Personhood and Abortion Rights

[_EAllusion]

First, I think you need to clear this up a bit. Personhood is the condition an entity has that entails it having rights. Oughtness is built into the concept. Personhood doesn't tell us if something "should." It is the "should." It describes referents of moral statements by its nature.

Okay, you lost me here. I have a living thing. If that living thing has personhood, it has rights (not it should have rights). But there's another step, right? We have to figure out what rights someone with personhood should have.

Personhood tells you something has rights or enjoys moral regard. To say it has personhood is to say it has that. Saying you should respect something with personshood is a tautology as it reduces into "You should respect something that you should respect." It's useful to know if something is a person or not for moral purposes because it gives you information on what classes of things you ought to be treating with moral regard.

What the rights of personhood are is a separate question, but then you're just getting into general ethics.

I don't think a blastocyst is a person. I think it is less plausible that blastocyst is person than a cow is a person, in fact. It is possible to argue that a blastocyst is a person, but its rights don't extend to getting to use a woman's body without permission even if it can't survive without it. So personhood isn't the end-all be-all of the abortion debate. But it is the most important part of it.

[_Res Ipsa]

By calling it arbitrary, I meant that the distinction has no underlying rational basis and is not a useful guide to behavior. I think the distinction likely results in people finding some kinds of physical intrusions to be icky. It is sublimely weird that a person can be coerced physically in all sorts of rather demanding ways, but cannot be made to donate blood. I think these values are in tension and are driven by emotional intuitions that are also in tension.

Well, yeah, I think all this stuff we've been talking about in this thread are in tension, and the emotions, too. Do you think the weirdness has anything to do with thinking about your body as property? I mean, if you think about your body in the way you think about your sofa, then having someone stick it with a pin is no big deal. I don't think of it that way, and the only other people I've met who do are libertarians. I see my body as me. If you punch me, I'll say "why did you hit me?" Not "why did you punch my property." Whatever happens to my body affects whatever it is that thinks it's me. I've got separate words for body and brain, but as far as I'm concerned, it's just one big me. It makes sense to me that a person who considers his body as property he owns would view bodily intrusion differently than a person who sees his body as a part of his identity.

Regarding privacy, what I don't seem to be getting across is that all the ways in which privacy has a robust, distinct meaning are exceptionally weak as a basis to justify allowing a person to kill someone else, but it's broad meaning is just a restatement of the original position. I can't say the government ought not to interfere with my cock-fighting ring because I have a right to be left alone because my right to be left alone is not some absolute thing. If I then assert my right to privacy prevails for me that case, I'm just reasserting that I want to be left alone. There are lots of circumstances in which the public as a legitimate interest in not respecting privacy in this sense and engaging in activity that takes away someone else's right to life is typically right at the top. Any "yeah, buts..." you might offer in the case of abortion seem like a different argument altogether. You killing someone else is not some private matter and if you say there a justified basis for you to kill this person, then that sounds like the argument you should be having. That's what I see bodily integrity arguments as. (Of course, I think the better argument is to say this isn't a person at all.)

No, you are getting across what you think. What you're not doing is persuading. You've repeated the same things a few times, but that's just repetition. You keep stating that privacy, as the right to be left alone, is a weak argument. Yet, it is the basis for abortion law in the U.S., the basis for government not being able to ban birth control, the basis for government not being able to criminalize sodomy, etc. That seems to me to be evidence of a pretty powerful source of rights.

I haven't claimed that killing someone is a private matter, but that whether I give my body or parts thereof to sustain another's life is. It is for organ donation. It is for blood donation. And it should be for pregnancy.

I don't think my argument is attempting to provide a justified basis for killing. I think it is an exception to the right to life. The right to life should not include you being able to take my bone marrow and my blood. The right to life should not include the fetus being able to use the woman's body to sustain itself.

[_Res Ipsa]

Personhood tells you something has rights or enjoys moral regard. To say it has personhood is to say it has that. Saying you should respect something with personshood is a tautology as it reduces into "You should respect something that you should respect." It's useful to know if something is a person or not for moral purposes because it gives you information on what classes of things you ought to be treating with moral regard.

What the rights of personhood are is a separate question, but then you're just getting into general ethics.

I don't think a blastocyst is a person. I think it is less plausible that blastocyst is person than a cow is a person, in fact. It is possible to argue that a blastocyst is a person, but its rights don't extend to getting to use a woman's body without permission even if it can't survive without it. So personhood isn't the end-all be-all of the abortion debate. But it is the most important part of it.

