An Argument Against Abortion: Germain Grisez
by Paul M. Cox
I. Introduction
Germain Grisez, in Abortion: the Myths, the Realities, and the Arguments, defends a strategy which links moral personhood to membership in the human species. He proposes that moral rights exist in virtue of moral value, and that full moral value of human adults who are moral persons is implicit in the biogenetic nature which all members of the species share. Hence, he can conclude that all prenatal human individuals are moral persons.
Grisez presents an exceptionally clear statement of an argument for the moral personhood of human embryos and fetuses. Grisez's views on abortion are not limited to this argument alone nor is he the only representative of it. But Grisez's presentation of the argument is exceptionally helpful because he shows very clearly that the opposing views of the moral personhood of human embryos and fetuses presuppose contrary views of moral and ontological premises. Thus a look at Grisez's presentation will help focus the abortion debate on those fundamental issues whose resolution, or at least clarification, can provide the conceptual basis for a well thought through decision about the moral personhood of the unborn.
II. Identity of Being and Moral Status
Grisez adopts a formalistic strategy to the effect that all unborn human individuals ought to be counted as moral persons, at least on a prima facie basis, because the full moral value of normal adults who are moral persons is implicit in the living genetic mechanism of all members of the human species. Grisez's opponents dispute this conclusion, arguing that the human genetic package is not a sufficiently substantial basis to account for, or to manifest, the full moral value of an adult moral person. Rather, they suggest, its relative value ought to be determined by analogy to the value of a designer's blueprints relative to the full value of the completed structure [1]. Grisez replies that the suggested analogy is not instructive in this instance because the objects being compared are disanalogous in essential features. The blueprint is a dormant sheet and the structure is a dormant artifact which in no analogous sense embodies the design until its completion. On the contrary, according to Grisez, the living human individual bully embodies its design from its conception, as the inherent, living genetic mechanism from which all its adult qualities unfold in due course [2]. However, this reply leads to an additional objection.
It would be theoretically possible to attribute a lesser value and moral status to the unborn on the basis of their immaturity and consequent deficiency in the fully developed qualities and capabilities of adult human persons, such as rational awareness. If the moral value of adults were accounted for on the basis of specific qualities or capabilities, then it would follow that the value of immature, or potential, adults would increase proportionately to their growth and development of the valued qualities and capabilities.
However, Grisez's strategy is not vulnerable to this objection because he argues that moral value is accounted for on the basis of nature, itself, of the individual, rather than on the value of specific characteristics on their own account. Moreover, valuation on the basis of individual qualities and capabilities, on their own account, is vulnerable to criticism as inherently subjective and relative, providing a reasonable basis to exclude not only mature fetuses, but neonates and individuals who are temporarily comatose, or severely senile, as well.
By turning to the notion of the human species as a natural kind, the nature or essence of which is constituted by the living genetic mechanism common to its members, Grisez has obtained a conceptual tool to argue for an identity of being and moral status between all human individuals, from conception until death.
Grisez's argument that the full moral value of adult human beings is implicit in the living genetic mechanism of human embryos and fetuses would be strengthened normatively and conceptually if this argument for a single biogenetic nature or essence for all members of the human species were justifiable. By so linking his prescriptive premise to a justifiable notion of fundamental kind, Grisez could claim the normative advantages of relative objectivity and certainty. This could be supported by explicit reference to Aristotle's account of the relationship of potential being to actual being.
Aristotle's analysis of the potential in relation to the actual in his Metaphysics, and his reflections on biological development in On the Soul, and On the Generation of Animals, provides a basis to explain the relationship of a developing biological entity to the mature member of the kind or sort it has the potential to become. For Aristotle, they are the same being. Potential being and actual being of a biological organism can be considered different modes or ways of understanding the same thing or substance [3]. This follows from Aristotle's notion of sensible substance as an integral union, or a composite, of matter and form [4]. He concludes that, while matter exists as potentiality and form as actuality, the last matter, or actualized potential, and form are one and the same. Each thing or substance is a kind of unity. Potentiality and actuality, together, exist somehow as one. In other words, for Aristotle a sensible thing or substance is and exists in three senses: 1) As matter it is potentially but not actually a "this"; 2) As form it is actually a "this" and; 3) As a composite of the two it exists as a kind of unity, of which alone there can be generation and destruction [5].
