The Abortion Conundrum
Nikola Man
Sheesh. Where to begin? I’ll begin with honesty. The topic of abortion never piqued my interest. The subject was never close to my heart and had no impact on my life in any capacity so, selfishly, I have never explored it. I always thought “why should a dude debate about pregnancy?”. That all changed when a friend suggested the topic for this series of articles. Abortion fits the bill perfectly, it is a highly emotionally-charged subject on both sides, it is relevant right now, and it can be looked at through data. However, the reason I chose to tackle this subject is something completely different. Abortion presents a very interesting and difficult philosophical conundrum. It has vast moral implications for our society and, above all, I believe a rational approach to solving the problem does indeed exist.
I want to answer two main questions here:
Is abortion moral?
Should abortion be legal?
A couple of definitions first, you know I love my definitions. They are also useful because they ensure we all know exactly what each term means in the discussion. What is a living being? The most commonly used definition states that, in essence, a living being is a uniquely organized and functional system dealing with energy and matter. The property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter, is manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli or adaptation to the environment originating from within the organism. Inanimate systems are just structures of molecules and atoms while living systems are organisms consisting of cells. Remember primary school biology? The cell is the basic structural, functional, and biological unit of all known organisms. Cells are the smallest units of life. Two more definitions – embryo and fetus. An embryo is the early stage of development of a multicellular organism. More specifically, an embryo is a human offspring during the period from approximately the second to the eighth week after fertilization, after which it is usually termed a fetus. In human prenatal development, fetal development begins from the ninth week after fertilization and continues until birth.
With these definitions out of the way, I will try to tackle the question of morality in an unemotional manner. I have to reiterate; I am only answering the question “is abortion moral” and will not be touching upon its legality in this segment.
So is ending the life of a human fetus moral?
In order to answer that question, we have to answer another one – does the human fetus have any value and any rights? Based on the textbook definitions presented above, both the embryo and the fetus can and should be considered life. I would also argue that the fetus is human life. Those who argue that a fetus has no value and no rights are usually saying that a fetus is not a person. The question of when personhood begins is a really difficult one to answer and I believe there is no one answer that would satisfy everyone or even the majority of people. However, it is irrelevant for the discussion here. A living being doesn’t have to be human to have intrinsic value and rights. I am sure most people would agree that animals, especially pets in our society have some rights and intrinsic value. So that is my first argument here – even if you reject that a fetus is a person, a fetus doesn’t have to be a person in order to have intrinsic value and rights.
When facing this argument, people tend to shift the focus to the rights of the mother. Their claim goes along these lines – a mother should have the freedom to choose to end the life of her fetus. Is this moral? It is, if you believe that the fetus has no intrinsic worth. Confusingly, in most pregnancy cases nearly everyone believes that the human fetus has infinite intrinsic worth and the absolute right to live. When you ask? When a pregnant woman wants to give birth. This is the overwhelming majority of pregnancies by the way. So in these cases, both the society and its laws regard the fetus as so valuable that if someone were to kill the fetus they can be prosecuted for homicide. My question here is simple – does the fetus have intrinsic worth or not? You cannot have it both ways. This leads me to the second argument – on what moral grounds does the mother alone decide the worth of the fetus? We most certainly don’t do that with newborns. It is society, not the mother OR the father, that determines whether a newborn has worth and the right to live. So why should that be different before birth? Why does the mother alone (one person) get to determine whether that being has the right live?
Many respond with the argument that a woman should have the right to control her body and I agree. Every individual, man or woman, should have the right to control his or her own body. The problem here is that the fetus is not her body, IT is a separate body located in her body. My third argument here is quite simple – nobody ever asks a pregnant woman “how’s your body?”, we all ask “how’s the baby?”.
No clutter here, I am jumping straight into the fourth argument. Almost everyone on the planet agrees that once the baby is out of the womb, killing the baby is a) an atrocious, morally unacceptable act and b) a criminal, illegal act. Yet, taking the life of a fetus is often seen as morally problematic as laser hair removal surgery. How does that make sense?
The last and final argument – I believe that there are cases where everyone believes that abortion is not moral. Would it be okay to abort a male fetus just because the mother prefers girls? You can’t imagine that scenario? How about the reverse – China has a long history of sex-selective abortions which still persists today in rural areas. We are talking about a male-to-female baby ratio of 1.3 to 1. That is insane. Yes, that literally means that mothers were (and still are) aborting their female fetuses just because they wanted a boy.
