Creation Ethics: The Moral Status of Early Fetuses and the Ethics of Abortion

Creation Ethics: The Moral Status of Early Fetuses and the Ethics of Abortion by Elizabeth Harman

Introduction

• The paper addresses the moral status of early fetuses and the ethics of abortion, focusing on a neglected perspective.
• The author posits that a liberal view on abortion is more compelling than previously considered if we adopt a specific stance on the moral status of early fetuses.

Definition of Early Fetus

• Early Fetus: Defined as a fetus before it possesses any intrinsic properties that inherently grant it moral status.
• It is assumed there is a period where fetuses are 'early' depending on when such intrinsic properties develop.
• A plausible view is that a fetus is 'early' before it has conscious experience or can be considered a subject of experience.

Katherine's Dilemma

• Katherine is used as an example of someone struggling with the moral status of early fetuses.

• She intuits that early fetuses that die in abortions have no moral status and early abortions don't require moral justification.

• However, she also feels that early fetuses carried to term, becoming persons, are appropriate objects of love and possess some moral status because they are the beginning of a child.

• Katherine seems torn between conflicting views, leading to the assumption:

  • (2) Assumption: For any two early fetuses at the same stage of development and health, either both have moral status, or neither does.

• The author argues that this assumption can be challenged.

The Actual Future Principle

• Katherine can reconcile her intuitions by adopting the following:

  • (3) The Actual Future Principle: An early fetus that will become a person has some moral status, while one that will die as an early fetus has no moral status.

• This principle suggests different categories of early fetuses.

• Early fetuses that die without developing intrinsic properties never gain moral status.

• Early fetuses that will become persons will have full moral status, suggesting they have some moral status now.

• The author assumes the following without extensive argumentation:

  • (4) Assumption: If early abortion requires moral justification, it is because the early fetus has some moral status.

• Given assumption (4), the Actual Future Principle leads to:

  • (5) The Very Liberal View on the Ethics of Abortion: Early abortion requires no moral justification whatsoever.

• This view is stronger than the common liberal view, which acknowledges some need for justification.

Conclusions of the Paper

• The paper aims to establish four conclusions:

  • Conclusion 1: The Actual Future Principle is a tenable view of the moral status of early fetuses.
  • Conclusion 2: The very liberal view on the ethics of abortion is compatible with several attractive views with which it has seemed incompatible, making it more appealing.
  • Conclusion 3: The Actual Future Principle is the correct view of the moral status of early fetuses (the arguments for this are limited to bringing someone from a moderate liberal view to this conclusion).
  • Conclusion 4: Stated at the end of the article, concerning the significance of the choice to create a person.

• Conclusion 1 is established by stating the Actual Future Principle and addressing objections.

• The argument for Conclusion 2 relies on Conclusion 1.

Compatibility of the Very Liberal View

• (6) Compatibility with Caring Attitudes: The very liberal view is compatible with the view that some early fetuses are the appropriate objects of caring attitudes such as love.
  • Illustrated by Katherine's intuitions - one can hold that early abortion requires no moral justification because the early fetuses have no moral status, while also believing that some early fetuses have moral status and are the appropriate objects of caring attitudes.
  • There are two significantly different kinds of early fetuses: those that die while they are still early fetuses, and those that will become persons.
• (7) Compatibility with Prohibitions on Harming Early Fetuses: It is possible to give a good account of how the very liberal view is compatible with prohibitions on harming early fetuses that will become persons.
  • It might seem that the very liberal view is incompatible with our intuitions about our obligations not to harm some early fetuses.
  • The Actual Future Principle allows us to satisfy this worry, saying precisely that some early fetuses have some moral status, thus they are the kind of things we are prohibited from harming.
• (8) Compatibility with Reasonable Views on Miscarriages: The very liberal view is compatible with a reasonable view about miscarriages of early fetuses: a couple may be understandably upset about such a miscarriage, but it is inappropriate to mourn the death of the fetus.
  • It may seem that the very liberal view is incompatible with any reasonable view that takes seriously the badness of early miscarriages.
  • While the fetus lived, the couple was rational to love the fetus. However, they should also recognize that the death of the fetus should not be mourned because it turns out that the fetus lacked moral status.
• (9) Compatibility with the Unique Position of a Woman Unsure About Abortion: The very liberal view is compatible with an explanation of the unique position of a woman genuinely unsure whether she will abort her pregnancy.
  • The decision she makes will determine what attitude she ought to take. If she chooses abortion, then it turns out that the fetus is morally insignificant. If she chooses to continue the pregnancy, then the fetus is the beginning of her child, and she owes it her love. Her choice is unique because it determines a feature of their present situation.

Objections to Conclusion 1 (The Actual Future Principle)

• (10) First Objection: Facts about a fetus's actual future can't determine its moral status, because something's moral status is determined by its ‘nature.’
  • A thing's present nature is solely determined by the intrinsic properties it ever has.
  • On this view of a thing's nature, the Actual Future Principle does appeal to facts about a fetus's nature in determining whether it has moral status.
• (11) Second Objection: If the Actual Future Principle is true, then inaccessible facts determine a fetus's moral status. We can't ever know how to treat an early fetus, because we can't be sure of its moral status.
  • This objection neglects the fact that we often do know a fetus's overwhelmingly likely future.
  • The Actual Future Principle does not hold us to standards we cannot meet.
• (12) Third Objection: According to the Actual Future Principle, you just can't lose! If you abort, then it turns out that the fetus you aborted was the kind of thing it's okay to abort. If you don't abort, then it turns out that the fetus was the kind of thing it's not okay to abort.
  • It is not the case that if you don't abort, then it turns out that the fetus was the kind of thing it's not okay to abort.
  • According to the Actual Future Principle, early fetuses have their moral statuses contingently.

Rationality of Common Experiences

• (13) Rationality of Difficulties and Regret: The liberal view on abortion is compatible with the rationality of two common experiences of women who have abortions: finding having an abortion very difficult (though the choice to abort is settled) and regretting an abortion (though one does not regret the choice to abort).
  • A woman may regret an abortion because she regrets a lost possibility for her own life: the chance to become the woman she would have become if she had had a child at that time.

Conclusion 4

• (Conclusion 4): If the very liberal view on abortion is true, then: It is false that one ought to both deliberate seriously and recognize one's moral responsibility before aborting. Furthermore, one ought to both deliberate seriously and recognize one's moral responsibility before failing to abort.
• While there is nothing wrong with having an abortion on a whim, there is something gravely wrong with allowing a pregnancy to continue without moral deliberation. Creating a person always involves occurrences of great moral weight.