Since most of my readers are not sitting in this coffee shop right now, and therefore didn’t get to hear the louder-than-was-probably-wise argument I just had with Megan McArdle about this post, allow me to offer an alternative to the explanation Megan offers here:
My thoughts are a little ragged here, but here goes: most people are against aborting healthy fetuses. Most people are in favour of aborting fetuses that have certain kinds of birth defects, primarily those that affect the head, nervous system and brain, or impose early fatality. That’s because most people don’t think of the cognitively disabled as fully human. Most people don’t care as much about what happens to the retarded as they do about what happens to cognitively normal people.
Assuming “cognitively disabled” here means “retarded” as opposed to “brain-dead or close to it,” that’s a pretty vulgar sentiment she’s attributing to folks, and I hope it isn’t true. If it were, it might well count as a point in favor of Ross’ view, since it would suggest that thinking about selective abortion activates some of people’s uglier intuitions.
But here’s another possibility. Suppose (per Megan) most people hold views on the status of the fetus that are somewhere between mine and Ross’. That is, they don’t think a second-trimester fetus is a full-blown person just like you and me, albeit tinier, but they do think it’s… something. It has some sort of moral status intermediate between, say, your cousin Bob and a turnip: You can’t just do whatever you like to it, but it also doesn’t have the kinds of strong rights a person does. This is actually how most of us feel about lots of the higher animals, though we obviously disagree on the specifics. Most people think it’s immoral to maim or kill a dog or a chimpanzee just for your own amusement, or if it would save you some minor inconvenience. But most people also think it would be permissible to maim or kill that very same dog or chimp (but not a person) for important medical research, or if it would avoid some significant burden.
If, as I’m supposing, many people do hold this sort of “intermediate” view of the fetus, at least at some stages of its development, then we don’t have to explain the pattern of reactions Megan alludes to by ascribing to people the ugly view that retarded people are somehow subhuman. Instead, they might ascribe the same value to both at the adult and fetus stages, but judge the reasonableness of terminating either sort of pregnancy, not by the standard of full rights, but relative to the expected burden on the prospective parents if the pregnancy is brought to term. At any rate, I hope that is the explanation.
7 responses so far ↓
1 razib // Aug 3, 2007 at 8:02 pm
most people accept and support the coercive power of the state to shape social mores. obvious social conservatives do, but what about liberal support to anti-discrimination laws and speech codes? i think it is pretty obvious that ross knows that unlike you julian most supporters of abortion rights aren’t strongly wedded to the property rights argument (“my body, my choice”). disparate impact matters, which is why conservatives also love to bring up the higher abortion rates for black americans. if you focus purely on the criteria for determining means the argument is over before it begins because most people in the USA aren’t going to go as far as ross re: the “life” issue. but if you switch toward ends the ball game shifts, and people no longer seem themselves as instruments maximizing their personal utility, but individuals embedded in a social context which they feel they should have a voice in.
2 LP // Aug 3, 2007 at 8:04 pm
“…that’s a pretty vulgar sentiment she’s attributing to folks, and I hope it isn’t true. If it were, it might well count as a point in favor of Ross’ view, since it would suggest that thinking about selective abortion activates some of people’s uglier intuitions.”
Aside from all the to-do over whether it counts as ‘eugenics’ or not, I share the general uneasiness about genetic engineering and genetically-informed abortion decisions. Humans have a strong, strong aversion (coupled with an equally strong fascination) to biological weirdness, physical and mental characteristics that are way outside the normal range. People who look odd, who have odd body parts, who act in odd ways — most people, in their day-to-day lives, are very uncomfortable around the physically or cognitively disabled, and go to great lengths to avoid them. This suggests to me that if/when abortion of all but the ‘best’ fetuses becomes routine (or is displaced by pre-conception genetic engineering), it may start with the alleviation of obvious genetic defects, but it will end with the elimination of an awful lot of interesting human traits that might be considered sub-optimal. (Sorry for going all sci-fi dystopian there.)
