“Why Fetal Potential is not Enough” (Debunked)

I recently encountered an article entitled, Why Fetal Potential is not Enough. As I apparently cannot have enough of debunking pro-choice arguments, I thought I might as well do this one:

A common argument for the pro-life position relates to the potential of the fetus. Even if the fetus isn’t presently conscious and self-aware, the argument goes, they nonetheless have the potential for these things. On this view, the mere potential for complex psychological capacities is sufficient for significant moral status and the right to life. Actual consciousness and self-awareness are not required. Abortion would be prima facie seriously wrong because killing the fetus thwarts its potential to achieve experience conscious states. 

This line of reasoning faces serious problems. Contrary to popular pro-life belief, the mere potential of the fetus is not enough to ground the immorality of abortion. It is the job of this post to explain why.

This, I think, is a decent characterization of the opposing side. I would only say rather that it is specifically that we ought to treat fetuses as human persons because they are human and members of a rational kind rather than basing our morality on what they can do at the moment. That said, I do think the “future like ours” argument is strong enough as far as it goes, even if it is not exactly complete. But let us consider what my opponent has to say.

There is a Wide Chasm Between Potential Rights and Actual Right

Why should we take potential properties to be morally relevant? As Nathan Nobis and Kristina Grob note, “in general, potential things of a kind don’t have the rights of actual things of that kind”. Michael Jordan is potentially the president of the United States, but this is no basis for awarding him the rights of an actual president. Moreover, a 12 year old child is potentially a 25 year old adult, but this does not mean the child actually has the right to consent to sex. Why are fetuses the exception to the rule? Why does potential consciousness and self-awareness give a creature the same rights as an actual subject of conscious experience?

Because rationality, personhood, and human dignity are a different kind of thing from the legal right to sex or the social construct of presidency of the United States. I am curious what the author of this article thinks of killing newborns who though perhaps have consciousness, certainly lack our level of self-awareness, not to mention rationality. Some studies have shown that it is at 18 months that a child develops basic self-awareness and 4 to 5 Years for full-fledged self-consciousness, so I think this argument proves more than it intends.

Further, why does the pregnant women have a moral obligation to donate her bodily resources to help the fetus realize its potential? If my child is potentially an elite skier, do I have an obligation to drive her to the mountains for practice? Surely not. So, why should a pregnant woman be obligated to provide what’s necessary to bring about a fetus’s potential, especially when doing so involves an incredibly invasive biological process?

Once again, the same could be said of newborns and really children for a long time since they need a lot of care for a long time before they have fully developed rationality and self-awareness. However, as life is a more fundamental right than the right to be an elite skier, because being alive is natural to a person by virtue of being a person and being an elite skier is a personal choice chosen later, I think it is unfair to so compare the two.

The trend should be obvious at this point. The potentiality argument for the pro-life view requires adopting a bizarre and seemingly arbitrary interpretation of what potential entails, ethically speaking. It is must simpler and less ad hoc to posit that moral status is hashed out in terms of the actual properties that people have. This is a significant mark against the argument. 

It is not obvious to me at all at this point. A fetus (and a small child) is human and therefore part of a naturally rational kind. I am still curious what the author of this article thinks of killing small children. Someone with a severe intellectual disability would probably generally lack rationality as well, and I hope one will not argue that such a person can be killed.

What Kind of Potential?

Another problem with the potentiality argument relates to the kind of potential under discussion. Should we care about potential in terms of theoretical capacity or in terms of yet-to-be-realized ability? Both answers lead to difficulties.

If we understand potential in terms of the mere theoretical capacity to become a person, then the potentiality argument proves too much. Philosopher Michael Tooley gives an example of a magic serum that, when administered to kittens, turns those kittens in talking, reasoning persons (Abortion and Infanticide, 60). The moment this serum is discovered, then, all cats have the latent potential to become persons. If the potentiality argument holds that the right to life is grounded in the theoretical capacity to become a person, then all ordinary kittens, even if they never receive this serum, will have a right to life.

I would be remiss if I did not point out right now that from a pro-life perspective, I am more interested in a higher sense of rationality than consciousness and self-awareness, and I think the wording here illustrates why. First of all, cats do have a basic level of consciousness because any cat-lover can tell you that they are aware of their surroundings and even make basic communications with their owners to convey their needs or desires. Second, although it is not conclusive, as far as I can tell, as to whether they have any sense of self, there is a complicated issue as to whether certain other animals have a basic concept of the self. There is also the issue as to whether any human fetuses have a basic sense of self, but early-term ones, I grant, do not.

That said, I think my interlocutor’s argument relies too heavily on the assumption that magic serums could ever exist. This is a more relevant factor than meets the eye, since one could argue that our moral intuitions could be very different if these magic serums were an immediate issue.

Further, I would say the analogy not the same because it is already within the nature of a fetus to be rational, which is not so for a kitten. Hence, that could not happen unless the kitten loses his cat mind and gains a human mind—in this case, through the use of magic. The blueprints for a rational human mind are already within a human fetus. That is not true with a cat.

But this is certainly absurd. The actual interests and properties of kittens are left entirely unaffected by the discovery of the magic serum. If kittens did not possess a right to life prior to the discovery of the serum, then surely they do not suddenly gain a right to life after the magic serum is discovered.

