Charles Amos is a PhD student in political philosophy alongside working in the haulage industry. He writes The Musing Individualist Substack in his spare time.
Honestly, I’m not sure what my view is on abortion. It is a very complicated moral question which often requires answering the metaphysical question of when a person emerges from conception. Yet decriminalising abortion up to birth is surely wrong even if you’re pro-choice.
I want to run an argument from Judith Jarvis Thomson’s famous article, ‘A Defence of Abortion’, showing that even her moral reasoning doesn’t get you to decriminalising abortions after the 24 week limit which cause severe pain to the foetus. The basic thrust is though women might have a moral prerogative to kill a foetus this only extends to doing it in a minimally to non-painful way for it.
Since only about 1 per cent of abortions are due to rape, I will put that issue aside and along with it Thomson’s famous violinist analogy.
Instead let us focus on her lesser-known people-seeds analogy for abortion. Thomson asks us to imagine ‘that people-seeds drift about in the air like pollen, and if you open your windows, one may drift in and take root in your carpet’. Since Thomson imagines you don’t want children, she further speculates that ‘you fix up your windows with fine mesh screens, the very best you can buy’ to stop them getting in. Unfortunately, however, very, very rarely a person-seed gets through the mesh screen and takes root in your carpet. Thomson asks: ‘Does the person-plant who now develops have a right to the use of your home?’ Thomson answers ‘Surely not’.
If we can uproot people-seeds that have slipped through the mesh screens though, then, analogously, we can abort embryos which have been created through sex with good contraception which has failed. This argument has legs for it locks on to a very intuitive idea that our individual rights are not shrunk by accidents. Some might say the analogy fails because simply by having sex you take on the responsibility that a child might be created, hence, you’re liable to bring it up should the contraception fail. This counterintuitively implies though that in the people-seed example you’d need to live with sealed doors and shuttered windows to avoid any rooting ever; without sealed doors and shuttered windows you’d always be liable, because, you’d be responsible for them getting in, to your housing having people grow in it for nine months. I sense a dis-analogy here insofar as people-seeds are simply present in the air while sex creates their moral equivalent in fertilised ova.
Nevertheless, assume the people-seed argument broadly works; does it get us to abortion up to birth? Let us extend it a little more.
Imagine the person-seed has rooted into your carpet and is either not a person yet, or, is an early person who can be killed painlessly (Thomson isn’t clear on which it is). Thomson and pro choicers are going to argue you can up root it and kill it in the process, especially given the fact that should it fully grow it will seriously damage the building, here, standing in for child birth. However, can the home owner watch the person-seed take root, watch it grow for 5 months over tea and biscuits, knowing it will develop the ability to feel severe pain at 5 months, then, at 7 months, very painfully uproot it and thus kill it too. Obviously not. Analogously, then, a pregnant woman can’t wait 5 months, i.e., the medical consensus on when foetuses can feel pain, or, four missed periods or withdrawal bleedings if on the pill, then, very painfully abort the baby.
Now the current means for third trimester abortions on the NHS, only allowed due to danger to the mother or fetal abnormalities, are not very nice. Fetocide involves injecting potassium chloride into the heart of the baby causing it a cardiac arrest, or, via the umbilical cord up through the baby’s liver and into the heart. According to a 2002 study, injection into the heart causes ‘a long and supposedly painful fetal agony’. The umbilical cord means is comparable to lethal injection for the death penalty which the BBC has described as ‘extremely painful’ and ‘likened to liquid fire entering veins and snaking towards the heart’. Painkillers can be used to stop this. Yet as of 2023 only 76 per cent of NHS Trusts in England are willing to administer painkillers; 49 per cent of that number use painkillers as part of the regular procedure while 26 per cent only offer it on the mother’s request. As it stands then, decriminalised abortion is seriously objectionable even were it available on the NHS, which, is probably where we’ll end up due to concerns for women’s health.
But Clause 208 of the Crime & Policing Bill decriminalises women carrying out their own abortions at this very late stage, but does not permit the NHS or anyone to supply any medical assistance. Decriminalised self-abortions, and, still criminal but inevitable backstreet assisted abortions, are invariably worse for the mother, but, crucially, worse for the unborn too. No doubt back street abortionists will still use dilation and evacuation after 24 weeks, i.e., tearing the baby limb from limb using sopher forceps with serrated teeth after crushing its head. Women doing that themselves would face no legal penalty under the amendment. Coat hangers, knitting needles, bicycle spokes and deliberately using chemicals to induce abortion are hardly going to be much better in the case of self-abortion. Either way, the pain for the baby is likely to be excruciating.
