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Rights, intrinsic values and the politics of abortion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Abstract

In Life's Dominion Ronald Dworkin argues that disagreement over the morality ofabortion is about how best to respect the intrinsic value of human life, rather than about foetal rights as many people mistakenly suppose. Dworkin argues that the state should be neutral indebates about intrinsic value and thus it should be neutral in the abortion debate. Through a consideration of the notion of intrinsic value, it is argued in this article that Dworkin'sargument fails. On the interpretation of ‘intrinsic value’ which Dworkin seems to favour, it is shown to be implausible that such a notion accounts for different views about the value of human life. On an alternative interpretation of ‘intrinsic value’ it is argued that the state is not usually neutral on such matters, and thus there is no reason why it should be in the case of abortion.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1999

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References

1 Life's Dominion: An Argument about Abortion and Euthanasia, London, 1993Google Scholar. All page references are from this source.

2 Dworkin goes on to claim that the intrinsic value of human life is actually a ‘sacred value’, by which he means to suggests that it is only intrinsically valuable once it exists, rather than something of intrinsic value which we want as much of as possible. Nothing hinges on this distinction for my purposes, so I will continue to use the more familiar notion of ‘intrinsic value’.

3 Dworkin's other main reason for thinking that the debate over abortion has nothing to do with foetal rights is that he thinks both liberal and particularly conservative views would be confused and contradictory if based solely on beliefs about foetal rights. He considers a great deal of popular opinion on abortion, as opposed to reflective philosophical views, as evidence of this. I do not think it is a compelling strategy to dismiss the view that the abortion debate is about foetal rights just because much popular opinion is confused and contradictory. I am therefore ignoring this part of Dworkin's defence of premise 1.

4 More specifically, Dworkin claims that the state should not enforce a contestable view about intrinsic value when those views are essentially religious in nature, and when the effects of enforcement would be particularly grave for pregnant women. Whilst these further qualifications are important, the key aspect of Dworkin's argument is the claim thatour debate is about intrinsic value. It is this claim that I will be concentrating on in this paper.

5 Much of the detail of Dworkin's argument is concerned with US Constitutional issues which I shall not be addressing. In this paper I shall focus exclusively on the more general moral and political views expressed by Dworkin in defence of his argument. I happily acknowledge that Dworkin's argument in defence of the legality of abortion may well find much greater support from Constitutional and legal considerations than I think it does frommore general moral and political considerations.

6 Two Distinctions in Goodness’, Philosophical Review, xcii (1983)Google Scholar.

7 Intrinsic Value and Investment’, Utilitas, xi (1999)Google Scholar.

8 See Rachels', James review of Dworkin in Bioethics, viii (1994)Google Scholar. As Rachels argues, evolutionists from Darwin on have tried to correct these kinds of misconceptions, and particularly the idea that human beings are the highest achievement of evolution.

9 Ken O'Day, ‘Intrinsic Value and Investment’, argues that Dworkin's notion of intrinsic value is inconsistent with his view that such value is based on investment, particularly human investment. Intrinsic value in the strong sense that Dworkin means it, that is, value independent of what humans want, need or enjoy, O'Day characterizes as agent-independent value. Agent-independent value. Agent-independent value is in conflict with the idea that such value is derived from human investment, that is, the investment of agents. This claim seems to me to be too quick. It is one thing to say that such values are independent of what human beings want or need, another thing, and much stronger, to claim that such values are independent of human beings altogether. It is quite logically consistent to claim that the value of some things is derived from their connection to us, without that connection being one of desire- or need-satisfaction.

10 This reading of intrinsic value was suggested to me by O'Day, ‘Intrinsic Value and Investment’.

12 A version of this view is defended by Sumner, L. W., Abortion and Moral Theory, Princeton, New Jersey, 1981CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Tooley, Michael is the most well-known proponent of this view, which he defends in Abortion and Infanticide, Oxford, 1983Google Scholar. Others have been convinced by his arguments, for example, Singer, Peter, Practical Ethics, 2nd edn., Oxford, 1993Google Scholar.

14 Tooley, part III.

15 Singer, pp. 173 f.

16 Sumner, pp. 151–3.

17 ‘Atomism’, Philosophy and the Human Sciences, Philosophical Papers, vol. 2, Cambridge, 1985Google Scholar.

18 Ibid., pp. 193 f.

19 I would like to thank the following people for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper: Jakob Hohwy, Rae Langton, Ken O'Day, Michael Smith, Natalie Stoljar and C. L. Ten.