MandM » Susan Sherwin

During, Sherwin & Hutchison on Backstreet Abortion

Matt — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:34:10 +0000

Recently Madeleine was on a TV panel discussion regarding the issue of abortion and parental notification/consent which will go to air in the next week. During the ensuing dialogue Dr Paul Hutchinson, National Party Member of Parliament for Hunua, specialist in Obstetrics and Gynaecology and former member of the Abortion Supervisory Committee, raised the famous backstreet abortion argument for abortion rights. In many respects this is hardly surprising. In almost any media discussion of the issue of abortion the back-street abortion argument comes out. In Abortion: A Feminist Perspective, Susan Sherwin states, “Feminists recognise that women have abortions for a wide variety of compelling reasons.”[1] One reason she immediately cites is,

No one denies that if abortion is not made legal, safe, and accessible in our society, women will seek out illegal and life-threatening abortions to terminate pregnancies they cannot accept. Antiabortion activists appear willing to accept this cost, although liberals definitely are not; feminists, who explicitly value women, judge the inevitable loss of women’s lives that results from restrictive abortion laws to be of fundamental concern.[2]

In similar vein Dr Zoe During, former President of the Abortion Law Reform Association of New Zealand (ALRANZ), in a debate with the me, gave a paper entitled “Is Abortion Justifiable: An Examination of the Evidence”, in which she argued,

But the majority of women, poor women, have had to go to backstreet practitioners or swallow dubious potions or use knitting needles on themselves. Attempting illegal abortion by such means has always been dreadful and dangerous and greatly increased maternal mortality.

The World Health Organisation estimates that worldwide there are 20 million abortions each year, half or more being illegal, these causing up to 78,000 maternal deaths and hundreds of thousands of disabilities. A New York statistic is illuminating. For the three years before abortion became legal in that state, the maternal death ratio averaged 51 per 100,000 live births. For each of the three years immediately following legalisation it dropped to a mere 38, and there was the additional bonus of a 5% reduction in the neo-natal mortality rate. Thus not having access to legal abortion unjustifiably kills mothers and babies, while legalising abortion saves lives.[3]

During’s argument rests upon three contentions:

(a) That prohibiting feticide results in the death of women.
(b) That (a) entails that prohibiting feticide kills women.
(c) That killing of thousands of women in these circumstances is unjustifiable.

Firstly, this is an argument not to the conclusion that feticide is permissible but rather that it should not be a criminal action. The fact (if it is a fact) that there are reasons why an act should not be a criminal offence does not entail that the act is morally permissible. Strictly speaking, this argument is compatible with the position that feticide is morally wrong. However, even as an argument for decriminalisation it is unsound.

Many debates swirl around (a). As the citation shows During bases her conclusion on statistics from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and an un-referenced study about mortality in New York. These statistical claims are vigorously debated in the literature,[4] however, for our purposes this debate can be set aside. More interesting, I think, are the normative premises encapsulated in (b) and (c). If these are mistaken, the argument as a whole is unjust regardless of any merits of (a).

Regarding premise (b) During appears to think that if passing a law results in the death of large numbers of women then to pass such a law is to kill these women. This is false. It is an empirical fact that building motorways results in innocent people dying, yet it does not follow that a person who builds a road kills innocent people. It is also a fact that by allowing people to swim at beaches some people will drown yet in permitting people to swim at beaches the government cannot be said to have drowned these people. Even if it could be demonstrated that restricting feticide results in women dying it does not follow that such restrictions kill women.

