Once upon a time, I thought philosophy was a total waste of time.⁎ The whole thing seemed like a talking shop to me: talking about stuff that didn’t seem to map to anything, or have any kind of impact on anything. I had Plato’s cave explained to me several times, with the clear implication being, “You are so very badly stuck in this cave, Muireann!!!”, but these conversations just made me even more dismissive. “Hm, you expect me to take this more seriously because you’re just insisting that I have to see things totally differently in order to see things totally differently? Nice try.”

About seven or eight years ago, however, I came across the idea that there are different kinds of facts. As a result, I was able to open myself up to learning about new kinds of facts and truths, including philosophical truths. I still had all the old kinds of facts available to me, like scientific facts, but I was able to see that I actually believed all sorts of other things already not on the basis of science, but on some other basis. A really good example of something I already believed, but not on the basis of science, were my pro-life beliefs.

One thing I hear pro-life people say a lot is that “Science is on our side! Science proves that the unborn are human! We have facts and logic on our side”. This is true – but it’s not even half the battle. Why? Because in order to arrive at the pro-life position, it’s not enough to show that the unborn are human. You have to show that all human life has equal value. What can science tell us about how valuable something is? Pretty much… nothing.

Think about it. Why do you think it’s wrong to murder your brother? Because you can see he has fingers and toes? Because he has taste buds? Because science proves he’s human? You might think yes, because he’s human, but hang on a second. Is it wrong to kill a kitten? A kitten isn’t human, but most people think it’s wrong to kill a kitten regardless. You might say it’s not as wrong to kill a kitten as to kill a human, but why is that? OK, science shows us that kittens and people are different species, but…so? Science showing us that humans aren’t kittens isn’t the same as showing us that humans’ lives are worth more than kittens’ lives.⁎⁎

Pro-life people make this mistake all the time, and I can see why! It’s because, for most of us, we naturally, instinctively think that human life is valuable, even more valuable than animal life. The idea that pro-life people therefore latch on to is, well then, all we have to do is show that unborn babies are human, and everyone will use their pre-existing belief that all human life is equally valuable to conclude that abortion is wrong. However, this misses several key steps.

First of all, just because everyone instinctively thinks all human life is valuable, that doesn’t mean they all think all human life is equally valuable. Secondly, even if someone does have that instinct, a pro-choice person can often successfully push back on that idea by talking about brain-dead people, or people whose consciousness is transferred into the body of a chimp, or other funny thought experiments. A pro-choice person might successfully point out that the person’s instinct that all human life, including very early unconscious human life, being equally valuable isn’t very well grounded. Finally, even if someone still thinks all human life is equally valuable, that doesn’t mean that they think human life outweighs bodily autonomy.

I think all these are not just important considerations, they’re vital considerations for anyone who wants to draw a conclusion one way or the other re abortion. Unfortunately, not one of them can be addressed using the tools of science. Instead, we have to turn to philosophy.

Philosophy is the kind of tool we have to use to determine questions like, “What is value? And what is valuable?” Once we use philosophy to come up with the conditions or characteristics that something must have in order to be valuable, then science can come in and determine whether an organism has those conditions or characteristics. But without the philosophy being sorted out, we’re wandering around in a space that science cannot get us out of.

In our experience, pro-life people have not been given the tools to make the philosophical arguments. They have been given the scientific tools in abundance, which is really, really great (most pro-life sources spend a lot of time and effort on education about foetal development, for example), but the philosophical arguments are all but forgotten. The really frustrating part of this is that in general, people have heard the scientific arguments a lot (almost everyone has seen an ultrasound picture, for example) but very few people have heard the good philosophical arguments. We here at Minimise keep marvelling, again and again, at how people respond to really basic arguments on things like equal rights, or bodily autonomy. They just have not heard the good arguments.

It’s hard to overstate how low this fruit is hanging! Something as simple as a quick version of the Equal Rights Argument can really make people stop and think, including people who are very up to speed on things like foetal development. People’s pro-choice beliefs are often really not well founded, and once their values are properly interrogated and applied to the question in a thoughtful way, they find their whole position can unravel. For some reason, though, pro-life people just fail to do the interrogation, because they are very very stuck on the science.

This is not a request to throw out the science. This is a very strong recommendation to try expanding the set of tools in your pro-life kit to include philosophical as well as scientific questions and answers. It’s truly remarkable the kind of success this approach has had, including changing the minds of two of the founding members of Minimise. Give it a try and see how you get on!

Muireann

⁎ This was before I was friends with Ben. Just FYI.

⁎⁎ It’s worth noting here that you don’t even need to believe this in order to be pro-life. You can totally believe that kittens are equally valuable, or even more valuable, than humans, and still be pro-life, just as you can believe that humans are more valuable than kittens and be pro-choice.