on Abortion
I just finished reading Francis Schaeffers A Christian Manifesto and Peter Kreeft's The Unaborted Socrates and it seems that Schaeffer, like Kreeft, places strong emphasis on abortion and the issues surrounding abortion. Rightly so, I think. So, maybe some comments on Kreeft and Schaeffer. On the legalization of abortion Schaeffer comments:
"The door is open. In regard to the fetus, the courts have arbitrarily separated "aliveness" from "personhood," and if this is so, why not arbitrarily do the same with the aged? So the steps move along, and euthanasia may well become increasingly acceptable. And if so, why not keep alive the bodies of the so-called neo-morts (persons in whom the brain wave is flat) to harvest from them body parts and blood, when the polls show that this has become acceptable to the majority [...] Law has become a matter of averages, just as culture's sexual mores have become only a matter of averages."[1]
Schaeffer subsequently quotes Charles Hartshorne in the January 21, 1981, issue of The Christian century, pages 42-45, titled 'Concerning Abortion, an Attempt at a Rational View':
"He begins by equating the fact that the human fetus is alive with the fact that mosquitoes and bacteria are also alive. That is, he begins by assuming that human life is not unique. He then continues by saying that even after the baby is born it is not fully human until its social relations develop (though he says the infant does have some primitive social relations an unborn fetus does not have). His conclusion is, 'Nevertheless, I have little sympathy with the idea that infanticide is just another form of murder. Persons who are already functionally persons in the full sense have more important rights even than infants.' he then, logically, takes the next step: 'Does this distinction apply to the killing of a hopelessly senile person or one in a permanent state of coma? For me it does.'[2]
The danger in Hartshorne's definition of what it means to be a human being is that as a definition, it's entirely arbitrary. Hartshorne believes social function is the mark of 'full humanity,' but why should we agree? Perhaps one is 'fully human' when one can feel pain, or think, or ask questions. Maybe one is 'fully human' when one looks human. Even lacking all of these features, perhaps one is still fully human. Does level of development and functioning as a human necessarily dictate whether one is fully human or not? Which is also to ask the question, if one is not fully human, then what are they?
In examining the United States Supreme Court ruling of January 22, 1973, which gave every woman the right to an abortion, Schaeffer quotes Joseph P. Witherspoon, "In this 1973 decision the court . . . Held that the unborn child is not a person within the meaning and protection of the term 'person' utilized in the fourteenth amendment so as to strip all unborn children of all constitutional protection for their lives, liberty, and property."[3] Schaeffer goes on to note how invoking the fourteenth amendment (which does not define 'persons') is arbitrary in a number of ways; firstly, it's medically arbitrary. Quoting from Our Future Inheritance: Choice or Chance (1974), Schaeffer notes that according to the book, the question of when human life begins is open, "It [abortion] can be carried out before the foetus becomes 'viable' -- although when that is, is in itself an arguable point [...] a biologist might say that human life started at the moment of fertilization when the sperm and the ovum merge".[4] Rightly observing that, "the full genetic potential for becoming a human being and will be come one if implantation [in the womb] and gestation are successful. At what stage of development should the status of a patient be attributed to the embryo or foetus?"[5]
Needless to say, in Kreefts The Unaborted Socrates, Socrates and Dr. Herrod (an abortion doctor) had this very discussion over degree of development and the acceptability of abortion as a viable option:
Herrod: All right. Look at the differences between the zygote and the adult person. Those who call abortion murder say that a person begins at conception, that the zygote is a person. SO they must say there is a greater difference between prezygote and zygote than between zygote and adult, since the first difference, they say, is a difference in kind, between nonperson and person, while the second is only a difference in degree, between two stages of growth of a person. It is this claim, I feel sure, we will be able to see as absurd. Surely you see the enormous difference between a zygote and yourself: a far greater difference than that between prezygote and zygote [...]
Socrates: Let us begin with something we do know. What are the differences between an infant and an adult? [...]
Herrod: All right. Let's see . . . For one thing, infants are obviously much smaller [...] they are much less developed in all their bodily systems [...] they are more dependent on their mother for survival [...] the infant does not move much unless moved, while the adult roams about at will.
Socrates: Now -- one more question before we return to the fetus [...] Do any of these four differences we have just mentioned make a difference as to whether killing is murder or not? For instance, can we say that it is murder to kill a large person but not a small person? Or is it worse to kill a larger person? [...] Would you say that it is not murder, or less serious murder, to kill a preadolescent child whose reproductive system is not fully developed, than to kill a late adolescent, whose system is complete?
Herrod: Of course not. But it does seem to me worse to kill an adult than a ten-minute-old infant. The degree of development does seem morally relevant.
Socrates: Let us see if this "seems" is an "is". If the degree of development makes a moral difference, then a great difference in degree of development would make a great moral difference, and a small difference in development would make a small difference in morality [...] Then if it is much worse to kill an adult, than an infant, it would be a little worse to kill a late adolescent than a preadolescent [...] And it would also be not such a terrible thing to molest or beat or kill small children as large ones.
Herrod: No, no. If anything, it's worse. The small ones are less able to defend themselves. Everyone detests child molesting.
Socrates: The absurd consequences necessarily follow from your false principle.
Herrod: What false principle?
Socrates: That the victim's size of degree of development makes a difference to the morality of killing.[6]
Craig reinforces the above, "Those who deny that the little one in the womb is a human being typically confuse being human with being at some later stage of development [...] This argument seems to me completely fallacious. On this reasoning, we could with equal justice say that because a child is not an adult, he is not a human being; or because a baby is not a child, he is not a human being. Of course, an embryo is not a baby, but that doesn't mean that an embryo is not a human being. All of these are various stages in a human being's development, and it is completely arbitrary to cut off one stage and say that because it is not a later stage, it is not a human being.[7] As Herrod said, "either there is a sharp break, and then abortion after that is murder, or else there is not, and then it is not so bad to kill a ten-year-old as a seventeen-year-old".[8]
It seems then to me the question naturally turns to viability, that some how it necessarily follows that because a fetus is some how dependent upon its mother for survival, it is not a human being (or less human?). Not forgetting that young babies are just as dependent on us to continue living. The idea here is that if a baby can be born and survive, it is a person. If not, then it is not a person. This seems wholly ridiculous, however, as even born babies cannot survive outside of the womb for very long. It seems to me, however, that viability (just as time and location) is not an indicator of personhood. For instance, a baby born in the modern age and kept alive in an incubator might not have been viable in the classical age, but is nevertheless a person.[9] It does not seem to me that there is any possible way, save intentional ignorance, that one could claim a fetus to not be a human being, a person. "The fact is that from conception to old age we have the various stages of development in the life of a human being. It seems therefore that the medical and scientific facts make it virtually undeniable that the developing fetus is a human being".[10]
[1] Francis Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? (Wheaton: Crossway, 2005 ), 223.
[2] Francis Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto (Wheaton: Crossway, 1981), 21-2.
[3] How Should We, 219.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid., 219-20
[6] Peter Kreeft, The Unaborted Socrates (Downers Grove: Intervarsity, 1983), 57-8.
[7] William Lane Craig, Hard Questions, Real Answers (Wheaton: Crossway, 2003), 116-7.
[8] The Unaborted Socrates, 60.
[9] Ibid., 62.
[10] Hard Questions, Real Answers, 120.
Related posts:
- Fetus: human being, if not, what?
- Anti-abortion… Anti-women?
- Book Review: Three Approaches to Abortion
