Are You a Person?

An Examination of the Illusion of Continuity

by Scott Chastain

            The argument both for and against the legal right to abort a pregnancy has many facets.  While it is untenable for me to examine them all within the scope of this paper, I would like to examine one of the more powerful arguments, in this case, against abortion rights.  The argument that I am referring to is known under many guises, but for the sake of this paper I shall dub it the continuity argument.  The two principle forms this argument takes are the argument from continuity as a person and the argument from continuity as an organism.  I will give a synopsis of both claims and then use the same argument to show why these views are implausible.  Once the strongest argument against abortion is overcome,  I should be able to argue that abortion is morally permissible.

            It may seem rather pointless, from a certain point of view, to even argue against any person based claim as to why abortion is either right or wrong.  The late Jane English demonstrated rather effectively that any use of the concept of person in an abortion argument ultimately fails.  Allowing for the possibility that we are persons, her argument clearly shows that it is morally permissible to kill persons, even innocent persons, under certain circumstances (e.g., self-defense).  If the circumstances warrant (such as bringing the pregnancy to full term) that to save the mother=s life, for example, then the label of Aperson@ being applied to a fetus is a non sequitur.  It would still be morally permissible to kill it.  She argues that there are many situations where being an innocent fetus has no bearing on whether or not the mother has the right to defend herself against damage caused by the fetus.  One variation of her argument is as follows:  Imagine a demented psychiatrist learned a hypnosis technique that gave him the power to command their patient to wound another to the point it left scars.  The victim of the scarring cannot escape the >innocent attacker= and unfortunately cannot defend herself without causing the attacker to die.  It could be argued that the victim has a right to kill the attacker in his own defense.  Giving birth to a baby, in like fashion, causes scarring in many cases, due to no fault of the baby itself.  Thus the mother has the right to terminate the pregnancy.  In any event, being a person (or human organism) by itself is not grounds against abortion as an innocent person may still be killed by another under certain circumstances.  However, the continued use of the concept of person is still employed in abortion debates, by scholars and laypersons alike, so I will give the concept its due attention.

            The continuity argument states, more or less, that from the moment of conception until one's death, there exists a continuity.  For example, it seems plausible to conclude that the person we call Joe Smith today was Joe Smith five years ago.  He is still the same ole Joe you used to know.  If you happened to know Joe all your life, and remembered the day he was born, you would probably have no trouble claiming that the baby you held in your arms on that day was also Joe Smith. 

            The point that the continuity argument attempts to make is that Joe Smith didn't begin to exist on the day of his birth.  Perhaps he wasn't named yet?  So what?  If a new animal was discovered tomorrow that nobody knew had existed at any point before tomorrow, naming it would not eradicate any essential qualities about the animal that are there upon discovery.  It would be strange to say that by naming the animal, we have added something to its essential quality.  In like form Joe not having been named yet would not detract anything from his Joe-ness.

            So, therefore, Joe was still Joe (sans the name) before birth.  At what point did Joe appear?  The most likely place to assume Joe's origin as a cohesive entity is with conception.  Why?  Because at that point, an organism came into being, which would share the same "life" as everyone we call Joe Smith.  The person we know as Joe Smith can be traced back to that point, a continuity of his organism, and no further.  His father's sperm cells and his mother's eggs cells lack Joe-ness (at least in the form of his specific DNA).  Yet from the moment of conception to the time Joe departs the earth, there seems to be a continuity of Joe as a person which never ceases in that period. 

            You could argue that Joe the Zygote and Joe the Embryo were not conscious, and thus, did not contain any Joe-ness.  However, if Joe were knocked unconscious and incapable of any conscious reasoning as a result, we would still consider the unconscious entity to be Joe.  "Look at Joe, he is unconscious."  This, in a nutshell, is the continuity argument.

            Upon realization that the word Aperson@ might cause problems for the argument, proponents might remove the concept of person entirely, and rely solely on the continuity of the human organism.  Alexander Pruss made such an attempt, in his article, "I Was Once a Fetus."  Essentially, the organism argument is the same as the person argument, with the notion of the human organism replacing the notion of person.  The human organism Joe Smith has the right to not be killed (except under certain circumstances), and this right holds true for Joe at all points in his existence.  Thus, as the organism Joe Smith at age 40 is the same organism Joe Smith at age 5, and thus the same organism Joe Smith at birth minus 8.9 months.