Got it. I got tripped up on the language. Thanks.

[_EAllusion]

For what it is worth, the pro-choice position is by far the dominant position in philosophy of ethics. This is because of fetal non-personhood arguments. The idea that abortion is seriously immoral and ought to be criminal is a minority position held by a small group that overlaps almost completely with the same people who hold other outlier philosophical positions that correspond with conservative Christian beliefs. Unlike some of those other positions, they're at least capable of making an interesting argument in this case.

However, once you get off the personhood debate, then all bets are off. I'd like to see a survey on it, but my sense is that ethicists would be pro-life by majority if you granted fetal personhood.

[Guest]

So...far...behind....

Honor: My argument does, indeed, ignore personhood because it looks at the existing legal duties of one person to save the life of another. That's not an indication of disrespect of the argument -- it's just a different argument.

Hi Res -

In a sense, the discussion you and EA are having is an extension of the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade, and for reasons I had assumed you and he were aware of this. So my comments weren't aimed at you. I'd honestly assumed you shared a view on the personhood debate that acknowledged it, and similarly set it aside to argue the next tier of rights between the state and individual with EA. The majority opinion had this to say about the centrality of "personhood" to the debate -

410 US 113.IX.A. The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a "person" within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment. (my emphasis added) The appellant conceded as much on reargument. On the other hand, the appellee conceded on reargument that no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.

It was essential to the opinion that they concluded -

The Constitution does not define "person" in so many words. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment contains three references to "person." The first, in defining "citizens," speaks of "persons born or naturalized in the United States." The word also appears both in the Due Process Clause and in the Equal Protection Clause. "Person" is used in other places in the Constitution: in the listing of qualifications for Representatives and Senators, Art. I, § 2, cl. 2, and § 3, cl. 3; in the Apportionment Clause, Art. I, § 2, cl. 3; [Footnote 53] in the Migration and Importation provision, Art. I, § 9, cl. 1; in the Emolument Clause, Art. I, § 9, cl. 8; in the Electors provisions, Art. II, § 1, cl. 2, and the superseded cl. 3; in the provision outlining qualifications for the office of President, Art. II, § 1, cl. 5; in the Extradition provisions, Art. IV, § 2, cl. 2, and the superseded Fugitive Slave Clause 3; and in the Fifth, Twelfth, and Twenty-second Amendments, as well as in §§ 2 and 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. But in nearly all these instances, the use of the word is such that it has application only post-natally. None indicates, with any assurance, that it has any possible pre-natal application.

So while avoiding the attempt to define personhood as such, the court did acknowledge the centrality of it to the debate and looked to precedent to identify if it, however defined, could be assumed to apply to a fetus. As it could not, it was accepted that the Constitution's lack of definition for what is meant by "person" combined with precedent demonstrating a lack of example where it was applied to the unborn was sufficient to answer the question that the rights afforded by the Constitution weren't in play in the case. So the argument moved on to those of state interest and the rights of Roe and her physician.

[_EAllusion]

Well, yeah, I think all this stuff we've been talking about in this thread are in tension, and the emotions, too. Do you think the weirdness has anything to do with thinking about your body as property?

Bodily property arguments are just a away to justify or understand why it is your body can't be used by others against your will. I don't think the weirdness comes from that at all. Rather, I think people are contradicting themselves because people have a natural disgust reflex to certain kind of physical intrusions compared to others.

It's common for people to believe in bodily self-ownership while, like other forms of ownership, also believing that ownership isn't absolute or inviolable by others. In fact, abortion is pretty much the only topic I see normal hardcore liberals start talking like libertarian rights theorists out of the blue. Now that's weird.

I mean, if you think about your body in the way you think about your sofa, then having someone stick it with a pin is no big deal. I don't think of it that way, and the only other people I've met who do are libertarians. I see my body as me. If you punch me, I'll say "why did you hit me?" Not "why did you punch my property." Whatever happens to my body affects whatever it is that thinks it's me. I've got separate words for body and brain, but as far as I'm concerned, it's just one big me. It makes sense to me that a person who considers his body as property he owns would view bodily intrusion differently than a person who sees his body as a part of his identity.

There is a key distinction between sticking a body and a sofa with a pin. The sofa might cause some depreciation of value to your sofa, but the pin prick to your body is likely to cause you some measure of pain and possible psychological distress. These are different sorts of harms. Understanding that different kinds of harms require different duties and consequences is not exotic.

