Nathan Nobis, Southwest Philosophy Review, Vol. 18, No. 2, July, 2002, pp. 55-63
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Elizabeth Harman has presented a novel view on the moral status of early fetuses that she calls the “Actual Future Principle” (hereafter the AFP):[1]
An early fetus that will become a person has some moral status.
An early fetus that will die while it is still an early fetus has no moral status.[2]
This view is said to justify a “very liberal” position on abortion, that “early abortion requires no moral justification whatsoever,”[3] and show this position to be “more attractive than has previously been thought.”[4]
Harman concedes that the AFP “may appear to be incoherent or be plainly wrong on its face.”[5] I will argue that she does not defeat this appearance: strong arguments are not given in its favor. I will undercut Harman’s main argument for the AFP by showing that no defender of abortion needs to accept the AFP to reasonably retain her views. Since the AFP is not adequately defended, Harman does not provide a strong argument for her view on abortion. I will note, however, that Harman’s liberal view on abortion may, in fact, imply very little about the morality of most actual abortions.
Harman’s principle concerns “early” fetuses, by which she means fetuses that lack “any intrinsic properties that themselves confer moral status on the fetus.”[6] (Henceforth, I will refer to “early fetuses” as “fetuses,” but it should be understood that I am always discussing early fetuses). The notion of “intrinsic” properties is not defined, but she offers a plausible candidate: being the subject of conscious experience.[7] Clearly some fetuses lack this property. This is the class of fetuses whose “moral status” is in question.
What is it for a fetus to have “moral status”? This too is not defined, but Harman offers this suggestion: for fetuses than have no moral status, “their deaths simply do not matter morally.”[8] What it is to “matter morally” is also not said, but the idea might be that if something’s death does not matter morally, then one can do no wrong in or be blameworthy for bringing about that death. We might presume that for fetuses that have some moral status, their deaths do matter morally. If this presumption is correct, we might suspect that, in her view, a fetus has moral status if, and only if, its death matters morally.
Harman explains the AFP:
The Actual Future Principle says that an early fetus’s actual future determines whether it has moral status. The Principle says that there are two significantly different kinds of early fetuses. Early fetuses that die while they are still early fetuses go through their entire existence without any intrinsic properties that themselves confer moral status. But an early fetus that will become a person is a very different kind of thing: it will one day have the full moral status of a person, and that is a good reason to think it has some moral status now.[9]
The AFP says that some fetuses’ deaths matter morally and that some do not: some have moral status and others do not. We have assumed that all these fetuses lack intrinsic moral-status-making properties, so if any have some moral status, this is in virtue of their extrinsic, relational properties. The AFP says that the relevant moral-status properties are those that a fetus has in relation to its future, its actual future.
If the AFP is true, then it’s morally permissible to abort those fetuses that are aborted because, as a consequence of being aborted, they come to lack actual futures where they become persons and, therefore, they lack moral status and their deaths do not matter morally. It might seem that, according to the AFP, one can make a fetus lack moral status and its death not matter by the very act of killing it. But this isn’t quite correct: if it was true that the fetus was going to be killed and its future prevented, then the fetus lacked moral status all along since it always lacked a future. Harman writes, “Throughout each fetus’s existence as an early fetus, the question whether it has moral status yields a single [i.e., the same at all times] answer. It does not depend on the day of the week.”[10] So, according to the AFP, the act of abortion reveals that a fetus lacks moral status and that aborting it is permissible. This is a surprising result.
On the other hand, the AFP implies that if a fetus has an actual future, then it has some moral status and its death matters morally. Clearly, some fetuses have actual futures since some fetuses become persons. According to the AFP, these are the only fetuses with moral status. Is “moral justification” needed to kill these fetuses? In the actual world, yes, justification is required because, since they have futures, they have moral status. However, if they were killed then no justification would be required, since they would have lacked moral status. So, some fetuses are, in the actual world, prima facie wrong to kill because they have moral status, yet, were they killed, nothing morally objectionable would have occurred. This is a puzzling result.
