From conception to death: equalizing life termination decisions

Non-political perspective: abortion as one of contributors to life-termination events

Abortion is perceived as a disruption of a normal baby birth process. It has a strong negative emotional component, which is further enhanced by subconscious utilitarian one – indeed, younger generation is a future labor-force enabled our societal survival in older days of extremely high child mortality. Hence, “don’t kill” is the major argument against abortions. However, this   argument should be considered in connection with other life termination procedures which might occur over the duration of a person’s entire lifecycle.

Accidents and other events resulted in catastrophic health decline may eventually lead to a situation when a person’s life support may need to be turned off.  Regulations have been established how to deal with such life termination events in the case of incoming death (in particular, many US states allow it when no brain function is detected for a certain time, etc.) when it can be easier morally acceptable as just an acceleration of the inevitable outcome. However, abortion, that can be seen as a life termination during pregnancy when future opportunities for not yet born child are wide open, is extremely controversial.

The asymmetry in our perception of life terminations during a conception-death lifecycle originates, in part, from our subconscious judgment on possible future benefits the person may generate to society. In this respect, a younger person with longer life expectancy is automatically seen as having potentially higher value. It clearly makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint: because of low childhood survival rate until quite recently, increasing number of babies was critical for the population existence in the long run. In other words, the existing asymmetry in how we justify decisions for life termination during the conception-death cycle is a product of our evolutionary past, our internally built-in view on others through the lens of their “economic”/social value. Though it seems practical, is it morally justifiable today?

Shouldn’t life termination be treated in a consistent way throughout the entire life cycle, exclusively based on the person intrinsic value as a human being, no matter how important this life is deemed to be judged from past/future perspective? In other words, life starting/ending periods should be treated the same way, no matter what the expectations for the person future/past values beyond this particular moment in time might be.

By unifying person’s treatment throughout their entire lifecycle, we come up with an “universal”, inclusive life termination approach. Rather than arguing about specific criteria justifying life termination (where any agreement is practically impossible) we may agree on a procedure for how it should be decided, which would be acceptable to a maximally wide range of people with different socio-cultural background (religious, political, etc.). Then, the criteria may be debated separately, and they can be easier adjusted to a current level of cultural/social standards at a given time and location.

To narrow the scope and simplify our considerations, we introduce an artificial viability figure-of merit – let’s call it “functionality”, which represents some combination of person’s physical+mental capabilities. The question is whether one can accept existence of a functionality “red line” below which life termination becomes acceptable. For instance, such red line may lay within a gray area when a person is incapable to live autonomously without being connected to an external life-support source and not capable to communicate.

If the mere existence of such functionality threshold is unacceptable to you then you reject a possibility of life termination at any point in time in a person’s life cycle from conception to death. If one acknowledges that the red line makes sense in principle it opens a discussion on specific conditions when life termination may be considered. Again, rather than pre-determining specific red line conditions that is very much a personal judgment ever evolving with changing society values and medical advances, we focus on a decision-making procedure for life termination (how decision is done), which would be both moral and legal.

Decision making: Since it cannot be fully formalized in principle, the life termination judgement is left to people authorized making the decision in each specific case. Who are these people? – presumably those having the largest stake in the game: next-to-kin. Thus, the abortion decision (that represents a single topic in the family of life termination decisions) should also be made by the next-to-kin – by pregnant woman.

Consequently, as follows from the above concept of equal treatment through entire life cycle (conception-death symmetry) by prohibiting abortions we also automatically eliminate the humane end-of-life termination option.