In Defense of Abortion: Issues of Pragmatism Regarding the Institutionalization of Killing

PERSPECTIVES IN BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE Volume 34 · Number 3 · Spring 1991 IN DEFENSE OF ABORTION: ISSUES OF PRAGMATISM REGARDING THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF KILLING ROBERT T. MULLER* Recently, the issue of abortion has received considerable attention in the media. Two political bodies have served to popularize this issue. These are the so-called Prolife and Prochoice movements. The main argument espoused by the Prolife movement is that abortion is "morally wrong," as the act entails the termination of human life, innocent human life. They consider the fetus to be a human being at conception. Prochoice suggest that the right to an abortion is a matter of individual conscience. They say a woman has the right to this choice as only she should be able to control consequences to her body. In this view, abortion is seen largely as a medical procedure. The Prochoice movement does not directly address the question of whether a fetus is or is not a human being, as this issue is viewed as essentially unresolvable. Many conceive of these organizations as addressing independent issues , with the Prolife movement addressing the issue of Tightness versus wrongness of abortion, and Prochoice addressing the issue of individual versus social right to control abortion. However, it appears that with respect to each of these two issues, the movements oppose one another. In supporting the view that abortion is wrong, Prolife supporters generThis article was written while the author was on a fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (452-89-0451). The author thanks colleagues Leonard M. Fleck, Lauren J. Harris, Diane A. Philipp, and Peter J. Snyder for their helpful comments. ""Department of Psychology, Snyder Hall, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824.© 1991 by The University of Chicago. AU rights reserved. 003 1-5982/91/3403-0733$01 .GO Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 34, 3 ¦ Spring 1991 315 ally conclude with the policy decision that it should be halted, regardless of individual conscience. In supporting the view that the right to abortion is a matter of individual decision, Prochoice's arguments imply that no wrong is perpetrated when an abortion is performed (this follows from the assertion that most individuals who consider an act to be morally wrong would not consider the right to execute such an act to be one of individual conscience). As such, Prochoice implicitly condones the act of abortion. Among academic circles, the issue of abortion has received considerable attention as well. Tooley and Warren presented a view that has been labeled the "liberal" position [1, 2]. They drew a distinction between human beings (in the genetic sense) and persons (in the moral sense) (for recent summaries of this approach, see [3—5]). Tooley argued in favor of abortion on the grounds that the fetus does not have the right to continued existence since it does not possess the attribute of a "continuing self or mental substance" [6, p. 121]. In a response, Tushnet and Seidman suggested that even if the fetus lacks rights, this does not establish that killing it is permissible [7]. More recently, Marquis suggested that what makes the killing of a particular human being morally wrong is, not the sanctity of human life, but that the act necessarily deprives the other of a future [8]. It appears that the "liberal" and "conservative" camps (in both colloquial as well as academic circles) have failed to address a fundamental issue. I will refer to this issue as the institutionalization of killing. The Institutionalization ofKilling In Civilization and its Discontents, Sigmund Freud suggested Men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved, and who at the most can defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness. [9, p. 65] In expounding the issue of institutionalized killing, let me begin by proposing that killing is as much a modern socially sanctioned institution as, say, marriage or education. Most individuals would acknowledge some validity in this statement, noting that we condone the killing of animals for food or clothing. And although the act is looked on by many with distaste, it is not...