3 Gordon Lightfoot // Aug 6, 2007 at 9:46 pm
While you could carve out an argument for the abortion of fetuses with genetic defects that is essentially neutral regarding the intuitive revulsion that such defects inspire, I think it’s a little dishonest to say that gut aversion has nothing to do with people’s opinions. In most cases it is probably the predominant formative element of those opinions, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There is something about saying a woman can’t abort a Down Syndrome stricken fetus that is creepier, in my opinion, than hearing that the aforementioned fetus MUST be aborted for eugenics reasons. There is a sense in which some some serious genetic defects really do constitute the creation of something “sub-human,” and the natural impulse to disown these unfortunate creations doesn’t come out of nowhere. I am not saying that a woman “should” have an abortion under these sorts of circumstances, but I think it’s not a valid criticism to suggest that a woman who has an abortion because the idea of raising a Down Syndrome child creeps her out is somehow self-evidently unethical, whereas if she decides to have an abortion because she’s made a heartless calculation regarding the burdens associated with such a task that now it’s morally acceptable. Especially since, for all practical purposes, there is not going to be a real distinction between these two decision mechanisms. The facts that would lead you to believe that a Down Syndrome child would be a more exceptional burden than a normal child are the same facts that would lead a person to an instinctive aversion to having that baby.
4 Julian Sanchez // Aug 6, 2007 at 11:22 pm
I certainly agree *in principle* that there is a level of cognitive defect so severe that it places one outside the human moral community–anaencephalic births are an extreme and unambiguous case. But Down’s just isn’t even close. But I want to stress, since maybe it wasn’t clear, that I’m not here passing judgment on anyone’s private reasons for wanting to terminate their own pregnancy; I’m talking about *third party* judgments of whether it’s *morally permissible* to abort in each case.
5 Gordon Lightfoot // Aug 7, 2007 at 3:39 am
Alright. I think I understand what you are saying here, and I probably took things a little out of context before. In conversations I’ve had with people, it’s pretty clear that when they say they think aborting a genetically defected fetus is acceptable and aborting a healthy fetus isn’t, they really probably aren’t making a gut check about how they feel about potentially retarded babies. This exception is similar to the “in case of rape” type abortion allowance which is also commonly held, and it seems to me they are held for similar reasons. I am not sure, however, that it would be fair to say that there is a widespread idea about the intermediate moral status of a fetus. Most of the time these kinds of exceptions are entertained by people who are looking for a “middle way” in dealing with the moral question of abortion: people who are uncomfortable with both the idea of abortions and the idea that there could never be a good reason to have one. If you asked them what they thought the status of a fetus should be, they’d give you the standard pro-life answer. The exceptions aren’t plugged into the logic of their moral schema at all-they are just tossed out there willy nilly, as a concession that there must be SOMETHING to the pro-choice argument.
6 Jon H // Aug 7, 2007 at 11:08 pm
“In conversations I’ve had with people, it’s pretty clear that when they say they think aborting a genetically defected fetus is acceptable and aborting a healthy fetus isn’t, they really probably aren’t making a gut check about how they feel about potentially retarded babies. ”
They’re probably thinking the way people have thought for millenia. If you’re a neolithic family on the steppe, it does none of your family any good if you’re spending all your time caring for, say, a child which has stuck been at the developmental level of a newborn.
And if overall infant mortality is high, then I doubt someone would hesitate to kill a disabled newborn or infant. Healthy kids would be rare enough, no point wasting your scarce resources raising a child who will be a non-contributing burden.
Which is not to say the child would be put to death without grief or mourning. There would probably be those things, along with regret that circumstances had turned out that way.
My point being, infanticide has been a part of human life for millenia, especially in circumstances of limited resources. I think it would be odd if we didn’t carry some of that along with us even now. At root, it is a survival instinct.
I do think a lot of pro-lifers would find themselves making precisely this kind of decision if they found themselves in a dire enough situation for long enough.
7 Bill // Aug 15, 2007 at 7:25 pm
again I have a relevant post up now.
http://draggedfromthebottom.blogspot.com/