I presented these exact same 5 arguments to a couple of friends and without exception I could see panic in their eyes as they realized that their original positions weren’t really thought through. They realized that there is much more to this subject than just “my body my choice”. You know who else realized that? I did. As I was debating myself and building the 5 arguments you see above, I too panicked. I know, weird activity and even weirder that I would admit it publicly. Anyway, you are probably convinced that I am a staunch pro-life advocate. You are wrong, I am not. Let me demonstrate that to you as we shift the focus from morality to legality and my proposal as to what should be done.
I believe that most rational people, when presented with the moral arguments above, have the same desire – fewer abortions. I think this is true for both people who are pro-choice and people who are pro-life. Further, the most common reason for abortion is an unwanted pregnancy. Most people, on both sides of this debate, believe that unwanted pregnancies should be curbed as much as possible. Does that mean that abortion should be outlawed? Does prohibiting abortion by law actually reduce the number of abortions? No, but what it does do is increase the number of unsafe abortions, as evidenced by numerous studies and analyses, most notably by Guttmacher institute. One study in particular showed that, in countries that restrict abortion, the percentage of unintended pregnancies ending in abortion has increased during the past 30 years, from 36% in 1990–1994 to 50% in 2015–2019. Moreover, unwanted pregnancies happen across the board in all countries and all income groups irrespective of their abortion policies as shown in the two graphs below. Making abortions illegal just makes the problem worse.
There are other reasons to keep abortions legal such as complications that could end the mother’s life, complications with the fetus/baby, and for cases of rape and incest. While these reasons represent a relatively small fraction of total abortions, they nonetheless happen and need to be addressed safely in a sanitized, professional environment of a well-funded clinic. However, unfortunately, the vast majority (around 90%) of abortions are those where a healthy woman aborts a healthy fetus and there is no way around it, these abortions just aren’t moral. So what should we do?
Abortions have to stay legal
We should avoid overbearing restrictions
However, some restrictions should exist – for example setting the upper limit for pregnancy termination. The worldwide average is 24 weeks, however, most evidence I’ve looked at suggests that a slightly shorter upper limit for termination should be imposed (16-20 weeks). You wouldn’t believe how late some countries have their limits set to. I personally belive it should be somewhere around 12 weeks, but that's just my subjective take.
Clinics should offer counselling by experienced psychiatrists and psychologists
Above all and most importantly, our education system must provide comprehensive sex education. We need to teach our boys and girls about sex hygiene, all forms of contraception, consent, and responsibilities that come with a child among others
This last one is essential. Proper sex education simply yields results. Countries with the best sex education programs and reasonable legislature have the lowest numbers of unwanted pregnancies and decreasing rates of abortions.
Abortions are not a contraceptive method and shouldn’t be treated as such. Killing a newborn is an egregious, morally reprehensible act, yet for some people abortions carry the moral weight of tooth extraction and that is unacceptable. To illustrate why, here is an ultrasound image of a fetus 12 weeks into a pregnancy:
Yes, this is 12 weeks into a pregnancy
So as you can see, my position on the matter is not a straightforward one. There are several reasons why I have been able to formulate an opinion that relies on arguments from both sides of this highly controversial debate. The most important one being the fact that I was able to sit down and calmly make a plan of attack. I approached this subject as I would any other:
What does the science say? What does the scientific consensus point to?
What conclusions present themselves once I analyse the official numbers?
What do the world’s leading doctors, biologists, ethicists, and philosophers say?
In this case, I also did some of my own philosophizing as you could see in the moral arguments. An essential component of my argument building process is trying to refute every point I make. I imagine having the opposite stance and then try to either come up with or find the best counterarguments and when I say try I mean really try. When I say really try I mean days in the case of this article and in most cases months and sometimes even years of thinking, internal debating, and searching for strong counterarguments. If my argument still stands after all this time and effort spent trying to prove the opposite or just find some faults, then I can stand behind my argument/opinion with reasonable confidence. That being said, I am fully aware that I have many limitations and that is why I always welcome a discussion on any subject. The only way for my arguments to be even stronger is for someone to poke some holes in them. In order for these discussions to happen, please, for the love of everything that’s beautiful in this universe, stop feeling through problems, start thinking through problems.
A big thank you to my brilliant and wonderful friend Anja for the idea of collecting the sources I used. Click here to see the full list of sources.