Assuming you are unsure about the permissibility of abortion, which side should you err on? An unstated premise in a paper by Mario Derksen suggests a fairly sound principle. Assuming the odds are sufficiently high enough to warrant treating abortion as if it were impermissible, then we should do so just to be safe. This naturally raises the question of how high the bar needs to be for us to have such warrant.
The answer will largely depend on whether we are talking about acting on a personal level or a social level. On a personal level, treating something as if it were impermissible only means not participating in that action. If it turns out that the action is indeed permissible, you do nothing wrong by refraining. This means that on the personal level, you can set the bar as low as you deem necessary to be safe.
However, to act socially as if something were impermissible means demanding no one in your society participate in that action, usually on pain of criminal penalty. Minimally, this means intruding on other people’s business. If it turns out that the action is indeed permissible, you have not only needlessly intruded on other people’s business, you will have denied people the expected benefits of the action. This means that on the social level, the bar needs to be high enough to at least be commensurate with the level of intrusion. The rest of this essay will therefore deal primarily with the question of how high that bar should be before acting socially as if abortion were impermissible.
With regard to abortion, Peter Kraft developed an argument that was subsequently modified and used by Derksen. Following their lead, I will call this argument the “quadrilemma.” While somewhat similar to an argument I’ve addressed already, the quadrilemma poses four possible options which the abortion debate may take. They conclude three of these options involves some serious wrongdoing. Assuming these options have equal weight, there is a 75% chance the doubter should act as if abortion were impermissible. If they are correct, this would be a very powerful argument. It is certainly worth taking the time to examine it carefully.
Here, I’m going to consider both Kraft and Derksen’s versions.1 I conclude that Kraft’s version is obviously a false choice, since it excludes viable possibilities. While Derksen’s version is much stronger because it eliminates many of the viable possibilities in Kraft’s version, ultimately, it comes to conclusions that do not follow from the premises and is therefore invalid.
Kraft’s formulation of the quadrilemma proposes there are only four possibilities regarding whether the prenate is a person: it is not a person and we know it; it is a person and we know it; it is a person but we don’t know it; and it is a person and we don’t know it. However, in regard to the question of whether abortion is permissible, this hardly exhausts the range of viable possibilities. It simply assumes that if the prenate is a person, abortion is morally impermissible. But that is not a given, meaning the range of viable possibilities also include:
The prenate is a person, but killing it is justified.
The prenate is a person, but killing it is excused.
Other permutations that flow these possibilities, such as “The prenate is a person but killing it is justified and we know/don’t know it.”
Other possibilities not mentioned above along with the permutations associated with them. One possibility might be, “The prenate is not a person, but it is still wrong to kill it.”
When we include the full range of viable possibilities, assuming all these options have equal weight, it seems unlikely all the possible options will involve serious wrongdoing. Thus, it also seems likely the odds the doubter should act as if abortion were impermissible are less than 75%. How low that chance is will depend on the full range of viable possibilities.
Derksen makes a relatively simple change to the formula that results in a vast improvement over Kraft. In his formulation, the possibilities are: “(1) abortion is right and we know it; (2) abortion is wrong and we know it; (3) abortion is right and we don’t know it; and (4) abortion is wrong and we don’t know it.” By formulating the quadrilemma as a question about abortion rather than the status of the prenate, the number of viable possibilities with regard to whether abortion is permissible is significantly reduced. Indeed, this formulation is stronger than perhaps Derksen himself realizes.
By formulating the quadrilemma as a question of whether abortion itself is (im)permissible, Derksen renders the reasoning behind the (im)permissibility of abortion moot. It doesn’t matter why abortion is permissible; indeed, any plausible reason will do. And the same is true if abortion is impermissible; any plausible reason will do. Thus, this formulation appears to avoid the false choice fallacy.
However, the strength of this formulation means the conclusions Derksen asserts do not necessarily follow from the premises. Derksen simply imports Kraft’s conclusions wholesale without examining them in light of the new formulation. So although I am now addressing the argument made by Derksen, the criticisms I offer will largely apply to Kraft’s arguments as well.
If option (1) is true, then there is no problem. Kraft, Derksen, and I are in complete agreement here. But whereas Kraft gives a grossly inadequate rebuttal to the truthfullness of option (1), Derksen can at least claim to have a prima facie refutation: “we know that (1) is false, for, obviously, there is serious controversy about abortion, and hence we do not ‘know’ that abortion is morally right.” Though I will have something further to say about this rebuttal, for now, I will simply stipulate Derksen has successfully refuted option (1).
