Let us begin with some lexicography: the words embryo, fetus, and baby. Embryo and fetus are medical terms. An embryo is a product of conception more organized than just a cluster of cells but not

15. ABORTION

Let us begin with some lexicography: the words embryo, fetus, and baby. Embryo and fetus are medical terms. An embryo is a product of conception more organized than just a cluster of cells but not yet recognizable as a member of the species. A fetus is a further stage of the organism but one not yet born. There is no precise, objectively specifiable moment at which a cluster of cells becomes an embryo and the embryo a fetus. But there are certain relatively clear cases.

Take the cases of an IUD and a morning-after pill. Both of those prevent a fertilized egg that has become a cluster of cells from becoming attached to the mother's uterus. The cells are then expelled and the result looks like spotting from the woman's period. The cluster of cells is not yet an embryo.

The embryo turns into a fetus – a recognizable form of the human species – at some time between eight and twelve weeks. The fetus at this point cannot exist outside the woman's body until, at the very least, several weeks later. An embryo then is not recognizable as a form of the species and cannot have an existence separate from the mother's body. Once the fetus is born, it is called a baby.

The terms embryo and fetus call up a medical context, in which the issues are medical issues. An abortion from the medical perspective is a surgical procedure. If an embryo is aborted in the seventh week, a living, organized group of cells that is not a recognizable form of the species has been removed from the uterus, and it ceases to exist as a living entity outside the uterus. Using words like embryo and fetus keeps things in the domain of medical procedures, where the issues are medical. Using the term baby imposes a different form of conceptualization. A baby is an independently existing human being, not just an unrecognizable group of the mother's cells that might be subject to a medical procedure.

Defenders of the morality of abortion are usually defenders of early abortion: abortion of the embryo or of a fetus well before it is viable outside the womb, usually in the first trimester. That is, they are defenders of the morality of removing from a mother a group of cells that is not an independent, viable, and recognizable human being.

Opponents of abortion use the word baby to refer to the cluster of cells, the embryo, and the fetus alike. The very choice of the word baby imposes the idea of an independently existing human being. Whereas cluster of cells, embryo, and fetus keep discussion in the medical domain, baby moves the discussion to the moral domain.

The issue of the morality of abortion is settled once the words are chosen. The purposeful removal of a cell group from the mother that does not constitute an independently existing, viable, or even a recognizable human being cannot be "murder." The word "murder" is not defined as such a medical procedure. The purposeful killing of a "baby" – an independently existing human being – can be "murder."

Is an abortion in the first trimester, say, in the seventh week, merely a surgical procedure that is morally neutral, and perhaps even moral if it is beneficial to the mother? Or is it the murder of a baby? The answer one gives depends on how one frames the situation and, correspondingly, on what word he or she uses – "embryo" or "baby."

When there is more than one possible framing of the situation, is there a right framing? Is there a single right way to conceptualize abortion? Both sides agree that there is a right framing, but they disagree as to which the right framing is. But both sides agree the answer is a moral one, and that it is a moral stance that chooses the right framing. These views are held with very deep moral conviction and sincerity on both sides; in many cases they are so deeply held that they are part of one's identity.

Interestingly, the choice of framing is not independent of politics and political morality. Catholics aside (religion is another, very relevant matter), liberals think of abortions and talk about them in terms of medical procedures, while conservatives think and talk about them in terms of killing babies. It could be that this is a historical accident, but I don't think so. I think it has everything to do with the two moral systems, those of the Strict Father and the Nurturant Parent.

What inclines me to this view is the attitude of pro-life advocates on the death penalty and on programs for reducing America's astronomically high rate of infant mortality, the highest in the industrialized world. Most pro-life advocates favor the death penalty. Most pro-life advocates do not support government programs for reducing infant mortality through, say, prenatal and postnatal care programs for impoverished mothers.

Indeed, some cynical liberals have even questioned the sincerity of pro-life advocates as not really being in favor of "life" as an absolute, since they support the death penalty. Other liberals have questioned the morality of pro-life advocates who want to save the lives of some unborn babies (those who would be aborted) and not save the lives of other unborn babies (the great many who die of inadequate pre-and postnatal care). To a liberal, it is both illogical and immoral for someone to want to save the life of an unborn baby whose mother does not want it, but not to want to save the life of a baby whose mother does want it.

I do not question the sincerity of pro-life advocates on the issue of abortion. I have met many of them, and their moral position seems completely sincere. But when I mention the death penalty, that is seen to be irrelevant and another matter completely. And when I mention pre- and postnatal care, they say they hadn't thought of it, but maybe it might be a good idea, though maybe not if the government does it. But they do not, with the fervor with which they oppose abortion, then go out and support pre- and postnatal care programs.

I do not think such opinions are either irrational or insincere. I think they are natural concomitants of having a conservative worldview, a Strict Father morality. Think back for a moment to the beginning of Chapter 9, where I laid out the major categories of moral actions for conservatives. So far as I can tell, those are the primary categories in terms of which conservatives naturally categorize actions as moral or not. Those categories do not mention life and death as primary criteria in themselves. Issues of life and death are seen as moral or not based on other criteria. The death penalty falls under Category 3, upholding the Morality of Reward and Punishment.

On the basis of those categories, conservatives support the death penalty and oppose social programs, for the reasons I gave above. Programs for pre- and postnatal care are social programs, and so they are opposed by conservatives. Moreover, conservatives would naturally assume that such care was the responsibility of parents. If poor parents could not afford adequate pre- and postnatal care, then it would be irresponsible for them to have children. For conservatives, the issue of infant mortality due to inadequate care is one of individual responsibility, not government action. It comes under moral action Category 2 – self-discipline and self-reliance.

