Well THAT'S a big question, I won't attempt to answer. But I might phrase it differently: 'should' they have that right ... since I prefer to assume that we get to decide which 'rights' to apportion, rather than that we somehow discover the 'rights' that already exist .... And to begin an answer to such a large question you'd have to begin working out very general views on the nature of morality in general, as well on the relationship between public and private, and more -- and no doubt you might like to distinguish between such cases as "purely" elective abortions v. those which are in some sense medically-motivated or "necessary" (eg threatening the life of the mother) ... Even more interestingly, esp with respect to the latter distinctions, you might want to explore exactly how it is that abortion has come to be so vehemently opposed by the Catholic hierarchy -- in fact I recently was reading that until the 20th century the Church's opinion on abortion in general was far more liberal and lenient than it is today -- which raises the very interesting question about the degree to which religious tenets (incl moral tenets) are devised by quite fallible human beings (and thus open at least to discussion and engagement) ... For if you feel (for example) that religious teachings do NOT require that Catholicism be so thoroughly opposed to abortion in every form (as was believed until the 20th century), then you might have a different answer to your question than if you feel that they DO .....

best,

ap

Actually, the Catholic Church has always held that abortion -- understood as deliberately ending the life of an ensouled human being in the womb -- is gravely immoral. The changed view to which Andrew refers is the result of changed understanding of when ensoulment occurs. Remember that relative to the history of Christianity, biology has only recently revealed what happens in conception and gestation; Thomas Aquinas, for example, thought that life began at "quickening," or the mother's awareness of fetal movement -- typically after (what we now know is) 15-20 weeks of life and growth!

As for your question, I'd refer again to Aquinas: everyone has a moral right to refuse to act against his or her conscience. To deliberately do what your conscience forbids would be morally wrong, always. (The converse doesn't hold, by the way: it is not always morally right to do what your conscience permits. Your conscience could be in error. But on the negative side, even if it is in error, if you do what it forbids you are by that very fact acting wrongly.) So if Catholic health care providers are convinced in conscience that abortion is morally wrong, then they would have the moral right to refuse to perform them.

Just a brief comment, which is that, even if one always does have a moral right not to do things one regards as morally objectionable, it does not follow that one has a legal or political right to do so, i.e., that one cannot legitimately face legal consequences for not doing so. It is fairly easy to come up with counter-examples by thinking of people whose moral views are themselves pretty objectionable. I don't know which issue the questioner probably had in mind, but both seem worth considering.

For what it is worth, I think similar such examples make Aquinas's view very doubtful. If one thinks a thing is morally abhorrent, say, when it is, in fact, morally obligatory, then it is not at all clear that one has a moral right not to do the thing. Indeed, it seems almost contradictory to say one does: One has a moral right not to do something that is morally obligatory? Presumably, the resolution of this "paradox" lies in distinguishing subjective from objective elements of this, as is now pretty common.

I don't know if this is Singer's view or not. I just want to respond to the suggestion that the view "shows a progression of the pro-choice stance on abortion extending beyond the womb." Do not buy the facile and cynical "slippery slope" argument advanced by some unscrupulous people that holds that any principle that justifies abortion in any circumstances will lead inexorably to a validation of heinous practices like murder of unwanted children or elderly adults.

The term "pro-choice" refers to a particular political position: it is the position that the decision whether to continue a pregnancy should be made the pregnant person, not the government. People who are pro-choice do not necessarily agree on the morality of abortion -- they do not all agree on the conditions in which abortion is morally permissible, and they may not even agree that abortion is ever morally permissible. (Many members of the organization Catholics for Free Choice believe on theological grounds that abortion is wrong, but also believe that the government should not enshrine any one theological belief into law. Most Catholics who I know take the same position on divorce.)

Even those who agree that abortion is morally permissible under the same conditions may disagree about the reasons why. Some defenders of abortion see the issue in terms of liberty -- no person has the right to use my body without my permission, even if they need my body to survive. Others would say that a person does have the right to use my body if he or she needs it to survive, but that a fetus is not (yet) a person. Singer is a utilitarian: he believes that the rightness or wrongness of an action is determined by the amount of utility the action would produce. But that means that he has to assess and compare the utilities that would be produced by various courses of action. In the case of a mentally handicapped infant (and I imagine Singer is talking about severe handicap, like microencephaly, or Tay-Sachs), Singer is assuming that sustaining the infant's life would not produce very much utility -- for the infant as well as for the parent -- and that ending the life would prevent needless suffering and the expenditure of resources that could be used elsewhere. Not every utilitarian, however, is going to agree with Singer's assessment of the relative utilities of saving the infant and killing the infant.

You can find out about Singer's position on infanticide here--

http://www.princeton.edu/~psinger/faq.html

This seems like many other agreements two people might make, and not in a class by itself. On the whole, we should keep our promises, but we don't want the law to step in and enforce all of them. If a woman promises not to have an abortion, then she surely she should keep the promise. It would be the same in the other direction. A woman might ask a man to agree not ask her to have an abortion, if she should become pregnant. Morally, both have at least a prima facie obligation to keep their promises.

