In this article, I will tell you my opinion on the ethics of (some cases of) abortion. Abortion is an interesting subject, not just because of the fact that it is divisive, but rather why it is divisive. Abortion touches on so many distinct topics, which interconnect to form a web of complex opinions. Most people who think about it honestly are bound to find contradictions in their value structure as a result.

I don't think all cases of abortion should be painted with the same stroke. If we allow ourselves to drop party slogans, I think we can all think of moral counterexamples to our viewpoints. Below is a list of reasons for a person to have an abortion. I encourage you to come to your own conclusions on each case.

• Convenience: The Mother (or Couple) has decided that having a baby would impede upon their quality of life, and would prevent them from being able to do the things they want to do.
• Convenience (Disability): Same as above, except the couple were expecting to be pregnant, but the fetus is revealed to have an unexpected disability that would make taking care of the resulting baby more likely to diminish their quality of life than a non-disabled child.
• Convenience (Gender Preference): The baby would be healthy… but the “wrong” gender.
  • This happens quite a bit in China, in which there is a lot of emphasis on having a male son.
  • It also has been happening in Western countries.
• Pragmatism: The Mother (or Couple) believes they would be unable to provide a good quality of life for the baby if it were born.
  • For example, if the mother was impoverished, (assume that there is not a reliable social safety net), she might doubt that she could provide for a child, and that the child would starve.
  • We consider the case in which the baby is disabled in the same way. It may be that the mother believes she could support a healthy baby, but not a disabled one.
• Shame: The Mother is ashamed of the baby's conception.
  • For this case, we assume that the conception was consensual, but it was a poor decision that the mother regrets.
  • For example, a single woman having a child out of wedlock.
• Rectification: The Mother was raped, or the conception was the result of incest.
• Life-Saving: Delivering the baby would kill or severely injure the mother.
• Mercy: Due to some disability with the fetus, the resulting baby would have health problems that would cause it to suffer.
• Mercy (Lifespan): The baby would likely die almost immediately after birth.
• Mercy (Disabled): The child would not be in physical pain due to it's disability, but it would lead a difficult life.
  • For example, being born blind or deaf, or being born with developmental disability (eg, Downs)
• Mercy (Social): Strictly because of how society operates, the baby would have a difficult life.
  • For example, suppose the baby is mixed-race, and the mother knows that the child will face discrimination from her community.
• Mercy (Philosophical): The mother believes that bringing children into the world is immoral, simply due to the intrinsic suffering that is a part of existence. (eg, “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”)
• Societal: The mother believes that having a baby would be bad for society at large.
  • Some women may believe that the world needs less white children, and, if the baby is white, she may decide to abort for that reason.
  • Some Women could believe that bringing a child with certain traits (ie, mentally handicapped) would be bad for society.

No matter how stalwart of a pro-life or pro-choicer you are, there should be some cases that give you pause. That's why I have created the Abortion Belief Survey, shown below. Next to each abortion consideration, there are two options: “Aborting” and “Not Aborting”. Your job is to assign one of four symbols to each case:

• “+” if you believe the action is “Moral”. That is, the action is good, but not required. (For example, rushing into a burning building to save a person's life)
• “0” if you believe the action is “Neutral”. ¹⁾. That is, the action is neither moral nor immoral. (For example, not rushing into a burning building to save a person's life)
• “-” if you believe the action is “Immoral”. That is, the action is bad. (For example, starting the fire)
• “?” if you aren't sure.

Here's how I filled out the survey. I expect this to upset everyone. :)

First, I will explain why, in most cases, I consider Convenience, Pragmatism, Shame, and Societal to be immoral reasons to abort. In this argument, I will assume that the conception was consensual. Non-consensual falls under the “rectification” reason, in which case I consider it neutral to abort. I will also assume that both consenting parities understand what sex is, and the fact that having sex makes women pregnant. I think this is a fair assumption for most people

In our society, we are expected to take responsibility for our action's consequences. This, I think, is a necessary caveat to living in a free society. For example, although I am free to own a firearm, if I shoot someone with that firearm, I will be penalized. I argue that there are three things that make it (definitely) acceptable to expect a person to take responsibility for an an action's consequences.