During fails to distinguish between an action that foreseeably results in a person’s death and an action that causes that person’s death. Suppose that Parliament were to criminalise feticide and this led to a chain of events one of which was the death of a woman due to septic abortion. Somewhere in this chain, between the act of the legislature and the death of the woman, are the free actions of various people who choose to ignore or breach these laws. Parliament does not perform these actions; in fact they are done in defiance of Parliament’s will and hence without Parliament’s consent. Such actions include the choice of a woman to violate the law and procure an abortion and the choice of an abortionist to perform an abortion and to violate hygiene and safety standards. The death and injury that occurs is caused by these actions. It is the abortionist’s decision, acting as an agent of the woman, to perform unsafe surgery that causes the injury to occur. These facts make it evident that Parliament does not cause such deaths. The actions of the woman and abortionist are un-coerced. They are free, voluntary actions and as such not caused by someone else. It follows immediately that they were not caused by the state. If they were not caused by the state, then the effects that follow from them were not caused by the state either. The suggestion that one causes the free (and hence uncaused) reactions of others to decisions one makes is far fetched.

The failure to distinguish caused and foreseen effects is illustrated well by Augustine. In contending with the consequentialists of his day, Augustine proposed the following example. Suppose a man approaches a woman and tells her that he will kill himself if she refuses to have sex with him. Does that mean that she is a murderer if she refuses?[5]

One response to this kind of rejoinder is to claim that a woman’s choice is not free; rather it is made out of desperation and anguish. She feels compelled to abort given the psychological and economic pressures she faces. Three responses can be given to this argument.

Firstly, even if it is granted, the same cannot be said to be true of the abortionist and given that it is the abortionist’s actions that kill the woman, the fact that these are uncaused entails that Parliament cannot have caused them either.

Secondly, even if the woman’s actions were not free but caused in some way it does not follow that Parliament caused them. In some circumstances other people, such as the man’s decision to have intercourse and then to not support her or the family’s refusal to help, caused this desperation. Given that these actions are free, then Parliament cannot be held to have caused these either.

Thirdly, making the claim that a woman was not free to refuse an abortion makes this argument less plausible. Abortion is often trumpeted as a woman’s free choice. If this claim is correct then how can women be coerced into such an operation against their consent? Further, it seems odd to claim that we should legalise forced abortions.

Turning to (c), this claim is plausible only if it is true that feticide is not homicide. If feticide is homicide then to permit feticide is to permit homicide. Not only will the failure to permit feticide result in human beings dying, permitting it will also result in human beings being killed. If, as During contends, endorsing a rule that results in deaths is wrong then it will also be wrong to permit feticide.

It is worthwhile noting that the numbers of fetuses killed by legal abortion is significantly higher than the number of women killed by illegal ones. At its highest, the number of women who died from illegal abortion in New Zealand in any one year was 37.[6] The number of fetuses destroyed by legal abortion in New Zealand annually is approximately 18,000.[7] Moreover, according to the stats During cited from WHO, there are around 10 million legal abortions per year and 78,000 deaths resulting from illegal ones.[8] If we follow the argument During offers, then we are permitting the killing of 10,000,000 human beings per year to avoid killing 78,000 human beings.

During’s argument in favour of feticide is sound only if feticide is not homicide. However, if feticide is homicide she is arguing that in order to prevent thousands of people from harming themselves we should kill millions of people; a claim that on the face of it is absurd.

This absurdity is not unique to During; the same thing can be said about the arguments offered by Sherwin and Hutchinson.

[1] Susan Sherwin “Abortion a Feminist Perspective” in Ethical Issues in Modern Medicine ed Bonnie Steinbock & John D. Arras (Mountain View CA: Mayfield Publishing Co, 1999) 361.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Zoe During “Is Abortion Justifiable?” New Zealand Rationalist Humanist Spring (1999) 10-11.
[4] The debates on this issue are documented in Francis Beckwith Politically Correct Death: Answering the Arguments for Abortion Rights (Grand Rapids MI: Baker Books, 1993) 54-59.
[5] Augustine On Lying 9.
[6] Wayne Facer Criminal Abortion in New Zealand: Public Health Consequences; this study was distributed by the Abortion Law Reform Association of New Zealand in the 1970’s. Facer was an outspoken proponent of decriminalising abortion.
[7] New Zealand Abortion Supervisory Committee Report 2008.
[8] These figures are not current.

Abortion and Child Abuse

Matt — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 04:21:00 +0000

Bloggers WhaleOil and David Farrar are in disagreement over some comments made by Garth George in the New Zealand Herald regarding abortion and child abuse.