As form, a sensible thing already contains its own principle of actuality within itself, even though as matter it is on the way to becoming a composite substance. Form is thus the essence of each thing and therefore Aristotle called it formal substance. Form is not, itself, generated or made in each individual, but the sensible thing, as a composite substance, is generated from the form which provides its identity or name. Hence, a sensible thing already is an actuality in a significant sense as soon as there is a sufficient reason to judge that the form from which it generates and takes its identity and name, has become an integral part of its being [6]. Aristotle's analysis provides a reasonable ontological basis for Grisez's claim that the living genetic mechanism of members of the human species constitutes a biogenetic nature or essence. It follows from Aristotle's analysis that the formal principle or nature from which and by which rational beings come into being, take their identity, grow and develop, is present at the inception of each human individual, as Grisez argues.
The application of Aristotle's unifying formula that potential rational beings and actual rational beings are the same in regard to their fundamental kind of being adds further clarity and theoretical justification to Grisez's contention that the very meaning of the potentiality of a living thing is that it already is a certain kind of being which will develop in accordance with its proper kind. Moreover, the fundamental kind or sort a living this is, is determined at its inception by the initial actualization of its potential to be a living thing of that kind or sort.
On the other hand, it also follows that potential human persons and actual human persons are different, in regard to the degree of actualization of their potential for growth and development, including neurological development. That is, until the last stage of growth and development, or the "last matter" has been achieved, they are on the way to becoming substances in Aristotle's third sense of being as composite. But since this growth and development presupposes and proceeds from the primary actualization of the composite as a being of that kind, this being on the way does not, itself, imply a deficiency of identity.
This Aristotelian argument for an identity of being strengthens the conceptual basis for Grisez to argue for an equivalence of moral value and status between human embryos and fetuses as potential rational beings, and human adults as actual rational beings. Given some reasonable basis to justify the premise that moral value is linked to fundamental kind or sort of being, Grisez can argue that the full value of the adult is implicit in the unborn because they are different modes or senses of the same fundamental kind or sort of being. This ontological identity is presupposed by Grisez's argument that the fullness of human life is implicit in its living genetic mechanism as an integral and necessary part of its biography and complete meaning. According to Grisez, it follows that the human individual is properly described and valued as a rational being from its conception to its death irrespective of its growth and development of the physical characteristics, or the formation of the personality or self, which is ultimately required for rational awareness [7].
III. Conclusion
Most people would agree that unjustified and unexcused homicide is morally wrong, but many disagree about whether abortion is homicide. If abortion were homicide, then one would be bound in conscience to seek a justification, or at least an excuse, for homicide in every act of abortion. By contrast, if abortion were not homicide, but only the medical termination of a pregnancy, then an act of abortion would not have a fundamental moral significance; the practice would then be justifiable by less fundamental reasons.
It follows that particular arguments for or against the morality of abortion are secondary to the question of whether abortion is homicide. Therefore a prior question to the issue of the morality of abortion is whether embryos and fetuses are possible victims of a homicide, or moral persons. Grisez's argument buttressed ontologically by Aristotle convincingly shows that to kill the fetus is to kill the baby, to kill the child, to kill the young adult, to kill the adult, and thus to kill the older person. For the full value of the person is in every stage of development. Or as Aristotle could say, "killing the potentiality certainly kills the actuality."
PAUL M. COX is the Director of the School for Professional Studies at Vanguard University of Southern California.
End Notes
1. Germain Grisez, Abortion: the Myths, the Realities, and the Arguments, (New York: World Publishing Company, 1970; Corpus Books, 1972), p. 275.
2. Ibid., pp. 275-276.
3. Aristotle, On the Soul, trans. J. A. Smith, 2. 4. 415b8. 8-14.
4. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 7. 2. 1029a3. 3-7.
5. Ibid., 8. 1. 1042a24. 24-33; 8. 6. 1045b8. 16-25.
6. Ibid., 7. 8. 1033b5. 5-19; 7. 11. 1037a22. 22-1037b7; 7. 17. 1041a33. 33-1041b34.
7. Grisez, Abortion, pp. 275-276, 285-286.