Abortion is a complicated issue, and though politicized to be either completely forbidden or completely permissible, I think that the philosophy behind it is a bit more complex than either side would like to admit. In deontological terms we'd be remiss to consider abortion a moral act, or at least a morally neutral one, because at its core we're talking about an invasive procedure that, by definition, seeks to end the existence of a living being. I phrase it in that way to try to avoid moral terms at this point in the discussion, but I do think that doing so ends up creating a silly euphemism. I suppose we'll get to that in due time but I don't quite see how abortion can be all that vague and neutral. If left alone, the woman will eventually give birth and a new human being will come into the world, with all his or her inalienable human rights promptly recognized. So if we are given no context whatsoever, we would never allow for an abortion, and if we conceive of a perfect utopia, we simply won't conceive of abortion clinics, it just doesn't seem to make much sense. But then again, perfect utopias don't exist, and as such we really do need to consider the circumstances around a pregnancy. And with those in mind, the seemingly reasonable proponents of abortion consider that, if certain conditions are met, an abortion might be in order since it would amount to a tangible reduction of suffering in the world. Still, it's not so simple one way or another, but my question is that if abortion can be allowed if the baby would be born into an unfortunate circumstance, then wouldn't that same logic apply to all others form of mercy killing?
Arguments about abortion inevitably lead to one single question – is the fetus a human life or not? If you say yes then you need to give reasons as to why ending its life is an action we are morally entitled in committing. One often given, which is psychologically understandable, is stating the belief that women ought to be in charge of what they do with their own bodies. It makes no sense that legislation is put into place so that a woman is morally and legally unable to undertake a procedure that so intimately relates to her own body. However, if we grant that the fetus is a human life, then the question isn't her body, it's the fetus' body. Why does the body of one individual take precedence over the life or even the convenience of another? Morally it shouldn't, and yet I can understand how unfair it feels that a woman has to go through an unwanted pregnancy, I can imagine it feels helpless and, without going into detail, I get why so many horror movies use pregnancy themes as inspiration. However, that truth is not at all solvable because politics simply cannot break biological realities. If women feel frustrated about the way in which human beings procreate, then they need to file their complaints to either Charles Darwin or God.
An elephant fetus, the sanctity of which I presume the vast majority of people would defend
Another argument within that line of thought, one I feel ambivalent about, is to say that, yes, the fetus is a life, but it's a life of a different degree. It's a life in the strictly biological sense but it's not considered a life in any other sense, it's not a person or a citizen, it doesn't think, it's not aware that it even exists, it's incapable of writing books or singing songs, and it has no history. Thing is, if left alone, it will one day grow up to be a person and a citizen, it will become aware of its own existence, it will write books and sing songs, it will have a future, and the pronoun I now use to describe it will become dehumanizing. At the end of the day there appears to be no real way to distinguish between degrees of humanity, there's no default mark on where to draw the line. It's not a human life while it's inside the womb, but it is a human life as soon as it emerges from it? It's not a human life at X weeks, but it's suddenly a human life at X+Y weeks? Don't make much sense... There seems to be no accurate way to say the fetus is a human life in one instance but not a human life in another, or that it just upgrades from a lesser life to a proper one, whatever that means. It seems to me that such arguments inevitably lead to subjective considerations on how we determine what is and isn't a human life, and such subjectivity seems conducive to a rather scary relativism.
On that point I like to propose the following scenario – say you have a drunk driver recklessly going through a busy intersection, and in doing so he crashes his car against two other cars. In one car there's a pregnant woman on her way to the hospital for an ultrasound, in the other car there's a pregnant woman on her way to the abortion clinic. If both women die in the crash, how many deaths will the drunk driver be charged with? The only possibilities are two, three, and four, but you cannot answer three without losing all logical consistency. Either only the two women died, since the fetuses are not considered human lives, or four people died, the two women and their respective fetuses. But how can the man be charged with four deaths when one of those women was on her way to have the fetus killed? And if you were to answer three, why is it that the same being is considered a life in one case but not in the other?
Thus I think the response becomes about accepting that the fetus is a human life, but that allowing it to be born will cause much more suffering than ending it now. It rather reminds me of how in the first season of Game of Thrones the small council were arguing about the morality of killing Daenerys and her unborn baby, and Grandmaester Pycelle argued his case by saying – Is it not wiser, kinder even, that she should die now, so that tens of thousands might live?... I know it's not a perfect comparison, what with the political assassinations and whatnot, but his logic strikes me as quite similar to the logic presented by proponents of abortion. We can in fact realize that, in some situations, the baby coming into the world will cause much more suffering than the parents, and society at large, are capable of withstanding. Whether it be poverty, prenatal illness, dysfunctional marriages, sexual assault, immature parents or cases where the would-be father and mother don't even know each other, and so on, we understand such situations to be all too complicated for children to become a part of. The argument then changes into, okay, fine, the fetus constitutes a human life and we recognize some inherent rights, however, because it's not yet conscious, and because the situation is rather dire, we conclude that to be never have been born is better than the fate that awaits it... That's why I say that, though immoral, abortion can perhaps be, in a strange way, merciful.
