Todd Akin's Rape Comment Was Pseudoscience, But What About The Morality of Abortion? - Part 3 - Morality

In  of this series I laid the groundwork for the morality of abortion.  In , I built a foundation for a definition of life and death through philosophy and theoretical physics.  Now, in conclusion, I will touch on the origins of morality in our species and then build a framework for the morality of abortion in general.

First, on morality.  I don't have the space in this forum to build the entire case, so I will stick to two ideas.  Morality essentially evolved; likely through a subcategory of natural selection called social selection.  Our brains have been in their current evolutionary state for at least 40,000 years and as many as 250,000 years.  Based  on hunter-gatherer research in egalitarian societies, like our ancestors, bullies and cheaters are punished and ostracized, ultimately reducing their reproductive fitness.  In plain language, in the aggregate, those who have cooperated over the last 10s of thousands of years have had more kids, therefore passing on their DNA and resulting temperament.

Just look at it this way, even if one of the Torah's 10 Commandments were not "Do not Kill," would you be more inclined to kill?  Of course not.  Murder is a learned behavior.  It is not something that is inherent in our biology, unless you are part of the 1% of the population that is born psychopaths.    The above description on the origins of morality is the likely reason why.  (By the way, in a world with 7 billion people, that's 70 million psychopaths in our midst.)  To learn more on moral origins and killing, read here and here.

Is the willingness of billions to allow abortion in certain cases evidence that biologically speaking, abortion is not considered murder?  I think so.  There is a difference between terminating a foreign entity inside a woman's body, and looking at a living breathing baby in the face and murdering it.  

The foreign entity inside the body technically does not officially exist as an individual human being.  Considering it was the merging of two different sets of DNA via an egg cell and sperm cell, not some supernatural implantation, it is only an undeveloped possible human.

Now I come back to legislating abortion and the doctor's definition of "Time of Death."  First, I like John Stuart Mills' Harm Principle as a standard in legislating morality. The principle is as follows, "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."

Again, a foreign and fully dependent entity in a woman's body is not an individual, or an "other," not until birth.  Therefore, making a law that forbids a woman control over her body against her will is a libertarian violation of her freedom.  This especially implies the right to contraception, morning after pills, and particularly abortions arising as a result of pregnancy due to rape and/or incest, regardless of how far developed the fetus may be in a woman's body.

That said, there is a scientific, or moral case to be made against all other abortions, but not until somewhere in the range of 8-10 weeks.  For this, we must refer back to how a doctor determines the time of death of a human being, which is when the brain stops functioning.

Therefore, wouldn't this be an excellent scientific guide to determining the "Time of Life?"  Meaning, when a fully functioning brain develops in the fetus, this is the time of life.  Depending on how you define a fully functioning brain, this occurs anywhere from 8-10 weeks after conception.  To be conservative, you would make harm laws against abortion at 8 weeks.  To be a little more liberal in the definition, you would make harm laws against abortion at 10 weeks.

So, while as I said in Part 1, the real answer is that I don't know and am glad I don't have to make that decision, the more nuanced answer is simply that the "Time of Life" is defined the same way as "The Time of Death," which relies completely on a normally functioning brain.  Once you cross the line of a functioning brain, the morality of abortion becomes questionable, except for in the cases mentioned above, (rape and incest) when the morality of abortion should never be questioned.

Basically, this is how Roe vs. Wade already works, although I don't believe it uses the same scientific definition of life and death as I am implying here.  In my mind, that makes it a good law, and anything that attempts to weaken that law is an infringement on the rights and freedoms of women everywhere.  

In a country that prides itself on individual freedom, the hypocrisy of the likes of  is not an excusable means to an end.  Abortion in cases of rape and incest is not immoral, nor is abortion before the 8-10 week range; however, the GOP's continued attempts to restrict the inalienable freedoms of women are as immoral as any restriction on human rights ever has been.