Abortion, some slippery slope arguments and identity over time

✍ Scribed by Clement Dore

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1989
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 706 KB
• Volume: 55
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0031-8116
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00355326

✦ Synopsis

The following is a version of the conservative's so-called "slippery slope" argument against abortion: "Infanticide is clearly seriously wrong. But there is no morally relevant difference between the neonate and the fetus just before it emerges from the womb. And so, too, for any stage of the developing fetus and the immediately preceding stage, until we slide all the way back to the newly fertilized egg (the zygote)."

A standard liberal response to this argument is that its advocate cannot prevent it from taking us all the way back to the sperm-egg pair, which will unite to form the zygote (the gamete pair), and, hence, that it proves more than some conservatives desire, namely, the extreme conservative conclusion that artificial contraception is seriously wrong. John T. Noonan is a moderate conservative, i.e., a conservative with respect to abortion but not artificial contraception. Noonan in effect tries to meet the envisaged liberal response in two ways: 1 (1) The zygote has the genetic code of the future human being which it will become if it is not destroyed, while the gamete pair does not. And this stops the slide back to the latter: because of its DNA, there is a morally relevant difference between killing the zygote and preventing conception by the use of contraceptives. (2) There is a high probability that the zygote, if not destroyed, will become a full-fledged human person; but the likelihood of any given sperm and any given ovum becoming a zygote is enormously small.

However, these replies are not impressive. The trouble with (1) is that DNA molecules per se make no moral claim on us. Otherwise, it would be wrong to brush one's teeth or wash one's face, thereby killing some DNA-inhabited cells. The DNA molecules which are contained in the zygote are, of course, different from those which are contained in