Abortion and Infanticide: What's the Difference?

This is a re-post with minor edits of an entry from March 1, 2012.  I agree with it still.  (Surprise!)  I would like Vlastimil V., who is currently exercised by topics in this neighborhood, to tell me how much of it he agrees with, and what he disagrees with and why.

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If you agree that infanticide is morally wrong, should you not also agree that late-term abortion is also morally wrong?  Consider this argument:

Infanticide is morally wrong
There is no morally relevant difference between infanticide and late-term abortion
Therefore
Late-term abortion is morally wrong.

To cast it in a slogan:  Late-term abortion is pre-natal infanticide!

But of course the argument can be run in reverse with no breach of logical propriety:

Late-term abortion is not morally wrong
There is no morally relevant difference between infanticide and late-term abortion
Therefore
Infanticide is not morally wrong.

To make a slogan of it: Infanticide is post-natal abortion!

Since the arguments and slogans  'cancel each other out,' the question arises whether we can move beyond a stand-off.  The pro-lifer finds it evident that infanticide is morally wrong, violating as it does the infant's right to life, and extends that right to the late-term fetus, while the type of pro-choicer I will be discussing in this post finds it evident that late-term abortion is morally acceptable and extends that moral acceptability to infanticide.

My response to the problem makes appeal to two principles, the Potentiality Principle, and the Modified Species Principle.  After I lay them out I will ask  whether they help us avoid a stalemate.

The idea behind the Potentiality Principle (PP) is that potential descriptive personhood confers a right to life. In other words, the idea is that potential descriptive personhood entails normative personhood.  For present purposes we may define a person in the descriptive sense of the term, a descriptive person,  as anything that is sentient, rational, self-aware, and purposive.   A person in the normative sense of the term, a normative person, we may define as a rights-possessor.  We assume that actual descriptive persons are normative persons and thus have rights, including a right to life, a right not to be killed. Presumably we all accept the following Rights Principle:

RP: All descriptive persons have a right to life.

What PP does is simply extend the right to life to potential persons. Thus,

PP. All potential descriptive persons have a right to life.

I have undertaken the defense of PP in other posts and I won't repeat myself here.  PP allows us to mount a very powerful argument, the Potentiality Argument (PA), against the moral acceptability of abortion. Given PP, and the fact that human fetuses are potential persons, it follows that they have a right to life. From the right to life follows the right not to be killed, except perhaps in some extreme circumstances.

It may be that the right to life has multiple sources. Perhaps it has a dual source: in PP but also in the Species Principle (SP) according to which whatever is genetically human has the right to life just in virtue of being genetically human. Equivalently, what SP says is that every member of the species homo sapiens, qua member, has the right to life of any member, and therefore every member falls within the purview of the prohibition against homicide.

The intuition behind SP  is that killing innocent human beings is just plain wrong whether or not they are actual persons in the descriptive sense of the term.  Now late-term human fetuses are of course human beings, indeed human individuals (not just clumps of cells or bits of human genetic material).  And of course they are innocent human beings.    it follows that they have a right to life.

Subscription to SP entails that a severely damaged infant, a Down's Syndrome baby, for example,  would have a right to life just in virtue of being genetically human regardless of its potential for development, or rather its lack of  potential.  Some will object that SP is involved in species chauvinism or 'speciesism,' the arbitrary and therefore illicit privileging of the species one happens to belong to over other species. The objection might proceed along the following lines. "It is easy to conceive of an extraterrestrial possessing all of the capacities (for self-awareness, moral choice, rationality, etc.) that we regard in ourselves as constituting descriptive personhood. Surely we would not want to exclude them from the prohibition against killing the innocent just because they are not made of human genetic material." To deal with this objection, a Modified Species Principle could be adopted:

MSP: Every member of an intelligent species, just insofar as it is a member of that species, has a right to life and therefore falls within the purview of the prohibition against the killing of innocents.

The two principles (PP and MSP) working in tandem would seem to explain most of our moral intuitions in this matter. And now it occurs to me that PP and MSP can be wedded in one comprehensive principle, which we can call the Species Potentiality Principle:

SPP: Every member of any biological species whose normal members are actual or potential descriptive persons, just insofar as it is a member of that species, possesses a right to life and therefore falls within the purview of the prohibition against the killing of innocents.

Does the above help us move beyond a stand-off?  Not at all.  No committed pro-choicer will accept the principles I have articulated above. And of course I won't accept his rejection of them.  For they are eminently rationally defensible and free of any formal or informal logical fallacy.  And of course no empirical facts speak against them.  Here as elsewhere, reason and argument can only take one so far.  They are wonderfully useful in achieving clarity about what one's position is and the reasons one has for occupying it.  But no argument will convince anyone who doesn't accept one's premises.

Here as elsewhere reason is powerless to decide the question even when informed by all relevant empirical facts.  As I have maintained many times, there are few if any rationally compelling arguments for any substantive thesis in areas of deep controversy, this being one of them.

