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Abortion and Argument by Analogy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Lisa Sowle Cahill
Lisa Sowle Cahill*
Affiliation:
Boston College
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Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to examine the consistency and coherence of some arguments about abortion. Theological, philosophical, and public policy discussions of abortion are linked by the necessity of understanding the legitimate claims of the fetus on the woman who bears it, as well as on the larger human community. The tools of moral philosophy widely are employed, whether directly or indirectly, to evaluate abortion as one solution to problematic pregnancies. In particular, theologians examining the problem of abortion from the standpoint of normative ethics find it necessary to take into account some of the seminal work in recent moral philosophy. However, the logic of the moral arguments adduced is not always given fully critical attention in either “pro-choice” or “pro-life” positions, whether they be essentially religious, philosophical, or political in character.

One logical implement used broadly is the analogical argument. Burdensome pregnancy can be compared to other situations in which the duty of one individual to protect the rights of another either is sustained or is modified. Differences in evaluations of the morality of abortion can be clarified and perhaps reduced by probing the ways in which the morally significant features of fetal dependency, and of maternal and societal obligation, are partly revealed yet partly hidden by the analogical mode of moral argument.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , Fall 1982 , pp. 271 - 287
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1982

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References

1 This comparison, however, has never been endorsed by the magisterium. For an exhaustive discussion of the history of this analogy and other elements of the abortion debate among Catholic theologians, see John Connery, S.J., Abortion: The Development of the Roman Catholic Perspective (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

2 “A Defense of Abortion,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1971), 47–66.Google Scholar

3 “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion,” The Monist 57 (1973), 43–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Abortion and the Roman Catholic Church (Knoxville, TN: Religious Ethics, 1978).Google Scholar

5 “Abortion and Infanticide,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 2 (1972), 37–65.Google Scholar

6 “How to Argue About Abortion” in Contemporary Issues in Bioethics, ed. Beauchamp, Tom L. and Walters, Le Roy (Encino and Belmont, CA: Dickenson, 1974), pp. 210–16.Google Scholar Originally published by the Ad Hoc Committee in Defense of Life, 1974.

7 Frederick Ferré offers a concise introduction to the history and problems of analogical argument and a short bibliography in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edwards, Paul (New York: Free Press and Macmillan, 1967).Google Scholar Brief discussions may also be found in Reese, William L., The Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1980)Google Scholar and in the Dictionary of Philosophy, ed. Runes, Dagobert D. (16th ed.; New York: Philosophical Library, 1960).Google Scholar George P. Klubertanz, S.J., gives a thorough discussion of Aquinas', Thomas use of analogy in St. Thomas on Analogy: A Textual Analysis and Systematic Syntehsis (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1960).Google Scholar

8 The central Thomistic text on analogy is found in the Summa Theologiae I, Q. 13, a. 5. Thomas Aquinas was primarily interested in that similarity between God and his creatures which is due to their relation as cause and effect. Much subsequent analysis of analogy has been a commentary on his. Aquinas and his followers would maintain that some properties, such as being or goodness, can be attributed to God because they are evident in his creatures, who possess them by participation in the First Cause, who alone possesses them perfectly.

9 Paul Camenisch also has addressed the issue of argument by analogy about abortion. He notes that dissimilarities in the primary and secondary analogates can obstruct the effectiveness of the analogy, and proceeds on the basis of his understanding of analogy to suggest that the position that the full value of human life emerges at conception is questionable. See his “Abortion, Analogies, and the Emergence of Value,” Journal of Religious Ethics 4 (1976), 131–58.Google Scholar

10 I have chosen the word “person” to represent human life which possesses full value or status in the human community, and thus is regarded as having basic human rights and protectability. It is my perception that the real controversy is not over whether the fetus is “human life,” though that is how the debate is often phrased. Not many seriously mean to question whether the fetus is of the human species and is alive. The disagreement is instead over the exact status in the human community which human life occupies in its prenatal stages.

