Richard
Dawkins has made quite a name for himself in popular media. He has his own
twitter account and frequently interacts with people in academia (like Daniel
Dennett) and ordinary folks from different walks of life.
Well
recently Dawkins made a rather interesting howbeit disturbing comment that I
think captures his real views on why he thinks abortion is morally permissible.
On his twitter account Dawkins, while interacting with a woman about what
should be done for unborn children (I’m using ‘children’ because I’m pro-life)
who have Down’s Syndrome, made the following statement: “Abort it and try
again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice.”
Now
there are a few problems going on here with Dawkins’ reasoning about abortion.
First, Dawkins seems to think that there is a morally relevant difference
between killing a fetus that has Down’s syndrome and bringing it into the
world. Killing the fetus is a morally superior choice than a mother giving
birth to it. This is inevitably linked to the idea that the capacity to
experience pain and pleasure is the measuring line that determines who
qualifies as a person and who doesn’t. Since if a fetus was born and became a
newborn and had Down’s syndrome, it would face a life of suffering, potential
ostracism, and several obstacles to growth and development in cognitive,
social, emotional, and perhaps physical areas of life.
Now
let’s pause for a moment before I continue. Clearly most of us – pro-life and
pro-choice – probably feel for kids who have Down’s syndrome and don’t like it
when they experience more difficulties in life than most of us will see. So we
obviously value those kids. But the problem with Dawkin’s first assumption is
that the capacity to feel pain and pleasure insofar of what we should be aware
of - when we think of certain decisions as being moral and immoral – is then
taken to be the very factor that makes abortion morally justified.
Because the fetus apparently can’t feel its limbs being ripped off its body,
it’s not being harmed. Well, gee, I can think of one counter-example to this
claim. What if we gave a girl a strong dose of some medication that completely
numbed her body and then we took a chainsaw and amputated her legs and arms?
Would that be wrong? Well not according to how Dawkins reasons here. It’s the
very absence of the present ability to feel pain and suffering that
entails that the person being harmed is in fact not being harmed.
Now
someone might object to what I just said in the following way: “That girl at
one time was able to experience pain and suffering and even though she did not
feel her legs and arms being chopped off with the chainsaw, she was still
harmed and the perpetrators should be punished.” I wholeheartedly agree with
this response but it does not help the pro-choice advocate in his or her case.
Why? Because the pro-choice advocate is implicitly admitting that something other
than the presence of self-awareness is doing the work of making her a
person worthy of protection. It cannot be the mere present capacity to
experience pain and suffering that makes her a moral subject because that
ability has been taken away for awhile. So what is it? Is it her past
experiences of experiencing pain and pleasure? Let’s change the story a bit.
What if the perpetrators gave her the numbing medication and additionally
gave her a pill that sent her into a coma that lasted for a few years. And
suppose when she comes out of the coma, she has lost nearly all of her past
memories including the tragedy that happened to her. What then?
It
cannot be the present capacity to feel pain, pleasure, and suffering or to have
memories of one’s past that makes her a person. So what is it? If someone wants
to say that she still had a past even though her memories are completely
disconnected from it, then they are borrowing from the pro-life’s
resources. Something other than memories and experiences of pain and
pleasure is doing the work in what would condemn the perpetrators’ actions
against that girl.
But
moreover, there’s a second problem lurking beneath Dawkins’ train of thought
that I think deserves some attention. It’s a little subtler but I think it’s
worth exploring. Dawkins says that it would be immoral, assuming the mother had
the power to decide one way or the other, for her to bring the child into the
world with the condition it had prior to birth. To borrow an idea from
philosopher Francis Beckwith, suppose the mother was able to get an operation
done on the fetus with Down’s syndrome so that it would lack the brain
development that would cause it to later on experience suffering. But
tweaking with the fetus’s brain would also cause it to never experience
joy, pleasure, happiness, love, and many other things. Would that have been a
wrong decision on the mother’s behalf?
If
you’re pro-choice and support a mother’s decision to abort the fetus at
least because the fetus can’t feel pain at that stage of development and hence
it’s not being harmed, then you must believe that it’s morally
permissible for a doctor to alter the fetus’s brain at that point so
that it will never experience pain, pleasure, happiness, or even a
future. Because, you’re not depriving the fetus of anything right? It hasn’t
been harmed because it doesn’t desire not to be harmed. If it doesn’t
desire not to be harmed, then it doesn’t have a right not to be
harmed. End of story.
So
Dawkins, by his own pro-choice reasoning, cannot object to the scenario I just
pictured because on his own view of personhood, no one is harmed by
abortion and by being deprived of future suffering and pleasure.
Now
someone might object to my illustration by suggesting that if a mother wanted
her potential baby to experience a future with goodness and happiness,
then it would be wrong to abort the fetus before it reaches that stage. So
insofar as the mother desires that kind of life for that fetus, whatever the
mother desires for that fetus is the appropriate mode of action to take. There
are several problems with this. First of all, it cannot justify why it would be
good for a mother to choose a life of pleasure and happiness for her future
baby and yet wrong for the same mother at a later time to change
her mind or for an entirely different mother to deliberately give birth
to her future baby so that it will experience pain and suffering. Who has done
the right thing in those cases?
If
you say what’s right depends on what the mother perceives and desires, then it
follows there is no morally relevant difference between a mother choosing
happiness for her future baby and another mother choosing a life of misery and
suffering for her baby. But this is absurd. Just because two mothers might
choose different courses of actions does not entail that they are morally
equivalent actions.
Second,
it renders the even more absurd idea that killing someone prior to birth
in order to spare them from future suffering is somehow a better choice than
giving birth to them and loving them through their suffering. Why is this
absurd? Because it assumes without justification that the unborn are not human
beings with a right to life. If we have seven 6 year olds inflicted with an
incurable disease and decide to kill them immediately so that they will not
suffer another 2 weeks of suffering, is that morally wrong? Well yes it would
be wrong. It is wrong to kill someone ahead of time so that he or she won’t
have to experience more suffering.
So
these are my thoughts on Richard Dawkins and his comments on abortion.