            Both arguments are wrong.  To illustrate this, let us say Joe Smith has a new car, he calls the Joe-mobile.  His brother, Dave Smith, also has a new car, different from Joe's, he calls the Dave-mobile.  Let us also say Joe and Dave own an auto-parts and repair business, and this gives them unlimited access to all the individual parts that make up both of their cars.  Joe, being conscientious wants to keep his car looking as good as new for as long as he has it.  To do this, he replaces one car part with an exact replica each day.  In 20 years, he has managed to replace every single original part of the Joe-mobile.  Dave, on the other hand, is brutal with his car, and while he replaces things as they break, eventually the car is demolished in a bad wreck.  Rather than buy a new car, Dave rebuilds the Dave-mobile from all new parts.  Dave finishes the new Dave-mobile at about the same time Joe puts the last new part in the Joe-mobile.  From both of their perspectives, Dave would say he had two different cars bearing the same name; the dead Dave-mobile lying in a heap in the backyard, and the brand new Dave-mobile.  Joe, on the other hand, would be inclined to think that he still has the same car he started with.

            Herein lies the rub.  In essence, both cars are totally different from the original cars they started out with.  In Dave=s case, this difference is made salient by the fact that he had to put together all the new parts at one time.  In Joe=s case, it is less salient because the replacement of the car parts occurs over a long period of time.  However, we cannot really say that the Joe-mobile he now drives is the same Joe-mobile as the one he bought 20 years ago, because there isn=t  one single part of the original car left!  From this model we can show that the human body (whose cells only live about seven years and are eventually replaced) that Joe has now is not the same body that Joe=s mother carried in her womb.  It is highly unlikely that any of the cells, never mind that first conceptual cell, are still existent anywhere within Joe.  The original organism has been replaced with an entirely different organism.

            So what about person?  As Jane English points out, we cannot come to any conclusion about what it is that makes an organism a person (English 766).  Clearly, an organism needs to be alive, and of the species homo sapiens (although some definitions extend person to include all members of the genus homo).  However, there are many living things that are not considered persons, such as cacti for example.  If we conclude that a person is simply defined by being a homo sapiens, then it seems we have locked onto a single criterion.  Using this criterion alone, we can define that a homo sapiens is any organism that shares the DNA similar to all other homo sapiens (that 2% or so that distinguishes us from chimpanzees).  Is this really true?  No.  Consider identical twins.  If we consider a case where we have identical twins who are both living, and both homo sapiens, we are faced with the dilemma that they both share the exact same DNA strand.  If a person is defined based upon their DNA, then it would follow that the identical twins are the same person.  That seems a bit weird to me.

            If we cannot find a single criterion for defining what a person is, why do we then cling on to the concept so vehemently?  The answer is the same for why Joe considered the Joe-mobile to be the same car.  We cannot see the changes, and thus we fall for the illusion of continuity.  Much like how we fill in the blanks when an incomplete picture is shown to us, we persist in attributing a concept to ourselves that in actuality doesn=t exist.  We confirm this in our everyday language.  AJoe was a different person before he bought that car, and now we can=t get him out of the garage at all.@ 

            The continuity argument proponent might still wish to cling to this illusion, and to be fair, it is a powerful illusion.  One way to rebut my argument would be to claim that the process itself is where the continuity lies.  In Joe=s case, of either body or car, there was a process that was involved over a period of time that allows us the license of considering them the same organism or car.  This I would not deny.  However, a process doesn=t have any rights whatsoever.  For example, let us say that Joe, at some point in his automobile endeavor, decided that enough was enough, he wanted to quit replacing the parts.  Would ending the process in this case be immoral?  Would it be unethical to stop a process in any circumstance?  Yes, many would agree that on certain circumstances, it is unethical to stop a process if by so doing you cause harm to someone dependent on that process.  For example, during the middle of the process of a double-bypass, the doctor in charge decided that he didn=t want to continue the process (for no viable medical reasons), and left the patient to die in the operating room.  What if an airplane pilot decided to terminate the process of flying a plane as it was coming in for a landing?  In similar form, ending the process of the continuity of human life would be considered unethical, barring circumstances in which it is allowed (self-defense, war, capital punishment, etc...).   As the zygote is a part of the process that defines a human being, to terminate that process, and killing the zygote as a result, is no different than terminating the process of life at any stage in the organism.