The death penalty and pre- and postnatal care simply fall, for these reasons, under different primary categories of moral action in the conservative moral system. But what about abortion? Why should conservatives tend to categorize as a "baby" what liberals see as an embryo?

Consider for a moment who is most likely to want an abortion. There are two classical kinds of cases: Unmarried teenage girls who have been having sex but have been careless or ignorant in the matter of birth control; women who want careers or independent lives and whose deepest aspirations would be destroyed by having a child at this point in their lives. There are, of course, many other kinds of cases – victims of rape or incest, for example, and women with a family already and neither the money nor the strength to raise more children. But the first two are the stereotypes.

Let us start with the first case. According to Strict Father morality, an unmarried teenage girl should not be having sex at all. It is a moral weakness, a lack of self-discipline, a form of immoral behavior, and she deserves punishment. She has to be responsible for the consequences of her actions if she is to learn from her mistakes. An abortion would simply sanction her immoral behavior. She would be "getting away with it." That is unconscionable, immoral – a violation of moral-action Category 2 (self-discipline and responsibility for one's actions).

Here is how Marvin Olasky, a major conservative writer, puts it (Wall Street Journal, March 22, 1995): "Unmarried lust and abortion go together like a horse and carriage.... men and women who shack up are nine times more likely to engender abortion than their married counterparts.... anything that increases promiscuity and discourages marriage... increases abortion."

Now the second case. In the Strict Father model of the family, a woman's role is raising children. The moral order places men in leadership roles, not women. Women can work to help out the family and to help out men in business. But women should not be choosing careers or an independent careerist lifestyle over their natural role as mothers in a family. When a women chooses an abortion in order to place a career above motherhood, she is violating the moral order and challenging the entire Strict Father model. Abortion in such a case is immoral by moral-action Category 1 (self-defense of the Strict Father family model, where the father has authority) and Category 5 (upholding the moral order, with men ranked above women).

In both of the classical stereotypical cases, abortion violates Strict Father morality. Strict Father morality therefore incorporates very strong reasons for categorizing abortion as immoral. But categorizing abortion as immoral fits the "baby" frame, not the morally neutral medical frame. Thus, classical Strict Father morality correlates naturally with conceptualizing the object of abortion as a "baby"; once that is done, it becomes difficult if not impossible to classify abortion as anything but baby killing.

Once Strict Father morality chooses opposition to abortion and, with it, the use of the "baby" frame, that choice functions to reinforce the Strict Father model itself. A primary function of the Strict Father model is the protection of innocent children. Opposition to abortion provides an ideal opportunity to assert a protective function and justify Strict Father morality. What could be a more perfect model of a helpless, innocent child than a baby in the womb? What could be a more heinous crime than bloody murder? This reinforces Strict Father morality once you have it.

Once one classifies the object of an abortion as a "baby," the abortion becomes "baby killing" and it is natural for it to evoke deep and sincere moral outrage. Thus, as a conservative, it is completely natural to be morally outraged by abortion, to favor the death penalty, and to be opposed to government programs for pre- and postnatal care – all for different reasons.

One last thing. In this explanation, the crucial thing that forces an opposition to abortion and with it the use of the "baby" frame is the authority of men above women in Strict Father morality. In conservative feminism, as described below in Chapter 17, the authority of men over women is eliminated and the crucial condition for requiring opposition to abortion is not met. Thus, conservative feminists (both male and female) are not bound by the logic of their morality to be either pro-life or pro-choice. In short, the model predicts that there should be conservatives who are pro-choice, and that they should be those who do not rank men above women in the moral order.

At this point we must ask similar questions about liberals. Why do liberals support a woman's right to choose whether to have an abortion? Why is the liberal's object of nurturance the pregnant woman instead of the embryo or fetus or the cluster of cells? Why don't liberals use the "baby" classification, instead of the "fetus" one?

We saw that the conservative categories of moral action require conservative opposition to abortion in the two cases cited above. But the liberal categories of moral action work very differently. In Nurturant Parent morality, the teenage girl is "in trouble," she needs help and deserves empathy (moral-action Category 2 – helping). The last thing she needs is somebody bawling her out, telling her how bad she is, and that she needs to be punished. Just being in this position is about as much punishment as a person should reasonably have to take. She isn't ready to be a mother, she has her whole life ahead of her, and, quite reasonably, shouldn't have her aspirations ruined (moral-action Category 4 – self-development). She has plenty of time to have children and be a mother later when she can raise them properly. She should have the abortion if that's what she wants. There is nothing immoral about it.

Since there is nothing in the categories of liberal moral action that militates against the abortion and much that favors it, the categorization of the collection of cells as an embryo or fetus rather than as a baby is motivated, and, with it, the medical framing of the surgery. The story is pretty much the same for the career woman.

Liberals and conservatives, understandably, find each other's attitudes shocking. Conservatives, who cannot help but use the "baby" frame, find it hard to imagine anyone not using it and not thinking of abortion as baby killing. To a conservative, a woman making the choice to have an abortion is necessarily engaging in denial, finding an excuse for her own self-indulgence and for her immoral behavior and irresponsibility. Conservatives, given their moral system, cannot help but see it that way.

Liberals find the attitudes and actions of conservatives equally horrific. Conservatives are trying to ruin the lives of young girls in trouble and women trying to make a go of it in a man's world. They are hounding brave doctors and nurses who are working with diligence and courage to help those women. Their actions and their rhetoric encourage those who would threaten or even kill people who have dedicated their lives to helping women who desperately need them. They are encouraging a return to the days of dangerous back-alley abortionists. Given their moral system, liberals, too, cannot help but see it that way.

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