Peter Singer on abortion

[MikeWaters]

Abortion, euthanasia and infanticide

Consistent with his general ethical theory, Singer holds that the right to life is intrinsically tied to a being's capacity to hold preferences, which in turn is intrinsically tied to a being's capacity to feel pain and pleasure. In his view, the central argument against abortion is equivalent to the following logical syllogism:

First premise: It is wrong to take innocent human life.
Second premise: From conception onwards, the embryo or fetus is innocent, human and alive.
Conclusion: It is wrong to take the life of the embryo or fetus.[26]

In his book Rethinking Life and Death Singer asserts that, if we take the premises at face value, the argument is deductively valid. Singer comments that those who do not generally think abortion is wrong attack the second premise, suggesting that the fetus becomes a 'human' or 'alive' at some point after conception; however, Singer remarks that human development is a gradual process, that it is nearly impossible to mark a particular moment in time as the moment at which human life begins.
Singer lecturing on medical ethics.

Singer's argument for abortion differs from many other proponents of abortion; rather than attacking the second premise of the anti-abortion argument, Singer attacks the first premise, denying that it is wrong to take innocent human life:

[The argument that a fetus is not alive] is a resort to a convenient fiction that turns an evidently living being into one that legally is not alive. Instead of accepting such fictions, we should recognise that the fact that a being is human, and alive, does not in itself tell us whether it is wrong to take that being's life. (Rethinking Life and Death 105)

Singer states that arguments for or against abortion should be based on utilitarian calculation which weighs the preferences of a mother against the preferences of the fetus. A preference is anything sought to be obtained or avoided; all forms of benefit or harm caused to a being correspond directly with the satisfaction or frustration of one or more of its preferences. Since a capacity to experience suffering or satisfaction is a prerequisite to having any preferences at all, and a fetus, at least up to around 18 weeks, says Singer, has no capacity to suffer or feel satisfaction, it is not possible for such a fetus to hold any preferences at all. In a utilitarian calculation, there is nothing to weigh against a mother's preferences to have an abortion, therefore abortion is morally permissible.

Similar to his argument for abortion, Singer argues that newborns similarly lack the essential characteristics of personhood — "rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness"[27] — and therefore "killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living."[28]

Singer classifies euthanasia as voluntary, involuntary, or non-voluntary. Voluntary euthanasia is that with the consent of the subject.

Singer's book Rethinking Life and Death: The Collapse of Our Traditional Ethics offers further examination of the ethical dilemmas concerning the advances of medicine. He covers the value of human life and quality of life ethics in addition to abortion and other controversial ethical questions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer

Singer is probably most famous for his animal rights work.

Currently he is promoting a book on helping the poor in the world. I heard him on NPR. He believes we have a moral/ethical obligation to help the poor people in the world, if we are rich.

[RedHeadGal]

That sounds like a distinction without a difference. Somehow the fetus's "preferences" are worth less because they are less human somehow. Having said that, the argument makes a lot of sense from the common Mormon perspective: that abortion is okay in certain cases (i.e. we agree that the innocent life is worth less because of the circumstances affecting the mother).

I don't see how the spectrum argument can be avoided. Abortion is but one (and typically last) stop to get off the train ride to full personhood.

[MikeWaters]

Uh-oh, now you have done it. You have stated that Peter Singer's arguments provide justification for the LDS church's position.

I would imagine that Peter Singer would be about the last person that the LDS church would like to quote in their new releases. However, who knows....the undergraduate grandson-of-a-GA who presumably wrote the Gay Marriage press release as a class term paper may actually do it!

[RedHeadGal]

well, presumably he would apply it more liberally. It sounds like he sees it as moral for about any reason up to 18 weeks gestation. I still say the Mormon list of "exceptions" fits well into his rhetoric otherwise.

Apparently, I was supposed to click on the wiki entry about him, but I didn't.