I have a long comment at ProSocial Libertarians, responding to Andrew Jason Cohen on “Moralism and Contemporary Politics,” itself a libertarian discussion of the Dobbs decision. The just-preceding link takes you to Cohen’s post. Scroll down all the way for my comment, which turns out to be longer than the original post.
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Policy of Truth 
This is not a comment on those comments, Irfan, only on law on abortions. It seems very hard for people who have always thought of this issue in terms of rights of the potential human being in the uterus versus rights of the mother to reorient to the rights in play over this, realistically, as between adult citizens.
The governor of my State Virginia, has declared his metaphysics: “Life begins at conception.” Of course, he might give a lot of weight in his views said out loud to opinions from voters (anyway one’s believing the individual human soul is in human DNA and who affect Republican electoral nominations). What is discouraging is that he can presume people understand that by “life” he means life as human life, that being human life is not detected as an equivocation with being a human being, and that he is talking of whose conflicting rights as the ones really at issue in prohibiting abortions. And, sadly, his presumption about the audience is correct.
Pushing the picture that what is at issue is whether the fetus (or earlier) has standing for rights to the house (Prof. Finnis of the olden days), the mother’s uterus, versus the rights of the mother to her body, to her autonomy in devising her own life, reminds me of the way religious people push the picture that in every moral issue, say whether to commit adultery, they are only carrying out God’s directions for proper living. So you get these parties to the issue, namely God or the potential human being, that are really a mask for the believer’s own values, and a distraction.
At a practical level, the contest is between the adults, namely the pregnant woman and adults who, by the law, want to have a say in the pregnancy. It is to those adults, with their metaphysics and moral ideals, that the pregnant woman can become impressed into the service of their projects for her body, and indirectly her future, instead of her own projects and ambitions in life. This can happen only if she is a pregnant woman trying to procure an abortion in the term before the fetus/baby is capable of sustained life outside the womb, with or without artificial support. The judgment of that capability has been in the province of the attending physician, so it is a decision on the development at hand, although there tends to be a clustering of the become-capable ones around a certain time in the term, given the particular stage of medical technology at the time, that is, given the present capabilities to artificially sustain the life of the delivered little one outside the womb. Capability for sustained life outside the womb, with or without artificial support, is the definition of viability (Colletti v. Franklin 1978). It is not a definition of personhood or rights-bearing of the little one. The significance of the viability stage was that people not the mother could after that point carry out there project of continuing the development to infancy, childhood, and adulthood, without impressing the mother into the service of their project. When I talk of impressment for services, it means forced labor, which is slavery—like in military conscription, but for another sort of endeavor.
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A fetus in the womb isn’t a potential human being. It is actually a human being, clearly distinct from both its parents (and all other instances of the species.) What you mean is that the fetus is potentially a person – that is, it’s a being which, if given the appropriate care, will develop the faculties of a rational agent, but doesn’t have them yet.
The devil in the view you’re taking, that a being must actually have the rational faculties for it to have rights under the law, is that human beings don’t develop those faculties until some time after birth, and can lose them either temporarily or permanently. So this view implies that it’s fine to abandon infants, the comatose, and the senile to die of starvation, if their relatives don’t want to support them anymore. That isn’t compatible with any justification of the State as the special defender of the helpless and friendless – which is almost every justification I’m aware of. (Of course a complete libertarian or anarchist can take this stance without inconsistency. But are you a radical foe of the State as such?)
As for “pregnancy is involuntary servitude” – every woman ought to know that pregnancy is a possible result of sex with a man. Therefore every woman who engages in sexual relations has, in that very act, already accepted the risk that her projects and ambitions will be seriously disrupted by pregnancy. The pregnant woman isn’t being impressed into anything, she’s being held responsible for choices she previously made. Starting with the pregnant woman, without asking how she got that way, cuts away her acts of agency to make her seem a victim. (People who play Russian roulette and die of it are classed as suicides, not accident victims, because their decision to pull the trigger on a possibly loaded gun led to their deaths. The principle is the same.)
