You probably haven’t been thinking about abortion much lately. Neither have I. Then I read the following synopsis based on a collaboration between two reasonably rational people from different sides of the debate:
Having recently gone through several rounds of IVF, I realized that my perspective on the matter has changed a bit.
Embryo Stages
The first thing that has changed for me is that I am now much more aware of different stages in early embryo development. When discussion abortion, people are usually interested in questions like when the fetus becomes conscious, or viable, outside the mother. I don’t really have any insight about that. For IVF purposes, the following (somewhat simplified) stages are more relevant:
- Unfertilized egg:
2. Fertilized egg:
3. Blastocyst (200–300 cells):
4. Implanted embryo
At each of these stages, there is a certain rate of attrition for making it to the next stage. For example, we might have 30 eggs, of which 15 survive fertilization, and only 5 might become healthy blastocysts (it is also at the Blastocyst stage that we did genetic testing to determine if the embryos are genetically normal).
The reason I bring this up is that an egg dying at or after each of these stages is a significantly different event. Basically, if a single unfertilized egg is lost I wouldn’t be too upset. For me, I probably fee the same about a fertilized egg. But by the time the embryos become blastocysts, I care about each one of them. Once they have been found to be genetically normal (i.e., have the right number of chromosomes, etc) I really care about them.
After two rounds of IVF, at great monetary, physical, and emotional cost, we now have 5 genetically normal embryos. For each of these embryos, there is something like a 2 out of 3 chance that they can successfully be implanted, and result in a child. To me its pretty clear that they are not “people” yet. Destroying one of these embryos probably wouldn’t be murder, but it would be a significant blow to me and Mercedes.
The reason for pointing this out is that I don’t think it really makes sense to think of a child as having a single threshold point in time where they begin to have inherent individual value. At each stage their value grows. By the time a fertilized egg is about 5 days old, it can already be pretty important.
Value to Others
This brings me to my second point. In the analysis I linked to earlier, the points seem to center around whether the life of a fetus is valuable in and of itself, whereas the points I made above are mainly about how valuable an embryo is to me (and my family).
The fact that Mercedes and I have made a lot of sacrifices to get to this point (i.e., genetically normal embryos) has a significant impact on their moral standing. The value of a genetically normal blastocyst is, to a large extent, determined based on how much it matters to the parents.
I would argue that this value (i.e., the value to others) changes over the course of a life, but it never goes away. It is an important component of the value of life that doesn’t get enough treatment in the abortion debate. It really does make a difference whether people have placed their hopes and fears in something.
The implication here is that there is a viable distinction between, say, when a mother chooses to abort her own baby and when someone else causes her to abort against her will. If the value of a life depends to a certain extent on the value others place on that life, the moral culpability of ending that life depends on who does it. The mother not only provides life to a fetus — initially, she also provides moral relevance to that life (because she cares about it so much). Of course, she isn’t the only one. Much of the value of the healthy blastocysts Mercedes and I have is due to my attitude toward them, and, to a lesser extent, the attitudes of our parents and others who care.
Value to Self
This isn’t to say that a life can’t have moral relevance to itself. It is a relevant question to ask at what point a fetus (or a child) has moral relevance independent of its value to others. This is where the consciousnesses and viability issues come into play.
It does make sense to ask whether aborting a fetus harms the fetus itself. And as the argument linked to above makes clear, the question of consciousness is important (although by no means sufficient) for this inquiry. For example, it may be possible that the future potential for consciousness can have value to a presently subconscious being. Sill, regardless of your opinion on that particular question, we can probably agree that value-to-self is an extremely important element of morality.
Combined Morality
But I want to step back and point out that it is possible to develop a coherent morality where individuals don’t really have significant value distinct from their value to their community. As a Western society, we tend to think of everything from an individualistic point of view. But it is easy to get so caught up in this perspective that we can’t even imagine any alternatives.
I should point out that for most of my life, I myself took the superiority of individualistic morality as a given. I grew up that way, and it is still a part of me. It’s just that now I think individualistic morality has an equally important counterpart in communal morality.
Imagine for a moment that the true moral value of something was like the product (i.e., multiplication) of individual and communal morality. So, for example, an individual life without connection to any other conscious being would have no value. Similarly, an object without consciousness has no inherent moral value even if it is valued by others.
This is a pretty extreme proposition but it is useful to think about. Under this theory, killing something is “murder” if the victim is both 1) conscious, and 2) a valued member of a community. So imagine if, during a murder trial, the accuser had to bring evidence that someone cared about the victim. If no one can come forth and make a credible case that the victim was loved, the killer could not be convicted of murder.
In the abortion case, imagine a scenario in which women could only terminate a pregnancy after the likely development of consciousness if no one stepped up to argue that they cared about the fetus.
Implications
In practice, such a legal regime probably wouldn’t be practical. Pro-life advocates could step in and argue that they care about every fetus. And putting restrictions in place to prevent strangers from claiming that they love a victim could get pretty messy from a legal perspective.
Perhaps it is easier to just assume that each human being has others that care for them. Or maybe one could argue that each life is imbued with value because God cares about them. Or, alternatively, one could take the position that if a mother doesn’t want to give birth to a baby it is sufficient evidence that the child isn’t a valued member of society.
In a primitive society, the only real way to get justice was for your tribe to get it for you. So a persons moral and legal standing had everything to do with their membership in the community. To an extent this is still true today, but we tend to think of legal standing as a legal technicality rather than something that actually depends on our relationships with others.
My point here isn’t really to convert anyone to one side or another. It is simply to say I have a new perspective after having gone through IVF. Even several day-old embryos have a lot of value, but their value is largely contingent on the fact that I care. To me this serves as a reminder that the value of every person depends, to at least some extent, on our relationships with others.
