Fetal Personhood by Backward Induction

A couple of weeks ago, I noted that analytical thinkers typically proceed from moral to political philosophy by asking the following two questions in order:

1. What beings (adults, children, fetuses, animals, aliens, etc.) are deserving of moral consideration? Call this the question of moral personhood.

2. What political rights, privileges, and powers should beings with moral personhood have? Call this the question of political status.

But in real-world political discussions, people seem to apply a kind of backward induction to these questions: they first ask what rights and privileges persons will be accorded in the political system, and then take that answer as given when deciding to whom they will grant the status of personhood (and to what extent).

In the earlier post, I applied the logic to immigration; now I’ll apply it to abortion. Intellectuals addressing the issue will typically start by asking whether a fetus constitutes a rights-bearing person. This question is treated as either prior to or independent of the question of what rights a person actually has. But I suspect that many people start by asking what political rights fetal personhood would imply if granted. The usual presumption is that if the fetus were a person, by virtue of that fact alone it would be entitled to shelter and sustenance inside the womb for a full term of pregnancy. This potential burden on the mother then influences how people answer the question of whether fetuses should be regarded as persons. As a result, pro-choicers spend a great deal of time insisting that a fetus is not human life in the relevant sense. If they grant fetuses moral personhood, they believe they’ll open the door to large burdens being placed on pregnant women.

But what if fetal personhood did not imply a legal entitlement to stay in the womb? What if, instead, the political system adopted the position of Judith Jarvis Thomson, who says even a rights-bearing person doesn’t have a right to continue living inside another person? (See here for my constitutional version of Thomson’s argument.) According to this position, a pregnant woman could use the minimum force necessary to remove an unwanted fetus from her body. Or, perhaps, she could be forced to carry it to term but would be paid compensation for doing so. Given this kind of answer to the question of fetuses’ political status, I suspect many people would be more receptive to the notion that fetuses do, in fact, possess moral personhood.

(I am not, by the way, endorsing Thomson’s entire position. Here’s my discussion of why every abortion analogy fails. Thomson’s position is pretty close to what I refer to as “The Unwelcome Houseguest.”)