Dehumanization and Abortion: Quick Thoughts

 Some notes for a class. 

1. The accusations (Google to find them?):

"Pro-choice people are like Nazis! They are like the KKK! They are like slaveholders!"

 

"Pro-choice people deny that fetuses are human! They deny that fetuses are 'human beings'! They dehumanize, just like Nazis and people who owned slaves!"

"It hasn't gone well when people deny that some humans are human!"

"It hasn't gone well when people deny that some people are people!

Questions:

• could any of this be true? If so, how would we know? If not, how would we know?
• If saying anything like this is part of an argument, is that argument good or bad?

2. What is meant by "human"?

A. "Human" = biologically human: biologically human as a characteristic; biologically human organism. 

Does anyone think that fetuses in biologically human women are anything other than biologically human? No. No!

What else might “human” mean?

B. "Human" = a person; a someone; something with high moral intrinsic value; something (someone) that's usually wrong to kill. 

Can anyone just assume that embryos and beginning fetuses are “human” in that sense? No. 

If one assumes this, one is “begging the question.” One is assuming that embryos and beginning fetuses are persons who are wrong to kill just like enslaved people, Holocaust victims, etc. 

So what is to be a person? Some thinking activities:

• Make a list of actual people, as well as (logically or metaphysically) possible people: what do they have in common that makes them people?

• Compare this list to clear non-persons: what’s the difference?

• What might end your existence as a person? What would have to stop for there to no longer be a person there? That indicates what a person is. 

Given all this, are embryos and beginning fetuses people (or even person-like)?

If not, can they be dehumanized . . meaning de-personalized, or de-valued (when they should be valued, for their own sake, because they are intrinsically valuable?).

3. Required readings: David Livingstone Smith, 

• Abortion and Dehumanization, 
• Abortion and Humanity, and 
• Are “Human” Embryos Human? 

How do core examples of dehumanization differ from how anyone considers embryos and fetuses?

3. Turning it on its head: does not allowing women to have abortions, when they want them, dehumanize them?

4. Related: could Klingons be dehumanized?

Star Trek: "Human rights. Why, the very name is racist."

There's a scene from the 1991 film Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, where one of the Klingon characters states, "Human rights. Why, the very name is racist." 

She says this in response to the suggestion that people on planets throughout the universe have "human rights."