The AFP seems problematic, but perhaps there are compelling considerations in its favor. Again, Harman’s goal is to defend a very liberal view that “early abortion requires no moral justification whatsoever” because early fetuses lack moral status.[11] She argues that adopting the AFP as the basis for one’s view about the moral status of fetuses makes this view on abortion “more attractive than has previously been thought.”[12] But what is supposed to be unattractive about this liberal view without the AFP? According to Harman, a liberal view held without the AFP has seemed incompatible with “several attractive views,”[13] e.g., that:
some early fetuses are the appropriate objects of caring attitudes, that some early fetuses are the kind of things we are prohibited from harming, that it is understandable to be upset by an early miscarriage, that the position of a woman genuinely unsure whether she will abort her pregnancy is unique, and that it is reasonable to regret an abortion.[14]
Harman claims that the liberal who does not accept the AFP must hold not only that aborted fetuses have no moral status, but that she also “must hold that all fetuses lack moral status.”[15] It is this latter claim—that all fetuses lack moral status—that is supposed to be unattractively incompatible with the views above. But is it? Even if all fetuses lack moral status, would that entail that these (admittedly) attractive views are inconsistent with any maximally permissive view about abortion?
Surely not. Those who think that all abortions are permissible are also well aware of these facts: some women want to have children and can have children only if their fetuses are not harmed; some women care about their future baby’s well-being so they care for the fetus that will develop into their child; most women who joyfully await a baby are understandably upset when their hopes and plans are frustrated by a miscarriage; and, finally, since having an abortion results in a woman not becoming a mother (at least, this time), the act results in a different future for her than she would have had had she kept the pregnancy. Deciding whether to abort or not can be a tough decision, since a woman often does not know what the best choice, even for her, will be. If she has an abortion, she might reasonably wonder what her life would have been like had she not had the abortion, and vice-versa. Thus, it makes sense for some women to be unsure about aborting and, perhaps, regret an abortion.
All these explanations are compatible with any liberal view on abortion
and an outright denial of moral status to fetuses. They are also compatible
with views that hold that maternal interests always “trump” fetal interests,
regardless of their moral status. This
shows that the liberal view does not have these unattractive implications. It might have seemed incompatible with these
views, but it isn’t. Harman claims
that, “The worry is the liberal view cannot appeal to the nature and status of
these early fetuses themselves in explaining why we are prohibited from harming
them,” but why should this be a worry?
No reason is given why a liberal needs to appeal to any view about the
positive moral status of any fetuses (much less the AFP) to defuse these
objections. Furthermore, it’s not clear
how the AFP would help defuse all these worries above since the AFP entails
that some of these fetuses above (e.g., miscarried or aborted ones) lack moral
status as well. Also, some of these
worries seem to presuppose a concern for alternative possible futures, which
the AFP entails to be morally irrelevant.
Harman suspects that many who are attracted to a very liberal view on abortion, adopt a moderate view, one that requires “some justification, however minimal,” because they want to hold some of these attractive views above and suspect that the two are inconsistent. She hopes to convince these people to adopt the very liberal view and the AFP in place of the moderate view, and claims that these are the people to whom her conclusion that “the AFP is the correct view of the moral status of fetuses” is directed.[16]
While Harman’s reasoning is not explicit, we might reconstruct it this way:
(1) These “attractive” views should be accepted. But some people think that they can’t consistently hold these “attractive” views unless they also hold that all fetuses have moral status. So, to keep the attractive views, they hold that all fetuses have moral status.
(2) Now, if the “very liberal” view is true, then there isn’t a good objection to it. But if all fetuses have moral status, that’s a good objection to the liberal view. Some people think that all fetuses have moral status: they think this to maintain the “attractive” views. These people think there is a good objection to the liberal view, so they think that the liberal view isn’t true.
(3) However, if the AFP is true, then people who think they need to hold that all fetuses have moral status to maintain the “attractive views” are mistaken. The AFP says that not all fetuses have moral status, only those that become persons do. If only those fetuses have moral status, then there’s no tension in accepting both the liberal view that “no abortion requires moral justification” (because aborted fetuses have no moral status) and the “attractive views” (since fetuses that become persons have moral status): one need not hold that all fetuses have moral status to keep the “attractive views.”
(4) So, there isn’t a good objection to the liberal view: people who think it has these “unattractive” implications are mistaken and they should adopt both the liberal view and the AFP.
The main problem with this reasoning, as we have seen, is that step (1) is based on a false assumption since one can easily hold these attractive views but yet deny that any fetuses have moral status. So step (3) is accurate in stating that one need not hold that all fetuses have moral status to keep the “attractive” views, but the problem is that the AFP is not needed for its truth.
