The key concepts that are necessary for this essay are deontolology and abortion as part of practical ethics. Deonotological ethics are most usually associated with Kant. Effectively it is a system whereby doing ones duty is morally right and the duty is arrived at by rational derivation of absolute moral truths. It is fundamental to the approach that the only morally good thing is the intention of the individual and nothing else, even the action itself or the consequences of the action. Kant famously uses the example of the grocer who is honest not because it might gain him more customers or because he believes it will lead to rewards in the afterlife, but because and only because it is his duty. This is an example of a deontologically moral action.

Abortion is deliberate termination of a pregnancy at some point between conception and birth. It is useful to know that three key stages of development are defined: Pre-embryo (conception-14 days), Embryo (14 days to 8 weeks) and Foetus (8 weeks onwards).

Abortion is one of the major issues in practical ethics, and raises key questions:

1. What is the moral state of a foetus?
2. How can we distinguish between a foetus and other stages (even infant and adult)?
3. When, if ever, is abortion morally justified?

To help us understand what a deontologist might say about the issue of abortion, let us examine the historical and philosophic context of the approach. Firstly, as with many ethical systems, it was an attempt to identify how we should act and to use in assessing the morality of oneself.

Deontology also arose during the age of reason, when Descartes wrote and the scientific revolution was taking place. Just as reason can be used to examine and derive a priori knowledge, Kant argued, so it could be used to discover a priori moral truths. These absolute truths would be above doubt and could solve many of the criticisms applied to previous ethical systems.

Another strongly attractive quality of reason applied to ethics is that all humans plainly have reason, Kant argued. Thus, he continued all of us would by pure reason arrive at the same absolute moral truths, solving ethical disagreements.

This discussion of why deontology was put forward point us to some of the advantages of the system. Foremost is the fact that the system can apply to everyone everywhere under all circumstances. In fact, it is key to the system that a moral truth must be 'universalisable'. This makes the system very fair, and eliminates any potential issues to do with making moral judgements, as one's duty is always the same, irrespective of circumstances or consequences, and so subjective judgement is not required.

As the moral law is reached by reason Kant believes that he has ensured that we will all agree on a common moral law. Thus everyone not only knows clearly what is moral and what is not, but everyone will believe the same things are moral. This is a very attractive prospect.

However, there are a number of arguments against the deontological perspective. The first is that the system does not judge the consequences of the action. In this example, if the duty is to preserve life, no account will be taken of any suffering of the mother of the child (e.g. what if the mother is a 13-year-old rape victim?)

A further weakness of the deontological approach is that it does not take account of other cultures. In the 16th century when the system was developed there was obviously much less awareness of other cultures, but today we must be aware that some moral principles are not universalisable across cultural barriers. For example, Catholic countries allow a medical procedure that will have the side effect of abortion if the mother's life will be saved (e.g. to remove a fallopian tube in the case of ectopic pregnancy). However the intent must not be to abort, the abortion must be an unfortunate side effect. In this example, Catholic countries do not allow modern procedures whereby doctors to remove the ectopic foetus without removing the fallopian tube (a far less radical surgery that will dramatically improve the chances of future conception) as this has a primary purpose of removing foetus. This shows us that the principle of preserving the mother's well being (as practised in the UK) is not universalisable to some other countries.

Principles concerned with abortion (e.g. life is always sacred) may also highlight another criticism of universalisation, namely that there may be a contradiction in will. This means a moral law that you would not like to be on the receiving end of yourself (for example in not being able to choose abortion in certain circumstances).

In it's specific application to abortion, deontology will also come across some issues in the 'grey areas'. For example if the principle is that life is sacred, when is a foetus alive? Is it at the point of conception as the Catholic Church decreed in the 17th century, or is it not until birth? Many people might argue in favour of one of the grey areas in between, but what developmental stage does a collection of cells become a human, and a human become a person? For dualists this leads to the issue of ensoulment. This is literally a discussion of when the soul is added to the body during the developmental process. Obviously this is a difficult thing to decide on for the purpose of law making where a boundary has to be drawn. A way around this is to say that potential life begins at conception and is thus sacred from that point on. However people have countered this by asking why not then make eggs and sperm protected in the same way? Taking it to a logical absurdity, your next meal might ultimately be potential human life!

This becomes even further involved if one is not a dualist, but believes that a person is just a very complex system of chemicals and electricity. Following this logic would mean that the same amount of respect must be given whether an adult or a foetus, or even an animal is involved. Carrying it further fire and weather also fit the definition of complex life-like systems, but maybe should not be accorded rights?

This leads us to the final argument against deontological ethics (in fact against all absolutist approaches). This simply asks what happens if the duties or principles clash? If the choice is to save the baby or the mother, who is chosen? Any absolutist approach will necessarily lead to moral paradoxes in the complexity of actual experience.

In the same way that a priori truths can never tell us anything about the real world, so too absolute moral truths cannot exist in reality, as they cannot always be true, they must be compromised by some circumstances.

Thus, in conclusion to the question what would a deontologist say about abortion we can say that whatever moral truths they use that they cannot answer the complex dilemmas surrounding abortion. That is not to say that the approach as a whole is wrong just because it does not work in one instance (e.g. preservation of life when have to choose mother or baby). Rather that any absolute moral principle will eventually face a circumstance where a subjective judgement has to be made, and thus perhaps a balance must be struck between absolutes and pragmatic approaches.

Tutor: Oliver McAdoo MA

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