• Non-coercion: There are no negative consequences from not taking the action.
• Consciousness: Taking the action can't be an accident. The person must have full knowledge of the action he is committing. This isn't to say that accidental negative consequences from an action are exempt from responsibility, but rather that the action that caused the accidental negative consequences should be judged. For example, a drunk driver killing a pedestrian isn't bad because they killed a pedestrian, but rather because they made the decision to drive while drunk.
• Knowledge of Risks: The person must understand the risks of what they are doing.

Sex is non-essential, and having sex is a conscious decision. That is, there are no consequences to not having sex, and it is never an accident. Furthermore, we are assuming that both parties understand the risk of pregnancy. This places it firmly in the territory of things that it is fair to expect a person to take responsibility for.

When an action that a person has responsibility for happens to some non-consenting party, it is not the duty of the non-consenting party to deal with the consequences, but rather it is the duty that performed the action. For example, if I hit and damage another person's car, it's my responsibility to make sure that the damage is fixed.

In sex, the unborn baby is the non-consenting third-party. It obviously cannot consent to being involved in the affair, because it doesn't exist yet. I argue the couple therefore has a responsibility to deal with the consequences of the action by ensuring the unborn baby remains alive and taken care of.

By the way, I am in no way saying that having children is a net negative. I am young, and I don't have children, but I have heard from my elders that having children was one of the best things that happened to them, and I have no reason to doubt it. My point is merely that even if you don't want children, if you make the conscious decision to have sex, you may still have a responsibility to bear them.

I don't anticipate getting much pushback on my decision to list abortion for rectification as a neutral action from either side of the aisle - I have heard most pro-lifers agree that it is probably okay to abort in this circumstance. Despite this, I thought I might cover my bases. My argument about the responsibility intrinsic does not apply when the sex is non-consensual. In that case, I think it is alright to abort, because the damage will have been done by the rapist, not by the person doing the aborting. I do believe it is commendable when a woman who has been raped chooses not to abort. Ultimately, however, the woman has no moral connection to the baby in this case.

If you disagree with me on this point, you are essentially saying that if a bad thing happens in the world, and you have the power to prevent it but refuse, you are a bad person. That's a valid (if naïve) position to take on things – if you actually act on it. But because you are reading this on a computer, when the money you spent on your computer could have been spent helping poor orphans, and when the time you are spending reading this could be spent doing good works, I sincerely doubt that you have followed the viewpoint to it's logical conclusion.

For this one, I've never heard anyone say that this would be immoral. However, it's worth justifying, just in case. When it comes down to it, either the baby or the mother will die. Both are equally bad, so I don't think you can say that it is immoral to preserve the mother's own life in this case. However, I do think it is a very heroic action when the mother chooses to save the life of the baby.

My opinions on the mercy of abortion are varied. I think most of us would agree that there is a point at which if a person is suffering, it doesn't make much sense to want them to remain alive. For example, cancer patients will sometimes decide to not take another round of painful treatment, and instead decide to die. On the other hand, it is very difficult to determine where this point is, because suffering is endemic to the human condition.

At this point I will propose what I expect to be a controversial definition of a life worth living. Life is worth living if there is the possibility of enjoyable things. By enjoyable, I mean every sense of the word: Pleasure, Satisfaction, Love, etc. I think that it is acceptable that we allow a person whose life will be defined by unceasing pain to die, because the pain will likely make it so that nothing is enjoyable.

However, in the case where the child will be disabled or discriminated against, there is still a possibility of enjoyable things. Disabled people do have things they enjoy, even if their lives are harder than ours. The same thing goes for people who are discriminated against.

I say that both the cases of abortion and not aborting in the situation in which the baby's life will be very short are neutral because the baby will die anyways. I don't view it as moral to abort the baby because I don't know if the baby will suffer in it's death.

Finally, I reject the notion that bringing a child into the world is immoral because of the suffering intrinsic in life for exactly the same reason. Living is not overrated for a normal person because of the possibility of good things in life. Music, Art, Good Food, Fun, Family, Romance, Spirituality - These are the things we would also be shielding the child from.

