Why Smart People Disagree About Abortion
A question science can't answer, and philosophers have been talking about for a millennium.
Abortion touches on two deeply personal rights: to life and bodily autonomy. You find a lot of righteous anger because each side feels the other is encroaching on a sacred right. It seems the pro-choice and pro-life advocates couldn’t be further apart, that they’re mortal enemies. But when you dig into what each of them believes, you find that their disagreement is minimal. And both parties, although understandably irate at times, act rationally in accordance with their beliefs.
I’m not here to solve anything. My goal is to show that abortion is not a medical question nor moral, but a philosophical one. Unfortunately, there will be no ‘proof’ that one side is wrong. The best we can do is understand everyone’s thought process, meet them at their underlying philosophical stance, and try to convince them of our own position.
I will navigate this minefield, expressing both opinions as honestly as I can, while maintaining an objective distance. If you think you are hearing my opinion, you are sorely mistaken.
Theory of mind
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it”.
The most important skill to possess during a tough disagreement is theory of mind. People have different beliefs. Different starting points, different assumptions and different facts - even if you're certain someone is wrong, they can still sincerely believe they're correct. Being wrong and believing you're right are not mutually exclusive. Their behaviour, which may initially seem irrational, suddenly becomes rational once you substitute in your set of beliefs for theirs.
Let’s take proselytising, for example. Why do some religious people try to convert others? It’s easy to dismiss them as nothing but a bother, interrupting our busy days to convince us we need ‘saving’. I don’t believe in a religious afterlife, but I can see how their actions make sense given what they believe about heaven and hell.
They believe damnation is real and you are in danger of eternal suffering. These people have so much love for humanity that they choose to spend their time going door to door having tough conversations with strangers. They want to save you from eternal torture. So they’re not evil or a public nuisance; in fact, they’re doing the greatest possible good within their belief framework.
So when I come across someone who has different beliefs, even if I know they are wrong, I always try to understand where they’re coming from. It’s unhelpful to say “But you’re wrong, so why do you believe that?” No, let’s find out exactly where we differ. It’s seldom at the forefront of the question and lies at a deeper underlying principle.
The beliefs
Bodily autonomy is the main focus for pro-choice advocates. We have the right to make our own decisions regarding our bodies, and abortion is seen as nothing more than exercising that right. It’s a tough, invasive medical decision, but a medical decision nonetheless. The state should have no authority dictating what someone can and cannot do with their body; it’s state overreach. It’s their body, so it’s their decision.
The pro-life advocates push back on this by saying that they’re not looking to control the autonomy of a woman. But that the decision she is making isn’t just about her body; it’s determining the fate of another person’s life. To them, a fetus has a right to life from conception; there is no moral difference between killing the unborn and an infant. Pregnancy and raising a child may be an undue hindrance upon the mother, but the right to life outweighs any burden that comes with pregnancy.
You may be inclined to push back and explain why one side is wrong, or to provide extra clarity. There’s far more depth in this topic that I could cover; I ask that you set that aside for now, and accept that this is the basic premise of each position.
With that in mind, I hope that we can understand why one may choose to protest outside of an abortion clinic; that allowing abortion isn’t some minor moral miscalculation, but, to them, is by orders of magnitude worse than the Holocaust, around 73 million deaths per year. Or how rightly upset a woman would be to have the trajectory of her life permanently changed because they were prevented from having a safe and easy medical procedure. You can disagree with either side, but you cannot say that their actions are irrational given their beliefs.
The interesting thing is that everyone agrees with the premise of both sides:
Bodily autonomy
The right to life.
The disagreement comes from when the latter of these rights begins.
It’s a philosophical difference
The disagreement isn’t about biology, but moral status. Biology tells us when a fetus’ heartbeat starts, when it’s likely to feel pain and when it’s born. But it doesn’t tell us which of these events are morally decisive. The real question is: when does an individual become imbued with intrinsic human worth?
Intrinsic human worth has been discussed by philosophers for a long time; it’s not some grand concept which I have stumbled upon. It has been described as personhood, moral status, and many other terms. I’ll be referring to it as IHW.
Pro-life says that IHW starts at conception. It’s easy and clear-cut with no ambiguity. Pro-choice says IHW starts at some point after. Their reasons are that characteristics attributed to IHW, such as consciousness or the ability to feel pain, have not yet fully developed.
Some people go the step further and claim that IHW does not apply to newborns. So in theory, it is not murder. These people are rare, but they’re worth mentioning because it shows there is a wide philosophical spectrum of people who draw the line at different places.
However, all parties agree that it is immoral to kill something that has IHW. It’s why the thought of killing an infant makes us recoil. It comes off as morally repugnant because most grant that infants have IHW. But who decides IHW? When does it begin? Is it gradual, or sudden? This is the insurmountable philosophical wall that we come up against: IHW cannot be measured, and yet it is the single defining question of the debate.
Regardless of the position you take, the disagreement is ultimately based on subjective opinion. IHW is open to interpretation because there is no objective method for calculating it. Regardless of whether IHW objectively exists, we cannot measure it. You can’t hold it; you can’t observe it - it cannot be quantified. It’s one thing to deny concepts like gravity, because it can be proven, but to say that a fetus does or does not have intrinsic human worth is just an opinion because there is no measurement for it.
We could come full circle to a time where abortion is largely viewed as socially acceptable, and the prolife movement becomes nothing but a flame. However, the flame can always be relit at any point, because of the subjective, non-measurable quality that IHW has.
It is an issue that can never truly be solved.
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