Abortion: A Review Article

ABORTION: A REVIEW ARTICLE I AT THE MEETINGS of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago, 29 December 1970, the Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences sponsored a symposium on " Problems in the Meaning of Death." One of the speakers, Professor Robert S. Morison 1 of Cornell University, observed: " Squirm as we may to avoid the inevitable, ... we must shoulder the responsibility of deciding to act in such a way as to hasten the declining trajectories of some lives, while doing our best to slow down the decline of others." Morison's proposal was: "... We have to do this on the basis of some judgment on the quality of the lives in question." This means that " we should now face the fact that [the] value [of an individual human life] varies with time and circumstance." It means also a comparison of the value of various lives with one another at various points in their " trajectories" in terms of their social worthiness, their enhancement of the general quality of life, or in terms of the social costs of maintaining them. Morison's is, therefore, a social calculus -albeit one that is richly sensitive to respect for individual human life-in which the limit-rule of classical utilitarianism, " each to count for one, no one for more than one " regardless of its state or condition, is of disappearing importance.2 Toward the end of his remarks Morison appealed to the analogy between his proposal for rationalizing our treatment of the dying in terms of judgments on the quality, social worthiness, and social costs of their lives and the fact that increasingly " men and women have shouldered the same kind of responsibility-but apparently with considerably less horror and dismay-at the beginning of the life-span." Recent developments, he points out, have greatly broadened the " indications " said to justify abortion " to include 1 Robert S. Morison, "Death: Process or Event?" in Science, Vol. 173 (August ~0, 1971), pp. 694-8. 2 Such, indeed, is the unavoidable outcome, in the logic of the matter and in the history of morals, of the competition between the " greatest good altogether" and the greatest good of everyone in utilitarian theory. 174 ABORTION 175 what is essentially the convenience of the mother and the protection of society against the dangers of overpopulation "; to include also " basing the decision of whether or not to abort purely on an assessment of the quality of life likely to be lived by the human organism in question." Here again, the comparison is of times and circumstances; it is also a comparison that pits one life against another life in respects that are not claimed to be or allowed to be a parity between claimants. Actions so fashioned may still add up to a greater good in general, provided we first admit that some lives count for less than one, or are not to be counted. Morison's appeal to the structure of current arguments in favor of benign liberalized abortion to support opening the question of benign liberalized euthanasia is an instructive one. It may serve as a touchstone for unpacking and assessing the arguments in support of either conclusion. For surely, if the moral reasoning is essentially the same, and correct, both practices should be and likely will be the outcome. If the moral reasoning is the same, and incorrect, both practices may still be the outcome. But if the moral reasoning is the same (correct or incorrect) , men and women cannot, without depriving themselves of their wits (consistency) , espouse the one and not the other conclusion also. In any case one can learn more from one unflinching thinker like Morison than from half a dozeu other men. In undertaking to assess the present state of abortion debate (so far as there has been one), and in moving Morison forward as my King's pawn, I of course do not mean to try emotionally to persuade any pro-abortionist from his or her opinion by frightening him or her with euthanasia. Nor do I mean to suggest a merely external or causal social connection between the current practice of abortion and the coming practice of...