Abortion and Personhood: What the Moral Dilemma Is Really About | Glenn Cohen | Big Think

Abortion and Personhood: What the Moral Dilemma Is Really About
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The landmark Roe v. Wade decision, handed down by the United States Supreme Court in 1973, touched off a divide deep within the American culture that shows little signs of healing. The reason is not necessarily that people have intransigent views when it comes to abortion. Instead, the issue is genuinely hard to grapple with, even from a moral standpoint, as Harvard Law Professor and bioethicist Glenn Cohen explains.
The first question we face when deciding whether abortion is immoral is this: are fetuses persons? That may seem like a straightforward question, but determining personhood requires understanding the distinction between a person, a human being, and being alive.
Certainly not all things that are alive are persons. A dog, for example, is very much alive and very lovable indeed, but not a person. As simple as this distinction seems, it has its detractors. The philosopher Peter Singer, for example, says that distinguishing between what is human life and inhuman life is an example of speciation — an act of discrimination that is ultimately logically untenable (and we should therefore abandon it).
According to Cohen, some scholars say that stem cells and embryos are human beings, but not persons. They are made of human being stuff but they do not have the moral and legal rights — namely, the right of inviolability — that we accord to individual persons.
Those who believe the granting of rights is more a political act than a natural one may look toward what Cohen calls a "capacity 'x'," i.e. some other quality that more accurately defines what a person truly is. Examples of such a capacity 'x' include experiencing a continuity of identity, or possessing self-knowledge. While these qualities form more naturally than the granting of political rights, they open the door to difficult-to-justify actions like infanticide (since the infant brain is insufficiently developed to have the concept of an identity, or to articulate self-knowledge).
If one decides to stick with a definition of "person" that is determined by the existence of moral and legal rights, thinkers such as Judith Jarvis Thomson point out that the rights of a mother countervail — she is a person, too, after all. Thomson's famous thought experiment, "the famous violinist" has become perhaps the most recognizable philosophical defense of abortion.
Glenn Cohen's book is Patients with Passports: Medical Tourism, Law, and Ethics.
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GLENN COHEN:
PROFESSOR, HARVARD LAW SCHOOL
Prof. Glenn Cohen is one of the world's leading experts on the intersection of bioethics (sometimes also called "medical ethics") and the law, as well as health law. He also teaches civil procedure. From Seoul to Krakow to Vancouver, Professor Cohen has spoken at legal, medical, and industry conferences around the world and his work has appeared in or been covered on PBS, NPR, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, Mother Jones, the New York Times, the New Republic, the Boston Globe, and several other media venues.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Glenn Cohen: In the 1970s we have the Roe v. Wade decision in the United States. It was a decision relating to a woman's right to have an abortion. It introduced the trimester framework. It basically allowed first trimester abortions, made it very difficult to have third trimester abortions. And essentially this was really met very quickly thereafter with the sort of backlash. And really the last 40/50 years of American history have more or less been a backlash against Roe v. Wade and an attempt to kind of criminalize abortion in all sorts of interesting ways without overturning the decision.
So that's kind of the legal playing field. I mean we can talk about some of the specifics, but the more interesting question I think is thinking about the morality of abortion. And I'll say that I think abortion is an extremely difficult question. So one of the first questions people have to think about is are fetuses persons? And that's a very important linguistic question, persons. I didn't say human beings. I didn't say alive. Those are three different issues. Something can be alive but not be a person. Your dog is a good example. You love your dog. It's a wonderful thing but it's not a person. Something can be human and potentially not be a person...

[jimgrant]

A fact about abortion that too often gets ignored is that there is a very simple, proven way to prevent the need for most abortions--- prevent unplanned pregnancies through education and access to contraception. And yet, the people who hate the idea of a woman having an abortion, also seem to actively work against the steps that could have prevented the pregnancy in the first place (except for abstinence). Making abortion illegal is not going to stop women from having abortions.

[rebeccac.l.]

This is a such a mature way to approach arguments, especially such a complex and delicate issue. Politicians, take note

[MichaelRicksAherne]

I could listen to this guy talk about this for hours. Really good way of breaking down the different approaches to the moral and legal questions, without any of the sloganeering.

[CF-eioz]

Third trimester or "partial birth" abortion is only done to save the mother's life or because the fetus is not going to survive because of terrible, irremediable physical defects. It's a horrible loss for the mother and other parent; they grieve it as a death. I've talked to women who went through it. It's a severe trauma. It's egregious that it's presented in some media as a frivolous "choice" that a woman makes when she suddenly decides, in the 8th or 9th month, "I don't feel like it".

[josephercanbrack]

At least we can all agree that Legal and Ethical are two different things.

