Sid, you defined personhood as “the extent to which a being is able to sense the world, react to it, think, and reflect on their actions” and say that as a result we can wind up with different degrees of personhood. That’s internally consistent and I see how you arrive at that. Culturally though it would seem that this definition doesn’t hold up. In our culture and indeed in most cultures that I’m aware of, children are considered precious. When you rescue them you are deemed heroic, more so than if you helped say an able bodied adult. The same can be said of the elderly, even those that can no longer care for themselves. I am encouraged to think of those beings as something to be protected. Similarly, harming animals and insects, depending on the motivation, can be considered an immoral act so I would think that the mother’s motivation for the abortion must be called into play. The amount of “personhood” something has should not be the sole measuring stick for considering the morality of the act against them.
Secondly, your statement that “Clearly, the level of personhood is much higher in the mother than in the fetus” is certainly clear to you, but less so to me. I understand how you’ve defined it, so that’s not where my issue lies. It’s more the conclusions drawn from that that bother me. The mother in most cases chose to engage in behavior that would bring another person into being. In the instance where she makes the decision to terminate her pregnancy in later stages, I can see how thinking of the baby as a lesser person, not as capable of feeling pain or understanding suffering as she is, would be comforting to her. But to take this sort of thinking to what I believe to be its logical conclusions would mean to think of anyone with a lower IQ as less human or anyone who is quadriplegic to be of a lower level of personhood (not views I hope that you hold). I’m certainly not attributing this belief to you, but thinking like this strikes me as something of a slippery slope. We can’t truly understand what thoughts are going through a baby’s mind and the only ways that I can think of for us to know the level of pain something is undergoing would be immoral in this case. As I understand it, Peter Singer has some very controversial beliefs that have come out of this belief system that bears my belief out. This sort of thinking can lead to a level of infanticide and euthanasia that I think even Singer would be uncomfortable with.
I think that you also need to consider potentiality. In a human child there are untold amounts of potential and to decide in the now that this being is not as much of a person as I am seems ultimately self centered. I understand that Singer doesn’t consider that to be important, but bear with me. Much of our legal system considers potential to be very important when it comes to human life. If I rob someone of a part or the rest of their life then the punishment for that act assumes that the person would have continued to live as they had done before for the life span of an average human being. I know that we’re not talking about legality yet, but hopefully you can see what I’m getting at. I don’t think that potential can be ignored.
The question I put to you is at what point does the life of the child gain its own importance? I agree with you to a degree. Until the child is able to survive “on its own” say at around twenty-three weeks, abortion in my mind could be considered moral, again depending on motivation. Does motivation play into your thoughts at all? Is it moral for a mother to abort just because she doesn’t feel like carrying to term? Say she makes this decision late in the third trimester. So many questions.