Menstrual Extraction, Suction, Dilation and Curettage, and Saline are all methods of abortion and, to many, practiced methods of murder. But from the blind emotions of fanatic Pro-Lifers to the vague rationalization of women en route to the clinic, the entire issue of abortion lies shrouded in unsupported personal convictions and human subjectivities. Within the limits of this paper I will briefly discuss the three main areas of confusion about the issue: the perception of a fetus, philosophical considerations and the arbitrariness of any decision in this matter; and concomitantly, I hope to substantiate my belief that the availability of a safe abortion is an inalienable right to be denied to no one.
The first cries of a child symbolize the beginning of life and its continuation, and within the sound lies the raw material for a future eloquence and the fact of an individual will beginning to interact with our maternal natures, its small, rounded features grabs us with a perception of cuteness, and together with its complete innocence we are helplessly drawn to cherish it. There is a magic and awe in the sight of a child, and hte well publicized procedure of abortion – showing us such revealing sights as a trash can in an operating room bulging with the carved up remains of, so recognizably human, fetuses – fills us with utter revulsion. All this is a sensationalized appeal to our emotions without regard to an intellectual understanding of what is truly occurring. If we consider what a human is and what the defined characteristics in our definition of a human being are, we shall find that many of our emotions become groundless misperceptions. We extend our perceptions of human existence into nonhuman domains by the general act of anthropomorphism, and by the specific act of developing empathy. In concert, these two modes of thinking can strongly attach us in emotional manners to objects in our world (i.e. our emotions for our pets). Let us remove the human characteristics of a mannequin from those of a human and we are left with the qualities of the mind; now, remove those qualities of the mind which are shared by lower primates or animals, and what we are left with are the truly distinctive characteristics of a human entity; namely, an exalted functioning of certain faculties such as memory, reasoning, association, imagination, and their collective operation in personality and consciousness. Birth denotes the beginning of the functioning of these faculties and the beginning of what we should rightly call a human; but before interactions with an environment, what is there in this biological potential that fits our definition of a human? There is no personality or consciousness that we could recognize – a child’s psychology, even at the well developed ages from one to two years old, has only reached the threshold of distinguishing between himself and his environment – and the faculties, in whatever stage of development, are empty of any material for thought. Going back, in consideration, to the elusive moment when functional neuronal tissues first begin to form, the whole idea of human characteristics vanishes. What does exist, however, is a human potential, and that I will consider later.
One argument against abortion smartly avoids the notion of human existence and cries of murder at the general taking of life; but what are the limits of our respect for life? Can the omnirespect of a Buddist, or of a Zainist who carries a broom to sweep away any creatures from his path which he might trod upon, be persuasively put forth in a manner which avoids the unprovable truths of beliefs or the authority of a God? Even if the gods do exist they contradict a general respect for life by having Man live by the divine, and all lower forms by Darwin; or by teaching general respect and have allowed, by lack of divine intervention or word, almost the complete total of all creatures to have ever existed, to have lived in an environment of death-struggles for niches, mates, food and territory. We must consider what exactly life is. If we define life as having the qualities of independent existence and/or the ability to reproduce, and considering the chemical processes which comprise those abilities, then the term “life” loses its connotative holistic quality and reduces to a denotative collective noun which embraces a complex of biochemical operations. Few would mourn the untimely death of a bacterium, but the more an organism resembles the basic human form and the more its behavior becomes understandable in human terms, the more revolted we are by the idea of killing it; and this is a good clue to a fallibility in our thinking. We are all brought up with varying degrees of respect for the inviolable right of human life, and the more a lower organism resembles a human, the more of this right to life we transfer to their existence, but we can claim this to be an intellectual conviction or is it rather an unreasoned, and wrongly applied, emotional feeling? In the termination of a pregnancy, after seven weeks of development the embryo resembles its future form enough to evoke this feeling of unreasoned emotion, and an abortion at later stages brings us the horror of an Auschwitz revisited. We must, therefore, be clear on the extent of our moral applications, and how their fluid nature can range into situations where they have no utility and cause us to consider events in a human light which may lie outside the human sphere of things. A fetus cannot be regarded int he same sense as a person; its only connection with humanity lies in its developing design and in its potentialities. But regardless of the question of a fetus’ inclusion into the sanctions of our morals, no immorality could be demonstrated even with their application to this issue. The morals which would apply to the act of killing, per se, cannot apply here because a fetus fits none of the exclusive definitions of being a human. In Christianity, the commandment of “Do unto others as you would them do unto you,” generalized within Kant’s Categorical Imperative as saying that any action is correct if it can be willed applicable to all, can be interpreted, with regard to killing, as implying that the more prone we are to kill, the more prone we shall be in being killed. But can these two representative moralities have any valid application to the question of terminating a pregnancy? Outside the moral teachings which deal with the relations of individuals, and the unexplained an unsupported religious dictum, the only guide must be in the consequences of an abortion. Any consideration of consequences, with the use of such theories as Mills Principle of Utility. which states that any action is correct if its consequence promotes the greatest amount of good over evil, will, upon reflection clearly point to the morality of the termination of unwanted pregnancies.