Is it right that a man should pass judgement on abortion, considering that the phenomenon of pregnancy is localized in a women's body? I don't think it is wrong or in poor taste to do so, and I have a variety of reasons for believing this.

Firstly, I disagree with the idea that a person must be intimately connected to a situation to be allowed to come to a conclusion on it. It seems that we don't follow this logic for any other circumstance, and, in fact, that being intimately connected to a situation makes you less qualified to make a conclusion on it. For example, in a murder case, it isn't the family of the murdered person who gets to decide who is guilty or what the punishment must be, but rather some uninvolved third party. We do this because involved parties have emotions that may cloud their judgement about a situation, causing them to make poor or unfair choices that a third party would not.

Secondly, men are connected to pregnancy. They may not partake in labor, nor do they nourish the unborn baby in the womb, but pregnancy cannot happen without the intervention of a man. The unborn baby is not the mother's sole responsibility, but the man's as well.

Thirdly, we all, men and women alike, should be invested in this problem, because it deals with other human beings. Yes, the baby is within the mother's womb, but I don't see how that changes the fact that as a society we have an investment in the baby's well-being.

Fourthly, and although this is not technically an argument, I'd just like to point out that all of the opinions I have presented above are more pro-choice than opinions I have heard certain women themselves express, especially my mother. I'm sure someone could find some way to exclude them from consideration, but that just seems silly. if they don't get to comment, why should anyone?

The biggest question that I all but skipped over in my argument was the question of where life begins. This is a tricky one, and I think most people have not given this question the thought it deserves.

First, I want to dispel the notion that this is a question the scientists have “found the answer to” and that the “science is settled”. This is not a question that scientists can answer, unless scientists have branched into philosophy out of boredom. They can't answer the question any more than they can answer the question of whether the Ship of Theseus is the same after it's journey as it was before. It's fundamentally a question of applying labels to things, determining physical attributes of them.

The reason that there is controversy over the definition of life is because we arrive at a weird continuum of development, with absurdity in it's endpoints. On one side, at the moment the baby emerges from the womb, we can say for certain the baby is alive. On the other side, at the moment at which the man's sperm imprints on the woman's egg, it seems a little silly to call it a human. If all it takes is an egg and a sperm, does that mean that a sperm or egg is a half-human?

Now, if both endpoints are clearly what they are (human on one side, non-human on the other), it makes sense that a second before or after those points would be the same thing. (Or else, does touching air magically make it a human?) If a second, why not a minute? And hour? A day? A month? Perhaps even – nine months? And then you arrive at the other end of the continuum, either at the idea that the baby emerging from the birth canal is not human, or the sperm imprinting on the egg is human. The astute among you may recognize this as an instance of Loki's Wager.

Personally, I think that a good definition of when a baby is alive is when it has a heartbeat. This means the baby, while not self-sufficient, is truly a separate system from the mother entirely, and is something approaching human, as we understand it. After all, all humans have a heartbeat. The heartbeat is generally audible at the beginning of the second trimester ²⁾, so I think that's a good cutoff. (Even though the heart actually starts beating much earlier, it is in a very early stage of development.)

Another, much earlier definition is after the formation of the placenta. The placenta is a marvel of human evolution, a necessary step between laying eggs giving live birth. Without it, the mother's immune system would eradicate the baby, in the same way it would eradicate any other foreign substance. Because the placenta is needed to protect the baby from the mother, it could be argued that this is the phase at which we consider it a human and a separate system. That would be at the beginning of the first trimester.

Childbirth is a truly fascinating and marvelous process. Perhaps it's my background as a software engineer, but I can't take for granted the fact that the creation of such a highly complex system just works, no project managers or engineers with blueprints needed. Think about it - it works well enough that it is considered unusual when a baby has even a small defect!

They come out of the womb, grow a bit, put together some patterns, and before long they are doing crazy stuff like programming computers and writing blog posts. Life is truly special, and every moment of it's incredible journey should be cherished, especially including it's beginning.