The morality of abortion

Ann Furedi’s speech at the UK Battle of Ideas. 

Ann Furedi, chief executive of BPAS, and Professor John Wyatt, professor of ethics and perinatology at University College London, came together at a recent London festival to debate ‘Abortion: The hard arguments’.

Ann Furedi’s introduction is below.

I am often frustrated with the quality of the debate on reproductive choice, and I think we need to be looking a more deeply at some of the issues involved. For example, I get very frustrated at the resort that there often is to a very scientific and medical discussion when it comes to abortion, rather than a discussion about the morality of abortion and whether it is a right thing for society to be embracing.

I was particularly interested in some of the discussions – which the pro-choice side won – around the recent Parliamentary debate on viability and the upper time limit on abortion, where the discussion was almost entirely framed around whether the scientific and clinical developments had allowed babies to survive at significantly earlier gestations. The conclusion, which I know some people disagree with, is that those advances have not been made and therefore the abortion time limit should not be reduced. In my view this was the correct conclusion to draw, but I think nonetheless that we sometimes have to get outside of the scientific and clinical discussion and pose this thing in a bit of a different way.

There are three main points that I want to address here. First is the pragmatics of the abortion discussion, because I think there is something more fundamental and ethical here than often seems to be the case. Second, I want to look at the value of life, and how I view this. Third, I want to address a crucial point about autonomy.

In terms of the pragmatic arguments around abortion, I am frustrated by the way that the anti-choice arguments, used by those people who see themselves as being opposed to abortion in principle, can appear to have taken the moral high ground on abortion. It can seem that the anti-abortion lobby are the people who talk about the rights and wrongs of it, while the pro-choice lobby is seen as saying, ‘Well, that would be okay if we lived in an ideal world, but life just isn’t like that’. So the anti-choice arguments take the moral high ground, and we’re seen as offering up a pragmatic justification of why abortion needs to exist.

Now there is a very strong pragmatic reason why abortion needs to exist, if we want to live in the society we live in today; and I would suggest that modern, democratic western society is at the moment built on a whole number of principles that I support. Modern society is built on the idea that we need to be able to plan our families; and that if women are going to play a full part in public life, they need to be able to decide when and if to have children. It is not a question of other people foisting this decision onto us: we want to be able to have that control, to be able to determine what we do with our lives.

Furthermore, we live in a society where it is assumed that parents should be able to take responsibility for their children. In fact today, there is a growing sense that parents should be responsible and that our children should be wanted. I think there is also a sense in modern society that sex should be separate from reproductive intent. We don’t just recognise that sex is something that will result in babies; we expect that sex can be an expression of closeness, love and intimacy and - dare I say - even fun. These are things that society holds quite dear.

We also live in a society where we know that contraception fails. In the real world, out of women who are using the contraceptive pill well, about 8 in every 100 will get pregnant in the course of a year. I would argue that if we want to live in this kind of society, we need abortion as a back-up. Abortion stands as a back-up to birth control, and this is very important for us. And I think that that is a good kind of society: I want my child to grow up in that kind of society.

How do we value fetal and embryonic life? Obviously we couldn’t allow abortion if we accepted that fetal life had the same degree of value as born human life, and I don’t believe that it does. I think we can accord fetal life and embryonic life a certain degree of value. However, the point is not whether we give it value or not, but how much value do we give it? I think it is quite possible to value fetal and embryonic life without according it the same degree of value as a born person.

For me the question is not: ‘When does embryonic life begin?’ I think we can accept that the embryo is a living thing, in the fact that it has a beating heart, its own genetic system. It is clearly human in the sense that it’s not a gerbil; and we can recognise that it is human life of a sort. But the point for me is not, when does human life begin? but, when does it really begin to matter? And that is something that we weigh up as being relative to the woman who is carrying it.

My third point relates to autonomy. For me this is the essential point in this discussion; and it’s also why I feel incredibly strongly about issues around reproductive choice. Because there is a very important principle in our society that we need to uphold, and this is a question about who makes decisions about the circumstances that impact most intently on our lives. Unwanted pregnancy can happen and it does happen, and when it does somebody has to be in a position where they make a decision about what the future of that pregnancy is going to be.

My strong feeling is that the person who should make that decision is the person who is closest to the decision, and is going to be most affected by it. There is one person who will get up every morning for the rest of her life knowing that she decided either to go ahead and have a child, or knowing that she decided to end it in abortion; and that is the woman who is affected by that pregnancy. That is why I very strongly believe that she should be the person who bears the awesome responsibility of taking on board that moral decision.

I will conclude with a quote from Ronald Dworkin, who has written an incredibly perceptive book looking at the ethics of abortion. He argues that part of our belief in human dignity rests in people having the moral right and responsibility to confront the most fundamental questions about the meanings of value in their own life for themselves. Each of us must be answerable to our own conscience and conviction; and if this is part of what makes us human, the fact that we do wrestle with these difficult decisions, it is part of our humanity. Our humanity is not our biology, not our DNA, but the ability to wrestle with these difficult decisions.

Dworkin makes the point that to take away our responsibility for our own moral decisions is to take away our humanity. And there may be people who will make wrong decisions, or who will make decisions that are different from those that we ourselves would make. But ultimately we have to allow people to make those wrong decisions.

Dworkin goes on to make the point that ‘tolerance is a cost that we must pay for our adventure in liberty’. I very strongly believe in that, and I think it’s important when we’re looking at questions of life to think about what we really do mean by humanity. I discovered recently that the ancient Greeks had two words for life: they had a concept of zoe, which meant physical or biological life, and then they had a concept of bios, which is about life as it’s lived: our actions, our decisions, our motives, our biography. I would say that yes, the embryo has life, it has value; but it is a life that does not know that it is yet alive, it is a life that has no bios. Humanity, living people, are something very different. That is why I accord them a different moral status, a different moral value.

Ann Furedi was debating with John Wyatt at the Battle of Ideas.

A woman’s right to choose is also her right to be human. Independent, 17 November 2008