Is There Sufficient Common Ground to Resolve the Abortion Debate?

Abstract

A common response to ongoing disagreement about abortion has been to look for overlap between the prolife and prochoice sides of the debate. In recent years, however, both opposing camps in the debate have claimed to be able to establish their respective positions on the basis of the same common ground. Faced with the apparent failure of philosophers to settle their differences about abortion by means of shared values, the question naturally arises: what should we do about this? It is possible to discern two main options in the scholarly literature. The first is to keep doing what we are already doing: namely, trying to create consensus on the abortion issue by appealing to analogies designed to reveal common ground. One example of this approach comes from a recent attempt by Charles Camosy to find areas of agreement with Peter Singer and other defenders of abortion. Alternatively, one might grant that the moral problem of abortion is rationally irresolvable, but then assert that we should nonetheless accept one side or the other of the abortion debate on political grounds. By appealing to political values that are widely shared in liberal societies, several philosophers have argued that the intractability of the question of fetal moral status favors the prochoice position. For example, Chris Kaposy claims that even though ‘‘reason does not require any particular understanding of the fetus’s moral standing,’’ it is still the case that ‘‘an effective argument against the prohibition of abortion can be made on grounds of freedom of conscience and religion.’’