The zygote is merely a potential person. Webster's Dictionary lists a person as "being an individual or existing as an indivisible whole; existing as a distinct entity." Anti-abortionists claim that each new fertilized zygote is already a new person because its DNA is uniquely different than anyone else's. In other words, if you're human, you must be a person.
Of course we've already seen that a simple hair follicle is just as human as a single-cell zygote, and, that unique DNA doesn't make the difference since two twins are not one person. It's quite obvious then, that something else must occur to make one human being different from another. There must be something else that happens to change a DNA-patterned body into a distinct person. (Or in the case of twins, two identically DNA-patterned bodies into two distinct persons.)
The demarcation between something that is human and someone who is a person is 'consciousness.' It is the self-aware quality of consciousness that makes us uniquely different from others. This self-awareness, this sentient consciousness is also what separates us from every other animal life form on the planet. We think about ourselves and use language to describe ourselves. We are aware of ourselves as a part of the greater whole.
The problem is that consciousness normally doesn't occur until months, even years, after a baby is born. This creates a moral dilemma for the defender of abortion rights. Indeed, they inherently know what makes a human into a person, but they are also aware such individual personhood doesn't occur until well after birth. To use personhood as an argument for abortion rights, therefore, also leads to the argument that it should be okay to kill a 3-month-old baby since it hasn't obtained consciousness either.
However, the Pro Choice defender's fear is unfounded. A human does indeed not become a full person until consciousness. And consciousness doesn't occur until well after the birth of the child. But that does not automatically lend credence to the anti-abortionist's argument that it should, therefore, be acceptable to kill a three-month-old baby because it is not yet a person.
It is still a potential person. And after birth it is an independent potential person whose existence no longer poses a threat to the physical well being of another. To understand this better, we need to look at the next question about physical dependence.
The zygote is absolutely dependent on another human being for its continued existence. Without the mother's life-giving nutrients and oxygen it would die. Throughout gestation the zygote-embryo-foetus and the mother's body are symbiotically linked, existing in the same physical space and sharing the same risks. What the mother does affects the foetus and when things go wrong with the foetus, it affects the mother.
Anti-abortionists claim foetal dependence cannot be used as an issue in the abortion debate. They make the point that even after birth, and for years to come, a child is still dependent on its mother, its father, and those around it. And since no one would claim its okay to kill a child because of its dependency on others, we can't, if we follow their logic, claim it's okay to abort a foetus because of its dependence.
What the anti-abortionist fails to do, however, is differentiate between physical dependence and social dependence. Physical dependence does not refer to meeting the physical needs of the child - such as in the anti-abortionist's argument above. That's social dependence; that's where the child depends on society - on other people - to feed it and clothe it. Physical dependence occurs when one life form depends solely on the physical body of another life form for its existence.
Judith Jarvis Thompson cleverly illustrated physical dependence back in 1971. She envisaged a scenario in which a woman is kidnapped and wakes up to find she's been surgically attached to a world-famous violinist who, for nine months, needs her body to survive. After those nine months, the violinist can survive just fine on his own, but he must have this particular woman in order to survive until then.
Thompson then asks if the woman is morally obliged to stay connected to the violinist who is living off her body. It might be a very good thing if she did - the world could have the beauty that would come from such a violinist - but is she morally obliged to let another being use her body to survive?
This question becomes even more profound when we consider a scenario where it's not an existing person who is living off the woman's body, but simply a potential person, or better yet, a single-cell zygote with human DNA that is no different than the DNA in a simple hair follicle.
To complicate it even further, we need to realize that physical dependence also means a physical threat to the life of the mother. The World Health Organization reports that nearly 670,000 women die from pregnancy-related complications each year (this number does not include abortions). That's 1,800 women per day. We also read that in developed countries, such as the United States and Canada, a woman is 13 times more likely to die bringing a pregnancy to term than by having an abortion.
Therefore, not only is pregnancy the prospect of having a potential person physically dependent on the body of one particular women, it also includes the women putting herself into a life-threatening situation for that potential person.
Unlike social dependence, where the mother can choose to put her child up for adoption or make it a ward of the state or hire someone else to take care of it, during pregnancy the foetus is absolutely physically dependent on the body of one woman. Unlike social dependence, where a woman's physical life is not threatened by the existence of another person, during pregnancy, a woman places herself in the path of bodily harm for the benefit of a DNA life form that is only a potential person potentially exposing herself to the risk of death.