The last main area of confusion is in the failure to recognize that all past, present and future decisions on when human life begins and the latest time at which it can be aborted is to be an arbitrary one and based, not on any solid, logical determinators, but on a mutual acceptance and understanding of the reasons why it must be arbitrary. The entire event of human development is a steady sequence of developmental stages, each dependent on the preceding one and a necessary precursor to the one following; and nowhere, from the formation of spermatozoon and oocytes to the birth of a child, is there any deciding flash of instantaneous human existence. If we use the viability of a fetus as a guide, the only way we can express the survivability of a fetus outside the womb at various stages of growth is in terms of probability. For example, in Boston, an obstetrician named Dr. Edelin aborted a one pound, three ounce fetus that was observed by a nurse to breathe a few times on its own. Dr. Edelin made not attempt to save it and was, therefore, indicted for murder. The probability, base on statistics, put its survival odds at a chance of 1 in 276,000. What, but an arbitrary number, could we choose to draw the line at? Or, we could think in terms of which stage does the idea of a potential human become so strong, or realized, as to set this period as the beginning of the fetus’ right to life. The moment of conception is regarded by many, especially Christians, as the instant at which human life becomes an inviolable approaching reality. But this seems more based on the aesthetical symbolic unit of two dissimilar parts to make a perfect (human) whole, than on a logical base of determining a beginning. We can carry the idea of human potentials back and say that with further perfections in artificial insemination and and artificial womb techniques we are in the wrong to deny the average of 300,000 female germ cells to be united with a sperm from the unlimited male supply to eventually become a conscious, thinking agency; and by not going through the extra effort, we would be wrongly preventing a conception. In all, there exists no criteria in a steadily evolving system which we could use to precisely set the boundaries of change.
In conclusion, the issue of abortion is made vague by the mistaken attributes of humanity we place within an unborn child, by the way our individual emotions and morals can, at times, wrongly affix our feelings and senses of proper action into, or concerning, areas which lie outside their dominion, and by the absence of any obvious facts that could lay the answer to the abortion question clear to us. I believe that after a more objective reflection on these areas of confusion, an opinion of greater reality results and clearly points to the righteousness in the act of abortion. Consequentially, to deny the availability of a safe abortion for an unwanted pregnancy would be a crime against society, women, and the resulting unwanted children; the child would be born as a curse, a frightening obligation, and a symbol of immorality with the greatest possible chance of not receiving a child’s undeniable right to receive love, affection, proper care, and guidance; the women would be force into a form of slavery – which motherhood is when it is not wanted – and the thought of such a fate would drive many in desperation to clothes hangers, basement ‘butcher clinics’, suicide, and prayers for miscarriage; and society would suffer a kind of illegitimate cancer which would weaken its resources, its ability to control its size, its productivity, its collective moral character, and its general harmony of operation in the promotion of good over evil for each individual living within.