Thomistic Institute Speaker Discusses Philosophy of Abortion Debate

University of Dallas professor Angela Knobel said pro-lifers and pro-choicers often ask different questions

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko

How do we define bodily autonomy and personhood? University of Dallas associate professor Angela Knobel claimed that these questions are central to debates surrounding reproductive policy during a lecture hosted by the Thomistic Institute and the Center for the Study of Liberal Democracy.

Knobel said that there are two questions at the heart of this debate, and when you analyze them, you can understand how people arrive at different conclusions. “If we can understand where each other are coming from, we can have better conversations,” she noted.

Part of the debate stems from the question of the personhood of the fetus. As Knobel worded it, “Is the fetus the kind of thing that the Declaration of Independence guarantees rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to? Is the fetus as morally valuable as a mature adult?”

The second question focuses on women’s bodily rights and how the child was conceived. “Was some horrible injustice present in the conception of the child? Or people say that they would want to know whether the mother wants the child. Does the mother have health issues?”

Knobel emphasized that it’s “absolutely vital to notice that support for abortion can stem either from the view that the fetus is not a person or from views about bodily rights.”

Knobel introduced the debate by stating that philosophers who support abortion often disagree on which view is the right one. She used pro-choice philosopher Mary Anne Warren as an example: “She says, if you can show me that the fetus is a person and has the rights that people have, you can’t have an abortion.” However, Warren believes that a fetus is not a person yet.

In contrast, philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson argues that abortion is morally permissible even if the fetus is a person. Knobel referred to Thomson’s thinking by saying, “It is absolutely astounding when you realize how early the fetus develops and how quickly it seems to be a person,” but the women’s bodily rights still take precedence over the life of the fetus, in Thomson’s view.

Knobel then discussed the opposite viewpoint, saying, “Opponents of abortion say that the fetus is a person, is the sort of thing that it is wrong to kill, and that your rights to your own bodily autonomy don’t trump the rights of the fetus.” Subsequently, Knobel explained that views about personhood tend to appeal to either a notion of species or specific characteristics.

If characteristics are what matter, then, as she put it, a human being “becomes a person at some point, but is not a person from the get-go.” Rationality, self-motivated activity, and the capacity for desires and aspirations can come and go, or are not things that everyone has. Under this view, she noted, “The baby has less self-concepts, less self-motivated activity, and less ability to reason than a dog.”

She added that under a rationality-based view, toddlers under three, fetuses, and even people in temporary comas “fail the rationality test” and do not inhabit a state of personhood at the present moment.

Knobel explained that this view entertains the idea that “the moral seriousness of killing something has to do, and only to do, with its presently possessed rational capabilities.” If personhood can be gained and lost so quickly, it raises the question of how fair it is to base moral value and the seriousness of killing on a shifting standard. Knobel explained how this would also mean that “the very young, and many of the very old, and certainly many of those who are mentally disabled” wouldn’t qualify as people or have moral value under this definition.

Knobel stated, “It is not as if some people think rationality is central to moral value and other people don’t. It’s just that they think rationality matters in different ways.” Many philosophers, such as Derek Parfit, argue that rationality matters in a normative sense, as what a being is supposed to have, even if it doesn’t currently.

She demonstrated this by showing an image of a three-legged dog. Before seeing the picture, she noted that most people, when explaining what a dog looks like, would say that dogs have four legs. Knobel explained that defining something solely by its characteristics can lead to problematic conclusions.

In her example, someone might conclude, “So, if dogs have four legs, that’s not a dog.” She went on to say that the easy rejoinder is that it should have four legs. In fact, Knobel noted that counterfactual reasoning supports the idea that “persons are beings for whom rationality is normative.” Both sides of this view agree that rationality is fundamental to personhood; they just understand the significance in “dramatically different ways.”

When turning to reflect on bodily rights of the mother, Knobel said you must ask yourself, “What do I owe somebody who is living inside my body?” One answer is that people have moral obligations to others, and another says that no one is morally obligated to others, especially with one’s own body.

Knobel illustrated this with a simple example. If a baby were left on your doorstep, most people would feel some obligation to help, not just step over it and go about their day. Whether pregnancy creates a similar obligation or if bodily autonomy makes it fundamentally different is the subject matter at the heart of this question.

Some, such as Thomson, think that “a woman’s right not to be burdened, outweighs any value the fetus has,” Knobel noted, “even if the fetus’s life is assumed to be as valuable as ours.”

“To oppose abortion is to commit oneself to a significantly more substantial view.” Knobel goes on to explain that, in this view, a fetus has the same moral value as adults and that “one has obligations to persons, simply because they are persons, even at considerable inconvenience to oneself.”

“Opposition to abortion does not come down to blind adherence to religious doctrine, and support of it does not stem from ignorance of biology. There are difficult and profoundly important questions at the heart of the abortion debate, questions which both sides need to take seriously,” Knobel said.

She closed the talk encouraging everyone to “take a hard look at our own opinions. We too often and too easily assume that we have a firm foundation for the things we believe. It can be worthwhile and productive to subject those beliefs to philosophical scrutiny.”