The Anti-Scientific Arbitrariness of Personhood Theory in Abortion

By: Omar Rushlive L. Arellano

I was inspired by a friend who asked me a question to write this essay. His intellectual reflection made him think that, if there is a distinction in the Trinity between a being and a person, and if the being:person ratio is not necessarily 1:1, could it be that while an embryo or fetus is a 100% human being, that he/she is not yet a person, and thus morally permissible to be killed?

This question reminded me of Nancy Pearcey’s book, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality (2018).¹ I intend to heavily rely on the first and second chapters of the book for this essay, which will focus on abortion.

Life Begins at Conception

In the book, Pearcey introduces us to the context of the debate. She said that abortion advocates in the past, in most cases, deny that pre-born babies are human beings. The babies are seen typically as a collection of cells or a blob of tissue. Thus, many pro-life arguments focus on proving that a fetus is a human life. I think that pro-lifers were successful in arguing for this proposition. One support that I remember is where Randy Alcorn cited different experts to show that science supports the view that human life begins at conception. Let me quote an article he posted where he cited different experts:

“Dr. Alfred M. Bongiovanni, professor of obstetrics, University of Pennsylvania:

“I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception. I submit that human life is present throughout this entire sequence from conception to adulthood and any interruption at any point throughout this time constitutes a termination of human life.”

Dr. Jerome LeJeune, genetics professor at the University of Descartes in Paris (discoverer of the Down Syndrome chromosome):

“After fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into being. . . . This is no longer a matter of taste or opinion. Each individual has a very neat beginning, at conception.”

Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth, Harvard University Medical School:

“It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception.”

Professor Hymie Gordon, Mayo Clinic:

“By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception.”

Dr. Watson A. Bowes, University of Colorado Medical School:

“The beginning of a single human life is from a biological point of view a simple and straightforward matter — the beginning is conception.”

Dr. Landrum Shettles, pioneer in sperm biology, fertility and sterility, discoverer of male-and female-producing sperm:

“I oppose abortion. I do so, first, because I accept what is biologically manifest — that human life commences at the time of conception — and, second, because I believe it is wrong to take innocent human life under any circumstances.”²

Personhood Theory

Hence, this fact seems to add credence to Pearcey mentioning that because of the advances in genetics and DNA, that virtually all professional bioethicists agree that life begins at conception. Nevertheless, this fact is not taken to be conclusive to say that abortion is morally wrong. And this is because of the view called personhood theory. Pearcey explains this view by borrowing from Francis Schaeffer’s image of a two-storey building. In the early stages of the pregnancy, the fetus is said to be in the lower storey. Pearcey explains that the fetus is acknowledged to be human from conception, in a sense that it’s a biological organism that could be known by empirical methods. Nevertheless, it is not thought to have any moral standing that warrants legal protection. Then later, Pearcey continues, that at some undefined point in time, the baby jumps into the upper storey and becomes a person, which is defined as someone with a “certain level of cognitive functioning, consciousness, and self-awareness”. This view implies that as long as the fetus or baby is still in the lower storey, then though that fetus or baby is a human being since they are not yet a person, then they could be deemed as an “expendable biological organism”.

One person that Pearcey cited that holds to this view is Miranda Sawyer.³ Sawyer labels herself as a liberal, feminist, with pro-choice views. It seems that her pregnancy made her realize that the life inside of her is a baby. And this made her think that the arbitrary decision of regarding a baby as a clump of cells, just because you don’t want it, is irrational and immoral. This made her have a quest for answers, where she went to the U.S. where the abortion debate is hot and divisive. Her article ends with what I would regard as a sad development. She started to dichotomize being alive with being a human being:

“My trip did end with me coming to terms with my two opposing beliefs. Maybe it’s as spurious as all the other arguments I heard, but it was when a moral philosopher pointed out that being alive is one thing, but being a human is something else that something clicked.

In the end, I have to agree that life begins at conception. So yes, abortion is ending that life. But perhaps the fact of life isn’t what is important. It’s whether that life has grown enough to take on human characteristics, to start becoming a person.

In its early stages, the foetus clearly hasn’t, so I have no problems with early abortions. In fact, I think they should be given on demand, as they are in France, rather than the UK system which forces women to get two different doctors’ signatures in order to get an abortion.