The law is another matter. If by making any promise we incurred the risk of being dragged into a courtroom, we'd make promises very sparingly. And then a valuable way of managing our personal relationships would be virtually lost. In this particular situation, either party would be able to foresee that the other could renege on the agreement. After all, as we all know, it's hard to predict what one will really want to do about something as life-changing as a pregnancy. A reasonable person wouldn't trust the other's word completely, and would avail themselves of good contraception.

If the moral objection to abortion is that it kills innocent persons, then you are right, the circumstances of conception should be irrelevant.

An important philosophical article by Judith Jarvis Thomson, "A Defense of Abortion" (originally published in Philosophy and Public Affairs in 1971 and widely reprinted) argues that in some circumstances, killing innocent persons is permissible. Those special circumstances are when the life of another is dependent on some huge personal sacrifice of an individual who did not voluntarily take on that responsibility. Thomson argues that when pregnancy occurs against the will of the pregnant woman (rape is clearly an instance of this, and Thomson argues that contraceptive failure is also an instance) it is morally permissible to abort (although it would be morally admirable to go through with the pregnancy).

Perhaps, such positions concerning abortion are based on the idea that a developing fetus is very morally valuable, but not equal in moral value to a fully developed human being. Therefore, something like the great emotional pain involved in being forced to carry a child conceived as the result of rape might be enough to justify an abortion. But, very few things other than the life of the mother or rape would be adequate to justify an abortion.

Or, perhaps, such views on abortion are mainly developed based on political pragmatism.

There are some practical reasons for using viability as the standard for when a fetus may no longer be aborted. In particular, the viability of a fetus means that its life could be sustained without the mother's involvement -- which makes it much easier for others to effectively intervene. With scientific and technological advances, of course, life outside of the womb has become possible at earlier and earlier stages, so that disallowing abortion in cases where the fetus could survive apart from the mother'sbody would effectively disallow abortion during most of a woman's pregnancy.

Moral reasons for emphasizing viability are largely due to the idea that human beings have a right to autonomous existence (an existence which is not dependent on the desires of others) only insofar as they are capable of autonomous existence. (Compare: I have a right to make my own choices only insofar as I am capable of making my own choices.) This rationale is problematic, however, since (a) no baby, let alone a seriously premature baby, is capable of living independently of the desires of others, and (b) even for adults, independence from the desires of others is never complete.

There are a few points that may be relevant to your thinking:

1) There is a substantial difference between 32 weeks and 36 weeks in terms of development, long term prognosis, etc. It is also uncommon for a newborn to be as responsive to social cues as you suggest. Typically "social smiling" doesn't occur until a full term baby is four to six weeks old. It is a mistake, I think, to generalize even about healthy fetuses from the vivid example you've just witnessed.

2) The cases of abortion Tiller performed were typically cases in which the fetus or mother faced significant medical complications. Would you feel differently if your cousin (once removed) was born to live with a disability that would cause constant and untreatable pain? How would you feel if your cousin's life was in danger, or if she faced a permanent and profound disability if she continued her pregnancy? Are there no cases in which you can imagine a late term pregnancy justifiably terminated?

3) It might be interesting to read some of the statements by physicians who provide abortions at Physicians for Reproductive Health and Choice: http://prhc.org, or some of the comments on the memorial page for Dr. Tiller linked to that site.

Let's try some analogies. Suppose U.S. citizens have a constitutionally guaranteed right to vote for President, congressional representatives, etc. Now suppose that anyone who sets up or runs a voting booth is prosecuted for violating a law that says providing outlets for voting is illegal. It seems that this law would violate our constitutional rights. Or try it with the Second Amendment. In general, it is unconstitutional to bar selling guns as well as buying them, presumably since it would violate our right to bear arms if there were no way to get them. Accused defendents' right to legal counsel would be violated if it were illegal to practice law. And so on.

I think that the way you set up the question, by supposing women have a right to abortion, suggests the answer: it would violate that right to make laws entirely restricting doctors from providing abortions.

However, if you did not make that initial assumption about women's right to abortion, then it seems there is nothing inconsistent about outlawing the "selling" of abortions even if the "buying" were not outlawed, though it's unclear why such a double-standard would be in place.

Sometimes this is put as a challenge to those who argue that abortion is morally equivalent to first-degree murder: if you really believe that, then you should advocate punishing women who get abortions as murderers (i.e., not only punishing abortion providers). Of course, some might be willing to bite this bullet. Others might offer arguments for why abortion is wrong but not as wrong as murder. And others would say that the challenge illustrates the moral and legal difference between murdering a (fully-formed) person and aborting a fetus.

Different people will have different views about this, but I think the obvious thing to say is this. Taking the potion you described harms a person who will one day exist. Having an abortion does not harm a person who will one day exist. So that is the difference: In the one case, a person is harmed, but not in the other. That person does not exist at the time the harm is done, but I think you are correct that the person does not need to exist at that time to be harmed.

To see the importance of this, note that a similar case can be described even if the woman takes the potion before any child is conceived. In that case, no independent life exists at all, and yet it seems as if taking the potion is morally objectionable, for much the same reason.

There are complications here, surrounding the idea that the woman's behavior is wrong even if no child is ever conceived, on the ground that she risked harming someone. But I'll leave it to you, and others, to work this out. One important point is that, so far as I can see, "X risked harming someone" does not imply "There is someone X risked harming", any more than "X was baking a cake when she died" implies "There was a cake that X was baking when she died." (X died before any such cake came into existence.)