Thursday, March 16, 2006

...Versus a Four-Year Old Child

I want to thank everyone who commented on my query of when "life" begins. I received many erudite responses, all of which helped clarify the position in my eyes. I am sufficiently convinced to take as a provisional position that a fetus is endowed with moral personhood at the commencement of higher brain activity. This seems like a suitable brightline, and is intellectually coherent as it seems to actually correspond to a feature we feel importantly distinguishes humans from other creatures. This does raise interesting questions about the non-health-related abortion of a fetus whose higher-brain function has begun (I gather this happens around the 3rd trimester). I think some commenters were too glib in saying that even these abortions should be left entirely between a women and her doctor, but it's a tough issue. I also want to note a provocative argument made by philosopher Judith Jarvis Thompson (cited by Lindsay Beyerstein):
In a famous paper the pro-choice philosopher Judith Jarvis Thompson assumes the full human rights of fetuses for the sake of argument and goes on to make a very strong argument for the permissibility of abortion. This is a radical view, even among pro-choicers. Normally we don't think that the right to bodily sovereignty entitles us to kill another person who is impinging intextricably upon your person but who is not directly threatening your life....[However,] Thompson doesn't say that the woman's right to control her own body simply overrides the fetus's right to life. Rather, she maintains that an innocent person's right to life doesn't include the right not to be killed if that person should inadvertently end up parasitizing another person's body against their will.

It's an interesting claim. But that's not what I want to go into right now.

What actually has been nagging at me is the example I gave to show why "life begins at conception" isn't really a viable position. I'm going to modify it slightly to provide some symmetry for the point I'm going to be making, but I don't think it really changes the base analysis:
If a fire breaks out in a fertility clinic and you can only save a petri dish with three blastulae or a four-year old child, who do you save if all are equally persons?

The point of the question is that I'd clearly save the four-year old. And I would not feel the slightest bit guilty about it. By contrast, if the blastulae were equally "persons" to the child, I'd presumably be obligated to save the blastulae (there being more of them), and leave the child. I can't imagine any person with a soul actually doing that though.

The problem, though, is that on further reflection, the argument may prove too much. Consider this modified scenario:
If a fire breaks out in a hospital and you can only save three newly born, 5-week old triplets, or a four-year old child, who do you save if all are equally persons?

Here's where the problem lies, because I'd still probably save the four year old. I'd feel incredibly guilty about it, but I cannot imagine I'd turn away from a child crying for help in the face of a few infants. I'm just guessing my visceral reaction here, but I really think I'd do it. However, I don't think that infants are not full moral human beings, and I don't think they can be generally deprived of their rights as persons.

At first, I was willing to chalk this up to my predisposition to linking moral personhood to enhanced brain activity--four-year olds top infants on that score. Problem number one with that approach is that it ruins my brightline--I dislike stupid people, but I definitely don't think they deserve fewer rights, so creating a sliding scale of protection linked to brain function is problematic. Problem number two is that the analogy falls apart in the face of the next scenario:
If a fire breaks out in an office building, and you can only save three fifty-year old accountants, or a four-year old child, who do you save if all are equally persons?

Uh-oh. Even here I can easily see myself saving the child. Again, with lots of guilty feelings, but that's my gut. Why is that? It's hard to think of a rational reason. I think that we have a deep-set aversion to letting children come to harm. It seems that at least part of that sentiment stems from the feeling that a child's gifts have not had time to develop, the potential they hold within them is still untapped. Oh God, the potential argument! I thought we got rid of that back in the last post, when responding to the point that a fetus was a "potential" human being. But, like a video game boss character, it has re-emerged from the dead, in far stronger form than when we last battled. Whereas the mere potential of a fetus to become a human being does not intuitively drive me to recognize its full rights as a person, the potential of a toddler to become a great poet or brilliant scientist leads me to give it considerably enhanced protection compared to other persons.

Of course we give additional protection to small children all the time, for a variety of reasons. But none seems particularly applicable here. Small children are comparatively more helpless than adults, but then, so are fetuses (and blastulae). Society has a special interest in developing the talents of its young, but generally "special interests" don't extend to letting many people die so that one can live. Nor is this a triage situation; the child is no more or less likely to survive the fire than the accountants, should you choose to rescue her.

I'm not even precisely sure how this relates back to the abortion debate (if it does at all). But it's a moral dilemma that's been troubling me for some time. Am I entirely off-base here? Or is there some justification for my decision to over-protect four-year olds over other people?