[Robfenix]

This is how I try to train my students: I don’t tell them what to think, but I test their level of depth in terms of whether they can honestly and accurately give increasingly complex counter-arguments on each side.

[homermalaluan]

As a man and born Catholic, I may not agree with abortion, but it doesn't matter. No matter what you believe, if it is not your body, you do not have the right to dictate on what and not what to do with it. Let the owner of the body decide on what they going to do with their body. Their body, their decision.

[caralawson]

Just how complex this dilemma is shows me that this is something to be left up to every individual and their healthcare provider to decide, not the government

[nathanwall]

I appreciate his attempt to explore both sides faithfully. That’s uncommon with this topic.

[calohtar]

This guy comes here with a thoughtful, comprehensive exposition of all the complexities in an issue that has been relegated to overemotional moralizing on both sides, and yet the highest rated comments just parrot the same tired memes that don't really engage with the issue without blatant demonization and conflation with terrible metaphors. I fucking worry about our future if people are this incapable of extracting themselves from their opinions and actually considering all sides of an issue instead of figuring out new ways to force their narrow minded opinions on others.

[thewoolshark]

Thank you so much for the balanced and nuanced overview here. I think much of the difficulty discussing abortion comes from the fact that "when does personhood begin", and "how much bodily autonomy do people have a right to" are two different, separate ethical issues...that can't be easily separated re abortion. The examples of both the famous violinist and frozen embryos were very helpful, illustrating "personhood" vs "bodily autonomy" a bit more on their own and independent of the other.

[greenredblue]

I wish all discussion and media was this reasoned, well considered, and dispassionate.

But I think that’s why nobody will talk to me at parties. :c

[Updog]

Given how complicated and subjective the issue is, and how dangerous pregnancy can be, I take serious issue with anyone who would go out of their way to ban or criminalize abortion. You’d have to be seriously lacking in empathy and intellectual humility to look at all this grey area and still feel so confident. If there can be gray area about our rights to choose self-defense, choose to donate our organs, choose to pull the plug on someone who is braindead, or choose to euthanize a pet, surely we can make peace with letting people choose whether or not to terminate a pregnancy. We don’t have to like it, but we ought to respect it.

I especially take issue with the hypocrisy of those who won’t support sex education and access to birth control but would happily take away people’s right to choose abortion. They argue that they don’t want their taxes to pay for it. If they they really cared about the life of the fetus they’d pay happily. There are more important things than money. If you’re going to try to make other people’s reproductive choices your business, don’t complain when the government taxes you for it.

[Jleigh]

If someone this intelligent has this much to say on both sides, maybe we shouldn’t remove the moral decision from the mother to choose to have or to not have an abortion. I was pro-life for a long time and that’s what changed my mind. It was that this is a complicated question and therefore I don’t have the right to answer it for someone else and the person in the situation should be the one who decides what is best for them.

[phiggins]

I really appreciated this balanced look at very complex questions. In fact, the first thing he said was that the question of abortion is very complex and difficult. I have a lot of questions that I would like to pose to him, but I am confident that I would get an intellectually well-grounded answer.

[SerenityNow....]

It drives me nuts how everyone (on both sides!) keep referring to all of the "fetuses" that are aborted, and whether or not "fetuses" are persons, when the vast majority of abortions are preformed on embryos! Is there really a difference?... Absolutely! During the embryonic stage, cells are still in the process of forming into their differentiated rolls, and no organs have completely formed yet (including the brain and nervous system). The term "fetus" specifically refers to the point in pregnancy when theses structures are now present. This stage is just before the end of the first trimester, meaning approximately 91% of abortions are preformed on embryos, not fetuses. Considering the term "fetus" can bring to mind the image of a tiny person, I do wish professionals would use the correct terminology when discussing this issue.

[swarleysheen]

It is a very tough argument but most people are so hostile about it that we can't have good conversations about it.

[ScruffyTheJ]

I think most of the comments are from people who didn't even watch the video.

[bluetube]

This is what we need to be doing on this issue - thinking in through in deep detail, without acrimony, and recognizing that neither side has clear-cut moral superiority here. I have my own opinion on abortion, but because of arguments like this, I can't really claim with certainty that my own thinking is ethically superior. Since that is true, I can't look at those who disagree with me as evil or malicious; they are just people who view the matter differently. It is hard to think that way about something so emotionally challenging, so filled with life and death and suffering and joy as the process of creating or aborting a child, ceding or reclaiming bodily autonomy for a woman. But, we too often think of our opponents on this issue as monsters; thinking like this video tells us we are wrong to think that way..

[JavierSanchez-moef]

Wow, that guy just explained the situation to me better then anyone else ever before. Nice video.