminal law needs clear dividing lines and, in normal circumstances, birth is the best we have.

    PETER SINGER is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, and Laureate Professor in the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne

     

       

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"Other opponents say the fetus has the potential to become a person, that is, a thinking, rational being, like ourselves, and the dog or chimpanzee do not have that potential. But why should mere potential give a being a right to life?" Of course it is ridiculous to save each cell and create life with it, but the cells that form the fetus are already in the process of creating life. By aborting the fetus you are cutting off a process that has already begun. If you're going to continue comparing humans to animals then you might want to consider the fact that any human being has more potential than an animal. The most intelligent ape can only barely reach the intellectual capacity of the least intelligent human. Even if that ape is smarter, he can not be called our equal simply because he does not have the same potential that we do. So that is what differentiates us from animals, sheer potential. Why should potential give a right to life? On what basis do you have to take away that life in the first place? A being with the potential to be equal to or greater than you intellectually has just as much right to survive as you do if not for the sole fact that he already exists as a being who could affect the world positively. Again, this fetus exists as more than a single cell at this point and therefore it is currently on the road to having its potential met far more than a cell found in my arm. Why not, by your arguments, kill people who are mentally or physically handicapped? Morally, one might argue that it's because they feel pain. However, animals feel pain, and we must differentiate ourselves from them or we are getting into an entirely different moral issue here that leads to veganism. They are our equivalents in potential. We consider them people too, because they are just as likely as we are to attain knowledge and be great. If there is a sliding scale of human potential, it is separate from the sliding scale of ape potential, and though there are people at the bottom, who have not attained the most a human can have, it's the very fact that they are on the same scale as us and have the potential to be at the upper end just as much as anyone else that makes it immoral to take their life away.

Posted by: Donovan Purcell of Newfoundland 6:30am today

Thing i liked in the article "I think this is the wrong question to ask. In a strictly biological sense, the opponents of abortion are right to say that abortion ends a human life." "When a woman has an abortion, the fetus is alive, and it is undoubtedly human" "We should be concerned about the capacity of fetuses to suffer pain in late-term abortions" some comments i liked "If a man kills a pregnant woman, he is charged with two counts of murder. " "The law seems to be saying that women are allowed to kill their own children, but nobody else is." "What sort of human beings have we become when we can legalise killing our own children in the sanctity of the womb? " " Is Matt implying that a woman should not have sex unless she is ready to have a baby?" my opinion is yes. a woman should NOT be greedy and have sex if she is not ready for a child. She is doing it for personal pleasure and is not relizing the consequences. In the case of women being raped there is an exeption. I still think she should not end a human life. Adoption is ALWAYS an option. I think potential is enough for people to want to save a human life.

Posted by: Noelle Herridge of new york 10:15am October 28, 2008

Obviously, the government isn't going to make decisions based on biblical principles, but what about consistency? If a man kills a pregnant woman, he is charged with two counts of murder. When a woman has an abortion, she is not charged with murder. The law seems to be saying that women are allowed to kill their own children, but nobody else is. While I understand the right to make decisions about your own body, I believe that the government needs to make up its mind. Is killing a fetus murder or isn't it?

Posted by: Emmy Stowers of 12:08pm October 20, 2008

Over the past nine months I became G¿pa to three gorgeous children, a boy and two girls. This was after one of the most traumatic times of our lives when we lost a grandchild some hours after the birth. The pain we all felt was something we would not want to experience again. We went through a long grief process that then became a healing process for us. This was a very human and natural experience. Now the Victorian Government is looking at legislating for ¿abortion on demand¿ making it lawful for ¿mothers to be¿ to have their unborn children killed. My mind cannot comprehend the barbarity of it all. What sort of human beings have we become when we can legalise killing our own children in the sanctity of the womb? Surely we should all be weeping bitter tears for these children being ripped from their mothers. It is a dark time for our state indeed and there will be a heavy price to pay if this goes ahead. Of course those involved in pushing this through are gambling that there is no God of the Bible because if He does indeed exist there will be hell to pay for these crimes against our young. There is no difference between the kiilling a child in the womb of its mother and the todler beaten to death by a parent. They are both abhorrent and criminal and if in this life one gets away with judjment from an earthly court we cannot sidestep God's judgement in His Heavenly Court. Only a heartfelt repentant heart through His Son Jesus Christ can keep you from His anger.

Posted by: Keith Lewis of Ballarat 1:01pm May 30, 2008
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