Derksen’s problem really begins when he simply imports Kraft’s conclusion to option (2): “if (2) obtains, then abortion is murder.” But the conclusion does not follow from the premise. To even get close to this conclusion, you would need to add an unstated premise like all moral wrongs are murder. However, that premise is clearly absurd. Remember, the strength of this formulation is due to the fact that it does not matter why abortion is wrong, only that it is a fact.
But if option (2) obtains, that tells us nothing about what kind of wrong it is. Abortion would be murder if, and only if, the fetus is a person and abortion can neither be justified nor excused. That would simply throw us back to Kraft’s formulation with its attendant problems. Additionally, some philosophers like Perry Hendricks have made serious arguments that abortion is immoral even if the prenate is not a person. Whether such arguments fly is, of course, an entirely different matter. Regardless, if it is true that abortion is wrong even though the fetus is not a person, the kind of wrong being committed is not necessarily murder.
The possibility that abortion might be wrong though not murder will have a serious impact on the doubter who is convinced by Derksen’s overall argument that we should treat abortion as if it were impermissible. If we are going to treat abortion as if it were impermissible, how then should we treat it? Presumably, we would treat it as the kind of wrong it actually is. It might be murder; it might not. Derksen would still have to make the argument that it is.
But suppose I’m wrong, and Derksen is correct that if (2) obtains, abortion is murder. Then it would not matter, since I can decisively show (2) is false. After all, there is serious disagreement about abortion, and we therefore do not know that abortion is morally wrong.
Derksen’s contention that if (4) obtains, then abortion is manslaughter faces the same kind of problem as his conclusion about (2). Manslaughter is a category of murder. So if it turns out that abortion is wrong but not murder, then it certainly isn’t manslaughter either. Again, the putative doubter treating abortion as if it were impermissible would still have to figure out what kind of wrong it actually is before determining how they should act.
And since option (2) is false, option (4) is, at best, doubtful. The quadrilemma is based on the contention that all the options other than (1) involves some level of wrongdoing and has a high degree of culpability attached to it. As such, (4) clearly depends on (2) being true. Option (2) is a paradigm case for full moral culpability. If you do something you know is wrong, you are fully culpable for doing it. If you do something that is wrong but you don’t know it is wrong, you are less culpable. However, if option (2) is false, then we don’t know if abortion is wrong in the first place. Given that option (2) is false, it is unclear if one is doing something wrong and how culpable one might be if option (4) is true.
Derksen again duplicates Kraft’s argument wholesale in concluding that if option (3) obtains, one is committing criminal negligence. A bit of reflection is all it takes to show that Kraft, and therefore Derksen is wrong, and wrong in a way that undermines their entire argument.
Most importantly, Derksen and Kraft completely misconstrue criminal negligence. In order for one to be criminally negligent, one must somehow be negligent in the first place. And to be negligent in the first place, one has to fail to exercise reasonable care in situations where they have a duty to take said precautions. But if option (3) obtains, one doesn’t have a duty to do anything in the first place. So if (3) is true, one can’t be negligent with respect to it, let alone criminally so. Derksen failed to attend to the ramifications of his formulation and makes an invalid argument.
But let’s suppose I’m wrong and Derksen is correct in importing Kraft’s argument. The fact remains that Kraft still misconstrues criminal negligence and the argument itself is contradictory. Again, I’ll use Derksen’s particular formulation to demonstrate this. In Kraft’s formulation, the option is that the prenate is not a person, and we don’t know that. But as with Derksen’s formulation, if the prenate is not a person, then one has no particular duty toward it that they can be negligent about, let alone criminally so.
Derksen and Kraft’s argument that option (3) commits criminal negligence relies on one’s duty to be sure no one is harmed through their actions. In Derksen’s wording:
Suppose you are a truck driver, and while you are driving at night, you suddenly see in front of you what looks like a man lying on the road, although you are not sure that it’s a man, for it might actually be a dummy. From your view, you simply cannot tell. Would it be morally justifiable for you to run over this “person”? Clearly, the answer is no. The very fact that you don’t know whether it’s a human or a dummy obliges you not to run over it in order to be on the safe side, and to do otherwise would be morally reprehensible. This is how we are to understand (3), that not knowing whether abortion is right or wrong when in fact it is right is still morally inadmissible, for the uncertainty obliges us to err on the side of life.
