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3:20 p.m., March 20, 2003--To mark the 30th anniversary of the Supreme Court case of Roe v. Wade, two philosophers at UD debated the morality of the landmark decision Wednesday evening, March 19, in Gore Hall.
Katherin Rogers, associate professor of philosophy, argued that the Supreme Court’s decision was immoral, while Richard Hanley, assistant professor of philosophy at the University, maintained that the judgment was moral on all grounds.
Roe v. Wade, which was decided on January 22, 1973, legalized abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy, striking down dozens of state antiabortion statutes. The decision also gave states the right to intervene in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy to protect the woman and the “potential” life of the unborn child.
Rogers argued against the case by examining its sister case, Doe v. Bolton. She said this decision outlined very broad cases in which a woman could get an abortion in the third trimester, including physical, emotional, psychological and familial cases. She said a familial problem, like poverty, should not be a compelling reason to get an abortion.
“If [a fetus] might not be a person, but if it might be, we generally should consider the fact that it might have life over the fact that it might not,” she said. “If it might be a person, then you should only be able to have an abortion in the most extreme circumstances.
“In the last three months of pregnancy, it is very hard to disagree that a fetus is not a moral person. Infants are considered people, and babies in the last three months of pregnancy are essentially the same.”
Hanley interpreted the guidelines for the third trimester that Rogers denounced in a different way. He said the judges were not attempting to completely broaden the scope of instances in which a woman could get an abortion, but rather, they were trying to make a decision that did not force doctors to make judgments in too narrow a scope. By way of example, he said a woman who is unconsciously impregnated and does not awake until she has two months left in the pregnancy should be considered eligible for an abortion.
“The majority of abortions are first-trimester abortions,” he said. “In the case of a third-trimester abortion, what counts as a compelling reason is the deciding factor, which should be the woman’s health.
“Why not regard the Supreme Court as leaving a vagueness gap rather than saying its decision is not morally defensible?”
Rogers said women should have the right to choose, but questioned why unborn children are not given any rights.
“A woman absolutely has the right to bodily self-determination,” she said. “If the fetus is a person, it does, too. What we have here is a genuine conflict of bodily self-determination.
“The big person on the outside wants to kill the little person on the inside.”
Hanley said the woman’s interest should always take precedence over the unborn child’s because the courts have not determined the stage at which a fetus becomes a moral human.
“When a being that we’re not sure if it’s a human conflicts with a being that is human and its human interests, the latter should win out,” he said. “We’ve got to balance these competing interests as best we can.”
Rogers rebutted by defining what she believes to be the competing interests between an unborn child and a woman.
“When we look at the conflicts between the ‘non-person’ and the real person, we see the interest of the ‘non-person’ is their life,” she said. “On the other hand, there’s the woman who would like to see it dead because she is poor or does not want to raise a child.
“The majority of abortions in this country are elective, not for health reasons. The overridingly important interest is life.”
Rogers cited an example of a woman she read about in an article that did not want to have a child because she would get stretch marks. She also said that no one in the United States is prevented from giving up a child for adoption and wondered why this option was not addressed in Roe v. Wade or Doe v. Bolton.
“Doesn’t Roe v. Wade at least give women freedom and power?” she asked. “And we’d have even more power if we could kill our 3-year-olds and our aging parents. If it’s in your self-interest, it’s okay to kill anything.
“People governed by their own self-interests are not very lovable. In this way, Roe v. wade hasn’t done [women] any favors.”
Hanley maintained his previous point that no one knows when a fetus becomes a human, making the Supreme Court’s decision moral.
“Even in the third trimester, they don’t know that there is a person there, so their judgment maintains moral standards,” he said. “We don’t know when we began.”
The debate was sponsored by UD’s Department of Philosophy, Catholic Scholars, Women’s Studies Program, Department of Political Science and International Relations, the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice and the Legal Studies Program.
Article by Amie Voith, AS 2003
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