A popular pro-life position is that people obtain their moral standing at conception or very shortly after. However, the reason they have moral standing at conception, and not some later date, can vary. This post will focus on those arguments that maintain that the soul entering the body at conception is the relevant quality for moral standing. More particularly, it is this fact that makes abortion immoral. In addressing this position, I will explain some conceptual hurdles that the advocates must address and why I find arguing for moral obligations via the soul unproductive.
A simple version of the soul argument against abortion can be made in four steps: 1) killing an innocent person is murder; 2) all things with souls are persons; 3) fetuses have souls; 4) thus, killing a fetus is murder. The driving intuition here is that what makes people different from other animals, and responsible for our actions, is our soul. Many believe that our identity resides in our soul and we retain our identity throughout our lives which extends back to the moment we are conceived. Now, for the sake of brevity, I have assumed that people have souls, and explain why I nevertheless find this popular pro-life position unconvincing.
Although my soul is the substance that contains my identity, how people enter the world is still not resolved. Our souls could be created (or enter) after our bodies develop beyond a particular point. Just as a human soul would not enter an insect and become a person (at least by many Christian theologies), the soul may wait to enter the body until it has been properly formed. This line of reasoning tracks the intuition that I am different from my body. Certainly I existed before my body and will exist long after it has rotted away. In short, before the soul enters the body, the primary moral concern should not be to have a child as soon as possible, but the life that the child will enter into.
For those that believe I am me only in the unity of the body and soul, the questions concerning the development of the body, and its relationship to identity still stand. If we must have a body to be a person, the type of body would still be at issue. For example, without the ability to think, it seems implausible to refer to the unthinking thing as a person. Further, would this unthinking being be accurately called me? I don't think so. And, I believe that our other moral intuitions about our relationship between those things with souls, and those without, agree with this assessment.
The underlying problem with the pro-life position from the belief in a soul is that, while it is a unique feature of human beings, there doesn't seem to be a reason to treat this property of persons differently than other qualities that make us stand out. In particular, it would seem that, while having a soul could be morally relevant in a moral consideration, the existence of the soul does not have the effect that the pro-life advocate desires. Consider, for example, how we ought to treat animals. Although we may disagree about whether killing animals is wrong, far more agree that the mistreatment of animals (abuse and negligence) is wrong. And, it would be wrong even if we were to conclude that animals have no souls. I might not believe that dogs have an after life, but this doesn't mean I can take my frustration at work out on my dog. Thus, possessing a soul is not a necessary condition for moral consideration.
The soul is not a sufficient condition for the kind of moral consideration needed for the pro-life position. That is, just because something has a soul does not mean that the destruction of that thing is on par with murder. For instance, if we believed that a house had a soul, the destruction of that house, while possibly not good, would not be equivalent to killing a person. Our intuitions about the destruction of a house versus killing a person is different because the physical properties of the house and a person are very different. It is these properties that make the difference in our moral determination. Similarly, the treatment of an unformed body with a soul is different than the treatment of a fully formed body with a soul. Hence, the fact that something has a soul is not sufficient to determine whether the destruction of that thing is murder.
Ryan
