Topic: Applied Ethics: Summarise and discuss at least one argument in favour of abortion or against abortion, contained in the essay "The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect" by P. Foot
Length: 1438 Words


Abortion has always been a morally questioned medical procedure. However significant advances in science led to abortion becoming less of a risk for the mother acted as a catalyst for the debate. According to the ‘National Right to Life’ website (a pro-life/conservative movement in the US) the American Law Institute passed laws that allowed individual states to legalise “abortion for reasons including the mental of physical health of the mother, pregnancy due to rape or incest, and fetal deformity”. (http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/facts/abortiontimeline.html)

It is the niche of Philosophical study, in particular Ethical debate to analyse the circumstances surrounding abortion and make conclusions based on reason and logic.

In 1978 Phillipa Ruth Foot published a book titled ‘Vices and Virtues’, chapter two of this book was entitled ‘The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect’. It is the aim of this essay to summarise and debate the concepts and arguments that Foot makes in this highly relevant chapter and to reflect upon how this sheds light on the abortion debate, is it fundamentally right or wrong?

In the introduction to the chapter Foot claims that a major source of our confusion on ‘the problem of abortion’ is a lack of unity on the issue whether a foetus should or should not be allowed the basic rights that we take for granted as self conscious adults and children (Foot, 1978, p19). To add weight to her arguments Foot states that “one way of throwing light on the abortion issue will be by setting up parallels involving adults or children once born.” (Foot, 1978, p19), Foot accepts that it is very easy to support abortion if you state that the foetus has no right to life but it would be more productive to assume it does because if you can prove that abortion is correct under such circumstances then you surely have a watertight case.

In the chapter Foot also looks at the Catholic approach to abortion issues, the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE). DDE, as Foot points out, “is based on a distinction between what a man foresees as a result of his voluntary action and what, in the strict sense, he intends.” (Foot, 1978, p20). The Church applies this doctrine to many sensitive issues, an abortion related example is the distinction between Hysterectomy and Craniotomy. A Hysterectomy is permissible as you are removing the cancerous uterus to save the mother, the death of the foetus is a regrettable yet forseen sideeffect. Craniotomy’s are however impermissible, by crushing the foetuses head you are directly attempting to end the babies life, the survival of the mother is the side effect, all be it a positive one (Foot, 1978, p20). According to Foot this arises bitter reactions amonst pro-abortionists, ”If you are permitted to bring about the death of the child, what does it matter how it is done? The doctrine of the double effect is also used to show why in another case, where a woman in labour will die unless a cranitomy is performed, the intervention is not to be performed”. (Foot, 1978, p20/21).

Foot’s analysis of DDE is fairly concise. She uses a number of fictional examples to test the fallibility of DDE and concludes that while DDE often presents the right answer to an ethical puzzle it is frequently for the wrong reason. Foot presents an example of merchants selling oil they know to be poisonous to make money and grave diggers selling it on the side to increase business. In the case of the merchants money is the direct intention and the death of innocent consumers is the oblique (unforeseen) intention while in the case of the grave diggers the deaths of innocents (all be it to generate work) is the direct intention, the money received from sales is the oblique intention. If DDE is to be believed then the merchants are in the clear, however “in morality, as in law, the merchants, like the gravediggers, would be considered as murderers; nor are the supporters of the doctrine of the double effect bound to say that there is the least difference between them in respect of moral turpitude.” (Foot, 1978, p22). Personally I stray towards consequentialism when making decisions on what is morally acceptable, in this example both merchants and grave diggers are killing people and making money, neither is permissible as the motivation of a crime should not effect how we look at it.

Foot goes on to talk about the differences between opting to direct a tram down a track that would kill one man in order to avoid going down a track that would kill five men and a judge who is given the ultimatum to kill one innocent man and pretend he is guilty of committing an atrocity in order to prevent the slaying of five innocent hostages held by an unruly mob. This is where my utilitarian thought process meets muddy ground, it can handle the tram scenario fairly easily but I find it difficult to justify the judge killing the man in the hostage scenario. Foot explains that DDE evidently has some worth “insisting that it is one thing to steer towards someone foreseeing that you will kill him and another to aim at his death as part of your plan.” (Foot, 1978, p23).

Further in the essay Foot presents her analytical tool based on DDE she calls ‘Doing and allowing’ or D&A. Instead of deciding permissibility solely on what the protagonist directly and obliquely intends we should look at what actions they take and what they allow to happen. While there are large parallels between direct and doing, oblique and allowing the terms are not absolute synonyms, “consider that it is possible to deliberately allow something to happen”. (Foot, 1978, p27). It is this theory that in my opinion ‘corrects’ the flaws of DDE and betters the black and white nature of consequentialism. Consider the merchants and gravediggers, like previously stated it is not their intentions that should be judged but their actions. What both parties are doing is selling poison, and what they are allowing to happen is people to die, the so called ‘negative duty’ of a person’s right not to be killed outweighs the murderers ‘positive duty’ of making money.

To really get to the grass routes of the problem we must analyse what this theory tells us about abortion and whether the conclusions the D&A tool generates are ethically acceptable from a neutral perspective. The first case Foot presents is “the situation in which nothing can be done will save the life of child and mother, but where the life of the mother can be saved by killing the child” (Foot, 1978, p30). By not performing abortion you are allowing them both to die but by doing the abortion you will allow the mother to live, not acting results in two broken negative duties but by acting only one is broken and a positive duty (save the mother) occurs.

Foot’s conclusion on whether to perform an operation to save the mother and kill the child or an operation to kill the mother and save the child is less than rock steady. She presents the example of the sailors Dudley and Stephens who ate a cabin boy when stranded without food, however surely the boy had just as much right to eat either Dudley or Stephens as they had to eat him. She concludes that “Probably we should decide in favour of the mother when weighing her life against that of the unborn child, but it is interesting that, a few years later, we might easily decide it the other way.” (Foot, 1978, p31). It may well be an interesting point but doesn’t offer any answers, nor any reason behind her judgement, for me this is the weakest part of the entire chapter.

”The worst dilemma” she claims ”comes in the third kind of example where to save the mother we must kill the child, say be crushing it’s skill, while if nothing is done the mother will perish but the child can be safely delivered afrer her death.” (Foot, 1978, p31). DDE is quiet clear that intending the death of the child is impermissible when no action would result in an equal amount of death. Foot may agree with this conclusion but disagrees with the premises that govern it, she ties a parrelel between this and the judge example but with a mother who will die unless her child, now several years old is killed. ”For in general we do not think that we can kill one innocent person to rescue another” (Foot, 1978, p31).


Bibliography

Foot, P.
Virtues and Vices
Blackwell, 1978

Dignen, S.
Dictionary Thesaurus
London, Covent Garden Books, 2000

National Right to Life (http://www.nrlc.org)
http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/facts/abortiontimeline.html


(c)2005 Dave Randall