My belief about the ethics of abortion is that it is a metaphysical question (meta, beyond, physics, the laws of science).  Ultimately our beliefs will shape our morals because science cannot find for us any morally relevant feature of a foetus that distinctively marks the passage from a collection of cells, to a human person.

Indeed, the issue of personhood (see Simon Blackburn’s useful discussion) comes before any moral judgement on the ethics of abortion for most moral theories (Kantian, Natural Law) except the utilitarians who argue that goodness resides in some balance of pleasure over pain.  If, as Singer argues, animals(at least higher order primates) have as much claim on the pain/pleasure calculation as humans, then it doesn’t really matter for utilitarians whether foetus is classified as human – it only matters whether they feel pain.

Here scientists can’t agree: the earliest estimate is eighteen weeks, the latest, twenty-nine weeks.  If you can find it, the Channel 4 documentary from 2006 gives a fascinating insight into this discussion.  Because although the ethics of abortion may be a metaphysical question, there are nonetheless certain facts which are morally relevant.

1. The presence of pain. Do foetuses feel pain?  When?  How much? How do we know?

2. The age of viability (survivability) of the foetus.  In 1990 as part of the embryology bill the legal term for abortion was reduced from 28 to 24 weeks. Yet some premature babies survive at 22 weeks.  Although this viability is unlikely to fall any further (the lungs are not sufficiently formed to sustain life below this level), it does seem morally relevant that babies can be in an incubator in one ward, whilst next door a mother is being wheeled in for a late term abortion.

3.  The presence of disability.  Today foetuses are scanned and tested for various genetic disabilities.  The 1967 act allows abortion for disabled foetuses, and abortion is also allowable if severe disability is diagnosed after 24 weeks.  But what are we supposed to do with this scientific fact?  Joanna Jepson went to the High Court in 2002 to obtain a ruling on the legality of abortions at 28 weeks for cleft palate (remember abortions later then 24 weeks are allowable for “severe disability”).

29 abortions for cleft palate had taken place in the preceding ten years. She writes: “It is not women whose human rights are diminished by hypocrisy, evasion, and conflict – it’s the disabled”.  Is an ethics that protects the weak compatible with an ethics of rights (such as a woman’s right to choose to abort?).

In addition, definitions do seem to matter in this debate.  How do we define a “human person”?  What makes a life “worth living”?  And we need to be aware that the early embryo, up to 14 days old, has now been defined as the pre-embryo, because so primitve is its cell life that it has no gender or recognisable quality that makes it distinctively “human”.  Do pre-embryo’s have no moral status?

My handout explores the ethics of abortion in greater detail, and Andrew Capone’s powerpoint gives a detailed explanation of how sanctity of life issues affect this debate.

Image: Revd Joanna Jepson, Wells Cathedral