I.  INTRODUCTION

            The abortion controversy is nothing new in our contemporary culture.  And additional debates about bioengineering and genetic manipulation in utero only fuel the discussions originally perpetuated by this controversy.  In some cases, such bioengineering issues reduce to the abortion debate directly (think of the current discussion on stem cell research).  Many philosophers and thinkers in general realize that one may never be able to present a case for the personhood of the fetus (in the case of the anti-abortion perspective) or the case against the personhood of the fetus (in the case of the pro-abortion perspective) that is satisfactory to every position available on the subject.  As early as St. Augustine of Hippo we find a position of epistemic ignorance declared on precisely when someone becomes a person or, in his words, becomes “ensouled”:

“It is not everybody who recollects his own infancy; and do you suppose that a man is able, without divine instruction, to know whence he began to exist in his mother's womb,— especially if the knowledge of human nature has so completely eluded him as to leave him ignorant, not only of what is within him, but of that also which is added to his nature from without? Will you, my dearest brother, be able to teach me, or any one else, whence human beings at their birth are ensouled,  when you still know not how it is that their life is so sustained by food, that they are certain to die if the aliment is withdrawn for a while? Or will you be able to teach me, or any one else, whence men obtain their souls, when you are still actually ignorant whence bags, when inflated, get the filling? My only wish, as you are ignorant whence souls have their origin, is, that I may on my side know whether such knowledge is attainable by me in this present life. If this be one of the things which are too high for us, and which we are forbidden to seek out or search into, then we have good grounds for fearing lest we should sin, not by our ignorance of it, but our quest after it. For we ought not to suppose that a subject, to fall under the category of the things which are too high for us, must appertain to the nature of God, and not to our own.”[i]

A similar concern is also mirrored in the 1973 opinion delivered by Justice Blackburn in the infamous Roe v. Wade case that precipitated the heated discussion flowering today.  Blackburn writes:

“When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.”[ii]

Human history and philosophy have been filled with discussions about the point at which someone actually becomes a person or is “ensouled.”[iii]  As any honest inquiry will yield, conclusions drawn all over the map have been suggested.  The result?  No consensus has been arrived at (as Blackburn correctly suggests).  Don Marquis, a professor of philosophy at the University of Kansas, thus notes that the current debate on abortion will leave us at best in a stalemate:

            “[W]e have both a symmetry and a standoff between pro-choice and anti-  abortion views. … The moral generalizations of both sides are not quite          correct.”[iv]

This potentially despairing conclusion that sees the debate as a “standoff” has led Marquis to opt for a non-arbitrary criterion of what exactly makes it wrong to kill another innocent human being.  His solution avoids the difficulties associated with determining personhood.  He suggests that abortion deprives fetuses of a “future-like-ours” in that should the fetus be left to her development, she would enjoy “experiences, activities, projects, and enjoyments that would otherwise have constituted one’s future.”[v]  I think there may be something to Marquis’ argument.  But nevermind.  Our concern here is to supplement the current debate with a different approach (if indeed I may be humble to say a unique approach) in the spirit of Marquis’ skirting of the personhood debate.  Avoiding the personhood debate is not merely an anti-abortion strategy either.  In a famous article by pro-abortion advocate Judith Jarvis Thompson, she makes it very clear that

the prospects for “drawing a line” in the development of the fetus look dim.  I am inclined to think also that we shall probably have to agree that the fetus has already become a human person well before birth.[vi]

Thompson’s approach is, therefore, to argue that despite the status of personhood, there are even situations analogous to pregnancy that warrant the woman’s overriding right to terminate that life.  Thus my objective in this article is to supplement this controversial discussion on personhood (since much ink has already been spilled on it) and, instead, present an argument against abortion on demand[vii] that does not depend on the ontological status of the unborn.  The benefit of this argument should be obvious – that the immorality of abortion on demand does not necessarily depend on fetal personhood.

We'll take a look at the argument's development next week!