Jasper Zhu '21 — Darwin's Case for Legalizing Abortion

Darwin's Case for Legalizing Abortion

Jasper Zhu ’21

On May 28th, 2019, the Supreme Court ruled to strike down a portion of the Indiana State legislature prohibiting the practice of abortions on the grounds of the race, sex, and mental status of the fetus in the case Box v. Planned Parenthood. In response to the ruling, Justice Clarence Thomas filed an opinion detailing his disagreement with this ruling grounded in an explanation of the history of eugenics (Farley). Particularly, he characterized abortion as a tool to “achieve eugenic goals” (Supreme Court of the US). Regardless of the accuracy or validity of his analysis of eugenics, his argument took on a distinctively Darwinist tone; by critiquing Margaret Sanger, the pioneer of Planned Parenthood, and her view that the lack of birth control caused the “spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all,” Thomas grounds his argument in a discussion of diversity in the human species and abortion’s harm towards that diversity (Sanger). This view seems to suggest that the practice of abortions harms a species’s overall survivability under a Darwinist paradigm. However, Darwin’s nuanced interpretation of species invalidates the argument proposed by Thomas and actually constructs a defense for the legality of abortions from the perspective of the individual.

Darwin rejects the idea that the human species is one united front with common goals for the whole population and characterizes the use of taxonomical labels as a means of tracing the lineage of certain individual genes. Darwin never provides an explicit definition for a species and instead admits to the inability to come to an agreement on the meaning of that term in the scientific community (Darwin 106). Regardless, he asserts that each species originates as a variety first and then at some arbitrary moment becomes a species. The vague delineation between these two classifications allowed Darwin to conclude that “no line of demarcation can be drawn between species” (116). Thus, in Darwin’s opinion, no matter what definition of species is used, it still is not a natural phenomenon; taxonomical labels are categorically artificially created. This rejection of the natural formation of species seems contradictory to the extensive usage of this term by Darwin in his writing. However, Kevin Padian from UC Berkeley explains that although the idea is artificial, it still serves a purpose in Darwin’s biological investigation. The latter uses genealogical groupings as a means of tracing the different organisms to a common lineage or a common ancestor (Padian 362). In other words, under Darwin’s paradigm, not only are species not a natural demarcation and therefore the members within it should not have an allegiance to one another, its existence actually helps scientists trace genetic material back to a certain individual organism. Therefore, when Darwin mentions that “the more diversified in structure the descendants from any one species can be rendered, the… more their modified progeny will increase,” it would be more accurate to interpret that as the diversity of the offspring of one original organism rather than the diversity of the group as a whole (77). Though Thomas’s critique on abortion and its influence on diversity has some grounding in Darwinist literature, it fails to take account for Darwin’s nuanced usage of species. Rather than suggesting that species as a whole should work together to preserve their own genetic diversity and strive for survival, Darwin believed that species themselves are not natural phenomena and thus do not have collective objectives.

Not only are humans not one united front, but they also actively rival each other for survival under the idea of competition within the theory of evolution. When defining the idea of a “struggle for existence” in The Origin of Species, Darwin brings up several examples. In one instance, he describes two dogs on the verge of starvation as truly having to “struggle with each other which shall get food and live” (50). In another example, Darwin brings up the mistletoe growing on a tree having to compete with each other because “if too many of these parasites grow on the same tree, it languishes and dies” (50). A shared characteristic between these two examples of struggling for existence is that the competition occurs between beings of the same species, suggesting that Darwin’s paradigm for the conflict in the natural world is often between similar, not different organisms. Particularly in the example of the mistletoe, he specifies that the parasites can only in a “far-fetched sense be said to struggle with [the] trees” (50). Darwin rejects the idea that competition is something that occurs between drastically different organisms, claiming it is rather something that happens between species. Therefore, it would be misguided to claim that humans are competing with other animals to maintain their survival as the competition in effect exists between the humans themselves. Austrian zoologist Konrad Lorenz specifically points out that the idea of a struggle for existence being one between different species is a common misconception (Lorenz 20). Lorenz explains that conflicts seen between species are a result of self-defense rather than a natural process (21). As the examples provided by Darwin illustrated, conflicts and competitions actually impact how evolution occurs between similar species. Lorenz goes a step further and explains how interspecies conflict actually “fulfils a species-preserving function” (21). Thus, even if Thomas’s understanding of species were correct, competition and struggle between different people still would stand as the most desirable outcome. Darwin’s analysis on evolution demonstrates that regardless of what interpretation of species used, struggle and conflict between people, rather than unity, remains the most desirable and natural outcome.

