Abortion and the Right to Life Part III

Having reviewed the above arguments and counter-arguments, Don

Marquis goes on (in "Why Abortion is Immoral", 1989) to offer a

sharper and more comprehensive criterion: terminating a life is

morally wrong because a person has a future filled with value

and meaning, similar to ours.

But the whole debate is unnecessary. There is no conflict

between the rights of the mother and those of her fetus because

there is never a conflict between parties to an agreement. By

signing an agreement, the mother gave up some of her rights and

limited the others. This is normal practice in contracts: they

represent compromises, the optimization (and not the

maximization) of the parties' rights and wishes. The rights of

the fetus are an inseparable part of the contract which the

mother signed voluntarily and reasonably. They are derived from

the mother's behaviour. Getting willingly pregnant (or assuming

the risk of getting pregnant by not using contraceptives

reasonably) - is the behaviour which validates and ratifies a

contract between her and the fetus. Many contracts are by

behaviour, rather than by a signed piece of paper. Numerous

contracts are verbal or behavioural. These contracts, though

implicit, are as binding as any of their written, more explicit,

brethren. Legally (and morally) the situation is crystal clear:

the mother signed some of her rights away in this contract. Even

if she regrets it - she cannot claim her rights back by

annulling the contract unilaterally. No contract can be annulled

this way - the consent of both parties is required. Many times

we realize that we have entered a bad contract, but there is

nothing much that we can do about it. These are the rules of the

game.

Thus the two remaining questions: (a) can this specific contract

(pregnancy) be annulled and, if so (b) in which circumstances -

can be easily settled using modern contract law. Yes, a contract

can be annulled and voided if signed under duress,

involuntarily, by incompetent persons (e.g., the insane), or if

one of the parties made a reasonable and full scale attempt to

prevent its signature, thus expressing its clear will not to

sign the contract. It is also terminated or voided if it would

be unreasonable to expect one of the parties to see it through.

Rape, contraception failure, life threatening situations are all

such cases.

This could be argued against by saying that, in the case of

economic hardship, f or instance, the damage to the mother's

future is certain. True, her value- filled, meaningful future is

granted - but so is the detrimental effect that the fetus will

have on it, once born. This certainty cannot be balanced by the

UNCERTAIN value-filled future life of the embryo. Always,

preferring an uncertain good to a certain evil is morally wrong.

But surely this is a quantitative matter - not a qualitative

one. Certain, limited aspects of the rest of the mother's life

will be adversely effected (and can be ameliorated by society's

helping hand and intervention) if she does have the baby. The

decision not to have it is both qualitatively and qualitatively

different. It is to deprive the unborn of all the aspects of all

his future life - in which he might well have experienced

happiness, values, and meaning.

The questions whether the fetus is a Being or a growth of cells,

conscious in any manner, or utterly unconscious, able to value

his life and to want them - are all but irrelevant. He has the

potential to lead a happy, meaningful, value-filled life,

similar to ours, very much as a one minute old baby does. The

contract between him and his mother is a service provision

contract. She provides him with goods and services that he

requires in order to materialize his potential. It sounds very

much like many other human contracts. And this contract continue

well after pregnancy has ended and birth given.

Consider education: children do not appreciate its importance or

value its potential - still, it is enforced upon them because

we, who are capable of those feats, want them to have the tools

that they will need in order to develop their potential. In this

and many other respects, the human pregnancy continues well into

the fourth year of life (physiologically it continues in to the

second year of life - see "Born Alien"). Should the location of

the pregnancy (in uterus, in vivo) determine its future? If a

mother has the right to abort at will, why should the mother be

denied her right to terminate the " pregnancy" AFTER the fetus

emerges and the pregnancy continues OUTSIDE her womb? Even after

birth, the woman's body is the main source of food to the baby

and, in any case, she has to endure physical hardship to raise

the child. Why not extend the woman's ownership of her body and

right to it further in time and space to the post-natal period?