Some might say the sheer overwhelming pain of childbirth still trumps any pain the baby might feel, so, abortion should be allowed up to 40 weeks. Two points. One, the woman had 5 months to decide to avoid that, thus, it is on her if she’s still pregnant in the third trimester. Two, women getting an abortion after 7 months can be in very similar pain to having a live birth – indeed – an induced abortion, according to the NHS, is to ‘end the pregnancy and bring on labour and the vaginal birth of the baby’. Therefore: Avoiding excruciating pain can’t be used as a justification for very late-stage abortion since the excruciating pain will likely be experienced anyway.
Thomson is explicit in saying ‘I am not arguing for the right to secure the death of the unborn child’. Yet if live childbirth is similarly painful to induced abortion, then, deliberately killing the baby in the womb by coat hanger, looks to be outright wrong on any morality, including Thomson’s. Indeed, even without any painful death many pro-choicers, such as Francis Kamm, author of Creation and Abortion, agree abortion is wrong at a late state after the baby’s viability is reached where the cost to the mother of birth is small (relative to an induced abortion). No doubt many feminists will still object to elements of my argument; nonetheless, surely, they must concede the amendment to the relevant bill being decriminalising abortion up to birth as it is is wrong. This amendment would allow a sadistic woman to get pregnant again and again just so she could painfully kill her baby at a very late stage and get away with no punishment at all.
Whether you are pro-choice or pro-life this amendment must be overturned as soon as possible as it is simply a legal license for women to inflict excruciating pain on the unborn. While pro-choicers might be right about women having self-ownership over their wombs entitling them to abortion, this cannot plausibly involve them knowingly waiting to the most painful point to abort them, or, even doing so for the fun of it.
Judith Jarvis Thomson was a titan in analytical philosophy supporting abortion, yet even she probably wouldn’t have supported this amendment.
This should make MPs and Lords, far less capable of rigorous moral reasoning then her, at least reconsider their decision and debate it again, properly this time.
Charles Amos is a PhD student in political philosophy alongside working in the haulage industry. He writes The Musing Individualist Substack in his spare time.
Honestly, I’m not sure what my view is on abortion. It is a very complicated moral question which often requires answering the metaphysical question of when a person emerges from conception. Yet decriminalising abortion up to birth is surely wrong even if you’re pro-choice.
I want to run an argument from Judith Jarvis Thomson’s famous article, ‘A Defence of Abortion’, showing that even her moral reasoning doesn’t get you to decriminalising abortions after the 24 week limit which cause severe pain to the foetus. The basic thrust is though women might have a moral prerogative to kill a foetus this only extends to doing it in a minimally to non-painful way for it.
Since only about 1 per cent of abortions are due to rape, I will put that issue aside and along with it Thomson’s famous violinist analogy.
Instead let us focus on her lesser-known people-seeds analogy for abortion. Thomson asks us to imagine ‘that people-seeds drift about in the air like pollen, and if you open your windows, one may drift in and take root in your carpet’. Since Thomson imagines you don’t want children, she further speculates that ‘you fix up your windows with fine mesh screens, the very best you can buy’ to stop them getting in. Unfortunately, however, very, very rarely a person-seed gets through the mesh screen and takes root in your carpet. Thomson asks: ‘Does the person-plant who now develops have a right to the use of your home?’ Thomson answers ‘Surely not’.
If we can uproot people-seeds that have slipped through the mesh screens though, then, analogously, we can abort embryos which have been created through sex with good contraception which has failed. This argument has legs for it locks on to a very intuitive idea that our individual rights are not shrunk by accidents. Some might say the analogy fails because simply by having sex you take on the responsibility that a child might be created, hence, you’re liable to bring it up should the contraception fail. This counterintuitively implies though that in the people-seed example you’d need to live with sealed doors and shuttered windows to avoid any rooting ever; without sealed doors and shuttered windows you’d always be liable, because, you’d be responsible for them getting in, to your housing having people grow in it for nine months. I sense a dis-analogy here insofar as people-seeds are simply present in the air while sex creates their moral equivalent in fertilised ova.
Nevertheless, assume the people-seed argument broadly works; does it get us to abortion up to birth? Let us extend it a little more.
