David B. Calhoun’s Blog

Saturation means “thoroughly full”, and I tend to think of it whenever I think of the enormous amount of literature now available to every person on earth. And now there is the internet and blogs.. we are saturated with information. So I sort of despair over having a blog here or trying to publish things at all. Both for the fact that what I write here will not be read or will not be useful (judging by the lack of comments) and the fact that what I have to say here has likely already been said better elsewhere.

For instance, my current point is likely buried in Thoreau’s Walden, where he says the true philosopher hates the news.. that basically the world has become so saturated and complicated that we should go back to basics. And that’s what he did. So not only did he say what I want to say here, and say it better, but he actually LIVED it, and this was now over 100 years ago.

There is nothing new under the sun.

In the abortion debate, supporters of choice often cite an argument such as the following in defense of abortion: “The fetus is in my body, which I ought to have complete control over.” So the argument goes that the woman is fully within her rights to remove the fetus.. after all, it’s HER body. Here’s the argument clearly logically stated:

1. When we do things within our rights, (=df) we aren’t violating any moral standard.
2. We are within our rights to anything we have full moral authority or control over.
3. We have complete moral authority or control over things that occur inside our own body.
4. Therefore, we are within our rights to do things that occur inside our own body (by 2 and 3).
5. Abortion is a thing that occurs inside our own body.
C: Therefore, we are within our rights to decide to have an abortion (by 4 and 5).
(C2: Therefore, we aren’t violating any moral standard when we decide to have an abortion [by 1 and C, since "within our rights" just means we aren't violating any moral standard])

The focus of my post today is premise 3: “We have complete moral authority or control over things that occur inside our own body.” I don’t think I’d be mistaken if I were to say this is THE main argument in favor of abortion. Keep in mind this is ignoring cases of rape, etc., that usually appear in abortion debates as red herrings, at least from what I’ve seen.

I want to offer two simple counter-examples that show where it seems intuitive we DO NOT have complete moral authority over things that occur inside our own body.

The first example is one in which Jones, our unwitting accomplice to help demonstrate this example, has a tumor in his brain that makes him predisposed to be quite violent. So violent that in fact he has been on a killing spree. Once he is captured by police, they find from reports from his family and neighbors that this behavior is quite unlike Jones. So Jones undergoes tests, and doctors find a large tumor in his skull. Though Jones refuses to have it removed, the court rules that it should be removed. So it’s removed and consequently Jones is cured - and no longer has the urge to go on killing sprees.

The second example is similar, but more outlandish. In fact, this is a wildly outlandish example, but it’s still quite important. A small device created by the government happens to be able to control the detonation of a test missile in the event of failure. This device is so small that it is barely the size of a fingernail, and was developed this small to show off the technical capabilities of the rocket. It just so happens that a government agent in posession of the device is eating at a local diner, when the missile is accidentally fired. If the device isn’t used to detonate the missile, it will crash into the densely-populated city and certainly kill many people. However, the government agent somehow manages to fling the fingernail-sized control across the room, and it lands in Bob’s drink. Before the government agent has a chance to say anything, Bob finishes his drink and ingests the control. And consequently, the device must be removed from Bob’s stomach by a stomach-pump before the missile lands.

It seems that Bob is not within his rights to refuse to have is stomach pumped. He refuses, even at the insistence of the government agent, and perhaps the rest of the cafe. If the missile lands and kills scores of people, and Bob is brought to court, it seems that he might be charged with at the very least not complying with the government agent.

In both cases we have examples of people who do not have full moral control over their bodies. In each case, though they may be opposed to the removal of something in their body, we would say that the right thing to do would be to have the object removed, even though this was against the person’s wishes. We might say, framing this in the language of the abortion debate, that the morally acceptable thing to do was to go against the person’s physical autonomy.

So it is with abortion, except in a slightly different way. Whereas the examples above showed the person not in their rights to keeping something in their body, in the abortion debate it’s a question of whether someone is in their rights to REMOVE something from their body.

This is no slam-dunk argument against abortion. All I have shown is that we have reason to be suspicious of premise 3, which presupposes in ALL CASES we have a right to physical autonomy - that we have an absolute rule over what goes on in our body. But it very well may be the case that in cases of abortion, we DO have absolute moral control over what goes on in our bodies.

So to fully advance an argument against abortion, it would have to be shown somehow that a person is not within their rights to wish for the removal of the fetus from their body. This involves questions about the basis of morality and about the requirements for personhood.

Morality has traditionally been the study of right/wrong or good/bad action in specifically PERSONS, but some such as Peter Singer have advocated for ethics that can be applied also to the treatment of animals or other living things. So if I were to further this issue I would sidestep the issue of personhood, which seems to stalemate the abortion argument, and argue for an ethics that protects living things. A fetus is a living thing, and thus it must be protected.. something along these lines.

Woo! I just got done converting my senior thesis paper into PDF form. You can view it by clicking here.

My Preface (included in the PDF):
This paper is a culmination of the undergraduate philosophy program at Biola University, which tests the student’s skills to rationally respond to academic philosophical material. The paper itself is the result of a semester’s worth of research work and is required for the undergraduate philosophy major.
At the time I wrote this, I had attended Biola for two years and had taken every class required for the Philosophy major except a class in Metaphysics, which I was to take the following semester. I really enjoyed working on this, as I learned much more about current studies in teleology, something that is by-and-large neglected in philosophy today. After I had completed writing, my material was presented at the 2006 Senior Colloquium on May 17, which is held each year for senior philosophy majors to present their work.
My presentation was a blend of reading straight from the following paper and an improvised talk based on the main points I wished to present. The result, if I remember correctly, was me reading the Introduction to the paper word-for-word, then an improvised discussion of the major points in the paper, then a return to a word-for-word read when I came to Larry Wright’s Unified Analysis of teleology and my modification to it. I wish I had recorded the talk I gave!
Anyhow, here’s a nice PDF version of my paper, something which represents much thoroughly enjoyable work. I’ve included lots of extra things to this PDF, from the original colloquium announcement to the response and grade I received on this paper. You can find all these things listed in the Table of Contents. Also, one final word: I would have preferred to have converted the endnotes to footnotes for the sake of readability, but the program I use (Open Office) doesn’t have this feature (although it does have the feature to convert footnotes to endnotes!). For this reason, my paper itself will be presented last, with even the Bibliography preceding it.
Enjoy!
David Calhoun (December 2, 2006)