This is true. However, the actual properties of a human fetus include the natural potential to rationality, provided they live and grow with enough time and the right environment, while my interlocutor seems to concede that at this moment it appears we could only give kittens these powers by the use of magic. If a human has a severe intellectual disability and is unable to process the world any better than a cat, we would say something is wrong with him and probably try to treat the malady if we can. We would not do that with a cat because a cat is not supposed to have such powers.

Alternatively, we could understand the concept of potential in the potentiality argument to be about potentials that will be realized. This option holds that only creatures that will in fact become persons have a right to life. Such a modification still falls prey to the magic serum case. It implies, for example, that whether a particular kitten has a right to life depends on if someone will, in the future, decide to inject said kitten with the magic serum. Two kittens that are the same in terms of all their other properties will stand oceans apart in terms of their moral status simply because luck has it that one of them will receive the magic serum. This result is clearly unacceptable.

Full agreement here. Any such argument from potentialities that will be realized is a bad argument for the pro-life side. It would also justify abortion if the child is predicted to later be miscarried, die soon after birth, or have a severe intellectual disability, all of which I think are wrong.

One might wonder whether an appeal to innate or active potentiality can save the day for the pro-life advocate. That is, can the pro-life advocate claim that potential that matters morally is the current and active progression towards consciousness and self-awareness as a consequence of a being’s very nature? Again, Michael Tooley shows why this is not a viable option. 

Consider the case of a temporarily comatose adult. There is no doubt that such an adult has a right to life. Crucially, the adult have a right to life even if some medical intervention was required to end the comatose state. To quote Tooley himself, “The fact, for example, that the person could emerge from the coma only if an operation were performed to relieve pressure on the person’s brain would not make it permissible to kill the person”(Abortion: Three Perspectives, 39). The key takeaway is this: to the extent that potentialities are relevant to an entity’s right to life, purely passive potentialities are just as relevant as fully active potentialities.

That is true. The reason for this, I would argue, is because rationality is innate to a comatose adult also, even if he cannot actively use it. If anything, I would argue that is an argument for the pro-life position, since both ways, it is natural that one should be rational (given enough time and the right environment for the body to function properly—although in the case of the fetus, this would only entail growing up healthily while the comatose patient might require medical intervention). Both a human fetus and a comatose human adult are members of a rational kind and it is innate to their design to be rational, even if they cannot think rationally at this particular moment.

So my question for you would be why do you think that comatose people are people? It seems to me that according to this line of logic, they should not be. They lack consciousness and self-awareness, after all. And no, it cannot be a continuous personality because fetuses very much have personality.

If that’s right, then it is not available to the pro-life advocate to limit the scope of potentiality to active potentialities. If only active potentialities mattered, then the temporality comatose patient from before would lack a right to life, a clearly mistaken deduction. However, it is also not open to the pro-life advocate to embrace both active and passive potentiality as being morally relevant, for then their view is vulnerable to the aforementioned magic serum case.

Even more damming, if passive potentiality matters just as much as active potentiality, then every one of the trillion-plus somatic cells that make up a human organism would have a right to life, for, given human cloning by somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), every one of them has the passive potential for consciousness and self-awareness.

I think this is a fairer argument than appealing to magic, but these cells are not organisms. My argument that an individual being in whose nature and therefore potentiality has the function of rationality is a person. A fetus or newborn is a person because given enough time and the right environment, he or she will be able to perform the functions of a person—to be fully conscious, self-aware, and use rational thought, among other things. These same functions a comatose patient can use, if his or her properties are corrected to how it ought to be. Medical intervention is only for aiding a thing to how it is supposed to be, you must remember, for which reason a doctor’s job is to save a comatose patient or help a pregnant woman give birth but rarely clone a somatic cell.

In short, there is no type of potentiality that can do the philosophical work necessary to derive the pro-life conclusion without falling victim to clear-cut counterexamples. 

Conclusion

Potentiality arguments against abortion suffer form two main problems: the decision as to when potentialities matter morally is arbitrary, and there is no interpretation of potentiality that can support the pro-life position while circumnavigating deeply counterintuitive implications. 

Until these problems are defused, potentiality remains unable to ground the immorality of abortion.

Granted, maybe it was a mistake for me to respond to this article since it is not exactly my argument to which these people are responding. However, I will agree that potentiality alone is not precisely a moral quality that gives dignity to a person. However, it is a moral quality that one is a member of a rational kind, even if that rationality only exists potentially. Fetuses and newborns are still of our kind because it is in their natural blueprints to develop rationality. A comatose patient or someone with a severe intellectual disability is also a person because they are also of our kind, naturally ordered toward rational thought. To put an analogy, we would still consider a person a male both prior to sexual maturity. We would also call him male if his genitalia are damaged so he cannot reproduce. Yet though a male be immature or impotent, he is still a male, and a person, though he be immature or intellectually disabled in some way, he is still a person.

I hope this helps or at least served as good food for thought. If you have any comments, additions, disagreements, or corrections to any thing above, feel free to write to me in the comments.

Until next time.

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