            The problem with this argument is that it still leaves us with the basic question of which organisms have rights provided to human beings.  Does a zygote have these rights?  If so, then terminating the process of continuity will be morally wrong.  If the zygote has no essential rights, then terminating the process will be morally permissible.  The process itself has no rights, and any unethical quality in the termination of a process is dependent on its immediate effects.  If for example, a medical student were performing a bypass operation on a cadaver and decided to terminate that process, it would have no ill effect on the cadaver.  Thus, it is morally permissible.      

            The argument then is a question of time.  When we terminate a process, it has an immediate effect.  It does not have a Adefinite future effect.@  Sure, Joe=s car might have been a real beauty if Joe had continued the process, but it could have also been a disaster.  When we kill another person the crime is really in the immediate effect of the death, and not in the deprivation of a future life, which could bear out any number of possibilities.  If you killed Joe when he was 15 years old, he could have become the president, or a serial killer.  Thus in killing him you potentially save other lives.  Perhaps Joe might have come down with a terrible mortal illness later in life, which would have caused him years of agony?  Your killing him was thus a potential mercy killing, saving Joe a lot of suffering.  It cannot be successfully argued that there is a wrong in removing possibilities, if those possibilities are both beneficial and detrimental.  While a zygote, embryo and fetus each have the potential to become a rational, adult, human being, they also have the potential to become a despot, a sufferer of a terrible disease or malformation, and even a serial killer.  Thus their potential cannot be valued into the equation.  The question at hand would be whether or not the zygote has the right to not have its process terminated by a measure of the immediate effect it has on the zygote.

            How do we evaluate such a measure?  It seems the best way to go about it would be to discover why is wrong to terminate the process of a born human (in any case where it is considered wrong), and then see if it applies to our zygote, etcY  There are many who think it is intrinsically wrong to kill another human being, but is this so?  If it were so, why is it conditional on external events?  If it is morally permissible to kill an innocent human in one=s own self-defense, but it is intrinsically wrong to kill a human, we have a contradiction.  It seems obvious our answer lies in some externally applied morality.

            It is apparent to me that the reason we find immorality in the act of killing other humans is that if such an act were morally permissible, it would cause great suffering in the world.  Indeed in points in history where the killing of humans was more tolerated by a society, that society didn=t last very long, and seemed rather insufferable anyway.  It should be clear that we do not kill because we as a species strive to prevent unhappiness and suffering, and seek to extend and prolong our own happiness.

            So will terminating the process of a zygote promote happiness, or promote suffering, or neither?  Certainly the mother who wants the abortion, by getting what she wants, would increase her own happiness, or at least decrease her own suffering.  What about our zygote?  It would be strange to think that such a simple organism is capable of experiencing either happiness or suffering, although at some stage in its development it could possibly experience both.  However, the more important issue is whether or not it promotes the long-term overall happiness, or at least decreases long-term overall suffering.

            Given the increase in our population, and the dwindling of our natural resources, it seems likely that each additional baby that is born will contribute to the suffering of the world population in general.  If our population growth continues unchecked, we will most likely face a point where we have to terminate the process of many human beings, lest we all have our processes terminated.  This creates a serious moral problem, as the decision of who will live and who will die must be done fairly (or else it would be unjust).  A random lottery drawing might work, but I doubt any of the individuals who win that lotto will see it from that perspective.  A zygote or embryo, or even a fetus, cannot understand what it is losing, thus it really doesn=t lose anything.  I could have walked past a suitcase filled with a million dollars, but not knowing it was there, I do not know I could have been a millionaire.  In similar fashion, the zygote has nothing to lose, and with its death, the rest of the world prolongs mass suffering.

            Thus, in that it contributes to the continued overall happiness of the human race without losing anything of morally equal significance in the process, it is morally permissible to have an abortion.