To pick another example that both involve the body, we tend to treat rape much more seriously than battery. But why? Isn't rape just assaulting a body with your penis? Same thing, right? Well, no. It turns out because of a quirk of human psychology, trauma from rape has the potential to be much more psychologically damaging. A priori, there's no reason that sexual assault had to be this way, but as it turns out, human brains are constituted such that it is. It's potential for harm is much more significant than beating someone up and it may be (and is) appropriate to have harsher legal consequences for it. The distinction here isn't that one is a bodily intrusion and the other isn't. They both are. The distinction is the range of harm that can obtain from either act differs.

No, you are getting across what you think. What you're not doing is persuading. You've repeated the same things a few times, but that's just repetition. You keep stating that privacy, as the right to be left alone, is a weak argument. Yet, it is the basis for abortion law in the U.S.

Oh, I think that'll be changing soon. I wouldn't hang your hat on the wisdom of the Supreme Court for much longer. Even liberal legal scholars, including at least one liberal Supreme Court justice, have gone on record to criticize this kind of argument. It seems like a reach to cite the auspices of American law when that law is controversial, almost certainly about to change, and criticized as a dubious reach even by some of its most sunny defenders.

That said, Roe vs. Wade specifically argues that fetuses aren't persons to make its decision turn. If some justices decide that fetuses are legal persons, maybe somebody whose name rhymes with Shmavenaugh, then it leaves room for a different decision.

I haven't claimed that killing someone is a private matter, but that whether I give my body or parts thereof to sustain another's life is. It is for organ donation. It is for blood donation. And it should be for pregnancy.

I was trying to interact with two different senses of privacy there. I think the state has a compelling interest in deciding whether or not it is appropriate for you to withhold resources from others that they need to live. I think claiming it is a private matter in the case of gestation, but is not a private matter in the case of supporting a child in the myriad ways a child needs to be supported to live is without justified basis. I just don't draw a hard line between these two forms of child neglect like you do.

I don't think my argument is attempting to provide a justified basis for killing. I think it is an exception to the right to life. The right to life should not include you being able to take my bone marrow and my blood. The right to life should not include the fetus being able to use the woman's body to sustain itself.

I can take all sorts of things from you to ensure other people live. I can make you behave in ways that I want so others may live. But you draw the line at blood? Again, I find that weird. Say what you will about libertarians, but at least they've got a consistent basis from which to assert that.

[_EAllusion]

Nope. I am open to persuasion on pretty well every issue involving political questions, but I don't feel any motivation for questioning the customary omission of vegetables from such discussion. Do you feel that situation should change?

I suppose you think you can get a slam-dunk by asking me 'How did you decide that without first deciding whether mushrooms are persons'? But your question just asked my opinion on whether I was prepared to advocate rights for mushrooms. And I've answered it, without having used the word 'person' or any equivalent thereto.

I asked it because saying "nope" implies you believe in a distinction between persons and non-persons. It seems like your stance is just that you are going to assert claims about personhood, but refuse to call it that or worry about being justified in your assertions.

There's nothing admirable about that.

I ask whether you can give any content to personhood other that 'having rights' . You reply, in effect that you can't. So the concept of 'personhood' adds nothing useful to a discussion about whether an entity has rights, does it? So why do you feel the need to keep talking about it?

Personhood is the preferred term both in ethics and law to refer to the status of deserving full moral or legal respect. I say "full" because we can draw a circle around the kinds of rights and obligations that apply to persons while still thinking that other entities deserve some measure of moral regard. The term is useful in that it is referring to a concept that people talk about. Since there are things that deserve full moral regard and things that do not, it's helpful to have a term that refers to this distinction. It gives us the tool to talk about what sorts of qualities matter in determining if something has rights or not.

By the way, it is a result of observing such discussions as the endless to and fro on this thread that I have come to think that the concept of personhood is not a useful one.

Be sure to inform philosophers and legal scholars of your discovery.

[_Res Ipsa]

Honor, I hadn’t thought of the discussion in those terms, at least at first, but I can see why you did. From past discussions, I believe EA and I have similar views on personhood. But personhood doesn’t decide the issue. Being a person entitles one to the full meal deal of rights, but exactly what are those rights. And when those rights conflict, which gives way? Or as EA puts it, ethics. And in some sense, I approached the abortion issue backwards, from the question “Under what circumstances does one person have a duty to save the life of another?

[_Jersey Girl]

So Mark bailed, right?

[_Res Ipsa]

So Mark bailed, right?

He may just be deep into his Super Bowl preparation.