One might think that the AFP provides the best explanation for why the liberal view does not have these unattractive implications (since it allows for some fetuses to have moral status), so the AFP is true. However, given the existence of much simpler explanations that can account for this compatibility of the liberal and “attractive” views, it’s unlikely that the AFP provides the best explanation for why intuitions to the contrary are mistaken. So this reasoning (or any argument from concerns related to reasoning similar to that in step [3]) for the AFP is not compelling.
The deeper problem is that it is not clear that any good reasons are given to believe that that the AFP is true, the crucial antecedent in step (3). Harman’s general strategy seems to be to note if one holds (or wishes to hold) a liberal view on abortion based on the premise that all aborted fetuses have no moral status and their deaths don’t matter morally, the AFP provides a justification for that view. But, of course, the AFP just is that view, so to state the AFP is not to defend that premise. Also, it also seems to conflict with some of the “attractive” views above that Harman is trying to harmonize her views with. So, the AFP is not adequately defended.
The problematic nature of the AFP might be still clearer if we consider its implications for a long-term comatose patient: suppose a thirty year old individual has been in a coma all her life, from birth and even before. Up to this point, she has never had any intrinsic properties that give her moral status: her moral existence seems to be analogous to that of an early fetus’s.[17] However, she will wake up in ten minutes, unless the “plug” is pulled on her in five minutes (and she will then immediately die). If she wakes up and becomes a subject of conscious experience, then she will have (and has always had) moral status, according to the AFP, and it has always been wrong to pull the plug. But, if the plug is pulled in five minutes, then it would not have been wrong to pull it because her dying would have prevented her from becoming a conscious person, something with moral status.
Would it have been OK to pull the plug, just five minutes before she would have awoken and become a person? Many would think not. It appears that counterfactual ‘that she would have become a conscious person had she been allowed to live 10 more minutes’ is highly relevant to what is morally permissible here. If what is morally permissible depends on the “moral status” of this comatose individual, then it appears that at least some of her counterfactual properties are relevant to her moral status as well.
The AFP seems to run aground both here and in the fetal case in its
implication that only temporal properties are relevant to the moral status of
beings that lack intrinsic moral-status making properties: the AFP implies that
none of their counterfactual properties are relevant to their moral
status. But in the comatose case, facts
about what could and would have happened are highly relevant to the morality of
the various options and whether the individual’s death would matter morally (at
least in the sense of whether it would have been a good or bad thing, both
overall and for the patient herself, had the plug been pulled or not). If the AFP is true, then all counterfactuals
are, in general, irrelevant to such cases, including those concerning
fetuses. Since counterfactuals are
often morally relevant, the AFP seems mistaken.
Harman states that “we must accept that abortion deprives [at least some] fetuses of possible futures that would be good” and that “this can be seen as a loss for the fetus—as bad for the fetus,” but then claims that “this badness need not matter morally, because the fetuses in question lack moral status.”[18] Why do they lack moral status? Why don’t their deaths matter morally? Again, the AFP says this is because they don’t have actual futures. What about the possible good futures that (at least some of them) could have had and, in fact, would have had if they hadn’t been aborted? The AFP’s response to this question (as well as its response to the possible futures of our comatose individual) is, in effect, “So what? What could or would have happened is morally irrelevant: all that is relevant is what will happen.”[19]
This seems to be a mistake and an instance of a general error in denying the importance of counterfactuals for moral matters. On some common views, killing persons is wrong, roughly, because it deprives them of the many goods they would have experienced over their lives—happiness, friendship, knowledge, and other benefits—and/or makes the world overall worse. So, killing a person is typically wrong because it prevents her from experiencing her good future: a future she would have experienced is taken from her at a serious loss. So, at least for us, our (actual) moral status and whether our deaths matter morally supervene on, among other properties, some (but not all) of our counterfactual properties. The moral status of acts and agents also often, in part, supervenes on some of their counterfactual properties. Modal-to-moral supervenience is pervasive. Harman denies this in the case of fetuses, but it is unclear what the argument for this view is, except, perhaps, that it seems to imply her desired conclusion that, considered in itself, it’s impossible for killing a fetus to be wrong.