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Michael Brazier: [RISK] Therefore every woman who engages in sexual relations has, in that very act, already accepted the risk that her projects and ambitions will be seriously disrupted by pregnancy.
Sure, in the typical case. But it will take more argument to establish the further claim:
Michael Brazier: [RESPONSIBILITY] The pregnant woman isn’t being impressed into anything, she’s being held responsible for choices she previously made.
There are plenty of cases where voluntary actions involve accepting risk, but do not involve committing to endure any well-known consequence. People who drive on interstate highways accept a normal, easily quantified and well-publicized risk of injury or death; but when these happen they are counted as accidents, not suicides. People who leave their front doors unlocked accept a normal risk that someone may come in without their permission and take their worldly possessions; people who walk alone and unarmed at night accept accept a risk that their projects and ambitions may be seriously disrupted by robbery or murder, but this is of course not the same thing as giving permission for the burgling, mugging or murder, much less some kind of binding permission that they can be held to keep on giving by force of law.
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The risks of driving a car are quite low (about 1 in 10,000 chance of death, according to a quick Internet search) and can be mitigated by prudent behavior (careful driving and regular car maintenance.) So one can’t say that death or injury are expected consequences of driving on interstate highways, for any individual. Also, I believe that in most car accidents the law does hold at least one driver responsible for all injuries and damages incurred, considering them negligent in their handling of their vehicle. Meanwhile, burglary and mugging are inherently wrong, so the responsibility for their results is always placed on the criminal – if the victim was negligent, by leaving a door unlocked or being alone and unarmed in a dangerous neighborhood, that’s immaterial to the criminal’s guilt.
Pregnancy can’t be assimilated to either of these. First, sex isn’t inherently wrong, though it’s fraught with consequences (and ought to be treated much more seriously than our current culture does.) Second, the chance of pregnancy from a single copulation is quite high (1 in 4, as I understand) making it very much an expected consequence for any reasonable person, rather like rolling six on a standard die. And if people are held responsible for running much smaller risks than that – as they are, for car accidents – a pregnant woman can certainly be held responsible for running the risk that made her pregnant.
The basic answer to your question “Why should a pregnant woman be required to support the infant in her womb until it has grown enough to survive outside it?” is that she is partly responsible for the infant existing and being in that position of complete dependence on her. It’s not as if pregnancy can just happen to women spontaneously – if live sperm constantly circulated in the water supply, waiting for women to take baths, say. That’s why “the pregnant woman” is the wrong place to start. To be true to the biology and the morality, you have to start with the sexual act.
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“A fetus in the womb isn’t a potential human being. It is actually a human being, clearly distinct from both its parents (and all other instances of the species.)”
That a fetus in the womb has a unique DNA distinct from its mother is not incompatible with the fetus being also a part of the mother’s body, sharing her circulatory system and so forth. That the mother’s left eye is a human eye does not make it a human being nor a potential human being (without our profound laboratory manipulations of it). In the course of natural development, the fetal brain is only a potential human brain in the earlier stages, notwithstanding the fact that its neurons and glial cells are uniquely human. At 25 days of gestation, the human embryo has a nervous system resembling that of a worm. By 40 to 50 days the brain clearly is that of a vertebrate, resembling that of a fish. By 100 days, it is clearly recognizable as a mammalian brain. By five month, it has acquired the features of a primate brain. It is over the next four months that it acquires the vast expansion and elaboration of the forebrain and cerebral cortex of a human brain.
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Michael Brazier: [INDIVIDUATION] A fetus in the womb isn’t a potential human being. It is actually a human being, clearly distinct from both its parents (and all other instances of the species.)
Well, maybe. (Certainly, I have no basic objection to calling attention to possible conceptual distinctions between the question about biological [?] identity and the question about criteria for moral or juridical personhood.) But I’d say that even this claim needs some more argument than you’ve given it here. There are stages of pregnancy at which treating a fetus as an actually distinct, biologically human organism in a symbiotic relationship with the mother makes pretty good sense. There are also stages of pregnancy, or alternate outcomes, where I don’t think this is nearly as obvious as you’re presenting it.