This brings us to the next question: do the rights of a potential person supersede the rights of the mother to control her body and protect herself from potential life-threatening danger?
A potential person must always be given full human rights unless its existence interferes with the rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness of an already existing conscious human being. Thus, a gestating foetus has no rights before birth but full rights after birth. If a foetus comes to term and is born, it is because the mother chooses to forgo her own rights and her own bodily security in order to allow that future person to gestate inside her body. If the mother chooses to exercise control over her own body and to protect herself from the potential dangers of childbearing, then she has the full right to terminate the pregnancy.
Abortion is a woman's own right and choice. In 1973 the Roe v. Wade decision proved this by recognizing abortion as a fundamental constitutional right and made it legal in all states. The law now permits abortion at the request of the women without any restrictions in the first trimester and some restrictions in the second trimester to protect the women's health. The National Abortion Right Act League argues that without legal abortion women would be denied their constitutional right of privacy and liberty. The women's right to her own body subordinates those of the foetus and the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade argued that the women's "right to privacy" overruled the foetus’s right to life.
Anti-abortion activists are fond of saying "The only difference between a foetus and a baby is a trip down the birth canal." This flippant phrase may make for catchy rhetoric, but it doesn't belay the fact that indeed "location" makes all the difference in the world.
You cannot have two entities with equal rights occupying one body. One will automatically have veto power over the other - and thus they don't have equal rights. In the case of a pregnant woman, giving a "right to life" to the potential person in the womb automatically cancels out the mother's right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
After birth, on the other hand, the potential person no longer occupies the same body as the mother, and thus, giving it full human rights causes no interference with another's right to control her body. Therefore, even though a full-term human baby may still not be a person, after birth it enjoys the full support of the law in protecting its rights. After birth its independence begs that it be protected as if it were equal to a fully-conscience human being. But before birth, its lack of personhood and its threat to the women in which it resides makes abortion a completely logical and moral choice.
This brings us to our last question, which is the real crux of the issue: is abortion murder? It's not murder if it's not an independent person. One might argue, then, that it's not murder to end the life of any child before she reaches consciousness, but we don't know how long after birth personhood arrives for each new child, so it's completely logical to use their independence as the dividing line for when full rights are given to a new human being.
Using independence also solves the problem of dealing with premature babies. Although a premature baby is obviously still only a potential person, by virtue of its independence from the mother, we give it the full rights of a conscious person. This saves us from setting some other arbitrary date of when we consider a new human being a full person. Older cultures used to set it at two years of age, or even older. Modern religious cultures want to set it at conception, which is simply wishful thinking on their part. As we've clearly demonstrated, a single-cell zygote is no more a person that a human hair follicle.
No one thinks abortion is a wonderful thing. No one tries to get pregnant just so they can terminate it. Even though it's not murder, it still eliminates a potential person and is a hard enough decision to make as it is. Women certainly don't need others telling them it is murder. On the contrary, abortion is an absolutely moral choice for any woman wishing to control her body. Abortion does have negative affects on those involved. Research has shown that abortion may cause psychological side effects: it can leave the woman with feelings regret and grief. Symptoms like nightmares; panic attacks and flashbacks are signs of a recently discovered Post Abortion Syndrome. According to a study published by Association for Interdisciplinary Research in Valves and Social Change, one in five women studied had diagnosable stress disorders. (Lyons d-11) Also two in five had sleep disorders and flashbacks following abortion. As long as women are made aware of possible side affects and allowed to make a rational decision based on medical evidence then the state should not be intervening in what really is a matter of individual choice.
Bibliography:
Davies – Foetuses, famous violinists and the right to continued aid (Philosophical Quarterly, 1983)
Don Marquis – An argument that abortion is wrong (in ‘Ethics in Practice’, ed. LaFollete)
English – Abortion and the concept of a person (Canadian journal of philosophy, 1975)
Genschler – A Kantian argument against abortion (Philosophical studies, 1986)
Katz – Redefining abortion (in ‘Ethics in Practice’, ed. LaFollete)
Singer – Practical ethics (1979)
Thompson – A defence of abortion (in ‘Ethics in Practice’, ed. LaFollete)
Warren – Do potential people have moral rights (Canadian journal of philosophy, 1977)
Warren – On the moral and legal status of abortion (in ‘Ethics in Practice’, ed. LaFollete)
