Oversimplifying Abortion

Apparently a creationist website called Uncommon Descent is attempting to get 25 influential atheists (some may say the 25 most influential) to answer a list of grossly oversimplified questions about what rights, if any, fetuses and newborn babies have. Seriously, go read that list of "five simple questions," for which UD is only willing to accept yes or no answers. The fact that anyone thinks such questions are simple goes a long way in explaining the vitriol fundamentalists spew at anyone who sees abortion as a viable, morally acceptable action.

Well, I may not be one of the 25 most influential living atheists, and I'm definitely not going to play by UD's rules, but I am going to answer the questions. Let's just get this out of the way upfront, though:

I realize these questions are designed to make abortion rights supporters look like monsters, but I'm also hoping that giving reasonable answers to unreasonable questions will help expose the intellectual deficiency and/or dishonesty behind the way a segment of the pro-life side tries to frame the debate.

(a) Do you believe that a newborn baby is fully human? This one's actually easy. Of course a human baby is fully human. But wait..."fully" human? Why "fully"? Given the context of these questions, the inclusion of that word seems to suggest that there could be such a thing as a half-human, or maybe a quarter-human, and further that such an entity might have a different moral status than a full human.

The only way I would consider giving a different response to this question is if the context were evolutionary, and we were speaking hypothetically about a transitional form between humans and a new species that evolved from humans. But then the question would be irrelevant. Species divisions are arbitrary and man-made, and there's often quite a bit of argument about which species a given specimen belongs to. So maybe a newborn human baby could be closer to a non-human species than either of its parents, but it's hardly a yes or no question.

(b) Do you believe that a newborn baby is a person? I loathe this question. The argument over what constitutes personhood is a huge quagmire that is, in my opinion, best avoided even when doing ethics. I vastly prefer to leave everyone to her own definition and look for solutions that work no matter what that definition is. This is why I love Judith Jarvis Thompson's defense of abortion. Rather than arguing over whether fetuses are persons, she simply concedes that they are (on whatever definition of "person" you prefer) then argues for why abortion is still morally permissible. 

That said, I tend to view personhood as falling on a continuum between the ability to experience flourishing and suffering, and the lack of said ability. As with all these "simple" questions, there's no easy answer, so I won't give one. Instead, I'll just say that I think it's possible for babies to be more or less persons.

(c) Do you believe that a newborn baby has a right to life? My position on rights is that talk about them is meaningful only within a legal context. You have rights only to the extent that your society grants them. Of course we can argue about whether granting more or fewer rights is in a society's best interests, but convincing me that rights are inherent to human beings would require a truly brilliant bit of metaphysical reasoning.

So technically my answer to this question is "If we're talking about America, then yes, I believe that a newborn baby has a right to life, because it is granted under American law." But let's remember that there's a huge ceteris paribus there, and if a baby is born with no chance to lead a productive life (that is, with no chance to experience anything approaching a reasonable degree of flourishing), then it has less of a right to life than a baby born with a normal capacity for flourishing. Still, I want to make it clear that I see this as an entirely legal question, and not a moral one.

(d) Do you believe that every human person has a duty towards newborn babies, to refrain from killing them? This one actually is simple: absolutely not. Having given that answer, though, let's quibble a bit about semantics. How does the questioner define "killing"? Is he referring to murder, or any action that would directly cause the end of the baby's life? If it's the latter, then it's easy to think of examples in which "killing" a baby is morally permissible, e.g. taking a child with no chance to ever breathe on its own off of life support. If it's murder, then I would still say "no," but with the caveat that it's much harder to think of actual world examples in which I would say such an act is morally permissible. In terms of possible worlds, though, it's much easier. Imagine a possible world in which you could travel back in time and murder Hitler in the crib. Would you have a moral duty to do so? I say you would.

(e) Do you believe that killing a newborn baby is just as wrong as killing an adult? This question comes with the same semantic quibble as (d). If we're talking about causing an end of life, then there are medical cases in which "killing" is not morally wrong, and may even be morally required. If we're talking about murder, then yes, I think a newborn baby has the same rights (again, using my legalistic definition of "rights") as an adult. It's not inconceivable to me that there could be a case in which murdering a baby is the moral thing to do, but I don't know of any such cases in the actual world as it exists at this moment.

My answers to these "simple" questions aren't as important as pointing out how messy and difficult the questions actually are. Only someone firmly in the grip of dogma (religious or otherwise) could think otherwise.