But is that mercy well placed though? To answer that I need to fall into a weird little quirk I've been considering lately. I have to ask – does God exist or no? It may sound flippant but nowadays I can't think of morality any other way. If God exists, then we have to defend the value of all human life, innocent human lives most of all, among which a fetus reigns supreme because the fella did nothing wrong because he didn't do anything at all. As such we need to find the faith to accept the pregnancy as some part of God's plan, or just the unfortunate result of human free will, and we need to accept the incumbent suffering as something of a test we need to overcome to the best of our ability. This idea of test or burden is something muslims often bring up, saying precisely that Allah tests all people with their own respective problems, through which we need to strive and carry on in worship. Christianity goes a bit further and even tells its followers to actually expect suffering as something inherent to the world and to all existence. Therefore, God's plan in both religions isn't to fix every single problem in the world, namely problems that would make reproduction at all difficult. The plan is instead to give us the strength to carry on in the right path. So if a pregnancy happens, no one has the right to take away an innocent life, and thus whatever is meant to happen simply has to happen. If a human life has to end, it has to end naturally, as per God's decree.
On the other hand though, if God doesn't exist, then to minimize suffering appears to be the best moral command available, and if the baby is to be born into an absolutely dark situation he might be better off not being born at all. And precisely because he is not born yet it is more merciful to end his life now. This view seems to apply a kind of account of suffering, just running the numbers and concluding that to bring another human being into the given situation is simply unfeasible, so the best is to prevent it as soon as possible, even if it's a little later than ideal. And you know what? In my pessimism I'm somewhat inclined to agree, but thing is, why stop at abortion? Seriously. Proponents of abortion, I'm assuming, would also be proponents of euthanasia, but why stop there? Yes, I am saying what you think I'm saying – the moral reasoning that allows for an abortion to take place given certain circumstances also ought to give way for suicide to be committed under similar circumstances. If the goal is to prevent suffering, then it should reasonably follow that all death can be good, or at least less bad, given certain contingent circumstances.
He paused, and turned to the white Lethal Chamber. The silence in the street was absolute. “There a painless death awaits him who can no longer bear the sorrows of this life. If death is welcome let him seek it there.” – Robert William Chambers, in The King in Yellow
I'm tentative to go on writing more at this stage, but I'm also not seeing the blunder here. It's one of those moments where everyone else is wrong or careless, or I'm wrong and dumb... If the fetus constitutes a human life but just one of a lesser degree, and if its birth will cause more suffering than necessary, then doesn't that mean that a person who might be living in certain dark circumstances that cause more suffering than necessary would likewise be better off just avoiding the whole thing? If pragmatism is the highest value I don't see how that logic wouldn't follow. After a while of hedging our bets it becomes impossible to differentiate between the inherent sanctity of human life and stone-cold pragmatism. You might say the individual is an already living human being, conscious and aware of his own existence, and thus simply has more value than a fetus. But doesn't that actually make it so that a suicide is less immoral than an abortion? It is precisely because the individual is aware he is considered to be able to rationally decide what's best for him, and if abortion is defended as the right's of one's own body, then why can't a suicide be decided likewise?... Arguments in favor of abortion simply appear to apply themselves to arguments in favor of euthanasia, suicide and anti-natalism. They are all the same basic principle applied to different situations that aren't really all that different either. In essence, if God exists, we need to find stoicism in suffering, but if God doesn't exist, we perhaps ought to bend morality so as to avoid as much suffering as possible.
So I don't really know... Do I have an answer for any of this? I don't think I do. I can't be convinced that an abortion is simple and akin to having a bad tooth pulled, nor can I be convinced that all the motives behind most abortions are genuine. It's very easy to make appeals to emotion by bringing up case after case of a woman whose pregnancy happened during a complete nightmare, but it's also very easy to bring up cases of abortions that were performed out of what anyone, regardless of religion, would call vapid and all too worldly... Then again I'm also not convinced that the answer to every pregnancy ought be a resounding yes no matter the circumstances. It's easy to make that judgment when we're not the ones having to go through it, and it's equally easy to make the reasonable statement that society should be built in such and such a way that it would solve the problem of unwanted pregnancies by not allowing them to take place to begin with. Lust and impulsivity are human nature because they are the nature of every living being. So my closing thoughts would be that, in a perfect world, abortion simply wouldn't exist, but since this isn't a perfect world, it just might have to exist, at least for now or probably forever.
One that note I leave you with yet another scenario – if we had, assuming we don't already, the technology to extract a fetus from a woman's womb and then place it inside an artificial womb wherein it would grow, develop and be birthed after nine months, should we substitute all abortions with that procedure? If you answer yes then you agree there's something inherently wrong about abortion and that it should, whenever possible, be avoided. But if you answer no you either believe the fetus has little to no value or that, very deep down, an abortion is a way to escape responsibility in a way nature doesn't often allow.
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