Recently, the Campus Pro-Life (CPL) club here at the U of C put on a two-day "demonstration" which they call their "Genocide Awareness Project". Now, they are claiming that abortion can be compared to various kinds of genocide, for example, the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, and the recent genocide in Rwanda. Besides the fact that these statements (and the pictures to go along with them) are nothing more than attention-whoring Appeals to Emotion and do nothing to further their argument, they do actually have a reason for their fallacious comparisons.
They say that the cases of genocide mentioned happened when the notion of Human Being was divorced from the notion of Person, and thus since a certain group was deemed not worthy of personhood, it was okay to kill them.
Now, whether or not this is actually the case in regards to both Nazi persecution of Jews (it probably is) and the Rwandan genocide (I don't know), it seems they are trying to gain a certain level of credibility by making an argument that actually seems to have premisses which make sense. However, after debating with a couple of the members of the group for the better part of an hour on Monday, I realised that their argument is a) faulty, and b) missing the point.
Of Personhood (The Faulty Argument)
Firstly, their claim is that Personhood should not be divorced from the concept of being Human. Well, I decided to ask them exactly what this meant, and their answer was simply "DNA". They claim that as soon as something has unique human DNA, it should be considered a person, and thus a two-celled embryo should be afforded the same rights as you and I.
Now, I see a problem with this kind of strict biological reductionism. I do not think that simply having human DNA captures the notion of Personhood, nor does it allow for other creatures to be allowed the status of Person (chimpanzees, for example). The fact that hundreds of philosophers for hundreds have years have been wrestling with the concept of Personhood and still haven't come to a real consensus seems lost on these Pro-Lifers. However, just because they aren't philosophers doesn't make their claim faulty in and of itself, but perhaps their claim is a little bit presumptuous when there are people much more highly trained in intellectual endeavours who have far different concepts of Personhood.
Now, I voiced my problem with their biological reduction to the person I was debating. I said, well, if it is simply human DNA, what if I were to inject a bacterial cell with human DNA; would I then have to afford it the status of a Person, with as many rights as you and I? No, she said, and then she amended her argument to including "the possibility of growing into a human".
Wait a minute! Didn't she just say that something is both human and a person when it has human DNA? So why is "growing into a human" neccesary when it already is a human, according to her argument?
And now we start to see the problems. Affording two cells the same rights as you and I should (hopefully) seem odd to most people, and simply saying that if it has unique human DNA it is a person doesn't seems to get them into a trap. Not to mention the fact that it excludes other things from being Persons, like Chimpanzees, with whom we share 98.6% of our DNA and who at adult-hood have greater cognitive abilities than do most 3 year olds. So what is it about our 1.4% DNA difference, I ask these "pro-lifers", that makes us worthy of Personhood and Chimpanzees not? Chimpanzees and ourselves diverged from a common ancestor 5-7 million years ago, and in that time we have gained that 1.4% of genetic change through natural selection and evolution - so can we really hold that the random processes of natural selection are responsible for according human beings - and ONLY human beings - Personhood? No, we can't, because natural selection is a random, algorhythmic process that shapes our DNA. So to judge personhood by our randomly arrived at DNA alone seems to be quite arbitrary and subjective.
Having human DNA may be criteria for being a member of Homo sapiens, but it is not the sole criteria by which we should judge Personhood.
On Rights (Why CPL Misses the Point)
I have already shown that their argument regarding Personhood is not cogent, and now I will seek to demontrate that they are missing the point entirely.
I think what the question of abortion comes down to is rights. Who has more rights, a mother, or a foetus? Do they have equal rights? Let's examine this.
A foetus is, while inside the womb, attached to the mother and cannot survive without her. It is part of her body. What it comes down to, ultimately, is that a woman has rights, and she has rights over her own body which no one is allowed to circumvent. The foetus, as part of her body, pertains to this also. It is a women's right to choose what she does with her body.
If we say that it is immoral for her to have an abortion, we are saying that the foetus has more rights than the mother does - how can that be? The foetus is PART of the mother, and while inside her body the mother has complete domain over it, just as she has complete domain over her arms, liver, brain, etc.
Does a woman have a right to cut off her arm, if she wants? Yes, she does, though this seems non-sensical. In the same way, though, the woman has the right to an abortion. There is simply no case in which we should afford the foetus more rights than the mother.
Nor can we afford it equal rights - as part of the woman's body. she has control over it, and her rights supercede the foetus'.
The response that I was given to this was, Well, a two-year old is completely dependant on its mother for survival, does the mother have the right to kill it, as well? No, she doesn't, because at that point it is not part of her body, and she no longer has domain over it. It's really that simple.
Now, there are some issues left with this, but to me there are not so much moral as they are unpleasant.
Firstly, it is quite obvious that people should not be having abortions for the hell of it, nor should they use it as a form of birth control. But this is why education is needed, and why it is important for people to realise the consequences of unprotected sex.
Secondly, where I live it is legal for a woman to have an abortion anytime before the birth occurs. This does in fact accord with what I have said above (in terms of the woman having domain over the foetus while it is inside her body), but many people (myself included) are disturbed by the process in which late-term abortions are carried out. Now, many pro-lifers use a description of this process as a means of proving their point. Again, this is nothing but an Appeal to Emotion (an informal fallacy) that doesn't do anything to further their argument. However, there is a point to be made.
Obviously this kind of thing should be avoided if at all possible. Why on earth someone would leave it so late in the term to get an abortion is beyond me, and again, this is where education and available help is needed to deal with unwanted pregnancies in a timely fashion. Though I cannot, in principle, morally disagree with late-term abortions, I think it is something which is best avoided for the sake of everyone involved. It is not morally wrong, but it is certainly not something which needs to take place, especially when pregnancies can be ended much sooner in the process.
In this case, however, it is not justified to encroach on women's rights in order to prevent something which is unpleasant. It is better to educate and to prevent than to restrict women's rights outright.
It is obvious that this is a topic of great debate, though abortion does remain legal in most Western countries. It is important to realise, also, the consequences of banning abortion. "Pro-Lifers", would wish this, but in fact, I refuse to refer to them as such. I would much rather refer to them as "Anti-Abortionists", because in the cases where abortion is banned, there suddenly becomes a high number of women who die from botched back-room abortions. This is not "pro-life" in any sense, especially since those women are dying by excersizing their personal rights to domain over their body, something which is also violated in cases of rape, where the offence would become double - A violation of rights over her own body in being raped, and a violation of rights over her own body in being denied an abortion.
There is nothing wrong with holding anti-abortion views, and there is nothing wrong with demonstrating said views - those are both rights guranteed by free speech. However, it is also my right to criticise them and point out the flaws in their argument. There is nothing wrong with holding a view which is incorrect, but there is everything wrong with such ridiculous comparisons of abortion to the Holocaust and to the Rwandan genocide - especially when their entire argument misses the point.
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Please feel free to comment and tell me what you think.
