The Ethics Blog

A blog from the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics (CRB)

Tag: abortion

Sliding down along the slippery slope

11 April, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Pär SegerdahlDebates on euthanasia, abortion or embryonic stem cell research frequently invoke slippery slope arguments. Here is an example of such reasoning:

Legalizing physician-assisted suicide (PAS) at the end of life pushes healthcare morality in a dangerous direction. Soon, PAS may be practiced even on people who are not at the end of life and who do not request it. Even if this does not happen, the general population’s trust in healthcare will erode. Therefore, PAS must be forbidden.

Reasoning about the future is important. We need to assess consequences of allowing new practices. However, how do we assess the future in a credible way?

In an article in Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, Gert Helgesson, Niels Lynøe and Niklas Juth argue that many slippery slope arguments are not empirically substantiated, but are based on value-impregnated factual assumptions. Anyone who considers PAS absolutely wrong considers it as a fatal step in a dangerous direction. Therefore, it is assumed that taking such a step will be followed by further steps in the same dangerous direction. If you chose the wrong path, you end up further and further away in the wrong direction. It seems inevitable that a first step is followed by a second step…

The problem is that this prophesying is based on the original moral interpretation. Anyone who is not convinced of the fatality of a “first” step does not have a tendency to see it as a “first step” with an inherent tendency to lead to a “second step” and finally to disaster.

Thinking in terms of the slippery slope can sometimes be experienced as if you yourself were on the slippery slope. Your thoughts slide toward the daunting precipice. Perhaps the article by Helgesson, Lynøe and Juth contains an analysis of this phenomenon. The slippery slope has become a vicious circle where the prophesying of disastrous consequences is steered by the moral interpretation that one defends with reference to the slippery slope.

Slippery slope arguments are not wrong in themselves. Sometimes development is on a slippery slope. However, this form of reasoning requires caution, for sometimes it is our thoughts that slide down along the slippery slope.

And that can have consequences.

Pär Segerdahl

Helgesson, G., Lynøe, N., Juth, N. 2017. Value-impregnated factual Claims and slippery slope arguments. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 20: 147-150.

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Legal abortion: the right to move on

13 April, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Pär SegerdahlWith brave new ideas you can astonish the world. In the past months the youth association of the Swedish party, the Liberals, made several proposals that astonished not least the mother party – for example, that incest and necrophilia should be allowed. The state should not control individuals’ love life.

Probably, the young politicians are quite proud of their radicalism. They are more liberal than liberalism itself. But what is their radicalism made of?

In March, another radical proposal was made. This time it was about abortion. Women have the right to choose abortion until the 18th week of pregnancy. But men don’t have a corresponding right to opt out of their parenthood. The proposal is about correcting this unfair distribution of the freedom to decide about parenthood.

How? By giving men the right to disclaim paternity until the 18th week of pregnancy: so-called legal abortion. Through the proposal, men get the same right as women to decide if they want to become parents. Thus, justice is restored.

One can surmise that the mother party dreams of making their own little abortion. But listen to how splendid it can sound when one astonishes the world with brave new ideas:

  • “It’s about men also being able to choose whether they want to become parents or not.”
  • “Men should have the same right to opt out of parenthood.”

Indeed, it sounds magnificent: the liberal youth association wants to correct a fundamental asymmetry between the rights of men and women! They are fighting for a more equal society!

I suggest that the “equality” here is purely verbal. It sits on the surface of an individualist language of rights and freedoms, with the words “man,” “woman” and “equal right.” Scratch the surface and the beautiful symmetry disappears.

One thing that is hidden by the jargon, for example, is that the woman’s decision concerns a fetus. But if she doesn’t abort, the man’s abortion decision will be about a child who will be born, and who will live, “legally aborted.”

Another thing that is hidden is that if the woman chooses abortion, neither party becomes a parent, because no child is born. But if she gives birth to the baby, the man will be the father of the child, whether he disclaims legal paternity or not. Law is not everything in life. When a child is born, there is a parenthood that cannot be disclaimed, for the child can say: “My father aborted me.” Only the woman’s abortion decision can completely abolish parenthood.

A third thing that is hidden is that something rings false in the individualist talk about parenthood as my parenthood and your parenthood; as the woman’s parenthood and the man’s. To crown it all, the fetus as well as the child are absent in this reasoning about male and female parenthood – curious! Are they already aborted? Did the young politicians forget something rather central, in their eagerness to develop truly liberal ideas about parenthood?

In order not to be disturbed by all this, in order not hear how false it rings, one must purify an individualist jargon of rights and freedoms, and then lock oneself in it. This is where the youth association’s radicalism lies: in language. It purifies (parts of) the language of liberalism, but as mere linguistic exercises with the words “man,” “woman” and “equal right.”

The radicalism isn’t political, but linguistic. Therefore, one feels instinctively that the discussion that the youth association wants to start up cannot be political, but merely continued exercise of pure concepts – like when schoolchildren plod through grammatical examples to one day be able to speak a language that still is foreign to them.

