ome things in life are indeed quite settled.  We know, for instance, that American Slavery, on the one hand, and the Holocaust, on the other, were both horrendous wrongs.  We may re-think points here and there.  We may revisit old arguments in order to reinforce them in the light of new considerations.  But when all is said and done, there is no overturning the judgment that these were two morally heinous institutions.  By contrast, we will probably go on debating until the end of time (and then some) the extent to which and the ways in which women and men differ or are alike. 

With controversial issues, by contrast, I think that both sides ought to ask themselves a most important question: “What consideration or fact of the matter would give me pause, and so incline me to suppose that I need to need to re-think their position?”  In fact, I hold that there is a very real sense in which people debating controversial issues are being disingenuous if they do not ask themselves this question.  For otherwise, it is as if they suppose that their position is right no matter what.  And there are very few positions for which this claim is even remotely plausible. 

Is killing a morally innocent person wrong no matter what, where this is not a matter of self-defense?  I think not.  If, for instance, someone had been programmed to murder my dear old grandmother and was in the throes of choking her to death, I can assure you that I would kill the person in order to save my grandmother’s life, given the obvious proviso that I could not otherwise stop the choking of my grandmother. 

What has bothered me about the abortion debate is really something quite simple, namely that ideological commitments seem to be more important than truth itself.  In particular, the consistency of both sides is not as virtuous as either supposes.

The thesis that abortion is wrong no matter what cannot possibly be a consequence of a tenable moral position.  Likewise, for the position that abortion is justified no matter what. 

When people assert that the fetus is a person rather like you and I, then the word ‘person’ has become a term of art.  And the proof of this is that no one thinks it necessary or even appropriate to grieve for a miscarried fetus.  Yet, a woman who does not grieve for the death of her child, from SIDS, though the child is only a day old would strike all of us as a morally callous individual.   But if we have a person from the very moment of conception, then this difference to the death of a living being is makes no sense, since we have no less of a loss whether we have an instance of a miscarriage or SIDS.  Ex hypothesi, the fetus is no less of a person than a newborn who has only lived one day. 

Now, it could always be argued that women who lose a fetus owing to miscarriage ought to treat the fetus just like the death of a person—a newborn, in particular.  Thus, grief and mourning are absolutely in order.  I think, though, that it is no accident that no pushes this line of thought.  This is because our moral sensibilities simply do not sustain such an attitude, which makes the idea of disapproving of those who do not have such an attitude rather despicable instead of commendable. 

The seamless consistency of the pro-life position is not as virtuous as it is supposed.

Pro-choice folks, though, also seem to talk as if they have nothing but seamless consistency on their side.  But one can rightly ask, “In what does their seamless consistency consists?” 

Now, one thing is certain, namely that the fetus is certainly not a person like you and I.  But, then neither is a newborn.  Michael Tooley, in his article “Abortion and Infanticide,” grasped this point and argued that insofar as abortion is justified, then so is infanticide—at least up to a point.  A newborn infant is no more teaming with intentions and wants than is a fetus.  Yet, most pro-choice people reject Tooley’s position out of hand, and insist that the killing of a newborn infant is murder. 

Tooley holds that satisfying some level of self-consciousness is a necessary criterion for personhood.  The problem with his argument lies not with its consistency, but with the fact that people are utterly loathed treat newborns as not having a right to life. 

Both sides to the abortion debate argue about abortion as if all that matters is having a consistent argument.  Not so, however.  We have seen, though, that this cannot be quite right.  Consistency does not necessarily give rise to moral virtue. 

For the pro-life folks, the issue is how to accommodate miscarriages in a way that is consistent with the view that the fetus is a person from the moment of conception. 

For pro-choice folks, the issue is how to accommodate the reality that fetus exhibits more newborn infant-like behavior than is typically supposed. 

For instance, images have been taken of infants exhibiting smiling behavior and walking-like movement.  Of course, there are no intentions here, a claim that also holds for a newborn.  But these images make it clear that what have in the womb, way before conception is imminent, is far from being a mere clump of cells.  There is all the difference in the world between the image of a smile appearing on a clump of cells and the face of a fetus exhibiting a smile.  From none of this does it follow that abortion is always wrong.  But there is this issue: How can one acknowledge the reality of images that reveal a smile on a fetus’s face or walking behavior by a fetus and, at the same time, hold that abortion is always justified because the fetus has no moral value at all?  The idea that fetus has no moral value at all makes no more sense the idea that the fetus is an idea from the very moment of conception.