Abortion

• conception & when life begins

  ensoulment at conception- you're a person as soon as the zygote forms
• conception & when life begins

  delayed ensoulment

  Aquinas says 60 - 80 days and Aristotle says 40 days for boys and 90 for girls
• conception & when life begins

  brain activity, as early as 54 days, justified since brain activity constitutes the end of life
• conception & when life begins

  viability, when the baby is self sufficient at 24 weeks, the law in uk
• conception & when life begins

  at birth, you are only a person once you're out of the womb
• conception & when life begins

  when the spinal cord develops at 14 days
• Mary Anne Warren- what is a person?

  SCREAM
• Mary Anne Warren- Scream

  Sentience
• Mary Anne Warren sCream

  capacity to communicate
• Mary Anne Warren scReam

  reason
• Mary Anne Warren scrEam

  emotionality
• Mary Anne Warren screAm

  awareness of self
• Mary Anne Warren screaM

  moral agency
• Mary Anne Warren- problems with SCREAM

  • she says you don't need all the components, so which do you need?
  • rejects foetuses as potential persons
  • there are people, eg heavily mentally disabled, who don't possess even a majority of the components- ableist
• Judith Jarvis Thomson- the violinist

  • you wake up plugged into a violinist with kidney disease acting in the place of a dialysis machine.
  • to unplug is to kill them and you're only there temporarily until they recover
  • Thomson says its permissible to unplug because, while the violinist has a right to life, the dialysis person doesn't have a duty to be a good samaritan by keeping them alive
  • replace the violinist with a foetus and the dialysis with pregnant person, and the same still applies
• Judith Jarvis Thomson

  women are not morally obliged to carry to term, even if the foetus is a person
• Judith Jarvis Thomson

  • the pregnant person is the house and the landlord, the foetus is their tennant.
  • they can kick it out if they want to since they have rights over it.
  • the foetus' right to life doesn't mean a right to someone else's body even if that body is keeping it alive.
• Judith Jarvis Thomson

  pregnancy strains and damages the body of the pregnant person, abortion could be seen as self defence.
• Judith Jarvis Thomson

  there's no prima facie duty compelling you to be a good samaritan if the pregnancy is from rape/ faulty contraception.
• Judith Jarvis Thomson


  her arguments doesn't cover people who are responsible for getting pregnant but don't want to carry to term, the person in the violinist example is a stand in for rape/ faulty contraception.
• Christine Overall

  it's morally wrong not to respect the private wishes of the pregnant person, even if they want to kill the foetus
• Christine Overall

  forced carrying to term violates reproductive autonomy
• Christine Overall

  genetic relation with the foetus makes the pregnant person the most appropriate person to decide what to do with it.
• Christine Overall

  forced birth is equivalent to compelling someone to give up an organ, there's no way to justify an intrusion like that.
• Christine Overall

  removing her right to decide is misogynistic- its an example of our patriarchal society treating women as incapable
• Natural Moral Law- primary precepts

  abortion goes against all primary precepts
• Natural Moral Law- secondary precept

  abortion is wrong because it does not preserve innocent human life
• Natural Moral Law- secondary precept

  abortion is wrong because it's a violent act so doesn't uphold living peacefully in an ordered society
• Natural Moral Law- secondary precept

  abortion is wrong because it prevents reproduction
• Natural Moral Law- secondary precept

  abortion is wrong because you can't nurture and educate the young if you prevent them from ever living to begin with
• Natural Moral Law- secondary precept

  abortion is wrong because it doesn't worship god since it goes against sanctity of life and scripture like "do not commit murder" "before i formed you in the womb i knew you" and "god created man in his own image"
• Natural Moral Law- doctrine of double effect

  treating ectopic pregnancy and uterine cancer by removing the fallopian tube and uterus respectively, killing the foetus in the process, is permissible because it's an unintended consequence.
• Natural Moral Law- proportionalism

  can be used to justify any number of cases, like the uterine cancer and ectopic pregnancy as well as other complications and maybe things like not wanting to raise a rape baby.
• Natural Moral Law- Aquinas' own view

  • delayed ensoulment, 60 - 80 days
  • whoever kills a foetus is guilty of murder, if you were to strike a woman and cause a misscarriage you'd be punished, abortion is the same.
• Natural Moral Law- catholic church

  abortion is forbidden, even in cases where it would save the pregnant person's life as well as rape cases and incest.
• Abortion example

  • doctor during holocaust aborts 3000 babies to save 3000 women who would've been killed for being pregnant.
  • pragmatic, solution to save the women from death
  • personal, put the women first before potential persons
  • positive, a value judgement. agapeic calculus, saving 3000 lives instead of losing 6000 by not aborting since the foetuses would die if the mothers were killed
  • relative, goes against rules saying abortion is wrong
• abortion example

  • lady aborting her thalidomide baby since she was worried it would have birth defects was right
  • pragmatic, a practical solution to save the baby from being disabled
  • positive, a value judgement that not living at all was more loving than forcing the baby to live a difficult life
  • relative, went against the law in arizona
  • he said her choice to go get an abortion in sweden was brave, loving and right
• Situation Ethics- Fletcher's example schizo girl assessment

  
  

  • pragmatic- it would be a solution to save the girl from further distress
  • personal- puts the girl before the potential person
  • relative- would go against the law
  • positive- value judgement it would be more loving to prevent the baby from living a bad life and saving the girl from birth which would be very distressing
• abortion example

  there was a case where a schizophrenic girl in a mental hospital is raped by another patient and the authorities refused the father of the girls request for abortion since her life wasn't in danger. Fletcher calls it a "pregnancy begun in an act of force and violence by a mentally unbalanced rapist upon a frightened mentally sick girl", seemingly implying an abortion would've been the right thing to do
• Quality of life

  human life is not inherently valuable, it depends on what kind of life it is, can be used to permit abortion