In sum, it appears that Harman does not provide a good argument to support the AFP. The view seems counterintuitive and, on balance, no compelling considerations are presented to counteract that. Furthermore, the AFP does not seem to do any work in defending a liberal view on abortion: if the liberal view on abortion, as Harman characterizes it, is justified (and I have not argued that it is or that it is not), this is not because of any support the AFP provides. Add to that its implication that all counterfactuals are irrelevant to actual moral status, and we can understand why the AFP has been “regularly ignored,” as Harman reports it has.[20]
In a footnote, Harman comments that, “It is consistent with the very liberal view on the ethics of abortion that some early abortions may require moral justification, when they have particular aspects that not every early abortion need have. The very liberal view merely claims that an action will never require moral justification simply in virtue of being an early abortion.”[21] Harman does not specify what these particular aspects are or might be, but if they are considerations such as whether the fetus would have a good life on balance, the woman’s life would go better if she carries the fetus to term, or even whether someone cares about the fetus, it might turn out that even if this very liberal view is correct, it implies very little about the morality of most actual abortions since most will require, at least, some moral justification.[22]
[1] “Creation Ethics: The Moral Status of Early Fetuses and the Ethics of Abortion,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 28, 4, 1999, 310-324.
[2] Ibid., 311.
[3] Ibid., 313.
[4] Ibid., 310.
[5] Ibid., 317.
[6] Ibid., 310.
[7] Ibid., 310.
[8] Ibid., 311. Since the death of a fetus could easily make the world morally better or worse by causally influencing the world’s future balance of goods versus evils, it would seem it could easily “matter morally” in this sense. Clearly this isn’t the sense that Harman has in mind.
[9] Ibid., 311-312. It seems that, on Harman’s view, both kinds of early fetuses lack intrinsic properties that themselves confer moral status; for fetuses of the kind that will become persons, their non-intrinsic, temporal properties confer moral status. The last claim in this explanation is puzzling, especially when made general: why does the fact that something will eventually have some property provide “good reason” to think that it has that property to any degree now? Counterexamples to a principle like that seem obvious: even if one will eventually have the “status” of being a rich person, a parent, a full professor, a master of martial arts, etc., that doesn’t entail that one now possesses those properties in any manner or degree.
[10] Ibid., 318.
[11] This understanding of the relationship between the liberal view on abortion and the moral status of fetuses follows by from Harman’s assumption 4: “If early abortion requires any moral justification whatsoever, then this is so because the early fetus that dies in the abortion has some moral status” (312) and the AFP, that “An early fetus that will die while it is still an early fetus has no moral status,” and. These two claims entail that early abortion does not require any moral justification whatsoever.
[12] Ibid., 310.
[13] Ibid., 313. Harman does not present any arguments for the incompatibility of any “liberal” views about abortion or fetuses and the various “attractive views” she discusses. She briefly quotes (322, footnote 10) rhetorical questions from Ronald Dworkin’s Life’s Dominion: An Argument about Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom (New York, Vintage, 1994) that are suggestive of arguments in this direction (but not arguments themselves), as well as a brief remarks (316, footnote 7) from Rosalind Hurthouses’s “Virtue Theory and Abortion,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 20, 1991, that are not explicit arguments for the incompatibility thesis either. It might be that the intuition regarding this alleged incompatibility has not been adequately formulated or defended.
[14] Ibid., 322-323.
[15] Ibid., 314. Emphasis mine.
[16] Ibid., 314, 323.
[17] One obvious difference is that the comatose patient (presumably) isn’t in a womb, but the AFP doesn’t specify this as a morally relevant difference.
[18] Ibid., 313, footnote 4.
[19] Don Marquis, in "An Argument that Abortion Is Wrong," Practical Ethics (Hugh LaFollette, ed.) 1st ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 91-102, explains that an “account of the wrongness of abortion [that depends on fetus’s loss of its good future (a ‘Future Like Ours,’ or ‘FLO’)] is a potentiality argument. To claim that a fetus has a FLO is to claim that a fetus now has the potential to be in a state of a certain kind in the future. It is not to claim that all ordinary fetuses will have FLOs. Fetuses that are aborted, of course, will not. To say that a standard fetus has a FLO is to say that [it] either will have or would have a life it will or would value” (latter emphases mine). Harman holds that that these possibilities about the life it would have or value are morally irrelevant. This might be true, but it is unclear what reasons are given in defense of it. In absence of strong reasons to the contrary, it is not unreasonable to presume that whatever makes for moral status is more than just actual temporal properties and includes some counterfactual properties.
[20] Ibid., 310.
[21] Ibid., 313, footnote 5.
[22] For helpful comments on this paper, I am grateful to Earl Conee, Richard Feldman, Jason Kawall, and Gabriel Uzquiano.