Does an ectopic pregnancy involve an actual human organism distinct from the mother, or does it involve something that has failed and will fail to develop into a human organism? Well, I can see arguments for either side. (Lots of people will point to genetic distinctness from either parent as a basis for distinguishing zygote or embryo or fetus from mother; but this is obviously not a necessary condition — consider identical twins, artificial cloning, etc. — nor is it a sufficient condition on its own — human bodies can have lots of cells and tissues in them that are genetically distinct from their normal genotype, both for good and for ill, e.g.: gametes, tumors, transplanted organs, etc. etc. that are nevertheless part of the body not alien to it. There’s a teleological story you can tell about normal embryonic development in living human beings, etc. that can do some work towards making the relevant distinctions. But I think it is not obvious and is actually worth the work of trying to give non-question-beggingly plausible criteria that would locate and explain the transition from potential to actual human being.
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Yes, an ectopic pregnancy does involve an actual human being distinct from its mother. The problem is that, having grown in the wrong place, the fetus will kill its mother well before it’s able to survive outside her, so leaving it there will just kill both it and her. Only the mother can be saved, so removing the fetus is permitted. (Ectopic pregnancy is, in fact, exactly why jurisdictions that ban abortions generally allow it to save the mother’s life.)
If failing to implant in the right place is enough reason to deny the humanity of an ectopic fetus, you might as well argue that a grain of wheat is not really wheat unless it gets planted – which is ridiculous. An organism not developing the full powers of its species is still of its species.
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Michael Brazier: [SELF-DEFENSE] … The problem is that, having grown in the wrong place, the fetus will kill its mother well before it’s able to survive outside her, so leaving it there will just kill both it and her. …
Sure, I don’t disagree with any of that and I’m familiar with the argument. I agree that IF one accepts that an ectopic pregnancy involves (i) an actual, distinct living human being (organism) from the mother, AND (ii) this being counts as a rights-bearing person at this (very) early stage of development, AND (iii) its being a distinct rights-bearing person is sufficient to make it impermissible for the mother to get an abortion at the expense of its life, in the typical or normal (non-ectopic, non-life threatening) case, THEN the claim (SELF-DEFENSE) above is a reasonable account for why abortion would still be permissible in the emergency case, and the explanation of why it typically would still be legal under most historical and new abortion laws, even very restrictive ones.
That said, I’m not convinced by your argument below for the claim that an ectopic pregnancy does involve an actual human being distinct from the mother. I don’t think that very much about the ethics of abortion or the right to abortion turns on that; the usefulness of the Roe or Casey doctrines of a state interest in “potential life” might turn on it; but if so, I think that’s a problem for the (not great) arguments in Roe and Casey, not a problem for (stronger) pro-choice positions that focus on condition (iii) above, not on conditions (i)-(ii). But, that said —
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Michael Brazier: If failing to implant in the right place is enough reason to deny the humanity of an ectopic fetus, you might as well argue that a grain of wheat is not really wheat unless it gets planted – which is ridiculous….
Well, I agree that one might as well argue the one as the other; and either may seem patently ridiculous to you. But it doesn’t to me, and I’d rather see the argument for this conclusion, not only in the case of the ectopic pregnancy but also in the case of the wheat germ.
“A grain of wheat is not really wheat unless it gets planted” sounds ridiculous if you take this as a claim about SPECIATION (if it’s not wheat, then what is it?) but that would be equivocation, and missing the point of my response above to the claim about INDIVIDUATION of organisms — the question isn’t whether or not it’s “wheat;” the question is whether (1) it’s already an actually distinct wheat plant from its mother plant, or (2) it’s still a part of the mother plant, with only the potential to become a distinct plant, or (3) it’s no longer part of the mother plant, but as yet only a potential not an actual wheat plant. The fact that it may have a unique genetic compliment distinct from the mother plant’s is not enough to make it obvious which of these options is the correct one. Here is a picture of a ripe stalk of wheat:
https://radgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/SplitShire-280038-2036736197-768×512.jpg
The ear of wheat in the foreground has a whole bunch of seeds on it. But I will flatly assert it is not ridiculous to maintain that the foreground features one actual wheat plant and not dozens of them all attached (for now) to the same stalk. Perhaps it is incorrect to say so; but if so, I think you’d need some kind of non-question-begging argument to the conclusion that the seeds in the photograph have to be counted as (1) not as (2) or (3).
