Preview-
It is my hope in writing this essay to help improve the understanding of the potentiality argument. I will not presume to claim that this essay is authoritative on the subject, or even that I am some authority to be regarded as infallible. I only wish to improve the usage of the argument for the benefit of both sides.
Background-
My education was begun in rural America, in a public school system, and the institutional portion of it ended at a two-year college without a degree. During and since that time, I have and continue to read voraciously, and also write, mostly on internet chat forums in debate topic threads. I think the writing style and content of this essay will adequately demonstrate that I am literate and at least adequately informed on the topic.
Philosophically, I am a deist, specifically a Christian theist. While I was raised by Witnesses, I consider myself a fundamentalist as I no longer attend any organized religious services. I remain largely in agreement with many of the Witnesses articles of faith, but am at variance with some things, and feel no need to reveal them here. It is not my place, nor my prerogative, to judge the faith of others.
My position on abortion is that it is a taking of life that falls short, however minutely, of murder. I feel that this position is well-supported in the Old Testament (OT hereafter). Pregnant women who lost children to injury were to be compensated by the injurer, but that one was not put to death, as was the case with those who killed the born. Abortions performed in the Talmud even had some rules set in place regarding what was and was not acceptable, and those limitations also support the OT and the idea that killing a fetus is a serious matter that is not quite murder.
Clearly, I support the potentiality argument as an attack on abortion-as-contraception, IE the killing of a fetus for reasons other than the health of the mother or for reasons of detected abnormalities of the fetus, a situation that could not exist in Biblical times.
Pro-
The potentiality argument has two strong points:
Left to its own devices, a fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus (the unborn hereafter) will become a baby.
(50% of fertilized eggs and 10% of actual pregnancies result in spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) however. The actual chance of a fertilized egg becoming a human if unmolested is 45%, and for an embryo onward is roughly 90%.
Source:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001488.htm)
At all stages of development, the unborn have fully human DNA.
Certainly there is no question that a natural pregnancy can have but two end results: a human baby, or a miscarriage of some form. Therefore every pregnancy has the potential to result in a new human life. That potentiality is real cannot be seriously debated. Its significance is the only point of attack for those seeking to defeat potentiality. So is it significant?
Consider that almost no form of abortion is going to occur before the first mitosis, the point at which (see footnote 1) the odds of a successful pregnancy jump from a respectable 45% to an almost impregnable (forgive me) 90%. Now 45% potentiality is pretty strong, almost even odds. 90% odds you can get rich on in Vegas, by betting half your stake every time. Clearly this potentiality is by no means a weak and uncertain thing. Even the morning after pill (MAP hereafter) will be hard-pressed to face just a lone zygote, as first mitosis generally occurs within 30 hours (Source:
http://cats.med.uvm.edu/cats_teachingmod/embryology/1_3/week_1/zygote_divide.html) and the MAP is effective (and prescribed) up to 120 hours after intercourse. Unless literally taken the morning after, the MAP is denying life to an embryo that had a 90% chance of being a human.
45% is near-even odds, and saying that 90% is not statistically significant is simply not a defensible position.
Con-
Potentiality has its weak points as well:
By definition it is not actuality.
45%-90% is not a sure thing.
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. This common wisdom eloquently states that that which is evident and real holds more intrinsic value than that which is hoped for or expected. That this weakens potentiality is undeniable, but it does not dismiss it entirely. It does make the unborn hold less intrinsic value than the born, but only by a small margin. That margin is sufficient to extend certain liberties and privileges to the mother, such as expressing a preference to her life over the unborn in the event of a medical emergency by aborting to preserve her life due to necessity, but it is not sufficient to evaporate all right to life of the unborn.
The weakness in potentiality means that even a late-term abortion of a healthy fetus by a healthy mother is not murder, but something just short of it.
Conclusion
What this means to the abortion debate is that the pro-life side cannot claim that abortion is murder, and cannot name those who procure or perform abortions as murderers. In situations where the mother is not threatened by the unborn, the choice to abort should be rightly held as abominable, but not as murder. Taking away the m-word could have a very positive effect on the pro-life movement, as it would remove the sense of desperation felt by some unfortunates who feel compelled by their flawed understanding of the situation to take violent action to stem what they see as a form of genocide against the most helpless members of their society, while leaving behind a valid justification for regarding abortion-as-contraception as being morally repugnant.
On the pro-choice side, a willingness to listen to the pro-life side might be cultivated by not hearing the term murderer bandied about as a descriptor of their actions. This could lead to a voluntary reduction in the use of abortion-as-contraception due to increasing acceptance of the fetus as something nearly human, instead of as a clinically distanced clump of cells. It seems this term was invented to defeat the flawed potentiality=reality argument, and in so doing, stripped all humanity from the unborn, tearing away any social stigmata attached to their unnecessary deaths.
Abortion-as-contraception could become extremely unpopular even to those who support the right to abortion for unfortunate necessities by restoring a measure of humanity to the unborn by eliminating the pro-choice sides need to dehumanize them into clumps of cells to defeat spurious murder allegations.
The pro-life sides polarization of this issue with rigid insistence that abortion is murder is a self-defeating tactic. It is my hope that improving their understanding of potentiality will allow them to moderate their views in good conscience and remove the need for the pro-choice side to dehumanize the unborn. Dehumanization opens the door to atrocity, and the fate of millions has been atrocious indeed.
Abortion is not murder. Its not a wonderful thing, or even a good thing, and I cant imagine that anyone thinks it is more than a necessary evil. Abortion-as-contraception is about as close to murder as one can get morally speaking, and it should be socially abhorred. But calling it murder is counter-productive in the worst possible way, as the dehumanizing defense strips away any protective instinct society might otherwise retain.
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