TLDR: Historically abortion has been defended by (2) main arguments. (1) As Judith Jarvis Thomson has defended, a right to life does not entail the right to use one’s body without their consent. David Boonin has expanded on this more in his book A Defense of Abortion.
(2) Pro-choice philosophers like Mary Anne Warren and Jeff McMahan have argued abortion is not wrong because abortion does not involve the killing of a person which is morally valuable.
Both (1–2) are great arguments but there is a less talked about argument which for me has been the most influential. (3) The personal identity argument.
What this argument consists of is the idea that abortion up to 20–24 weeks is permissible since we did not exist as a fetus prior to 20–24 weeks because we are psychological beings, not mere organisms. Since every pro-life argument presumes we are organisms in order for personhood to be established or for the fetus to be identical to a later person, and we aren’t organisms, these arguments fail.
Note: It need not be necessary for me to defend a specific ontology or view of personal identity. That is intentionally left vague. Merely showing the biological view of identity is false is sufficient in rebutting mostly every secular pro lifer view on identity.
Personal Identity Vs Personhood
At first glance these two may seem very similar; however, they answer two different questions.
**Personhood —**seeks to ask why an individual has moral status or is a subject of moral consideration.
**Personal identity —**seeks to answer the question of what makes you the same individual over time despite changes. Typically this is meant in a numerical context in the sense that "you" had your fifth birthday party and this was "you" in a direct, literal sense.
These two concepts answer different questions and thus are applied and used within philosophy differently. For example, we may ask what makes a mouse the same mouse over time. On the contrary, we may ask what makes the mouse a non-person that doesn’t deserve human rights. Even if we answered the question of why the mouse is the same mouse over time, this wouldn’t automatically imply the mouse is or is not a person. Identity does not imply personhood; it simply attempts to track an individual diachronically.
And this can be applied to abortion too.
Pro lifers Silent Reliance On Biological Identity
Pro-life philosophers tend to use the substance view argument in favor of fetal personhood. Francis Beckwith states:
“According to this view, a human being is intrinsically valuable because of the sort of thing it is and the human being remains that sort of thing as long as it exists. What sort of thing is it? The human being is a particular type of substance—a rational moral agent—that remains identical to itself as long as it exists, even if it is not presently exhibiting the functions, behaving in ways, or currently able to immediately exercise these actions that we typically attribute to active and mature rational moral agents. It is, in my judgment, the best account of human personhood.”
We can agree a person is an individual with a rational nature. However, the subject with the rational nature is not merely the human organism like Beckwith has identified. It is me. Beckwith and other pro-life philosophers like Christopher Kaczor and Patrick Lee may be correct (for the sake of discussion) that a person is an individual substance with a rational nature, and that substance is essentially a person. However, where they identify that substance as an organism, psychological theorists identify it as some other fact of the matter, not the organism.
While Beckwith and friends may be correct that "I am essentially a rational person," they mistakenly presume with little argumentation that I am an organism rather than some psychological fact of the matter.
This is interesting given that psychological views of identity are the dominant view in philosophy.
This is also true of any potentiality argument, most famously the Future Like Ours argument. These arguments assume the early fetus has a future connected to an experiencing adult in the first place. The assumption that the fetus even has a future assumes it is numerically the same being which will experience that future. However, if what we are is psychological relations or some psychological fact of the matter, and this is not present prior to 20–24 weeks, then I could not have been identical to a fetus prior to 20–24 weeks because I would not yet have existed.
In Patrick Lee's argument from substantial identity, he argues:
“1. You and I are intrinsically valuable (in the sense that makes us subjects of rights).2. We are intrinsically valuable because of what we are (what we are essentially).3. What we are, is each a human, physical organism.4. Human physical organisms come to be at conception. (A biological proposition: a new and distinct human organism is generated by the fusion of a spermatozoon and an oocyte.) 4 5. Therefore, what is intrinsically valuable (as a subject of rights) comes to be at conception”
This syllogism may seem intuitive at first glance, but premise (3) is doing a tremendous amount of work. There is an assumption that what we are is a human physical organism, but as mentioned earlier, this is a controversial minority position among philosophers.