And it’s not ridiculous to maintain that even though each of those seeds already has a full genetic compliment possibly distinct from the mother plant’s, and even though each of them has the potential to become a distinct wheat plant given the right conditions for development. I figure there’s a reasonable case for insisting that those seeds should be counted as (1) not as (2) or (3); but there’s also a reasonable case for (2), and there’s a reasonable case for (3).
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Very well, let’s look at organisms more closely related to humanity than plants. It would be quite impossible for anyone to claim that a bird’s eggs are part of the bird, as they’re not even physically connected. And a fertilized egg begins with an embryo at the stage of an undifferentiated clump of cells. Such an egg contains an individual bird, of its parents’ species but numerically distinct from them.
However – all of the mammalian species descend from egg-laying vertebrates. So if physical separation from the parent is necessary for an embryo to count as individuated, we would have to postulate that the first placental mammals had embryos which were parts of their parents, while the species most nearly related to them, with otherwise very similar fetal development, had individuated embryos. This would not be a useful assumption for biology. Physiologically, it’s much more important that the mother and the fetus don’t share any organs at any point; the two circulatory systems approach each other very closely at the placenta, to share oxygen and nutrients, but never mingle their fluids or tissues. That functional separation is enough to show that a fetus and its mother aren’t one organism, but two.
Besides, it wouldn’t exactly help your overall position if a fetus were just part of its mother, because gratuitous self-mutilation is also morally wrong. The assumption that a fetus is not an integral part of its mother’s body (and thus can properly be removed from it) is a necessary condition for pregnancy to be involuntary servitude; otherwise it would be similar to a man demanding to have one of his hands cut off. If pregnancy isn’t an unwelcome intrusion into a woman’s body, why would she seek an abortion at all?
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Michael Brazier: It would be quite impossible for anyone to claim that a bird’s eggs are part of the bird, as they’re not even physically connected.
I agree that a bird’s fertilized egg, once laid, cannot plausibly be counted as (2) still a part of the mother bird. That leaves two options out of the three I listed: (1) the egg is (or better, contains) an actual living bird distinct from the mother; (3) the egg is (or better, contains) a potential living bird in embryo, which is not yet an actual living bird but will develop into one. But I don’t see any reason you’ve given for eliminating option (3).
I am not sure that this is obviously true of the egg before it is laid, while it is still developing in the body of the mother bird (as all eggs must, for a time). Now, if the forming or formed but not yet laid egg is a part of the mother hen’s body, it’s an odd sort of body-part — not like an organ you hope to retain as part of regular biological life, but rather a temporary part of the body that normally will and indeed must ultimately be expelled. But there are clear and uncontroversial cases where such tissues are still part of the body more or less just as long as they are in it — menses, gametes, placentas, etc. etc. etc. — and despite what you rightly say about the egg in the nest, the forming or completed egg that is still in the goose is going to need at least some further story for eliminating option (2) (i.e., part of the mother while it’s in the mother, then either (1) or (3) once it’s in the nest).
Maybe these options are the wrong way to go — for that matter maybe they are also the wrong line to take for, say, an acorn once it’s off the branch or a grain of wheat, once it’s on the ground, even if it is not (yet) planted or growing. But, if so, why? Are the cases all assimilable, or are they distinguishable? If so, on what criteria?
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Michael Brazier: And a fertilized egg begins with an embryo at the stage of an undifferentiated clump of cells. Such an egg contains an individual bird, of its parents’ species but numerically distinct from them.
