Aaannndddd the abortion debate is back on!
For so many years making a case for life felt like yelling into the wind. The matter seemed forever settled. And then it wasn’t.
Oddly, a common reaction that I have seen has been that this is religious fanatics forcing religious beliefs on the rest of the country. While I have no problem, in principle, in advocating religious convictions in the public square, this one is decidedly not religious. To my mind, the full personhood of the unborn not only could be but should be recognized by all. The case is not a religious one. In fact, I don’t find the Bible to be abundantly clear on exactly when the right to life begins. To be sure, the Bible clearly recognizes the personhood of the unborn in a variety of places. I think it also provides a theological framework for personhood that is at home with the pro-life view, and this is no small matter. But, just like many other important issues, one must take that biblical framework and make decisions about exactly how it applies to particular issues. [1]
It’s not religious but it does take some metaphysics
But the point here is the case need not involve any Bible verses. Not one.
The case requires no religious creed or theological doctrine.
The case doesn’t even require a belief in God. A full-blown atheist could believe in the full personhood of the unborn from the moment of conception and this would beg no question.
Now, to be clear, the case I will make does require a hefty metaphysical commitment. A strict physicalist that thinks a human person is nothing over and above physical parts and processes cannot abide this case. The unborn, for the physicalist, really just is a clump of cells. But so are you and so am I. You and I are just quite a bit larger clumps.
It seems to me perfectly morally acceptable to remove and destroy mere clumps of cells. If physicalism has it right, then abortion at any stage of the game is perfectly unobjectionable. But since nothing much changes from birth onward from the physical point of view, the problem becomes that it’s really difficult to say why infant, children or adult clumps of cells have the right to life. Us adult clumps of cells may decide by consensus that we shouldn’t end each other’s lives and all pinky-promise to hold up our end of the bargain. But this doesn’t amount to a moral right and certainly not one that is inalienable.
The case for the personhood of the unborn
Okay, what’s the case for the personhood of the unborn?
The first step is the hefty metaphysical commitment. So, buckle up here. The claim is that human persons are embodied souls. I know, I know…it sounds religious. But it’s not. Think Plato and Descartes here rather than some religious claim or creed. You could draw this view entirely from Plato’s and Descartes’s arguments and know nothing of the biblical claims. Even though these (especially Plato) argue for quite a number of theses related to the soul, they seemed to take the existence of the soul as a quite obvious fact.
And I agree.
Why think the existence of the soul is a quite obvious fact? I suggest it’s what we know best. If I know anything, I know I exist and that I’m not a mere physical body. I think that I am directly aware of myself as a thing of conscious experiences.
I am not my body
What I am not directly aware of is anything specifically physical or bodily. I am directly aware of conscious experiences that *I take* to be the result of physical and bodily processes, but, on my view, we are only directly aware of the conscious experiences.
For example, I’m directly aware of pain. I’m not directly aware of the bodily process going on when I experience pain. That takes an inference. When I stub my toe, there is an extremely complicated physiological process involving nerve receptors, my brain, nervous system, etc. But I’m not directly aware of these things. We are told these things are happening, but I can’t simply reflect and know that certain parts of my brain are lit up given my stubbed toe.
Look, I don’t even know for sure that I have a brain!! [Insert whatever jokes you need to here] Okay, I’m maybe being a bit cheeky here, but I have no direct evidence that I have a brain. And unless you have had some extraordinary medical issues related to your brain, you likely have no direct evidence either. Do I believe I have a brain? Of course I do, and I believe that you have a brain too. But, why? What evidence do I have? The evidence is almost entirely testimonial and inferential. I’ve been told by the experts that all humans (and many other organisms) have brains. I have seen this confirmed in other animals along the way. But, for most of us, that’s going to be about it.
But I do know that I have a mind perhaps better than anything else I know. I know that I am a thinking thing with all sorts of conscious experiences. And I know that there’s a self that is having these experiences. I am a soul. The way I think we are best characterized is as embodied souls. It’s not that I have a soul or have been ensouled. It’s that *I am* a soul. And this soul is embodied.
There is, of course, a lot more to say about this and an endless supply of controversies on which to weigh in. While this is a deep metaphysical commitment, I’d suggest that many people think of themselves in this way even without any of the technicality philosophers love to wade into. It’s very natural to think of yourself as something more than just particles in motion. We care about our bodies, but it’s not like we fret over losing skin cells on the daily. We care much more about conscious experiences and think of the bearer of those experiences as fundamentally us. So I don’t think we need any kind of sophisticated philosophy of mind to be quite aware of ourselves as souls where we understand this to mean we are immaterial selves that have conscious experiences.
When does the soul begin to exist?
Now, if you take the metaphysical plunge here, then the only question is when the soul/the self comes into existence. It’s clear that conscious experiences begin in the womb. How early? I’m sure we can know this for sure. But, by all measures, it’s rather early in fetal development.
But having conscious experiences is not, it seems, the best criterion for the existence of the soul. That is, we can fail to have conscious experience and still exist. We lose consciousness regularly. It’s not like we pass out of existence for the time in which we are unconscious whether we are sleeping, knocked out or under anesthesia. Conscious experience is best thought of a sign or evidence of the soul. It doesn’t, however, constitute the existence of the soul.
To me, the far and away most plausible marker is the moment of conception. The moment of conception is when the brand-new organism comes into existence. The sperm and the egg by themselves are not organisms, but a fertilized egg is. It’s a fundamentally new thing and from there it simply grows, develops and eventually changes location.
Now, it’s certainly possible that the soul comes into existence sometime after conception. But when? Every other marker seems to be arbitrary. Why should a fetal heartbeat or brain activity suggest there’s now a soul with rights much less viability or first breath or birth. When we evaluate the possible markers, conception seems to be the only non-arbitrary marker this brand-new existence.
The right to life
We should notice there’s nothing religious here. Does it fit a Christian anthropology? Yes. But so does getting good exercise and getting out of debt. This doesn’t make getting regular exercise and paying off credit cards religious. The claim that we are embodied souls fits an array of data, especially the data of our conscious experiences. While being metaphysically hefty, the claim that I am an immaterial self that has conscious experiences is a natural way of explaining what’s before me. If that’s what I am and I deserve the right to life, then there’s good reason to believe the unborn should have the right to life. When does the right to life begin? The moment of conception is the moment when this thing becomes something brand new. It is, as I see it, the moment in which life begins.
[1] Probably the closest we get is Jeremiah 1:5 where God says that he knew Jeremiah before he fashioned him in his mother’s womb. This may be a reference to conception, but, again, it’s not completely clear.