Derksen is certainly correct that the fact we don’t know what the object is entails a duty not to hit it. But the reason for this is precisely because it might be a man, i.e., a person. But the option given specifically states the prenate is not a person. So if we replace the man with a prenate in this example, you do nothing wrong by running it over even if you don’t know the prenate is not a person.
If this analogy applies at all, it applies to Derksen’s option (4). However, since option (4) is already doubtful, it is uncertain whether this analogy applies there either. Derksen has a lot a work ahead of him if he is going to make this analogy work.
Meanwhile, acting as if abortion were impermissible on the social level under option (3) does entail wrongdoing. If one acts as if abortion were impermissible on a social level, this probably means they are going to work to criminalize abortion. And if they are successful in criminalizing abortion, they will be massively violating the rights of every person with a uterus in their jurisdiction for no good reason. Since under option (3) it would in fact be wrong to engage in this massive violation of people’s rights, by acting to criminalize abortion, one would be doing something objectively wrong.
To see how this strikes at the heart of the entire quadrilemma argument, recall that the unstated premise is that, assuming the odds are sufficiently high enough to warrant treating abortion as if it were impermissible, then we should do so just to be safe. However, when we do these kinds of calculations, we need to include all the relevant factors in the assessment.
Derksen and Kraft do not do this. They leave out the most important factor that needs to be considered in the abortion debate—people who can become pregnant. At the social level, the abortion debate is not about whether the prenate is a person. It never was, and it never will be. It is about whether pregnant people can be forced to carry their pregnancies to term. Prenatal personhood may have a significant (though not decisive) part in making this decision, but it is not what the abortion debate is about.
So, now let’s assume Derksen and Kraft are right, and that there is a 75% chance you are doing something wrong if one acts as if abortion were permissible. Is that high enough to justify forcing pregnant people to carry their pregnancies, along with the attendant abrogation of several other rights? YMMV, but personally, I would say no.
However, even if 75% is high enough to warrant acting socially as if abortion were impermissible, this analysis shows Derksen doesn’t reach that figure. The first two available options are false, one is doing something wrong if they act socially as if abortion were impermissible in the third option, and what one is doing wrong and how culpable they are if one acts as if abortion were permissible in the fourth option is unclear. This means, at best, there is only a 50% chance one is doing something wrong if they act as if abortion were permissible. Putative doubters are now back where they started.
We can do better than this if you doubt the permissibility of abortion. Derksen’s dismissal of option (1) and my counter-dismissal of option (2) are both based on the implication that to “know” is to have 100% certainty about something, in this case, that abortion is or is not permissible. However, 100% certainty about anything is extremely hard to come by. And chances are, we are never going to be 100% certain about the permissibility of abortion. Unless and until we become omniscient, we’re simply going to have to make do the best way we can. The questions are how we should go about calculating the odds and determining how high those odds need to be.
First, start by keeping it absolutely clear what the abortion debate is about on the social level: whether or not we can force pregnant people to carry their pregnancies. This entails abrogating, at minimum, their right to life, liberty, and security of person; their right to be free from slavery; their right to be recognized as a person before the law; their right to equal protection under the law; their right to be free from torture; their right to bodily integrity; and their right to decide when and if to have children. It also entails abrogating all these rights without due process even though the pregnant person has done nothing wrong. It also entails accepting the possibility our hospital wards will again be filled by people with uteruses dying from botched illegal abortions.
Remember, if a pregnant person’s rights can be so abrogated, so can yours. So even if you can’t get pregnant, make sure you set that bar high enough that you would agree to have your rights similarly abrogated given the same level of certainty about the impermissibility of an action. You probably don’t need to be 100% certain, but I suspect that bar is going to be very, very high. Now start assessing the arguments for and against (criminalizing) abortion, giving each their due weight. You should only act socially as if abortion were wrong, if and only if that bar is met.
If our object is to guide those who have doubts about the permissibility of abortion, the quadrilemma fails. Though seemingly powerful and based on a relatively sound principle, on closer inspection the quadrilemma at best will only bring doubters back to where they started. When acting socially, we can use Derksen’s principle, but we have to set the bar based on what is actually being debated and what the stakes are. That means actually doing the necessary work and not relying on the quadrilemma’s easy way out.
1Derksen cites a different work by Kraft than the one provided in the link. This presumably accounts for the slight variation in the order of the options.
It should also be noted that neither Derksen nor Kraft make an explicit distinction in their respective articles between acting personally and acting socially. However, given the level of wrongdoing they believe abortion is, along with the levels of wrongness readers are supposedly committing given any option other than the first, it seems clear they expect readers to act socially based on their findings.
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