I think that’s a decent summary of my position, yes. I am thinking through some of these issues in detail for the first time, and that statement I can agree with. That would mean that if someone had already put your toe into an fully automated cloning machine, and switched it on, I’d be opposed to you destroying the clone. I think that’s reasonable.

I’ve already expressed my interest in finding an atheistic, principled pro-life position that stands on its own two feet, and I think Owen the same.

Yes, I’d like to explore it further as well, but I think this thread perhaps isn’t the place to do it, as it has generated a significant amount of heat and distraction. If we can separate a serious discussion of this specific point from the emotional nature of the wider issue of abortion, I think it would be very valuable. That was what my previous post was trying to say. I’m happy to continue by email, or elsewhere on a separate post, but if no-one has any final word, I’m happy to concede any open points and close the comments thread here.

I am wondering whether the criteria you are using is something like this:

we must treat with special sanctity (not in a religious sense, simply in a “special, protected” sense) anything that can progress from its current state to a thinking, feeling person by a chain of events that do not involve human agency.

That is, my toe is still not a person because someone would have to take a sample, clone it and put it in a (human created machine), whereas an embryo just develops naturally. If human agency must be invoked to join two events together, then we can’t say one leads to another. I think this is a much stronger argument than the HEPP argument, as we do considder human agency to change moral actions: a boulder rolling down a hill onto a car is an act of god (or, in secular terms, an accident of nature) – unless someone started it rolling or diverted its course on the way, where it is murder.

Is this anywhere close to your position, or are you sticking with HEPP?

Why is it okay to be allowed to create a life without its permission, but not to exterminate it? You can’t ask it either way anyway, therefore it is and always will be the womans right to decide. Period. (and if you ask me, women who abort their children are doing them a huge favour anyway).

Hasn’t it already been explained that people go from Ireland to other places to obtain abortions (thus not showing on stats) and also are very careful to conceal procedures which could get them arrested?

Yes, that’s what I was asking for.

To speak more broadly about this issue, I think the problem with discussing abortion is that there are really two things we are discussing. The first, and certainly most contentious, is the moral dimension. Clearly, we’re never going to agree on this, which is why this thread has generated some heated comments on both sides. I sicken the stomach of the pro-choice people with my views, and if truth be told, I don’t find their views that palatable either. But these are fundamentals of our individual beliefs, and they aren’t going to change (at least not overnight). I do think it is interesting to discuss why people have come to the moral views that they hold, and I think it’s a shame when people can’t discuss that openly without fear of being labelled (on my side) a misogynist (or worse) and (on the other side) the equivalent of a murderer. To this, I plead as guilty as some of those above. I have written in a deliberately provocative way, to try to generate discussion – in retrospect, I should probably have been less abrasive.

The second point, and that on which I find it difficult to understand why it can’t be discussed rationally, is policy. It seems that most people agree, on both sides, that the numbers of abortions are high and that we should seek to reduce them. The statistics show, for Britain at least, steadily rising numbers since abortion was legalised. I thought that it would be possible to have a proper discussion about the best way to go about reducing those numbers, but it does seem that ‘education’ has become an article of faith amongst the pro-choice side. I don’t really dispute that it could work – the common sense argument is obviously that if we teach enough kids about the ‘right way’ to go about their sex lives, early enough, they won’t have unwanted pregnancies (at least in as large numbers as before), and that as they grow up the numbers of abortions will therefore steadily decrease as a whole generation of more sophisticated adults emerges. The problem is that common sense has very little place in making decisions about policy, because it could be wrong. Just because I can propose a logical process by which abortion could reduce, it doesn’t mean it will translate well into real life. And often, let’s be honest, a lot of common sense in politics is just wishful thinking to back up our priors and prejudices. I’d love to see some research on the effects of programmes to reduce abortion, but it seems to be almost a taboo subject. I think that’s a shame, particularly when almost everyone seems to agree that reducing the numbers of abortions is a good thing to do.

This post details how abortion, in decline over the Clinton era, began to rise under Bush. Their take: “the policies pursued by pro-life politicians are associated with higher abortion rates.”

Sure, but I think you’re conflating two issues here, which I why I don’t really like the pro-life label. Pro-life is associated with religion and things like abstinence-only programmes, and all sorts of other baggage. I don’t subscribe to a lot of that. As I hope I’ve expressed above, I have no problem with sex education – I think it’s vital that we teach kids well. The evidence is pretty conclusive that abstinence-only programmes lead to higher sexual activity, higher unwanted pregnancies and then higher abortions. I’m not disputing that, but it doesn’t tell you anything scientifically about abortion restrictions in isolation.