Garth George says:

I have said it before and I say it again: The number one cause of abuse against women and children is abortion.

David Farrar says:

I disagree. I think there would be less child abuse if there were more abortions. The world would be a better place if those who are not suited to be parents did not become parents.

Whale Oil says:

I think they both are missing the point.

We have become a society that tolerates and indeed allows violence against children it is just a matter of where you draw the line that is the argument.

Garth George draws the line at conceptiona and David Farrar draws the line at birth. (I think, perhaps he would like to clarify when it is ok to kill babies and when it is
not.)

My view is that we are indeed a sick society at whatever point we kill and excuse it away with weasel words like foetus, procedure, first trimester etc.

Likewise my view about most of the recent cases of horrific child abuse is that they are no more and no less anything but late term abortions. The simple fact is that the parents of the children had no more respect for the life of the child than someon having a “procedure”.

You see if we accept that you can kill children at up to 21 weeks from conception then why not at birth or why not at 5 years old, or even 18 just before they can vote. For me there is no difference. The Nia Glassie’s and Kahui twins are simply late term abortions by parents who no longer respected the life of their child. As long as we fail to respect human life then we will continue to get these case and no one should be at all shocked by it all.

Whaleoil has a point, something Adolf agrees with me on, though David Farrar’s argument is not new; in, “Abortion a Feminist Perspective”, Susan Sherwin mentions that feticide may be justified in order to prevent child abuse.

[F]eminists recognize that women have abortions for a wide variety of compelling reasons. … knowing the fathers to be brutal and violent, may be unwilling to subject a child to the beatings or incestuous attacks they anticipate; some may have no other realistic way to remove the child (or themselves) from the relationship.[i]

In addition to outright abuse, she also suggests child neglect.

Women who suffer from chronic disease, who believe themselves too young or too old to have children, or who are unable to maintain lasting relationships may recognize that they will not be able to care properly for a child when they face the decision.[ii]

The argument is a two-premise syllogism. The first premise asserts that permitting feticide prevents child abuse or future child neglect. This is because it destroys organisms that will probably be abused in the future. The second premise claims that it is permissible to kill an organism if we know that it will probably be abused or neglected in the future.

The second premise is false. Consider a new-born child born into a context whereby one knows that it is likely that it will be abused either physically or sexually in the future. If the major premise were true, then killing that infant to protect it from abuse would be permissible. In fact, according to this principle, it is acceptable to kill any person, child, teenager or adult whom we know is likely to be abused in the future.

In order to be plausible, Sherwin and Farrar must limit the kinds of entities that the principle is referring to. It must be restricted to exclude entities that are infants or other human beings such as toddlers, adolescents and adults. However, the proponent of this argument must assume that fetuses are not human beings in the same sense that infants are. The argument is sound only if feticide is not homicide.

Engaging in feticide to prevent child abuse is only justifiable if feticide is somehow the morally-better option. If the two are both homicide then one will be engaging in the very action one is trying to prevent. Sherwin and Farrar’s argument relies on the assumption that feticide is not homicide. Farrar has, of course, argued for this assumption, he maintains that a fetus is not a human being until it acquires an ECG which Farrar places at 20 weeks. As I argue in, Abortion and Brain Death: A Response to Farrar, this argument is unsuccessful as are the other attempts to place it at viability, sentience or personhood.

[i] Susan Sherwin “Abortion a Feminist Perspective.” In Ethical Issues in Modern Medicine, 5th ed., ed. Bonnie Steinbock & John D. Arras, (Mountain View CA: Mayfield Publishing Co) 1999, 361.
[ii] Ibid.

Viability

Matt — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 01:26:00 +0000

A common argument claims that a fetus is not a human being until it is capable of surviving independently of another individual. Prior to this period, it does not have an independent existence from its mother; hence killing it is not homicide. This position is common in many legal and ethical arguments about the morality of abortion. Susan Sherwin, for example, notes that a fetus “is wholly dependent on her [the mother’s] unique contribution to its maintenance, while a newborn is physically separate, though still in need of a lot of care” [1].