Ludwig Wittgenstein described such pure conceptual exercises as language that idles, like an engine can idle without doing its work. In this case, it is the language of liberalism that is idling.

I propose a good dose of Wittgenstein.

Pär Segerdahl

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How are ethical policies justified?

20 January, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Pär SegerdahlEthical policies for practices such as abortion and embryonic stem cell research should, of course, be well justified. But how does one justify that activities involving the destruction or killing of human embryos and fetuses should be allowed? How does one justify that they should be banned?

Just because the issues are so sensitive and important, they awaken a desire to find the absolutely conclusive justification.

The questions arouse our metaphysical aspirations. Ethicists who discuss them can sometimes sound like the metaphysicians of the seventeenth century who claimed they had conclusive arguments that the soul affects the body, or that it absolutely cannot affect it; who thought they could prove that God is the soul of the world, or that such a view detracts from God’s perfection.

Since both parties claim they have absolutely conclusive proofs, it becomes impossible to exhibit even the smallest trace of uncertainty. Each objection is taken as a challenge to prove the superiority of one’s own proofs, which is why metaphysical debates often resemble meetings between two hyper-sensitive querulants.

This is how I perceive many of the arguments about the embryo’s “moral status,” which are believed to provide conclusive evidence for or against moral positions on abortion and embryonic research – based on the nature of things (i.e., of the embryo).

Others, who want to reason more rigorously before drawing conclusions, instead scrutinize the arguments to demonstrate that we haven’t yet found the metaphysical basis for a policy (you can find an example here). From metaphysical dogmatism to metaphysical pedantry.

The metaphysical vision of an absolute path through life does not seem to give us any walkable path at all. It does not even allow meaningful conversations about what we find sensitive and important. But isn’t that where we need to begin when we look for a justification?

Pär Segerdahl

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Genetic compatibility as a new dimension of partnership? (By Julia Inthorn)

9 April, 2014 / / 0 Comments

JULIA INTHORN is associated researcher and working on genetic risk information and pre-conceptional genetic screeningPreconception genetic carrier tests can inform a person if he/she is carrier of a recessive disease. In case the partner is also a carrier of the same disease, the couple has an increased risk (usually a 1 in 4 risk) to have a child with this disease. Current research in genetics works on developing tests for up to 600 of such recessive inherited diseases. Couples can use this test when planning a pregnancy and check if they are both carriers of the same disease.

In case a couple who are both carriers wants to rule out the risk of having an affected child they have different options: Medical options range from using IVF and preimplantation genetic tests to prenatal test (and the option of abortion in case the child is affected) to using donor gametes. Non-medical options are refraining from having children, adopting children or changing partner.

Preconception genetic carrier screening adds a new dimension to the question of family planning and partnership. In the rhetoric about partnerships – in online tests, horoscopes and questionnaires of online dating services – compatibility of partners is already a great issue connected to questions like matching in taste and interests but also similarity of background.

Genetic (in)compatibility is a new hitherto undiscussed aspect of partnership and marriage. While the idea of testing the genetic compatibility of partners might seem very unromantic to some the question of raising a seriously ill child together poses some important questions: questions of how partners imagine to be parents together, how they envision responsibility for a child and what kind of medical and non medical measures they think are acceptable.

Thinking about integrating genetic information into our concepts of family will challenge our ideas of responsible parenthood. We need not only to make decisions carefully but also to understand how decisions influence possible future plans: Building on a partnership irrespective of genetics leads to other questions and options in family planning than checking genetic compatibility during dating.

Discussions about integrating new genetic information into our concepts of family planning should address what options are most important and how to open up rooms of choices.

Julia Inthorn

Approaching future issues - the Ethics Blog

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Better not to know? (by Mirko Ancillotti)

1 April, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Inmirko-ethicsblog medical ethics a distinction is commonly made between negative and positive autonomy. One’s negative autonomy is exercised in refusing medical care or refusing some specific treatment. Positive autonomy is the right to choose a specific treatment (within what is available and allowed). Expressing a preference for not being informed about some medical condition seems to exercise negative autonomy.

Several criteria define the autonomy of a person in medical ethics, including knowledge. The knowledge a person has is not simply derived from the quantity of information made available, but by the real information that the subject is able to understand and use in the assessment. It can be said, then, that under this perspective, the more knowledge one has the more autonomous one is.

To illustrate the role of knowledge in autonomy, consider two couples with a family history of genetic diseases. In both cases the woman is pregnant. Couple 1 doesn’t want to make any genetic test, because “whatever the result we would never consider abortion an option.” Couple 1 has a set of values that is not compatible with abortion. Couple 2 has the same values and does not consider abortion as a feasible option. Nonetheless, couple 2 chooses genetic testing and the result of the test is a very high likelihood of an impaired offspring. Though knowing this, couple 2 decides to have the baby too.