But once an embryo has developed enough to feel pain, or begin a personality, then it has moved from cell life into the first stages of being a human. Then, for me, ending that life is wrong.”⁴

Sawyer is not alone in this view. Pearcey cites in the second chapter, Joseph Fletcher, a former Episcopal priest, Hans Küng, a liberal Catholic theologian, and Peter Singer, a Princeton ethicist, which all agree that simply being an alive human being does not make you a person. Fletcher is said to view that humans who do not attain personhood fail to qualify for the right to life. Singer is also said to qualify someone as a person once they have some level of self-awareness.

The Problem of Personhood Theory

Now, how do we respond given this argument?

Before we attempt to give a positive case of our view, in the same way, that Francis Schaeffer made an apologetic where he exposes the depressing implications of atheism, let’s assume the alternative given which is personhood theory to expose its problems.

The main problem of personhood theory could be seen in the 2nd Chapter of Pearcey’s book, which is the section, “Who qualifies as a Person?”. The most obvious problem that Pearcey mentioned is that there is no agreement on how personhood is defined. Since they stopped equating personhood with being biologically human, then it seems that it’s hard to anchor personhood to something objective. Pearcey says that every bioethicist offers a different take. She says that some propose that personhood emerges when the organism begins to have cognitive function, consciousness, feeling of pain, intelligence, neural activity, or a sense of the future. Furthermore, Pearcey cites Joseph Fletcher to show that he proposes fifteen qualities to define that human life is worthy of the right to life, such as a sense of time, communication, curiosity, intelligence, neocortical function, self-awareness, and self-control. And if you score too low in any measure, then you will no longer be a person but a mere biological life. This makes Pearcey ask which among the said cognitive functions are central in defining personhood, and also how developed should that function be? Thus, Pearcey reasons that the fact that there is no agreement makes the fact of choosing any stage in gestation as a point in becoming a person arbitrary and subjective. To me, this makes personhood theory arbitrary and subjective as well. If biological humanity does not make someone a person, then how should we adjudicate between competing claims about a person’s personhood? Especially that personhood is a philosophical and not a scientific concept? Don’t get me wrong, I am not against philosophy per se, but it seems that when they move personhood away from when life begins, they seem to have lost an objective basis for personhood.

Other people that Pearcey cited that show different takes on the personhood issue, is the bioethicist John Harris, who views that nine months of development does not make a baby a person because they are incapable of valuing their existence. James Watson, the co-discoverer of DNA proposes that a born baby should wait three days before we decide if the baby should live. The reason for this is because some genetic defects could not be detected until after birth. Francis Crick is also cited to propose that a newborn infant should only be declared human if it passes certain tests regarding the quality of their genes. Peter Singer is also cited to say that even three-year-olds are a gray case. Pearcey also cites two philosophers in 2013 that argued for after-birth abortion. Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, in the Journal of Medical Ethics, argued that the moral status of an infant is equivalent to the fetus, which is that they are non-persons. And they also argued that neonates might or might not become persons depending on our choice.

Aside from personhood theory being subjective and arbitrary, we can argue that it is also self-refuting and absurd. One example is consciousness. If a person experiences syncope or fainting, which is a brief loss of consciousness, then it seems morally permissible for them to kill someone who fainted if they will be consistent with their standards. If the feeling of pain is a standard, then people with congenital insensitivity to pain and anhydrosis (CIPA) could be killed with impunity. Sometimes for whatever reason, we do not have a sense of time, is it okay to kill us during this period? There are also some people who do not have self-control, do we kill them anyway? How about intelligence? If a person is not that smart, then are they sub-human because they are not intelligent? Who decides the IQ threshold for us to consider them to be persons? Are more intelligent people more of a person than those with lesser intelligence?

This patent absurdity seems to imply that a human being’s right to life could be decided by someone else and is not there by virtue of them being a human being. And for me, this leads to tyranny and oppression. This also applies to the state, when it is the one that decides who qualifies as a person. As Nancy Pearcey argues:

“When the state decides who qualifies as a person, the door is open to tyranny and oppression. If the state creates rights, the state can also take them away. Anyone at any stage of life could be demoted to the status of non-person and denied the right to live. When America’s founders wrote in the Declaration of Independence that humans have unalienable rights “endowed by their Creator,” they meant rights must come from a transcendent source — a source higher than the state. Otherwise they are not “unalienable.””⁵

A Biological Human Being is also a Person

Now that we are able to expose the problems of personhood theory, let us now proceed in making a positive case why we should base a human being’s personhood by virtue of his/her membership to the human race.