I agree with the factual claim about fertilized eggs. I don’t know whether I agree or not with the claim that it contains an individual bird rather than the potential makings of a living bird. This may be because — I will confess — I don’t know nearly enough bird embryology to understand the relevant stages well enough. But I also think there are some genuine hard problems about when undifferentiated clumps of cells can be properly said to have become whole and actual organisms of their biological kind (and my own suspicion is that not only are there genuine hard problems, but that there may be no general theory that can provide a good solution in all cases — the best approach to those problems may vary a lot based on biological details and teleological considerations about the kinds of creature and the forms of life in question). Again, maybe I’m wrong about all that; but if so, why?
Michael Brazier: [boldface added] However – all of the mammalian species descend from egg-laying vertebrates. So if physical separation from the parent is necessary for an embryo to count as individuated, …
Hold on a second, none of the views considered in any of this discussion — about the grains of wheat, or the bird’s eggs (whether laid or not yet laid), or ectopic pregnancies, or for that matter normal human pregnancy and childbirth — involved a claim that “physical separation from the parent is necessary to count as individuated.” (If not SEPARATED, then necessarily it’s not the case that INDIVIDUATED.)
The claim I entertained as non-ridiculous in the cases of ectopic pregnancies and of the seeds on the stalk of wheat, was this: that in the absence of physical separation from the parent, another, different factor (in particular, a genetic compliment distinct from the parent) is insufficient to count as individuated. (If not SEPERATED, then it’s not the case that GENES necessarily implies INDIVIDUATED.) In my original comment I pointed out some examples where this seems uncontroversially true (e.g., transplanted organs).
So the claim you’d want to be arguing against here is not a claim that anything in the body of the parent is necessarily a part of that parent’s body; that would be a strawman. (And could be easily enough refuted just as easily by pointing to a tapeworm as to the evolutionary history of mammalian reproduction.) The claim that you’d want to be arguing for is the claim that some feature of the fertilized cells in an ectopic pregnancy (maybe their genotype, or maybe something else — but if so, what?) DO clearly provide a sufficient condition for them to count as an individuated organism, which condition holds up plausibly well across counterfactuals and across relevantly analogous cases. But if there is such a feature, what is the feature?
Michael Brazier: … we would have to postulate that the first placental mammals had embryos which were parts of their parents, while the species most nearly related to them, with otherwise very similar fetal development, had individuated embryos.
I agree that IF one holds (i) the embryo in a bird’s egg is NOT (2) a part of the mother hen’s body but either (1) a distinct actual organism or (3) a distinct potential organism, but (ii) the embryo in an ectopic pregnancy IS (2) a part of the mother mammal’s body, THEN you would have to take that view about the evolutionary development of placental mammals. But I don’t see why this would obviously be a problem for the view.
It’s an important biological fact about mammalian reproduction that it has a very different course of development from reptilian or avian reproduction, and one of the important ways in which it differs is precisely that the conditions you (rightly) cite as proof positive for the individuation of bird embryos don’t obtain in placental mammals, and they don’t obtain because placental mammals developed an extremely complex system of tissues and organs for maintaining a much more intimate and intensive connection between the body of the mother and the developing embryo. Once, long long ago, the mother of us all reproduced by laying eggs; but then even longer ago, the mother of us all was a single-celled organism that reproduced by cloning. Maybe these evolutionary change are enough to make it reasonable to adopt a different view of when in that new and very different form of development a child becomes an individuated organism distinct from the parent. Or maybe not; but then, why not?
Your remarks on placental development are interesting, and I’m perfectly happy that they MAY be relevant to a proper account of what conditions might be sufficient for individuating an implanted embryo as a distinct organism from its mother. (It’s not obvious to me that this is entirely right; as an empirical matter, the parts of a developing embryo or fetus that the baby will keep after birth are pretty carefully separated from maternal tissue; but placentas in particular are a pretty complicated knot of tissues, and have to be to work properly, and absolutely do not avoid mingling of embryonic and maternal tissue.)