In the end it comes down to basic moral intuitions.  Some people have moral sense and some people don't.  I say: Can't you just SEE (i.e., morally intuit) that killing an innocent human being is morally wrong?  And can't you just SEE that the location of that indivisual, its size, and its state of developement are morally irrelevant?  If you say 'no,' then I call you morally obtuse or morally  blind.   I throw you in with the color-blind and the tone-deaf.   And then I go on to call into question your motives for holding your morally outrageous view.  I might say: "The real reason (i.e., the psychologically salient motive) for your support of abortion and infanticide is your desire to have unrestrained sexual intercourse without accepting any responsibility for the consequences of your actions.  At the root of it all is your refusal to practice self-restraint, and your selfish desire to do whatever you please."  But even in the cases where such a psychological explanation is  true it will do nothing to convince the opponent. 

Here is something to think about.  Would the abortion/infanticide question be such a hot-button issue if  it weren't for our innate concupiscence kept constantly aflame by a sex-saturated society? (Pardon the mixed metaphors.)  Could it be that concupiscence unrestrained clouds our moral vision and makes us unable to discern moral truths? 

This post was 'inspired' by After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live? (A tip of the hat to the noble Maverickians who brought it to my attention.)

The title leaves something to be desired as regards felicity of expression.   'Afterbirth' is either the process whereby the placenta is expelled from the uterus after the neonate has exited, or else the placenta itself.  May I suggest 'post-natal'?  And to call infanticide after-birth or post-natal abortion is an egregious misuse of language inasmuch as abortion in this context is the termination of a pregnancy by killing of the fetus.  Infanticide is not the termination of  a pregnancy.  One cannot terminate a process that has come to fruition.   

Related articles

What is Potentiality? An Exploration

Comments

[Vlastimil Vohánka]

Bill,

Thanks for re-posting.

Before I can tell whether and where I agree or disagree, some preliminary questions. Not that they are equally relevant, but all seem to me worth-asking.

-- When do you count something as self-aware, sentient, rational, and purposive? Am I sentient self-aware etc., in your sense, _only_ at those times at which I am paying attention to myself, have feelings, and am entertaining logical thoughts and my own goals?

-- Why do you say that "whatever is genetically human has the _right_ to life just in virtue of being genetically human"? What is so great about being genetically human that it confers the right to life? The only answer I can think of is this: whatever is genetically human has, just in virtue of being genetically human, the (in principle) _capacity_ to think logically, make free decisions, have higher emotions, be self-aware, have conscious goals, or the like. Similarly for being genetically Martian.

-- Of course, a deeper question would remain, what is so great about having the capacity to think logically etc.? Likewise, although you reject that _all_ human beings have the capacity, you still think that some or even most do have it. And you think that some or even most embryos have the corresponding potentiality. So what do you think it is about this potentiality that confers the right to life?

-- You may say, I don't know but the potentiality to think logically etc. confers the right to life because this explains "most of our moral intuitions in this matter". Which intuitions, exactly?

-- Why say, in the context of this post, that a Down's Syndrome baby is "severely damaged" and suggest that it does not have some, even if impaired, capacity capacity or at least potentiality to think logically, make free decisions, have higher emotions, be self-aware, have conscious goals, and the like? An anencephalic baby would be a better (although IMO still very problematic) candidate.

[Vlastimil Vohánka]

Better formulation of my last question:

Why say, in the context of this post, that a Down's Syndrome baby is "severely damaged" and suggest that it HAS NO, not even impaired, capacity or potentiality to think logically etc.?

[Bill Vallicella]

Thanks for the response, Vlastimil. But I thought we had agreed to disagree about potentiality and what exactly it entails. I don't see much point in continuing to discuss it. I think we have reached the point of diminishing returns on this topic.

[Vlastimil Vohánka]

Bill,

-- We have agreed to disagree about the idea of in principle potentiality. _Before_ you re-posted this. And now it shows up that the idea is relevant even here.

-- I agree with principles RP, PP and SPP if "self-aware, sentient, rational, and purposive" means: currently paying attention to oneself, have feelings, and entertaining logical thoughts and one's own goals. I agree, too, if it means: in principle capable of paying attention to oneself etc.

But I guess neither reading is yours. So tell me, what is it?

-- Also, I agree with SP, MSP and SPP. But this is _precisely because_ I think that whatever is genetically human, Martian and the like has, just in virtue of being genetically human, Martian and the like, the in principle capacity or potentiality to pay attention to oneself, think logically etc. It is precisely this in principle capacity or potentiality that makes all such beings so precious that they all have the right of life, ascribed to them by SP, MSP and SPP.

But suppose, as you believe, that this hypothesis of mine makes no sense or is simply false. So I guess your reason for those three principles is that they explain our moral intuitions. But which intuitions? And more importantly, how do you explain, without my hypothesis, the principles themselves?

My point is that they are not plausible if my hypothesis is nonsensical or false.

-- Finally, _even if_ my hypothesis is nonsensical or false and anencephalic humans have no capacity or potentiality to think be self-aware, think logically etc., you should still ascribe the capacity or potentiality to Downs. For they are, or they will be, self-aware, thinking logically etc.

[Vlastimil Vohánka]

Damn English grammar. I belive I should have said: "We AGREED (not HAVE AGREED) to disagree about the idea of in principle potentiality. Before you re-posted this."

[Tim O'Rourke]

Have you seen this over at Philosophical Percolations?

http://www.philpercs.com/2015/07/the-plausibility-of-the-principle-of-vulnerability-and-its-application-to-life-based-issues.html#more

Tim