First, basing personhood by virtue of an individual’s membership to the human race is objective. Aside from the experts that were cited that show that life begins at conception, it could be argued that the union of the sperm and the egg produces a new organism with unique genetic composition which develops. This new organism is considered to be a human being. In the Philippines, the Imbong v. Ochoa case shows that the Philippine Medical Association concluded that the zygote is alive and is a human being:

“The scientific evidence supports the conclusion that a zygote is a human organism and that the life of a new human being commences at a scientifically well defined “moment of conception.” This conclusion is objective, consistent with the factual evidence, and independent of any specific ethical, moral, political, or religious view of human life or of human embryos.”⁶

Furthermore, in the Abortion: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments of the Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate Ninety-Third Congress Second Session, we can see that it is also affirmed that an individual is a human being by virtue of his or her biological characteristics:

“The newly conceived life is human because it is from human parents and it is alive in a distinctively human way because, unlike the sperm and ova that, unfertilized, necessarily die, the fertilized ovum has the ability from within itself to reproduce itself and, if no untoward events occur, it will develop through the various embryonic and fetal stages to birth. The fertilized ovum represents a full human genetic package of 46 chromosomes. While half of these chromosomes is [sic] derived from each of the parents, the newly conceived life differs genetically from its parents as a unique combination of genes.

Biologically every living being is assigned to only one species, e.g., Homo sapiens, regardless of its developmental stage. Such species differentiations are genetically determined. “Its [a living being’s] designation [to a species] is determined not by the stage of development, but by the sum total of its biological characteristics — actual and potential — which are genetically determined. However, if we say it [the fetus] is not a human, i.e., a member of Homo sapiens, we must say it of another species. But this cannot be.“⁷

If this is the case, then it would be more objective to base personhood by virtue of an individual’s membership to the human race, since it’s something that has an empirical basis where we could all agree.

Second, if the basis for a human being’s personhood is their membership to the human race, then we avoid the self-refuting and absurd implications of personhood theory. A person’s personhood is not arbitrary. Also, we avoid making other entities, such as human beings or states, to decide for us who is a human being or not. Thus, it avoids possible oppression or tyranny of the state against the helpless and voiceless pre-born humans. All human beings, regardless of their stage in life, will be protected and no one will be able to take their humanity from them. The fact that they are human beings, then means that they have the right to life. They are not a life that Mary Elizabeth Williams has admitted to being worth sacrificing. She mentioned in “So what if abortion ends life?”:

“And I would put the life of a mother over the life of a fetus every single time — even if I still need to acknowledge my conviction that the fetus is indeed a life. A life worth sacrificing.”⁸

Furthermore, this reminds me of another quote from Nancy Pearcey which shows our equal dignity:

‘“The pro-choice position is exclusive. It says that some people don’t measure up. They don’t make the cut. They don’t qualify for the rights of personhood.” By contrast, I said, “the pro-life position is inclusive. If you are a member of the human race, you’re ‘in.’ You have the dignity and status of a full member of the moral community.””⁹

Third, there are scientific reasons that could be argued to make personhood theorists not affirm abortion for unborn babies.

Anthony DeCasper, et al. were able to observe that the fetus’ exposure to specific speech sounds can affect their reactions to them. They say that this suggests that third-trimester fetuses become familiar with recurrent, maternal speech sounds.¹⁰

Lagercrantz (2014), though he seems to be favorable with abortion, we can see that in his abstract if consciousness is assumed to be mainly localized in the cortex, then consciousness is said to not emerge before 24 gestational weeks. Though he says that the 22–24 weeks abortion in other countries makes sense, he seems to unwittingly agree that after 24 gestational weeks, then the unborn baby could be regarded as conscious.¹¹

Bellieni and Buonocore (2012) concluded that from the 217 papers that they retrieved, that most studies disclose that there is a possibility of fetal pain in the third trimester of gestation.¹² They say that it gets weaker before the third trimester, but it increases since the second half of gestation.

