THE ABORTION debate suffers from a great deal of confusion among pro-choice supporters and pro-life supporters. It is clear that the pro-life position is philosophically and practically untenable. With hope, the issue will fade away from the American political landscape into the far-off land of non-issues, where it has long belonged.
Abortion's relevance to amount-of-media-coverage ratio is nearly zero. Abortion isn't an issue that the average American is likely to confront often, if at all in the course of their daily lives. It is, at its foundation, a moral issue; that's the only reason that those concerned should care, because they suppose that they defend right - not that they are the champions of smart utilitarian public policy.
But pro-life advocates make bad moral theorists. To begin, Judith Jarvis Thomson, a MIT philosopher, observes that it's a logical jump to consider a fetus a person. That's why most pro-life supporters focus on the property of being alive, hence their name. But insofar as being alive is being not dead, the pro-life advocates have an irrelevant point. Plants are alive and if terminating life is wrong, then so is stepping on plants.
Pro-life advocates have to argue that there's something special or distinguishing about a person as compared to other forms of life, if they're to argue that such is sacred. That's fine. Supporters of the pro-life position can be granted that. They're pro-persons. Still, when did it arrive in their minds that personhood forms at conception? Pro-persons say it's because of the potential for human life (again, they confuse their terms). But so what? Thanks to Thomson and her moral theorizing, we know this is an empty point. If a fetus is a person because of its potential to be one, then so an acorn must be a tree because, it too, has the potential to become one.
It's true that acorns become trees at some point, but it is a fundamental confusion to say an acorn is a tree. In the same manner, it's deeply inaccurate to suggest that a fetus is a person. Thus, the abortion debate, if it is to be at all meaningful, ought to focus on when personhood develops. We know one answer to be wrong: conception. We also know that it's not extremely close to conception any more than a really fat acorn is a tree. Supporters of both the pro-choice and pro-life positions are able to agree that there are times when the fetus is a person. This is the sound logic behind mutual opposition to partial birth abortion, which to the mind of many, is just a form of infanticide.
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Thus, it's fair to conclude that those who are pro-life or pro-person, depending on who's doing the calling, go astray right from the beginning.
Pro-choice advocates, despite being correct, however, need to get a few things straight. Pro-choice supporters need to stop saying that terminating a pregnancy is wrong, but they don't support the government's right to deny individuals that option. You wouldn't say you think murder is wrong, but the government has no business stopping homicidal maniacs.
The point is pro-choice advocates and the other side divide specifically over the morality of abortion - nothing more. Arguing about the proper sphere of government lacks any sense because the government's role is shaped by what society deems to be normatively right and morally sanctionable.
Both sides need to remain focused on making intelligent moral arguments and stop framing abortion as a political issue that is separate and apart from morality. We need to be discussing when personhood starts and even then we need to analyze critically our belief that prematurely ending personhood is morally blameworthy.
This issue will continue to be the mantelpiece of fanatics on the far left and the far right. People, not predisposed to such fanaticism, likely would realize its actual irrelevance. But this is just the problem. Those who are most seriously engaged in the public debate over abortion are so cloaked in emotional baggage that the people who would think clearly about it are crowded out from public discussion.
If we were to engage the intelligent members of society in this debate with some clearheaded moral thinking, much of the confusion and the inaccuracy in the abortion debate would wither away in favor of greater tolerance of people's decisions about what to do with their bodies and the issue might finally come to a rest, which is where it needs to be. Until that happens, the pro-life position will continue uncritically to captivate the minds of many.
(Jeffrey Eisenberg is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. He can be reached at jeisenberg@cavalierdaily.com.)
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