11 Credit and appreciation are due to graduate students who have contributed to this analysis, particularly Maureen Kemeza, Kathleen Stavely Fitzgerald, and Harold Miller, and to colleagues who read early drafts. Among these the most scrupulous was John Connery, S.J., whom I have no doubt not yet satisfied but from whom I have learned. Members of the American Academy of Religion Medical Ethics Working Group also criticized a version of this paper at our 1981 conference; one hearer, James T. Burtchaell C.S.C., was kind enough to provide an extended critique.

12 John Connery, S.J., “Abortion and the Duty to Preserve Life,” Theological Studies 40 (1979), 318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World” (Gaudiam et Spes), Art. 51, in The Documents of Vatican II, ed. Abbott, Walter M. S.J., (New York: America Press, 1966), pp. 199–258.Google Scholar Among statements of the magisterium, that of Pope Pius XII makes the most direct reference to the “personhood” of the fetus: “The baby, still not born, is a man in the same degree and for the same reason as the mother” (“Address to the Italian Catholic Society of Midwives,” Acta apostolicae sedis 43 [1951], 839).Google Scholar

14 Abortion: The Development of the Roman Catholic Perspective, esp. chs. 12-15. Daniel Viscosi, an Italian seminary professor, published in 1879 a defense of embryotomy in which, interpreting Tertullian, St. Thomas, and others, he proposes that the fetus could be considered an “unjust aggressor” both early and late in pregnancy (after “animation” as well as before it). This argument was later taken up by Joseph Pennacchi, another seminary professor, who published in 1884 a treatise on the ecclsiastical penalty for abortion, in which he argues that killing a fetus does not clearly fall under the fifth commandment's prohibition of homicide.

15 Novak, David, “Judaism and Contemporary Bioethics,” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 4 (1979), 357.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

16 These examples were developed in particular by a Franciscan theologian, Antoninus de Corduba (1485-1578). Refer to Connery, Abortion: The Development of the Roman Catholic Perspective, esp. ch. 12, for a thorough discussion.

17 Abortion and the Roman Catholic Church, Chapters IV, V, and VI.

18 “The Prolongation of Life,” The Pope Speaks 4 (1958), 393–98.Google Scholar See also Kelly, Gerald S.J.,, Medico-Moral Problems (St. Louis: Catholic Hospital Association, 1958), chs. 16 and 17.Google Scholar

19 “Abortion and Infanticide,” pp. 60-62.

20 In the preceding discussion, I have used “baby” and “child” as nearly synonymous, that is, to refer to a very young human being (after birth). This is the sense which I take to be associated with “child” in most anti-abortion arguments. It is true that the terms “child” and “children” are sometimes also used more broadly, to refer to any offspring of human parents. For example, one might say, “She is with child”; or “She had ten children.” In such uses, it seems that “child” is used in an analogous reference to the time in which the offspring in question were or will be already born but still quite young human beings. Just as one would not therefore say directly and univocally of the adult son of the mother of ten, “He is a child,” one ought not to say of the fetus, “It is a child.” This is not to say, however that the argument cannot reasonably be put forward that the fetus does in fact have the same essential status in the human community that a child has—and as does the adult son.

21 Casti Connubii, 64, in Gibbons, William J. S.J.,, ed., Seven Great Encyclicals (New York: Paulist, 1963), p. 95.Google Scholar

22 “How to Argue About Abortion,” pp. 210-11.

23 Ramsey, Paul, Ethics at the Edges of Life: Medical and Legal Intersections (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 86–87, n. 38.Google Scholar

24 Abortion and the Roman Catholic Church, pp. 51-52.

25 “A Defense of Abortion,” pp. 65-66.

26 John Finnis argues, against Thomson, that the obligation of the mother to the fetus need not be the result of any special commitment on the part of the former. He maintains that it is an instance of a more general duty to one's fellow human beings. I would maintain that the duty of the mother is special in the sense that she is in a special position to sustain the fetus, which is related to and dependent on her in a unique and exclusive way. See Finnis, , “The Rights and Wrongs of Abortion,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 2 (1973), 117–45.Google ScholarPubMed