What does this all mean?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

It means you think too much!

In hypothetical #1: The question is would a person even THINK of saving the blastulae? Would it even cross someone's mind? And if they did, would they assume any personal risk to preserve them? Since the answers are are "no" for almost everybody, that makes this a very clear example.

In hypothetical #2: The real question is, if it takes two trips to save all the children, who do you take first and would you risk certain death to make the second trip? I would have to take the newborns on the first trip because the four year old would have a better chance of being alive if a second trip could be made. What would people say if they knew you chose 1 over 3? Saving the most lives is probably the calculation here.

In hypothetical #3: I think that everyone would say save the child, even the Accountants. This comes from the parental/lineage protection instinct, and the "the kid hasn't lived his/her life yet" ethical argument.

I'm not sure how useful these hypotheticals are. I'm don't think that the degree of moral personhood enters into the calulation of examples #2 and #3.

I imagine that many people would save themselves and watch everyone perish. And in the intense stress of such a situation, would you have a head to make any considered decision? Probably not. If you save anyone, you've probably done better than most.

Anonymous said...

What does this all mean?

That's the best question of all.

I've spent time over the years noodling over similar hypotheticals involving humans and non-humans. (How about choosing between a human on life support and the last nesting pair of bald eagles left on earth?) They are interesting exercises. The key question is what you are going to do with the answer once you've decided it.

The appropriate use IMO is to clarify your values and to prepare for a potential emergency you might face. The purpose should not be to pass a law saying that, if you find yourself in a burning building, you first save the accountants, the child, or the embryos. We leave it to individuals to make those choices spontaneously and the net of all those choices becomes what society unoficially values.

Such is my pro-choice argument. Implicit in your exercise about when life begins is the notion that the bottom line gets codified so that we all must follow it. I say to let individuals decide this delicate question for themselves. That is the essence of pro-choice.

Karen

Anonymous said...

I also get the feeling that it means you think too much. FWIW, here's how I look at it.

In all scenarios except possibly #2, I make the same decision as you. However, the key is that, when I save the 4 year old in scenario #1, as with you, I don't feel any guilt over it. No matter who I save, in scenarios #2 and #3, I do feel guilty because I left one or more living, breathing, pleading for help person/people behind.

Scenario #1 is the only one where I don't look back for the rest of my life and wonder if I made the right choice. To me, that's the difference.

Something else for you to think about and maybe bring to a whole other topic. How many "potential humans" are thrown in the trash every year at fertility clinics? If life begins at conception, isn't mass murder occurring at virtually every fertility clinic in the world every year?

Anonymous said...

Why have you assumed a bright line?

I come at the problem in a significantly different way: a function of permissability with respect to time. Decreasing from mostly permissable (but frowned upon by some) at contraception to unlawful (except in extrordanary cases) in the third trimester.

My feeling is that the need for a bright line causes many of the problems in this debate.

Anonymous said...

Why have you assumed a bright line?

I come at the problem in a significantly different way: a function of permissability with respect to time. Decreasing from mostly permissable (but frowned upon by some) at contraception to unlawful (except in extrordanary cases) in the third trimester.

My feeling is that the need for a bright line causes many of the problems in this debate.


I'd love to follow that guideline also. However, if we're talking about the debate in terms of whether/when abortion should be legal, we need a bright line. It's either legal or illegal. We can't say it's 90% legal at conception, 60% legal at the beginning of the second trimester, 10% legal at the beginning of the third trimester.

I know the question specifically isn't asking when it should or should not be legal but I think we have to remember that the whole debate on abortion revolves around people trying to find (or insisting they have) that answer.

Anonymous said...

Let us hit upon the real issue in abortion: genetic destiny.

Do you or I control our own genetic destiny? In a decade or two fetuses will be able to be grown in vitro w/o a womb. This will free women up from 9 mos. of pain.

But, it will then allow males greater say on whether that fetus 'lives' or not.

Now, the q is does a woman control her body? Yes, I say. But in a few decades will a woman say I don't want to carry that fetus, but the man object?

Will the state then step in and raise fetus farms? I would state that the state has no rights because both parents would have to agree on the fetus being nurtured to birth. It's half mine and half hers. Can fetuses, then be adopted?

All of these q's are coming, and none of the arguments today address these issues. W/o foresight into the advance of science the advance of society will always drag behind.