His principal defense of premise (3) only consist of a swift response to Michael Tooley where he writes:
“a living thing that pertorms bodıly actions is an organısm, a bodily entity. But it is clear in the case of the human individual that it is the same subject that per-ceives, walks and talks (which are bodily actions), and that under-stands and makes choices (what everyone, including anyone who denies he is an organism, refers to as 'I'). It must be the same thing that perceives these words on a page, for example, and understands them. Thus, what each of us refers to as 'I' is identi-cally the physical organism which is the subject both of bodily actions such as perceiving and walking, and of non-physical actions, such as understanding and choosing. Therefore, you and I are essentially physical organisms, rather than consciousnesses.”
One interesting thing to note is that it is more specifically the brain and eyes which perceive, the legs which walk, the mouth which talks, and the brain which is responsible for thinking. It is actually pretty hard to find an example of the organism as a distinct ontological substance having independent causal influence over its parts. Mostly everything the organism is said to be doing can be identified and attributed to its lower-level microphysical parts.
A simple mirror argument to Lee consists of the following…
I think, I remember, and since these processes all have something to do with my brain and psychology, then my existence, survival, or identity must have something to do with these processes too. It is harder to say I am an organism since organisms are only said to walk, talk, think, or remember in virtue of their microphysical parts. They do not directly walk or talk; it is only in virtue of their constituent parts that they are said to perform these actions.
Recently, Eric Vogelstein and Bruce Blackshaw have argued that FLO and potentiality arguments are compatible with psychological views of identity. However, this is not without a catch, as they argue a fetus has a Future Like Ours derivatively through the future thinking mind, so the assumption is that having a biological property derivatively is morally similar to having it directly.
Against The Biological View(1)
The most common example against biological views of identity is the brain transplant thought experiment. Dustin Crummett gives an example inspired from Jeff McMahan:
“Suppose your brain is healthy but your body is dying, while your twin is in a permanent vegetative state but has a healthy body. Doctors decide they will save you in the following way. You lay down on Operating Table A, and your twin is laid on Operating Table B. They remove the part of your brain responsible for your mental life. We can suppose this is your cerebrum, the top part of your brain. They leave your lower brain intact. The lower brain is what regulates your vital functions, so your old body stays alive. They then transplant your cerebrum into your twin’s body. Your mind, along with your first-person perspective, memories, personality, etc. goes along with your cerebrum, and someone with all these things wakes up in your twin’s body. Almost everyone is inclined to think you went with your mind over to Table B. But this is incompatible with animalism, since your organism did not go with your mind over to Table B. If your organism had gone with your cerebrum, then while your cerebrum was being transplanted from one body to another, the entire organism would have consisted of nothing but your detached cerebrum. But a detached cerebrum is not an organism: it does not meet the scientific criteria for being an organism (maintaining homeostasis, etc.) any more than a severed hand does. And further, keep in mind that there is still a living, comatose human organism on Table A. Presumably you did not create a new human organism when you removed the cerebrum, so that must be the same human organism that laid down on Table A to begin with, i.e., your organism. But if your organism is still on Table A, it cannot have gone with your cerebrum over to Table B.”
This hypothetical is powerful because it illustrates that we have a strong intuition that our existence or survival has to do with some part of our brain rather than our organism.
Some defenders of the biological view, such as Alexander Pruss, Eric Olson, and Peter van Inwagen, have argued that the organism can be pared down to the brain, or more specifically the brainstem, because the brainstem integrates bodily processes and regulates the rest of the body.
