Part 1

A Libertarian Case for Abortion Rights

Sharon Presley

In the libertarian tradition, a person is a free moral agent with “sole dominion” over his or her life.[1] This entails the right to make the choices believed necessary to a desired emotional or psychological, as well as purely physical, condition. (The right to control one’s body is meaningless, after all, without the right to control how the body affects the rest of one’s self.) To interfere with self-determination—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—is to deny the human capability of moral agency, to treat a person as a thing. When such interference occurs on a systematic basis, we give it a name: slavery. It includes race slavery, forced labor camps, conscription, and proscription of abortion (breeding slavery).

The Basic Issue: A Woman’s Right to Self-Determination

Those who believe abortion to be morally wrong focus all their attention on the fetus. In their view, the rights of the woman and the consequences to her life are secondary to the alleged right of the fetus to life. Libertarians, however, believe in the sanctity of private property. There is no property that is more private than one’s own body.

Therefore, the real issue is the woman’s right to self-determination. The woman has the prior moral claim because she is the already-existing free moral agent. It is her life, her body, and her physical resources that are being claimed, not the other way around. A woman’s right to self-determination includes not only the right to control her physical body and all that happens within it but the psychological and existential components of her life and well-being as well.

In the case of unwanted pregnancy, the existential choice for a woman is not between abortion and no abortion; it is between abortion and compulsory childbearing.[2] This brings into play the libertarian principle of limited government. If the government can force a pregnant woman to be a mother (and she is the biological mother even if she does not raise the child), then she is coerced into putting her body at the disposal of the fetus as if she were an unclaimed natural resource or a chattel slave. Even if the fetus is removed and raised separately, she is still forced to be the manufacturer, the baby machine. Thus, the woman’s most fundamental right of choice, the right to control her own body and happiness, is being abrogated.

Is the Fetus a Person?

Anti-abortionists rest the bulk of their moral case against abortion on the assertion that the fetus is a “person”; therefore killing it would be murder. If the fetus is not a person, their case against abortion fails.

Anti-abortionists never define the word person in any intellectually precise sense. They employ the word as if it were synonymous with “human being” but fail to distinguish between genetically human and psychologically human. Marshaling evidence to prove that the fetus is biologically human, they think this proves that the fetus is a person. However, the term person does not have the same definition as “biological human being.”

To blur the distinction between biologically and psychologically human is a useful trick, since the fetus is obviously genetically human. That is, the information encoded in the DNA of the fertilized egg will tell the egg how to develop into a human being. But this fact alone cannot have moral significance. Since every cell in the body has the same genetic information, it is theoretically possible to clone a human being from any cell. But no one would argue that it is murder to destroy skin cells. The anti-abortionists argue, of course, that the fertilized egg is somehow different from all other cells, but they fail to explain how.

The anti-abortionists also claim that a “person” is an animal with the potential for rationality. But “person” means more than this; several additional interrelated aspects of “personhood” that are generally agreed upon by philosophy and psychology are required. “In a general philosophical sense,” says the Oxford Unabridged Dictionary, a person is “a self-conscious or rational being.”[3] Reason is “the intellectual power or faculty which is ordinarily employed in adapting thought or action to some end.”[4] That is, a person is an organism that can engage in what psychologists call “purposeful action” and philosophers call “making choices.”

From a psychological point of view, the necessary condition for rationality and self-consciousness is the capacity for cognition—that is, the process of integrating perceptions and sensations into a mental organization, which in turn enables the individual to engage in intentional, purposeful action. But these faculties cannot be manifested until after birth. The perceptual process necessary for cognition can begin only when the organism is subject to outside environmental stimuli—that is, when there is something to perceive. In the uterus, a strictly limited sensory environment, only the most primitive level of sensations and reflexes is possible for the fetus.

Birth is the point at which purposeful action can begin. “The birth of the child is marked by two fundamental changes in his functioning,” say child psychologists. “He is now subjected to states of imbalance, deprivation, or discomfort that must soon be repaired and he encounters a variety of events and experiences which shape his perception of the environment and his reactions to it. These states are important psychologically for they force the infant to do something to alleviate the discomfort.”[5] That is, to engage in purposeful action.

The argument that a newborn infant is not rational, thus leaving the door open for infanticide, stems from ignorance of infant psychology. The newborn is functioning cognitively. “The newborn is a remarkably capable organism from the moment he begins to breathe. … The infant is biologically ready to experience most of the basic sensations of his species from the moment he is born. … We have exploded the myth of newborn insensitivity and incompetence.”[6]

Anti-abortionists try to get around these differences between fetus and infant with one of two assertions. Some say that the difference is only one of degree, a notion that is contrary to the findings of developmental psychology. Or else they claim that there is no significant difference in value between potential capacity and actual capacity to be a person. This idea flies in the face of most human experience. Most people do see a difference between the information or parts needed for a structure (the DNA or fetus; the plans or materials for a house) and the completed structure (the infant or the house).

To discredit the criterion of “actual capacity” as opposed to “potential,” anti-abortionists also argue that comatose or retarded individuals are “not capable” of rationality or cognitive functioning, yet we all agree that they are persons and we cannot justifiably kill them. However, the definition of a particular kind of entity describes the unique characteristics of an entity in its normal state.

Partial fluctuations from the norm do not change the essential nature of the entity. A car does not cease to be a car because its brakes don’t work. If the impaired condition of comatose persons were corrected, they would function cognitively. Retarded persons do function cognitively but at a lower level than the norm. But a fetus in its normal state does not function cognitively or make choices. Just as the unassembled parts of a car are different from a car with broken brakes, so a fetus is conceptually different from a comatose person.