The decision (to have the baby) of couple 1 and couple 2 is the same, but is reached through different paths. Couple 1 didn’t wish to know, it exercised a kind of negative autonomy. Couple 2 exerted a kind of positive autonomy deciding to gain knowledge about the condition (actual or likely) of its offspring. They displayed different attitudes toward knowledge, but both made a kind of autonomous choice. Couple 1 didn’t want to test its offspring, and one may be tempted to say that it didn’t put its values to test in the light of knowledge possible to attain, whereas couple 2 in testing its offspring also gauged the strength of the values on the basis of which they made their decision.

I would say that the couples’ first choices to know/not to know are equally autonomous. Henceforth, however, the couples’ paths diverge and couple 2’s final decision (to have the baby) is a more autonomous one, because it uses more relevant knowledge. Couple 1’s preference for negative autonomy (not to know) leads, on this account, to a less autonomous final decision (to have the baby).

Mirko Ancillotti

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The debate about after-birth abortion continues

8 May, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Last year the Journal of Medical Ethics published an article by two philosophers claiming that the same arguments that support abortion also support abortion of newborns.

The article provoked strong reactions and I too felt I had to comment on the article here on The Ethics Blog.

What’s so provocative? I’m not so sure it is the conclusion that if we allow abortion we also should allow abortion of newborns. The two philosophers actually never concluded with any practical recommendations. They only wanted to theoretically explore the logic in the arguments for abortion.

And maybe this is what’s so provocative, or rather tragi-comical: the spirit in which one approaches questions of life and death as an entrepreneur might use the annual report to consider his reasons for terminating a project that can become a burden for the company.

Recently, the same journal reissued the article; this time with two editorials and a number of comments by ethicists (here).

The reissuing of the article reaffirms the attitude that the burning hot questions of life and death should be discussed as a rational entrepreneur manages his firm.

Should we allow infanticide? We’ll have to postpone decision until we’ve received the annual report from the neuroscientists on neonates’ capacity for thought.

Pär Segerdahl

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After-birth abortion as a logical scale exercise

8 March, 2012 / / 0 Comments

How should one respond when ethicists publish arguments in favor of infanticide?

In the current issue of Journal of Medical Ethics, two philosophers argue that what they call “after-birth abortion” should be permissible in all cases where abortion is (even when the newborn is healthy).

Not surprisingly, soon after BioEdge covered the article, the news spread on the internet… and the authors of the article unfortunately even received death threats.

If you know the spirit of much current academic philosophy, you will not be surprised to know that the authors defended themselves by statements like:

  • “This was a theoretical and academic article.”
  • “I’m not in favour of infanticide. I’m just using logical arguments.”
  • “It was intended for an academic community.”
  • “I don’t think people outside bioethics should learn anything from this article.”

The editor of JME, Julian Savulescu, defended the decision to publish by emphasizing that JME “supports sound rational argument.”

In a similar vein, the philosopher John Harris, who developed basically the same rational considerations in support of infanticide, felt a need to clarify his position. He never defended infanticide as a policy proposal. – What did he do, then?

He engaged in “intellectual discussions.”

What I find remarkable is how some of our most significant human ideals – logic and rationality – seem to have acquired a technical and esoteric meaning for at least some professional philosophers.

Traditionally, if you build on logic and rationality, then your intellectual considerations ought to concern the whole of humanity. Your conclusions deserve to be taken seriously by anyone with an interest in the matter.

The article on after-birth abortion, however, is JUST using logical arguments. It is ONLY presenting a sound rational argument. It is MERELY an intellectual discussion. To me, this sounds like a contradiction in terms.

Moreover, because of this “merely” logical nature of the argument, it concerns no one except a select part of the academic community.

Still, logic and rationality are awe-inspiring ideals with a long human history. Philosophers draw heavily on the prestige of these ideals when they explain the seriousness of their arguments in a free liberal society.

When people in this free society are troubled by the formal reasoning, however, some philosophers seem surprised by this unwelcome attention from “outsiders” and explain that it is only a logical scale exercise, composed years ago by eminent philosophers like Singer, Tooley and Harris, before academic journals were accessible on the internet.

I repeat my question: how should one respond when ethicists publish what they present as “rational arguments” in favor of infanticide?

My answer is that one should take them seriously when they explain that one shouldn’t take their logical conclusions too seriously. Still, there is reason for concern, because the ideals they approach so technically are prestigious notions with a binding character for most of us.

Many persons think they should listen carefully when arguments are logical and rational.

Moreover, JME is not a purely philosophical journal. It is read by people with real and practical concerns. They are probably unaware that many professional philosophers, who seem to be discussing real issues, are only doing logical scale exercises.

This mechanized approach to the task of thinking, presented on days with better self-confidence as the epitome of what it means to be “serious and well-reasoned,” is what ought to concern us. It is problematic even when conclusions are less sensational.

Pär Segerdahl

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