Ethical Reflections on Ectogenesis and Moral Status of the Foetus
Delve into the ethical considerations surrounding ectogenesis as a potential alternative to natural gestation. Explore the implications on the moral status of the foetus, touching upon viewpoints from various scholars like Rosalind Hursthouse. Reflect on the significance of the mother's body in determining the moral gravity of the foetus and the intersection of virtue theory with the abortion debate.
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World Congress of Bioethics 2016 Hursthouse in a Tank? Iain Brassington CSEP/ iSEI/ School of Law iain.brassington@manchester.ac.uk 17.vi.16
A Few Preliminaries I m not persuaded that ectogenesis is a particularly realistic practical proposition. True: an ecto-chamber woud do what a womb does, and the womb is (biologically speaking) an evolved gestation- machine. But it s a complicated machine, and there s no reason to think that we ll be able to replicate it soon. Still: ecto-chambers can provide us with useful thought experiments. Notably, they might cast light on how to think about the moral status of the foetus.
Oh, no! Moral Status Again? Ectogenesis might put this right back in the centre of our moral attention. And it might help us think about how we think about moral dilemmas in the real world; I ll return to this. For the time being, I ll just state that I think we can t ignore it entirely. People who deny that the foetus have a moral status are hard to understand.
The Value of the Foetus Of course the foetus has a moral status! In just the same way, it has a temperature and a size. Whether it s a high or low moral status is a wholly different question. The classic thought-experiments about abortion admit this.
Enter Hursthouse Rosalind Hursthouse famously denies that the moral status/ value of the foetus is the proper focus of moral attention. [T]he status of the fetus that issue over which so much ink has been spilt is, according to virtue theory, simply not relevant to the rightness or wrongness of abortion... Or, if it is relevant, it is relevant only in the sense that the familiar biological facts are relevant. ( Virtue Theory and Abortion, p 236)
(Un)Familiar Biological Facts The most obvious thing to say about ectogenesis is that it eliminates the familiar biological facts. You can have a foetus without a pregnancy. But this means that things seem to be much easier for the pro-lifer (at least at first glance). - Joan Mir Maternit (1924)
Back to Moral Status Absent the mother s body, whatever (low) moral status the foetus has exerts a proportionately greater moral gravity on our thinking. But even if we think that it has no inherent moral status, it doesn t follow that anything goes.
Kant as Virtue Theorist My lead here comes from Kant. In The Doctrine of Virtue, he makes clear that it is wrong to damage brute nature or insensible animate creatures arbitrarily. We can cast this argument in less Kantian terms quite straightforwardly. Certain things have a kind of honorary moral status.
Honorary Moral Status But if clear thought commits us to imbuing moral status to certain things, why not just drop the honorary bit? Why not just say that moral status qua moral status is the product of thinking of something aright? That fits a virtue ethical perspective; but it s also rather idealist! (I tend to think that Kant is a big ol Aristotelian anyway. So that s reassuring.)
Back to the Pro-Lifer This looks like it busts the pro-lifer s argument, too, since that relies on a high inherent moral status for the foetus. The best move now would be to say that it s wrong to end the life of the foetus arbitrarily but who d argue against that? We don t begin with a status claim; we begin with a claim about arbitrary action, and work from there.
Some Remaining Points Note the utter absence of familiar biological facts. Correspondingly, note the absence of familiar maternality... ... but also the absence of familar norms about who decides what.