But even stipulating to the strongest version of your descriptive claim, this cannot possibly do ALL the work you need to do for your argument; the separation between a fetal circulatory system and the mother’s circulatory system tells you not very much about how to think about very early stages of embryonic development, — and this is directly relevant to the question of ectopic pregnancies — because they’re all complex structures that are not always present in embryonic development, and which have to develop over time in the course of normal growth and development. Maybe a closed circulatory system is the right place to draw the line; maybe the (much, much earlier) development of the membranes for an amniotic sac are; maybe these are all bad answers and the right answer depends on something more relevant to the independent life of the organism once born (for example capacities for perception, movement, breathing, etc.). As I’ve said repeatedly, I can see a plausible case for the position that you want to sketch out for wanting to adopt option (1) (actual organism, numerically distinct); but I don’t think you’ve given decisive reasons for ruling out option (2) (not yet numerically distinct; though normal healthy development will eventually make it so), nor have you offered any argument at all that I can see for ruling out option (3) (numerically distinct from mother, but as yet potential makings for an organism of its kind, not yet an actualized organism of its kind).
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Michael Brazier: Besides, [1] it wouldn’t exactly help your overall position if a fetus were just part of its mother, because [2] gratuitous self-mutilation is also [3] morally wrong.
In reverse order:
[3] Maybe so; I think that’s kind of complicated, see below. But I should note that this touches only on one of the questions about abortion, and specifically does not touch on the question of whether or not the right to abortion is one of the rightful liberties a woman ought to have. There are lots of things that are morally awful, but which (I would argue) people have every right to do — wasting away your patrimony or your child’s college fund on luxurious vacations, say, or ruining your health and relationships with a lifetime of chronic alcohol abuse. These are morally bad; but attempts to respond to them by prohibitionary laws or by the use of legal force is (I baldly assert, admittedly without much argument) vicious, tyrannical and stupid, and a serious infringement on the liberties of the people subjected to this kind of prohibition.
[2] I don’t know about that, man. I think principle [2] here is plausible only if you are using the terms “gratuitous” and “self-mutilation” in such a way that they already have a great deal of prescriptive content, and relatively very little descriptive content, baked into them — to settle a contested moral question with this principle is about as likely to be non-question-begging as trying to settle it by pointing out that murder is a crime most foul (certainly, it is), or that a woman’s got a right to kill in defense of her liberty (I reckon she has), when the dispute was precisely about whether abortion is murder, or whether ending a pregnancy is one of the liberties that she is rightfully entitled to defend.
There’s all kinds of cutting away body parts that people do and that they have a right to do and that there’s nothing wrong with them doing, sometimes that they really ought to do — shaving, clipping fingernails, cutting hair, etc. This includes body parts that won’t grow back. Sometimes the effects of this are trivial (for example, pierced ears); sometimes they are profound. There are cases where the cutting is not compelled by any necessity, but where it is justified by a chosen purpose (taking out a piece of liver or a kidney to donate it to a loved one or a stranger); there are other cases where the choice is much more a matter of much more narrowly self-directed convenience (for example, a vasectomy, a hysterectomy or tubal ligation) There are cases where the effects implicate thorny ethical questions about informed consent (for example, the circumcision of infants); on the other hand, it seems pretty clear to me that the question about consent is doing a lot more of the work than the question about cutting up the body. (Abram of old chose circumcision as an act of religious devotion; maybe he was right to, and maybe not, but I don’t think a general principle about cutting the body does any useful work in deciding that.)
You may of course claim that examples like donating a kidney are cases where the act is not gratuitous, even if it is mutilating. Contrast organ donation with having a kidney taken out and then throwing it in the garbage — the point of the surgery is that suffering the “mutilation” is justified by a high moral purpose. But of course the problem that you’re going to have here is to articulate what makes for a high enough moral purpose, or would fail to make for a high enough moral purpose, in the case of an elective abortion. Most women who get them get them because they think it’s the right thing for them to do under the circumstances. You may disagree, but then the characterization as “gratuitous self-mutilation” is contested and, unless you adduce some independent moral considerations, just begging the question. A woman who is trying to decide, for example, whether or not to become a mother just isn’t in the same moral boat as a person who wants to get a hand cut off just for the hell of it, and I think you know this; the “mutilation” isn’t nearly as profound in its effects, and the reasons that she has behind her choices (whether or not you think they are sufficient) are certain to be far more profound. You may well think that they are insufficient — but then explaining in detail why this is so is precisely the argumentative task that you have at hand, and is not settled simply by asserting that gratuitous self-mutilation is wrong.
