94. Christopher Kaczor | Abortion

Can abortion be wrong even if ‘personhood’ is unsettled, and what do moral realism and parental obligations imply about bodily autonomy arguments?My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy.1. GuestChristopher Kaczor is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University and his work has focused on bioethics, theology, and more.2. Interview SummaryChristopher Kaczor argues that the abortion debate leans heavily on competing accounts of ‘personhood’, but that settling personhood isn’t strictly necessary for evaluating abortion: the discussion can proceed using arguments that don’t presuppose a verdict about fetal personhood (for example, a ‘future like ours’ approach). He also notes the lack of consensus among defenders of abortion on what personhood consists in, and he surveys influential proposals that place personhood only after birth (or later, given psychological capacities). In parallel, he presses a biological/moral baseline: embryos, fetuses, and newborns count as human beings, and Kaczor defends the claim that all human beings have basic rights, centrally including a right to life, while distinguishing that status from gametes (living cells but not human beings).Friction then explores a gradualist or developmental picture, where moral status increases across gestation and reaches “full” standing at birth. Kaczor labels this the gradualist view and rejects it as implausible: physiological or psychological development is not ordinarily treated as what makes it more permissible to kill younger humans than older ones. He also challenges “cumulative-threshold” reasoning (the “rope” idea): if birth, viability, and sentience are each irrelevant to basic moral status, piling them up doesn’t generate moral standing. Kaczor allows that some rights sensibly track maturity (driving, voting), but he contrasts these with basic immunities—like not being intentionally killed, tortured, or enslaved—that don’t depend on the agent’s developed capacities. He reinforces the point with a historical warning about dividing humanity into those with basic dignity and those without, and he treats birth as an arbitrary line for that purpose.On bodily-autonomy arguments, Friction asks about Judith Jarvis Thomson’s violinist-style reasoning, and Kaczor argues that the analogy breaks because parents have special obligations toward their own dependent children that don’t apply to strangers; he extends the critique to the “burglar” analogy by emphasizing the difference between an innocent dependent child and a culpable intruder. To support the idea that obligations aren’t always voluntarily assumed, he offers cases where moral responsibility arises from circumstance (for example, encountering a newborn in danger) and discusses parental responsibilities (including an adoption example) as responsibilities that can bind even without a chosen commitment. The interview also detours into metaethics: Friction articulates a stance/attitude-based way of hearing moral claims, while Kaczor diagnoses this as emotivism and defends moral realism—some acts are wrong independently of anyone’s preferences—and he argues that thoroughgoing subjectivism struggles to make sense of widespread moral condemnation (e.g., of rape or racism).3. Interview Chapters00:00 - Introduction01:08 - Persons02:59 - Other categories05:50 - Vagueness07:27 - Choosing a precisification09:40 - Argument from history12:14 - Gradual view17:23 - My preferences22:36 - Connection to the mother25:53 - Duties to others28:42 - Responsibilities34:35 - Moral realism35:07 - Preferences and morality39:20 - Understanding the claims43:07 - Moral naturalism45:18 - Subjectivist commitments47:32 - Moral facts and motivation51:40 - Consistency53:40 - Variation on the violinist56:01 - Issues for the violinist argument59:50 - Double-effect1:03:20 - Arbitrariness1:07:23 - A Defense of Abortion1:11:05 - Aggressors1:13:51 - Framing problems1:18:05 - Restatement of my view1:22:51 - Value of philosophy1:24:20 - Conclusion This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fric.substack.com/subscribe