Derbyshire and Bockmann (2020), though they seem favorable to abortion because of their mention of a “humane approach to abortion”, concede that fetal pain cannot be definitely be ruled out before 24 weeks and that mere possibility of pain, even if the fetus is said to not have the capacity of self-reflection, is morally significant.¹³

For this reason, it seems that even in the late second trimester and the third trimester, it seems that abortions that are done in this period, by some person theorist’s standard could be said to be killing a human person.

Nevertheless, it’s not a good reason to hold to their theory because of its anti-scientific arbitrariness. In fact, Pearcey cites Jennie Bristow, the editor of Abortion Review, to expose the pro-abortionist’s disdain of science. In Abortion: stop hiding behind The Science, Bristow said, “With anti-abortionists pushing ‘scientific evidence’ on fetal viability, it is time to restate the moral case for a woman’s right to choose.”¹⁴ She also ends by saying, “Scientific evidence, however sound it may be, will never tell us what society should do about abortion.”¹⁵

In this essay, we discussed the context of the shift in the abortion debate which made personhood theory viable with pro-abortionists. We also explained what personhood theory is and exposed its problems. We also made a positive case in showing good reasons to believe that a human being should be regarded as a person by virtue of their membership in mankind. Therefore, we conclude that personhood theory is anti-scientific and arbitrary. It could also be argued to be politically oppressive since it assumes that personhood could be bestowed by humans or the state to whoever they want.

In light of this, we can say that we have something in our Constitution that we could make sure that we preserve, because it’s based on sound scientific evidence, and it makes sure that the voiceless and helpless unborn will be protected, because they are members of the human race, regardless of what other people or what the state might say. They also have rights that should not be violated by anyone.

As it is said in Section 12 of our State Policies in the Philippine Constitution:

“The State recognizes the sanctity of family life and shall protect and strengthen the family as a basic autonomous social institution. It shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception…”¹⁶

References:

1. Pearcey, Nancy. Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 2018).
2. Alcorn, Randy. “When Does Each Human Life Begin?: The Answer of Science.” Eternal Perspective Ministries. https://www.epm.org/resources/2010/Jan/29/when-does-each-human-life-begin-answer-science/
3. Sawyer, Miranda. “I knew where I stood on abortion. But I had to rethink.” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/apr/08/usa.world
4. Ibid.
5. Pearcey, Nancy. Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 2018), 46.
6. “Imbong v. Ochoa,” The LAWPHiL Project, accessed September 30, 2021, https://www.lawphil.net/judjuris/juri2014/apr2014/gr_204819_2014.html
7. Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments of the Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate Ninety-Third Congress Second Session. (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974), 190.
8. Williams, Mary. “So what if abortion ends life?.” Salon. https://www.salon.com/2013/01/23/so_what_if_abortion_ends_life/
9. Pearcey, Nancy. Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 2018), 49.
10. Anthony J. DeCasper, Jean-Pierre Lecanuet, Marie-Claire Busnel, Carolyn Granier-Deferre, and Roselyne Maugeais, “Fetal reactions to recurrent maternal speech, “ Infant Behavior and Development, Volume 17, Issue 2 (1994): 159–164, https://doi.org/10.1016/0163-6383(94)90051-5.
11. Lagercrantz H. The emergence of consciousness: Science and ethics. Semin Fetal Neonatal Med. 2014 Oct;19(5):300–5. doi: 10.1016/j.siny.2014.08.003. Epub 2014 Aug 24. PMID: 25160864
12. Bellieni CV, Buonocore G. Is fetal pain a real evidence? J Matern Fetal Neonatal Med. 2012 Aug;25(8):1203–8. doi: 10.3109/14767058.2011.632040. Epub 2012 Apr 6. PMID: 22023261.
13. Derbyshire SW, Bockmann JC. Reconsidering fetal pain. J Med Ethics. 2020 Jan;46(1):3–6. doi: 10.1136/medethics-2019–105701. PMID: 31937669.
14. Bristow, Jennie. “Abortion: stop hiding behind The Science.” Spiked. https://www.spiked-online.com/2007/10/22/abortion-stop-hiding-behind-the-science/
15. Ibid.
16. “The Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines,” Official Gazette, accessed September 30, 2021, https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/constitutions/1987-constitution/.