|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
| Title: | Abortion and the Right to Life - Part III |
| Author: | Sam Vaknin |
|
|
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
|
|
|
|
|
