Good news? Now fetal tissue can be used to treat a range of diseases once thought incurable. Andrew Kimbrell reported the news this way in The Human Body Shop:
Despite controversy over their effectiveness, fetal transplant operations are expected to continue and increase over the next few years. In fact, according to many in the medical community, Parkinson’s and diabetes are just two illnesses for which fetal tissue offers a potential cure. Researchers claim that fetal transplantation could potentially cure tens of millions of Americans.
Clearly, a good many Canadians will be affected by these procedures, and many of those are pro-life. Abortion is one thing, and relatively straightforward: killing is wrong, period. Euthanasia, too, seems straightforward, at least at first. But there the moral and medical minefield begins.
With fetal tissue transplants and products, we’re dealing with abortion at second and third hand. Why wouldn’t it be OK to take advantage of these new discoveries? What’s wrong? I’m not asking someone to have an abortion, I’m just trying to save a life.
Despite our intuitive misgivings, let us follow this argument a little further. Why not take advantage of it if you can? Don’s sulk and be dog-in-the-manger about abortion. Of course you’re opposed; so am I, no one more so. But consider; the abortions that produced these tissues were performed long ago and far away. There’s nothing you can do or could have done to prevent them. So let’s go on from there. You are almost certain to be cured. Go ahead, take it.
Beneath this argument is the old utilitarian fallacy. X is neither good nor bad in itself, it’s how it is used that makes it good or bad. We all see the lie when that is applied to euthanasia and abortion: some things actually are bad in themselves. But fetal tissue? Isn’t it morally neutral?
Of course not. The market is part of the support system for the procedure and the product. The buyer is a participant, an accomplice of the producer: no buyer, no product. It’s a bit like buying stolen goods: you didn’t commit the crime, you just got some stuff cheap (from a criminal).
Or imagine, fifty years ago, a shop selling “Cheap! Gold and silver recycled from old jewelry, fillings, wedding rings…” And you know that the gold and silver has come from Treblinka, Dachau, Belsen…Is it morally neutral?
The same basic principle operates here: the user is a participant. Is it right to benefit – even profit – from others’ misfortune? How can it matter whether the misfortune was a robbery or a murder?
A second argument tries to apply moral pressure as follows. Why not take advantage of the fetal tissue? Everybody else will. What makes you so special? Are you anxious to commit suicide? Think about your family, your responsibilities. This way the abortion will result in bringing good out of evil. Wouldn’t it be immoral if you passed up this chance to reclaim your life and reassure your family that you care about them?
Of course, this assumes that everything subsequent to the actual abortion is morally neutral and you’re carrying “old-fashioned” delicacy to an unreasonable degree. But the user is a participant; the buyer makes the seller possible.
Kimbrell predicts that the consequence of marketing-supply and demand—will inevitably occur: women will become pregnant and abort in order to make money.
Case 1, before the fact: “Why not? It’s there anyway. Why shouldn’t I make some money out of it? It’s not as if I’m charging for intercourse, just for what happens.”
Case 2, after the fact: “Any time you get knocked up you can always make a few bucks out of it, plus have the abortion free.”
Again, the user is a participant: no buyer, no seller, no sale. Already there is a brisk and well-documented trade in human organs sold by the poor to raise funds (treated at length in The Human Body Shop). As American ethicist William May notes:
If I buy a Nobel Prize, I corrupt the meaning of the Nobel Prize. If I buy an exemption from the draft, which was permitted in the Civil War, I corrupt the meaning of citizenship. If I buy and sell children, I corrupt the meaning of parenthood. And if I sell myself, I corrupt the meaning of what it is to be human.