[1] My “overall position” does not turn on any of the questions under dispute in this thread. As I’ve flatly stated elsewhere, my own view is that neither the right to elective abortion, nor the moral permissibility of elective abortion (these are of course two separate questions) does not depend on a claim that an embryo or a fetus is a part of the body of its mother, or any claim about whether they are numerically distinct organisms; my view is that abortion is within a woman’s rights, and in a broad range of cases morally permissible, even if it is stipulated that the fetus is a numerically distinct human being, and even if it is a rights-bearing person. My interest here is mainly one of curiosity, not one of advocacy: I’d like to see more of the argument for the premises that your argument draws on above, I don’t think that my position is bolstered or hurt or particularly affected by the answers to the questions about numerical distinctness.
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The claim that an embryo is just a potential living thing of its species implies that it’s actually something else. But what could that be? It certainly isn’t a living thing of another species; are you perhaps suggesting that it isn’t alive? But that makes no sense either – an embryo metabolizes nutrients, grows, and develops internal structures, just as living things do, and nonliving things don’t.
As a matter of fact, an embryo is a whole organism, complete in itself; and its DNA is that of a member of its parents’ species. Being alive, complete, and possessing the proper genes is normally enough to identify an organism’s species; why should being at a very early stage of its growth be considered relevant?
The only such problem I’m aware of is identical twins, where one embryo splits into two or more in the first ten days of gestation. That does raise a doubt about how many organisms a single embryo actually is. It doesn’t help abortion advocates much, though, since when it happens at all it occurs before the pregnancy can even be detected, so the specific moral questions of abortion don’t arise.
The same features that apply to normal pregnancies. As I’ve already explained, it’s permissible to abort an ectopic pregnancy because the fetus can’t survive anyway and will probably kill its mother if left in place. It isn’t necessary to deny any trait the fetus has to reach that conclusion. The details of embryonic development aren’t relevant; the logic holds regardless of those details.
Yes, I noticed that. I would appreciate it if you turned your attention to my remarks above, which are a direct reply to your position. Embryology, while interesting in itself, has really very little to say about the moral questions at hand.
After all – and this brings us back to where I started – the only reason we regard a human fetus as special is that it’s potentially a person, a rational and moral agent, and the point where that potential is fully realized comes well after birth. Nobody has ever objected to performing abortions on nonrational animals; I believe it’s occasionally done to livestock, for instance. Yet nonrational mammals acquire all the capacities you suggest as marks of individuation, and many others, except for rationality – so if you adopt one of those, how would you avoid the claim that cows have rights?
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Andrew Jason Cohen has responded to my first comment on his post at PSL, and I’ve just responded to his response. More comments on abortion and other topics forthcoming across the long weekend.
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“A fetus in the womb isn’t a potential human being. It is actually a human being, clearly distinct from both its parents (and all other instances of the species.)”
That a fetus in the womb has a unique DNA distinct from its mother is not incompatible with the fetus being also a part of the mother’s body, sharing her circulatory system and so forth. That the mother’s left eye is a human eye does not make it a human being nor a potential human being (without our profound laboratory manipulations of it). In the course of natural development, the fetal brain is only a potential human brain in the earlier stages, notwithstanding the fact that its neurons and glial cells are uniquely human. At 25 days of gestation, the human embryo has a nervous system resembling that of a worm. By 40 to 50 days the brain clearly is that of a vertebrate, resembling that of a fish. By 100 days, it is clearly recognizable as a mammalian brain. By five month, it has acquired the features of a primate brain. It is over the next four months that it acquires the vast expansion and elaboration of the forebrain and cerebral cortex of a human brain.
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