Abortion and the "Name the Trait" Argument

Repurposing an old standard

Christ and the children, from Christ the Saviour Orthodox Church in Harrisburg, PA.

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A common defense of ethical vegetarianism is the “name the trait” argument (henceforth NTTA), which goes as follows: given that it would be seriously wrong to torture and kill human beings for trivial benefits, then unless there is some morally relevant difference between human beings and non-human animals, it seems that it would also be seriously wrong to do these things to non-human animals. Given that none of the proposed differences (such as intelligence) seem to be morally relevant, it follows that it is seriously wrong to torture and kill animals for trivial benefits, as is done on factory farms.

As it happens, I don’t think the vegetarian NTTA is successful, since one could simply appeal to a natural-kinds view of personhood, which offers a principled reason for thinking that all human beings are persons, while non-human animals are not.¹ However, it occurs to me that one could repurpose the NTTA, turning it into an argument against abortion. This new argument would go as follows: given that it would be seriously immoral to kill an innocent human adult, then unless there is some morally relevant difference between human adults and unborn human beings, it seems that it would also be seriously wrong to kill unborn human beings. Given that none of the proposed differences (such as sentience, intelligence, or consciousness) seem to be relevant,² it follows that it is seriously wrong to kill unborn human beings.

Note that the aforementioned response to the vegetarian NTTA won’t work here, since unborn human beings belong to the same natural kind as adult human beings. Thus, it seems that the pro-life NTTA is plausibly sound.

1. I do oppose factory farming, but that’s for other reasons. I also don’t think it’s intrinsically wrong to kill and eat animals, which the vegetarian NTTA (if successful) would seem to imply.

2. Intelligence can’t be the morally relevant difference, since this would imply that it is permissible to kill the severely disabled, newborn infants, etc. (After all, pigs are more intelligent than some severely disabled people, and we don’t think it’s first-degree murder to kill pigs.) Ditto for Lockean views of personhood, according to which being a person requires that a being possess certain occurrent rational faculties: such accounts imply the permissibility of infanticide, along with many other horrific actions. Consciousness can’t be the morally relevant difference, since there are lots of conscious beings which lack personhood. Attempts to rehabilitate the consciousness standard (such as David Boonin’s) are unsuccessful (see Kaczor’s critique in The Ethics of Abortion). A similar line of reasoning applies against the sentience standard.