Editor,
In order to understand the ethics surrounding the abortion issue, there are two central questions which are determinative:
(1) Do human beings possess intrinsic value?
(2) Is the developing fetus a human being?
Something has intrinsic value if it is an end in itself, rather than a means to some end. Now, are human beings intrinsically valuable? I’m certain most people recognize that human beings are intrinsically valuable, and that they are ends in themselves.
That’s why Augustine said we should love people and use things, not vice versa. Even the international community recognizes the intrinsic moral value of human beings in its declaration on human rights; surely, few undermine this moral fact.
From this follows the implication that if the developing fetus is a human being, then he/she is endowed with intrinsic moral worth and therefore possesses inherent human rights, including the right to life. Consequently, abortion would then be a form of homicide, and against such attacks the innocent/defenseless fetus would have every right to the protection of law, regardless of what the mother says or feels.
It is virtually undeniable, scientifically and medically, that the fetus is at every stage of its development a human being. After all, the fetus is not canine, feline, or bovine; it’s a human fetus. Notice the rhetoric always used: human fetus. From the moment of conception forward, there exists a living organism that is a genetically complete human being and which, if left to develop naturally, will grow into an adult member of its species.
All of the individual’s traits such as body type, eye/hair color, facial characteristics, etc., are determined at the moment of conception and are just waiting to unfold. From the moment of conception we have a genetically complete and unique human being; in effect, you began at the moment of your conception.
Moreover, the development of this individual is a smooth and unbroken continuum throughout. There is no non-arbitrary breaking point before which you can say the fetus is not human, but after which he/she is. The traditional division of pregnancy into three trimesters has no scientific/medical basis: it is a purely arbitrary reckoning device for the sake of convenience.
The fact is that any attempt to draw a line and say “not human before this point, but human afterwards” is wholly arbitrary and without biological/philosophical foundation.
The fetus — the word is just Latin for “little one” — is a human being in the early stages of his or her development. Whether one is a “little one,” a newborn, an adolescent or an adult, one is at every point a human being at a different stage of development.
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Those who deny that the little one in the womb is a human being typically confuse being human with being at some later stage of development.
It seems to me, therefore, that the medical, scientific and philosophical facts make it virtually undeniable that the developing fetus is a human being. Therefore, “choice” involves more than just the mother.
Mac Morin
UNM student
