The most compelling moral argument against abortion centers on the right of the unborn fetus to be protected by the wider society against its mother in the case that it mother seeks to kill it.* Helpless or innocent people, especially, deserve our attention to their rights because they can not always defend themselves, so this position carries enormous weight.
This argument is at least diminished, if not negated, of course, in cases in which women were raped or molested, resulting in pregnancy.** It seems to be completely defeated in cases in which the life of the mother is at risk.
At bottom of my position is the assumption that adult women have the same right to make medical decisions about their bodies that adult men have. No one should object, that is, if a woman has her appendix removed.
So what makes a fetus different from an appendix?
It's not "humanity." The appendix has the same claim to being "human" that a fetus does -- all the DNA, all discernible objective material.
It must be that the fetus is a "person." So what makes a person?
In every decision we make in life, we must weigh priorities. Many such choices entail taking one thing more seriously than another. We cross the median line on the road in order to avoid hitting a pedestrian because we take our obligation to avoid harm to the pedestrian more seriously than our legal obligation to stay on our side of the street.
One way to "measure" personhood, though inexact, is to ask what priority we would give the life in question. Analogies are always risky, but take this one: if you were driving down the road and had to choose between colliding with a human walking across it or colliding with a chicken walking across it, you might choose the chicken. Why? Because you believe that the walking human has moral priority over the walking chicken. The human is more of a person. She has some quality or set of qualities that distinguish her from the chicken. Maybe it's because she is sentient, or has emotions, or can anticipate pain. Maybe it's just because she is more like us. All of these standards are problematic at some level, but in the end they are what we have.
Abortions require prioritization. The woman choosing an abortion must decide that the potential person in her body is less important than something else. The fetus, in almost every way, is more like the chicken than the woman herself. They both are human, but the fetus is not sentient or emotional or capable of anticipation. Furthermore, at the moment of the decision, it is attached to the woman and no less part of her body than the woman's appendix.
So the question is this: who should be allowed to set the priorities in such a case. The burden seems to be on those who want to dictate to the woman. Why should anyone be allowed to decide what medical procedures she can consider for her safety or even her comfort? Those who want to abolish abortions entirely must defend a deep and wide intrusion into the woman's life, and therefore must explain why the fetus is more of a person than the woman.
In some cases, I suppose such an argument could be made, but certainly not in all, and definitely not in a case in which the life or health of the mother is at stake. As far as I can see, therefore, allowing abortions is the moral things to do.
* I have no use whatsoever for arguments against contraception, or for the rights of the father, for example. In other contexts, those positions may have some merit, but they fall so short in the question of most abortions that they are not interesting to me in the least.
** I have even less use for the argument that a woman who was raped or molested is somehow responsible for her pregnancy. Anyone making that case loses the privilege of taking a stand on behalf of the fetus solely on the grounds of complete incoherence, if not dishonesty.
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