Two things can be said about this claim. Firstly, the ability to exist independently of another is not an essential property of human beings. Secondly, the inability to exist independently of another is in fact present in both fetuses and infants and so does not provide a reason for distinguishing between feticide and infanticide.

Viability is not an essential property of human beings. Fetal viability is contingent upon the medical technology of a given culture. A fetus that is not viable in Chad is viable in Los Angeles. If viability is necessary for something to be a human then a woman pregnant with a viable fetus in Los Angeles who flies from Los Angeles to Chad carries a human being when she leaves but this human being ceases to exist when she arrives in India and yet becomes human again when she returns.

A similarly-strange implication of the viability criterion is that it implies that Siamese twins are not humans either. Consider Siamese twins Bob and Scott. If Bob is a human being, then since Scott cannot live independently of Bob, Scott must not be a human person. However, it is difficult to see what property Bob has that Scott lacks which would justify considering one a human and the other not. It appears then that one would be forced to conclude that they both are, and are not, human. However, both Bob and Scott are human and killing one or both of them would be homicide despite this entailing that they are both human beings even though one cannot live independently of the other.

Not only does making viability the demarcer of humanity entail numerous absurdities but the property Sherwin points to to justify its doing so , dependence, is not something that ends at birth.

Oderberg puts the point well.

A born baby is also totally dependent on its mother, only instead of being fed and sheltered by the mother’s automatic internal processes, it is fed and sheltered by the mother’s consciously controlled external, behaviour. How can that make a difference to whether or not a foetus is a human being? [2]

A new-born is totally dependent on its mother if it happens to be born in an isolated area where there are no other lactating women or the means of bottle-feeding. An elderly woman may be totally dependant on her children looking after her. A hiker who breaks her leg a week’s walk from a road will die if her companions do not bring help. Yet in these situations, it remains that it would be homicide for the mother to kill her baby, the children to kill their mother or the hikers their companion. Further, one could not plausibly say that the hiker, the elderly women or the baby are not human beings. Consequently, it is not plausible to suggest that the dependence of the non-viable fetus upon its mother makes it non-human.

These examples preclude an objection often raised against this type of criticism. Some critics have tried to argue that the position of a new-born infant in terms of dependence is different to non-viable fetuses in that after birth or viability other options are available. The dependence for survival can be handed on to someone else. However, before viability this is not the case. Hence, while infanticide is wrong, abortion prior to viability is not. This feature is absent in the cases of the hiker, the elderly mother and the infant.

In fact, Sherwin notes;

It is doubtful, however, that adoptions are possible for every child whose mother cannot care for it. The world abounds with homeless orphans; even in the industrialised West, where there is a waiting list for adoption of healthy (white) babies, suitable homes cannot always be found for troubled adolescents; inner city, AIDS babies, or many of the multiply handicapped children whose parents have tried to care for them but whose marriages broke under the strain.[3]

Sherwin’s observation entails that some infants (and even older disabled children) are entirely dependent upon their parents and no one else is available to look after them. However, this confession is fatal to her position. Suppose society, as Sherwin argues, is racist and refuses to adopt dark skinned children. Does it follow that killing white children is homicide, whereas killing dark-skinned children is not? Suppose society is sexist or only wishes to adopt babies with blond hair and blue eyes or those that are able-bodied. Would non-Aryan babies, baby girls and those disabled cease to be human? If one’s humanity depends on societal conventions, the position is problematic.

[1] Susan Sherwin, “Abortion a Feminist Perspective,” in Ethical Issues in Modern Medicine, 5th ed., ed. Bonnie Steinbock & John D. Arras (Mountain View CA: Mayfield Publishing Co, 1999), 364..
[2] David Oderberg, Applied Ethics: A Non-Consequentialist Approach (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Co, 2000), 5.
[3] Sherwin, “Abortion a Feminist Perspective,” 366.