Thus, the fetus is not self-conscious, cannot function cognitively, and is not capable of purposeful action; it is therefore not a person in any commonly accepted philosophical, psychological, or legal sense.

Two questions remain:

1. At what point does the fetus become a person?
2. Until what point is abortion morally allowable?

The fact that there is no exact biological point of change that can be ascertained presents a slippery problem for those who base their moral case on biological criteria. Anti-abortionists say that because we cannot define an exact point at which the fetus becomes a person, it is therefore a person from conception. This is an example of the “line-drawing fallacy.”[7] These questions, however, can be resolved only on ethical and philosophical grounds—not biological ones.

The libertarian principle of private property logically entails a woman’s right to control her pregnancy totally until the point of birth dictated by natural forces—that is, until a normal or premature delivery or caesarian section. This includes the right to terminate the life of the fetus during the abortion procedure at any time prior to delivery. Some argue that using the point of birth as the dividing line between fetus and person is arbitrary. But birth is neither trivial nor arbitrary; it is a far more significant event for the newborn than anything prior.

However, there is a crucial philosophical difference that occurs at birth. At any point prior to the action of natural forces, the only moral way the fetus can be removed from the woman’s body is for her to make the choice to initiate the action. Because the natural process is not yet completed, she can still make a choice to bear the child or not. But once natural forces initiate the birth process, the situation is beyond the woman’s control and beyond moral choice. She simply is a mother, whether she wants to be or not.

Consequences of Interference with Abortion Decisions

The anti-abortionists elevate the principle of “life” to the level of a mystical abstraction independent of the lives of actual individuals. To call for the survival of “life” at any cost, without regard for the quality of life for living individuals, is to make morality a higher good than life itself.

To anti-abortionists, the physical survival of an entity that cannot yet experience emotions or cognitions is of more consequence and value than the emotional and physical well-being of an already-existing adult for whom unwanted pregnancy will bring great emotional pain and physical risk.

If we examine the consequences of abortion on the one hand and of unwanted pregnancy on the other, we will see that the consequences for the woman are of far greater magnitude than for the fetus. If an abortion is performed, the actual consequences to the fetus are cessation of certain physiological functions such as heartbeat and cessation of a primitive level of sensations and reflexes. Because the fetus has neither cognitions nor self-awareness, it cannot have emotions and cannot be said to suffer in the same sense as born humans.[8] No sensation the fetus experiences is comparable to the complex network of emotional, psychological, and even physical pain that a cognitively functioning individual experiences.

Anti-abortionists refuse to take seriously the enormous psychological and emotional costs to a woman of bearing an unwanted child. They dismiss unwanted pregnancies as mere annoyances. But, as NARAL has pointed out: “The urgency of women’s need to end unwanted pregnancy is measured by their willingness to risk death and mutilation, to spend huge sums of money, and to endure the indignities of illegal abortions. Women only have abortions when the alternative is unendurable. Women take both abortion and motherhood very seriously.”[9]

Women will continue to seek abortions, whether legal or illegal. Making abortion illegal will never stop this. Without recourse to legal abortions, women will resort once again to back-street abortions, risking infection or dying in great pain from the consequences of unprofessional or self-induced abortion.

A Principled Position

Individual liberty, self-determination, private property, and limited government are all libertarian principles that logically lead to the pro-choice position. To sacrifice existing persons for the sake of future generations—in slave labor camps, compulsory childbearing, or life-threatening abortions—violates everything we hold dear.

[2] See Garrett Hardin, “Abortion or Compulsory Pregnancy?,’” Marriage and the Family, May 1968; Garrett Hardin, Mandatory Motherhood: The True Meaning of Right to Life (Boston: Beacon, 1974); Cheriel Jensen, Lynette Perkes et al. Amicus curiae brief in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S., 959.

[3] Compact Edition of the Oxford Unabridged Dictionary, Part II P-Z (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 2140.

[4] Ibid., p. 2431.

[5] Paul Mussen, John Conger, and Jerome Kagan, Child Development and Personality (New York: Harper and Row, 1974). For a more recent view of the capabilities of newborns, see, for example, http://www.superstart.org/child_development_research.htm.

[6] Ibid.

[7] The line-drawing fallacy is discussed in many critical thinking texts. Moore and Parker, for example, define it as the fallacy of “insisting that a line must be drawn at some precise point when it in fact is not necessary that such a line be drawn.” Brooke Noel Moore and Richard Parker, Critical Thinking, 9th edition (New York: McGraw-Hill), p. 502. Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_drawing_fallacy or http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/f/fallacy.htm#Line-Drawing.

[8] The question as to whether a fetus feels pain is still controversial and in dispute, despite what anti-abortionists say. See http://www.answers.com/topic/fetus#Fetal_pain.

[9] This statement is from an old National Abortion Rights Action League leaflet discussing illegal abortions. The reasons for seeking abortions have not changed over the years. Women still seek abortions not for frivolous reasons but because bearing a child would have serious psychological, social, and financial consequences. See, for example, the studies cited at http://www.prochoice.org/about_abortion/facts/women_who.html or http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_why.htm. For a history of illegal abortion and its dire consequences, see http://www.feminist.com/resources/ourbodies/abortion.html. For a look at the desperation of women in countries where legal abortions are essentially not available, see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12178836 or http://www.womensenews.org/story/the-world/041128/illegal-abortions-rampant-latin-america.

• Six in ten women who had abortions in 2002 were mothers; 60 percent of them were near the poverty line. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/18/AR2005071801164_2.html.
• Three-fourths of women cite concern for or responsibility to other individuals; three-fourths say they cannot afford a child. See http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html.

• Mortality rates for illegal abortions are much higher than for legal abortions. See http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/tgr/06/2/gr060203.html.

NEXT: Jakub Wisniewski responds to Sharon Presley.