The public debate over abortion rights has a long history, with seemingly intractable differences. Some of the most common arguments on both sides have obvious flaws that I won’t belabor here. However, once we get past the bad arguments, there are still two points of view that deserve defending, and there are good arguments for both points of view:

1. Abortion is bad (wrong / immoral), therefore one shouldn’t have an abortion.

2. Abortion is permissible (my choice / none of your business), therefore abortion should be legal.

From the form of this, it should be apparent that there is no contradiction here. Consider:

A. Eating nothing but bacon is bad (wrong / immoral), therefore one shouldn’t eat nothing but bacon.

B. Eating nothing but bacon is permissible (my choice / none of your business), therefore eating nothing but bacon should be legal.

Admittedly, some people would not admit that “wrong” in A means the same thing as “wrong” in 1; some other people would not grant B any more than they would grant 2. I will assume that anyone in the latter category is irredeemably evil and not to be bothered with, and I will put off arguing against the former category for now (A preview: Sidgwick’s “what one has most reason to do” applies equally well to all sorts of actions).

Way back in 1971, Judith Jarvis Thompson pretty much solved the legal question in “A Defense of Abortion“. Basically, she showed that even if the fetus has all of the rights of a full-grown human, you still should have no obligation to house it inside your body; there are numerous justifications for this on the basis of rights.

The moral question isn’t even hard, depending on your views of morality. I’m a virtue ethicist, so here’s how it goes:

The significant concern in any moral question is “how does this impact my ability to live the good life?” which can usually be addressed simply by asking “what effect will this have on my character?” In general, killing people is bad; it has a bad effect on one’s character which damages one’s emotional well-being and one’s ability to perform well in future interactions. By extension, anything sufficiently like murder is also bad for one’s character. One shouldn’t set cats on fire, even if cats aren’t “conscious” or “moral agents” or whatever; it’s bad for oneself. By the same token, you probably shouldn’t go around waving pictures of aborted fetuses or mutilated cattle - it’s bad for people to see that sort of thing (I fear people who can wave around those pictures every week without getting sick). Of course, character isn’t the only concern when having an abortion - it can have a lasting negative effect on one’s biology as well.

To highlight this point, a philosopher (whose name I can’t remember at the moment; feel free to comment) pointed out a situation where the same nurses in charge of disposing of aborted fetuses had to care for premature babies. The nurse was asked to treat the aborted fetus as a piece of biological goo, an object to be thrown away; then, she was asked to care for babies that look exactly the same as the aborted fetuses. Anyone who understands how character works should at least see the putative moral issue in this scenario.

Abortion is unconditionally bad. This might seem crazy to say, a utilitarian, but the greek insight of Tragedy is relevant here. Yes, there will be situations where exercising your right to an abortion will be the best action to take. Nonetheless, expect it to do irreparable harm to your body and character. I’ll tell you the same thing about killing in self-defense, fighting in a war, and various other necessary evils. Nearly every situation has a best option, but not every situation has a good option. And in those cases where abortion is the best option, being screamed at by people waving gory pictures only makes it worse.

And so we see that abortion should be legal, and that abortion is bad, and that screaming anti-abortion people are jerks.