Charitable Assumptions and the Nature of the Disagreement

Once, during an ethics class that I was teaching, I asked a woman with very strong pro-choice views to explain what she thought the abortion disagreement was about? She responded that the disagreement was about who should get to make a woman's reproductive decisions - the individual woman or someone else. She added that the ultimate disagreement was about whether individual women, or someone else, should have control over their bodies.

What struck me about her response was that she was completely sincere. She simply could not imagine that most pro-lifers had no desire to control anyone's reproductive decisions prior to the point where they perceived another human being was involved. Nor could she imagine that pro-lifers did not consider fetal life to be a part of a woman's body in the way that plumbing is a part of a house (her analogy), but instead viewed fetal life as a very vulnerable (and in most cases invited) guest of the woman - someone to whom the woman owed a duty of care.

Even more alarming, the woman did not believe me when I told her these things. She persisted, despite my pressing her hard on her obviously flawed "fetal life is to a woman's body as plumbing is to a house" analogy. Nothing fazed her conviction that pro-lifer's wanted to control women (and get them back into the home).


However, I have also put this question to strongly pro-life students (there were an abundance of these at the University of Utah). I have been told repeatedly, with equal force of conviction, that the abortion disagreement concerns whether or not it is okay to kill a baby (or a developing "human person"). When I pointed out the absurdity of suggesting that the 60-65% of Americans who favor legal abortion do so because they think its okay to "kill babies," a significant portion of those students looked back at me with glazed eyes, completely at a loss as to how to proceed.

Both cases illustrate a very important point. Pro-lifers and pro-choicers disagree about what the law should be. But they disagree about the law because they perceive that they disagree about some fundamental moral issue - be it the rights of women to control their bodies, the rights of fetal persons not to be killed, or some other moral issue.

This view of the disagreement is FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG. The two examples I cited above illustrate that pro-lifers and pro-choicers mainly disagree about when fetal life becomes an independent "someone." They agree that when a fetal entity becomes a someone, it is entitled to the law's protection - subject to certain exceptions like "life of the mother" - which is akin to a self-defense exception. Both sides also accept the moral proposition that it is wrong, other things being equal, to kill human persons, and that doing so should be illegal. What they disagree about (fundamentally) is the stage of fetal development at which it is reasonable to think of fetal life as a "someone." That is, they disagree about the status of fetal life at its various stages of development.

However, the question as to when a "someone" is present in a fetal entity is a metaphysical and/or scientific question, not a moral question. It is metaphysical because it requires us to define what we mean by "someone." It is scientific because it requires investigation into what occurs at various stages of fetal development.

Recognizing that the disagreement about abortion is not a moral disagreement, but a metaphysical/scientific disagreement, is critical to our having a civil discussion about the issue. Failing to recognize that our abortion disagreement is metaphysical leads us to assign completely untenable moral views to the opposing side, as the two examples illustrate.

More later.

Joe H.