Internationally, those countries that ban abortion do not have a low abortion rate, but high rates of illegal abortion (link). I take your point that the same might not apply in England. Still, it’s not encouraging evidence for your stance.

The link talks exclusively about Latin American countries. So it doesn’t follow that, those countries that ban abortion do not have a low abortion rate, but high rates of illegal abortion. It simply says that a carefully selected group of countries with abortion bans have high rates of illegal abortion. I’ve already provided one counter-example (Ireland) where the abortion rate is relatively low. I’m happy to hunt around for more, but I’m not sure what it will tell us – I’d guess, that the combination of developed world + abortion ban leads to low rates, but without doing the research, I have nothing to back that up. That combination is also pretty rare.

Owen: Yes, of those I’d go with 3. I don’t think that your counter-argument about there being no distinction between attaching moral worth to something that is (a) alive, (b) human and (c) Caucasian and attaching moral worth to something that is (a) alive and (b) human is correct.

I think that there is no problem with granting rights as widely as possible, subject to those two categories (alive, and human). To subcategorise, you would have to provide a compelling reason to remove that right from the other subcategories. The best example I can think of is with slavery. We no longer distinguish between people who are (a) alive, (b) human and (c) Caucasian and those who are (a) alive, (b) human and (c) Black because there is no rational justification for doing so, and because we consider it immoral to do so. I don’t think that distinction is arbitrary, as you suggest it is. The fact is that we do treat human beings as having intrinsic moral value, and we don’t see it as acceptable to subcategorise them and assign different scales of rights. Could you explain why you think otherwise?

OK. We are agreed, then, that we have not been convinced by arguments for the moral status of the foetus based on what it has the potential to become. (Please, hold this thought at the back of your mind in the discussion that follows, because you may be tempted to come back to this argument later).

So the argument for the moral status of the foetus is based on what the foetus already is.

What might that argument look like? Here are some candidates.

1. If you are religious, you might believe that at conception, the foetus is endowed with a soul, or some other supernatural characteristic which demands our moral attention. If that is your view, then I have no argument to offer.

2. The foetus has characteristics of a sentient being – such as consciousness, self awareness or the ability to feel pain – which m demand our moral attention. This would be persuasive if a foetus did have these characteristics, but it doesn’t. A foetus does not have sufficient brain development to feel pain until week 29 – so on this measure of moral status, they reach about the status of a mouse.

3. Anything that is (a) alive and (b) human deserves our moral attention, irrespective of its other characteristics, in a way that other living creatures do not. (I would guess from your previous contribution that this is something like your view.)

The problem with this argument is that it just shifts the debate, to a discussion of why we are abitrarily allocating moral value to living humans and not other living creatures. Suppose I say that we should attach moral worth to something that is (a) alive, (b) human and (c) Caucasion, but not to other living creatures. You would probably demand to know why I had arbitrarily limited moral concern to Caucasians. I might reply that this is my belief; and I might even say that it is the belief of many people in my community. But that would not be convincing to you. I would need to explain what it is about Caucasians that gives them moral worth that does not also apply to black people. So the question is, why does something that is living and human have more moral status than something living but non-human?

The answer cannot be that a foetus can feel more pain, or has more consciousness, than an animal; because that is not true: a foetus is not more sentient than a cow.

The answer cannot be that, unlike a mouse, a foetus has the potential to become a sentient being, because we have agreed from the outset to eschew any argument based on what a foetus has the potential to become.

The answer cannot be that being human has an intrinsic moral value, because that is a purely arbitrary claim that could equally be made about men, or white people, or heterosexuals, as a reason to give them a higher moral status than women, black people or gays. You have to say why.

So once we eschew the argument based on what the foetus has the potential to become, we have instead to explain what characteristics a foetus has that should cause us to pay moral attention. And that turns out to be very hard to do.

Owen

It appears you don’t doubt that it does, but want evidence of the relative degree, which does require some evidence. Fair enough. I don’t have any evidence on education and abortion.

I do have some evidence on banning abortion and effects on abortion rates.
This post details how abortion, in decline over the Clinton era, began to rise under Bush. Their take: “the policies pursued by pro-life politicians are associated with higher abortion rates.”
Internationally, those countries that ban abortion do not have a low abortion rate, but high rates of illegal abortion (link). I take your point that the same might not apply in England. Still, it’s not encouraging evidence for your stance.

I’ll let Owen deal with the nitty gritty of the status of embryos and foetuses. I’m not really convinced by the “it exists” position. My toe exists, and I imagine within my lifetime someone will be able to take cells from it that could be used to clone another person. Despite this, there is absolutely no onus on me to allow that to happen, and I could prevent it without anyone considering me “morally equivalent to a murderer”, or some such.