Imagine the person-seed has rooted into your carpet and is either not a person yet, or, is an early person who can be killed painlessly (Thomson isn’t clear on which it is). Thomson and pro choicers are going to argue you can up root it and kill it in the process, especially given the fact that should it fully grow it will seriously damage the building, here, standing in for child birth. However, can the home owner watch the person-seed take root, watch it grow for 5 months over tea and biscuits, knowing it will develop the ability to feel severe pain at 5 months, then, at 7 months, very painfully uproot it and thus kill it too. Obviously not. Analogously, then, a pregnant woman can’t wait 5 months, i.e., the medical consensus on when foetuses can feel pain, or, four missed periods or withdrawal bleedings if on the pill, then, very painfully abort the baby.
Now the current means for third trimester abortions on the NHS, only allowed due to danger to the mother or fetal abnormalities, are not very nice. Fetocide involves injecting potassium chloride into the heart of the baby causing it a cardiac arrest, or, via the umbilical cord up through the baby’s liver and into the heart. According to a 2002 study, injection into the heart causes ‘a long and supposedly painful fetal agony’. The umbilical cord means is comparable to lethal injection for the death penalty which the BBC has described as ‘extremely painful’ and ‘likened to liquid fire entering veins and snaking towards the heart’. Painkillers can be used to stop this. Yet as of 2023 only 76 per cent of NHS Trusts in England are willing to administer painkillers; 49 per cent of that number use painkillers as part of the regular procedure while 26 per cent only offer it on the mother’s request. As it stands then, decriminalised abortion is seriously objectionable even were it available on the NHS, which, is probably where we’ll end up due to concerns for women’s health.
But Clause 208 of the Crime & Policing Bill decriminalises women carrying out their own abortions at this very late stage, but does not permit the NHS or anyone to supply any medical assistance. Decriminalised self-abortions, and, still criminal but inevitable backstreet assisted abortions, are invariably worse for the mother, but, crucially, worse for the unborn too. No doubt back street abortionists will still use dilation and evacuation after 24 weeks, i.e., tearing the baby limb from limb using sopher forceps with serrated teeth after crushing its head. Women doing that themselves would face no legal penalty under the amendment. Coat hangers, knitting needles, bicycle spokes and deliberately using chemicals to induce abortion are hardly going to be much better in the case of self-abortion. Either way, the pain for the baby is likely to be excruciating.
Some might say the sheer overwhelming pain of childbirth still trumps any pain the baby might feel, so, abortion should be allowed up to 40 weeks. Two points. One, the woman had 5 months to decide to avoid that, thus, it is on her if she’s still pregnant in the third trimester. Two, women getting an abortion after 7 months can be in very similar pain to having a live birth – indeed – an induced abortion, according to the NHS, is to ‘end the pregnancy and bring on labour and the vaginal birth of the baby’. Therefore: Avoiding excruciating pain can’t be used as a justification for very late-stage abortion since the excruciating pain will likely be experienced anyway.
Thomson is explicit in saying ‘I am not arguing for the right to secure the death of the unborn child’. Yet if live childbirth is similarly painful to induced abortion, then, deliberately killing the baby in the womb by coat hanger, looks to be outright wrong on any morality, including Thomson’s. Indeed, even without any painful death many pro-choicers, such as Francis Kamm, author of Creation and Abortion, agree abortion is wrong at a late state after the baby’s viability is reached where the cost to the mother of birth is small (relative to an induced abortion). No doubt many feminists will still object to elements of my argument; nonetheless, surely, they must concede the amendment to the relevant bill being decriminalising abortion up to birth as it is is wrong. This amendment would allow a sadistic woman to get pregnant again and again just so she could painfully kill her baby at a very late stage and get away with no punishment at all.
Whether you are pro-choice or pro-life this amendment must be overturned as soon as possible as it is simply a legal license for women to inflict excruciating pain on the unborn. While pro-choicers might be right about women having self-ownership over their wombs entitling them to abortion, this cannot plausibly involve them knowingly waiting to the most painful point to abort them, or, even doing so for the fun of it.
Judith Jarvis Thomson was a titan in analytical philosophy supporting abortion, yet even she probably wouldn’t have supported this amendment.
This should make MPs and Lords, far less capable of rigorous moral reasoning then her, at least reconsider their decision and debate it again, properly this time.