Contracts to provide goods and services (always at a personal

cost to the provider) are the commonest of contracts. We open a

business. We sell a software application, we publish a book - we

engage in helping others to materialize their potential. We

should always do so willingly and reasonably - otherwise the

contracts that we sign will be null and void. But to deny anyone

his capacity to materialize his potential and the goods and

services that he needs to do so - after a valid contract was

entered into - is immoral. To refuse to provide a service or to

condition it provision (Mother: " I will provide the goods and

services that I agreed to provide to this fetus under this

contract only if and when I benefit from such provision") is a

violation of the contract and should be penalized. Admittedly,

at times we have a right to choose to do the immoral (because it

has not been codified as illegal) - but that does not turn it

into moral.

Still, not every immoral act involving the termination of life

can be classified as murder. Phenomenology is deceiving: the

acts look the same (cessation of life functions, the prevention

of a future). But murder is the intentional termination of the

life of a human who possesses, at the moment of death, a

consciousness (and, in most cases, a free will, especially the

will not to die). Abortion is the intentional termination of a

life which has the potential to develop into a person with

consciousness and free will. Philosophically, no identity can be

established between potential and actuality. The destruction of

paints and cloth is not tantamount (not to say identical) to the

destruction of a painting by Van Gogh, made up of these very

elements. Paints and cloth are converted to a painting through

the intermediacy and agency of the Painter. A cluster of cells a

human makes only through the agency of Nature. Surely, the

destruction of the painting materials constitutes an offence

against the Painter. In the same way, the destruction of the

fetus constitutes an offence against Nature. But there is no

denying that in both cases, no finished product was eliminated.

Naturally, this becomes less and less so (the severity of the

terminating act increases) as the process of creation advances.

Classifying an abortion as murder poses numerous and

insurmountable philosophical problems.

No one disputes the now common view that the main crime

committed in aborting a pregnancy - is a crime against

potentialities. If so, what is the philosophical difference

between aborting a fetus and destroying a sperm and an egg?

These two contain all the information (=all the potential) and

their destruction is philosophically no less grave than the

destruction of a fetus. The destruction of an egg and a sperm is

even more serious philosophically: the creation of a fetus

limits the set of all potentials embedded in the genetic

material to the one fetus created. The egg and sperm can be

compared to the famous wave function (state vector) in quantum

mechanics - the represent millions of potential final states

(=millions of potential embryos and lives). The fetus is the

collapse of the wave function: it represents a much more limited

set of potentials. If killing an embryo is murder because of the

elimination of potentials - how should we consider the

intentional elimination of many more potentials through

masturbation and contraception?

The argument that it is difficult to say which sperm cell will

impregnate the egg is not serious. Biologically, it does not

matter - they all carry the same genetic content. Moreover,

would this counter-argument still hold if, in future, we were be

able to identify the chosen one and eliminate only it? In many

religions (Catholicism) contraception is murder. In Judaism,

masturbation is "the corruption of the seed" and such a serious

offence that it is punishable by the strongest religious

penalty: eternal ex-communication ("Karet").

If abortion is indeed murder how should we resolve the following

moral dilemmas and questions (some of them patently absurd):

Is a natural abortion the equivalent of manslaughter (through

negligence)?

Do habits like smoking, drug addiction, vegetarianism - infringe

upon the right to life of the embryo? Do they constitute a

violation of the contract?

Reductio ad absurdum: if, in the far future, research will

unequivocally prove that listening to a certain kind of music or

entertaining certain thoughts seriously hampers the embryonic

development - should we apply censorship to the Mother?

Should force majeure clauses be introduced to the Mother-Embryo

pregnancy contract? Will they give the mother the right to

cancel the contract? Will the embryo have a right to terminate

the contract? Should the asymmetry persist: the Mother will have

no right to terminate - but the embryo will, or vice versa?

Being a rights holder, can the embryo (=the State) litigate

against his Mother or Third Parties (the doctor that aborted

him, someone who hit his mother and brought about a natural

abortion) even after he died?

Should anyone who knows about an abortion be considered an

accomplice to murder?

If abortion is murder - why punish it so mildly? Why is there a

debate regarding this question? "Thou shalt not kill" is a

natural law, it appears in virtually every legal system. It is

easily and immediately identifiable. The fact that abortion does

not "enjoy" the same legal and moral treatment says a lot.

About the author:

Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism

Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is

a columnist for Central Europe Review, United Press

International (UPI) and eBookWeb and the editor of mental health

and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory,

Suite101 and searcheurope.com.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com

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Abortion and the Right to Life Part III

Article : Abortion and the Right to Life Part III