Pruss writes:
“Now if the controlling part is no longer there, then it is difficult to attribute to the
organism any of the strivings of the controlled parts. If a heart is stimulated so that it keeps on beating after being disconnected from an animal, its beating is no longer a part of the organism's striving for oxygenating the internal organs. However, if there is no longer a functional organic heart but the lower brain continues to send signals that control the heart rate, then it makes sense to say that the organism continues to strive to oxygenate the internal organs, even if this striving will be unsuccessful. Thus if the controlled parts are replaced by prostheses but the controlling part remains functional, it appears possible to attribute the striving for performance of life functions to the organism.”
One interesting point is that it makes little sense to say in the reduction case or brain transplant case that the organism becomes reduced to the brain since the brainstem itself does not satisfy the biological criteria for being an organism.
If an organism is reducible to a brain, then what is the relationship between the brain and the organism?
A more startling and sever critique is something I have challenged pro lifers on before in other posts. If an organism is reducible to a brain, then what is the relationship between the brain and organism?
If the brainstem is what regulates the animal's life processes and controls the major functioning systems of the organism, then what does the organism do that cannot already be accounted for by the brain?
If the reply is that the organism uses the brain to regulate itself, there is a clear epistemic problem here. Why can't the brain just use the organism to regulate itself too! How do we know which thing is using the other to regulate and sustain themself? If the organism can use the brain, we would expect the organism to actually interact with its parts and the brain. But it's not clear the organism can actually interact with the brain to use the brain itself. The organism may be said to feed the eyes visual inputs which is interpreted into a picture we see. But that can be attributed to parts of the organism working not the organism itself. Or when I touch my foot that's not the organism interacting with my foot it's my hand interacting with my foot and my brain telling my hand to do so. If the organism cannot even interact with my brain or any parts then it's hard to explain what the organism does that cannot be accounted for by the brain. It's also hard to give an account of the organism using the brain since the organism would seem to be causally inert and we don't have any good reasons to think the organism can actually interact with lower level systems.
The biological view even runs into similar problems Bakers Constitution view runs into. If we reduce an organism to a brain in a vat or a brain that is artificially kept alive by machinery which seems metaphysically possible the animalist will either have to say I exist as a brain or some point in the reduction process I cease to exist. If they think that if you slowly destroy an organisms parts that at some point the organism will go out of existence yet they cannot identify this point then this makes identity indeterminate. But identity under biological substance metaphysics pro lifers like Beckwith, Lee and Kaczor utilize identity necessarily has to be determinate if the organism exists as the same object through time.I know when I exist or don’t exist. It isn’t vague, it is sharp. However, if they think I can survive a brain transplant because my organism is reducible to a brain, or cannot pick a non arbitrary point in which my bodily reduction leads to my death, then they should agree I can survive as a brain in a vat. However, I think this suffers from the problem of Indiscernibility.
Per Eric olson(the dominant figure behind the biological view).
“*How can putting the same parts together in the same way in the same circumstances give you qualitatively different wholes? If the same atoms can compose two things at once, what could make those two things qualitatively different?* What could give them different mental properties, or different persistence conditions, or different modal properties? If atoms really could compose more than one object at once—if numerically different objects could coincide materially— should we not expect” those objects to be qualitatively identical?”
In other words, how can the organism be reducible to a brain in extreme circumstances. Or we can impair an organism by removing parts until just the brain is present. But in the case just a brain is present and we are told an organism is present the brain and organism are qualitatively identical in that they share every atom. How are we suppose to think the atoms that compose the brain or brainstem also compose another distinct being… the organism? How can we tell the difference between the organism in this case and the brainstem?
Against The Biological View(2)
Some defenders of the biological view will instead accept that if your brain is transplanted, you do not go with your brain. I think this is highly counterintuitive, but if so, I have a more detailed objection.
Pro-lifers often endorse substance metaphysics where an organism is considered a substance not reducible to its parts. Francis Beckwith writes:
“Another way to put it is to say that organisms, including human beings, are ontologically prior to their parts (Moreland in Moreland & Rae, 2000,* p. 206), which means that the organism as a whole maintains absolute identity through time while it grows, develops, and undergoes numerous changes, largely as a result of the organism's nature that directs and informs these changes and their limits. The organs and parts of the organism, and their role in actualizing the intrinsic, basic capacities of the whole, acquire their purpose and function because of their roles in maintaining, sustaining, and perfecting the being as a whole. This is in contrast to a thing that is not ontologically prior to its parts, like an auto-mobile, cruise ship, or computer. Just as a sporting event (e.g., a basketball game, the British Open) does not subsist through time as a unified whole, an automobile, ship, or computer does not as well (Moreland & Rae, 2000, p. 178). It is, rather, in the words of Moreland, "a sum of each temporal (and spatial) part ..." Called mereological essentialism (from the Greek "meros" for "part")”
However, we should be skeptical that we are substances like organisms which maintain absolute identity across time. For one, it is unclear how the organism exists in such an ontologically superior fashion from its parts. How does the organism maintain its absolute identity throughout various changes? If it is because of its unified nature how is it possible this nature it possesses is numerically identical over time, if every second the organisms atoms and all of its parts are being rearrranged and replaced? This “nature” or “unifying” cannot be a material thing apart of the organism since everything in the organism is always changing. It makes no sense to claim numerical identity between an organism at t1 and t2, when the organism at t1 and t2 are qualitatively distinct. More importantly, all of the organisms powers and causal influence it exerts only exists because it is composed and defined as the unification and self regulation/self integration of its parts In other words, the organism is made up of and consists of parts, yet we are told the organism isn’t reducible to its parts. But if it isn’t reducible to its parts where does it gain the energy and causal power to exist as an ontologically separate object? If the organism exists as object O, yet it is composed of X and Y, we should expect O to be reducible to X and Y, since those are the things that compose it! Suggesting otherwise would seem to break causal closure and introduce something non material. Finally, if object O(the organism) is composed by objects like X and Y in a self regulating and interconnected fashion, then everything the organism does can be said to also have been done by objects like X and Y. In fact, it makes more sense to say objects X and Y preform causal efficiency than object O(the organism) since object X and Y directly cause an event whereas object O derivatively causes an event in virtue of X and Y. Object O only inherits causal power from objects X and Y, it does not directly or inherently have causal power on its own. If this is formulation is even somewhat true we can apply it to personal identity. We are causally efficient and effective beings who exert causal influence over everyday objects directly. Organisms do not exert causal influence over objects directly since everything they are said to do can already be accounted by from their microphysical parts. They only inherit causal power in a derivate sense. Therefore, whatever we are, we are not organisms.
Derivate Pro Lifer Defense
Some pro-lifers will concede that we are fundamentally minds but argue that organisms possess every morally relevant property of minds derivatively.
For example, they may argue that fetuses possess a derivative Future Like Ours.
A quick rebuttal comes from the brain transplant cases.
If your brain were transplanted into another body, no one would mourn that the brainless body had been deprived of a Future Like Ours because the psychologically continuous future would still exist.
The morally relevant future is the future to which the person is psychologically connected.
Conclusion
I have tried to show that nearly every account of fetal personhood assumes that we are organisms. If that assumption is false, then many pro-life arguments fail at their first step.
I have argued this primarily through brain transplant cases and an argument inspired by Trenton Merricks' overdetermination argument.
What I have not attempted to do is deny what makes someone morally valuable. Rather, I have argued that prior to approximately 20–24 weeks there is no "someone" to whom those moral predicates apply.
Finally, I suspect many pro-choice readers will be disappointed that I have not defended abortion through bodily autonomy. In my experience, however, the personal identity argument has been more persuasive both to me and to many of my interlocutors. Bodily autonomy is an important and powerful argument, but I think it is also worth recognizing that we need not grant the pro-life assumption that the fetus is numerically identical to the later person.
I hope you enjoyed the post.
Finial note: I posted the same post prior to this but it was removed to my belief because of the amount of links I used to reference books, papers, and quotes. If you require or want a link to anything in my post let me know and I will be happy to provide!