In the competition for survival, overpopulation operates as a selective pressure, suggesting that mechanisms for population control would be evolutionarily beneficial. Thomas Malthus first proposed the idea that food could be the limiting factor in human development. In An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus points out that “population when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio” while food and “subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio” (qtd. in Darwin 39). He attributes the greater speed of population growth to the reason as to why there will be a cap on the development of human beings. Darwin’s idea of natural selection is the result of Malthus’s theory being “applied to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms” (Darwin 97). Since more individuals are produced than the number that could survive, there “must in every case be a struggle for existence” between different animals of the same species (51). Darwin’s thinking suggests that the greater rate of birth compared to the production of food will inevitably cause overpopulation among humans, forcing them to compete for subsidence in an effort to survive. Darwin then elaborates how the “geometrical tendency to increase must be checked by destruction” (52). Therefore, from the perspective of the individual, any mechanism that could function as a source of destruction would be beneficial to their chances of living. Given the constant looming danger of overpopulation, people should desire measures of population control as it maximizes the person’s survivability.

One methodology for limiting population growth comes in the form of abortions. In the 1950s, China attempted to promote the use of birth control and abortions through “the injection of…Malthusian threat into public discussions” to preserve the “interest of the nation as a whole,” laying out a clear relationship between abortion and Malthusian and Darwinist theories (Tien 39). From a purely intuitive standpoint, legal abortions represent the opportunity for someone to eliminate potential children. For the people not related to the person who got the abortion, they now do not need to worry about the competition between their own offspring and the would-be child. Indeed, in a paper that studied the fertility rate, a measurement that took into account families that had an abortion but proceeded to give birth to a child later on, in the United States in the early 1970s, the researcher found that the rate dropped by about 0.15 births in a two year period (Tietze 124). This characteristic is not unique just to the United States or the West. A separate study examining the role of abortions in Japan and China noted that abortions were effective in reducing the birthrate in Japan from 1947 to 1961, and concluded that “if attempted on a nation-wide basis, it would be likely to offer China relief from population pressure” as well (Tien 43). In retrospect, such a conclusion can clearly be validated with the imposition of China’s one-child policy, which resulted in a sharp decline of birthrates in the country. These studies validate the intuitive reasoning that legalizing of abortions can alleviate the selective pressure of overpopulation. In fact, an observational study on the experience of 116 countries even went as far as concluding that abortions should be legalized and widely practiced if a country wished to reach a growth rate of less than 1% (Mumford). The abortions play a significant part in alleviating overpopulation, and as a consequence, its role as a selective pressure. Thus, each person could increase their chance for survival if they pushed for abortions and its legalization.

Darwin’s interpretation of species and his theory of survival of the fittest justify the legalization of abortion from the perspective of the individual. Although Justice Thomas intended to use the possible damage abortions have on diversity — and by extension evolutionary viability — to oppose its legality, he failed to recognize the nuanced usage of species by Darwin as a tool to trace back to an individual genealogy rather than a united group of organisms. The focus on individuality refuted Thomas’s argument as the role of diversity serves to strengthen each person’s survivability, something not impacted by legal abortions since individuals can choose to not undergo the operation. Not only is there not a united species identity, but Darwin’s thinking also suggests that similar organisms are actually rivals with each other in the fight for survival. Coupled with the threat of overpopulation, legalizing abortions clearly is an evolutionarily advantageous decision for an individual operating under a Darwinist framework. Ultimately, by trying to appeal to the vague references a human species, Justice Thomas laid the groundwork for another argument defending abortions and serves as a reminder that noble efforts to advance human-kind may just be further misguided generalizations.

Works Cited

Darwin, Charles. Darwin, edited by Philip Appleman. 3rd ed., New York, Norton, 2001.

Farley, Audrey. “We Still Don’t Know How to Navigate the Cultural Legacy of Eugenics.” Longreads, June 2019, longreads.com/2019/06/19/ we-still-dont-know-how-to-navigate-the-cultural-legacy-of-eugenics/.

Lorenz, Konrad. On Aggression. Translated by Marjorie Kerr Wilson, London, Routledge, 2002.

Mumford, S D, and E Kessel. “Role of abortion in control of global population growth.” Clinics in obstetrics and gynaecology, vol. 13,1 (1986): 19-31.

Padian, Kevin. “Charles Darwin’s Views of Classification in Theory and Practice.” Systematic Biology, vol. 48, no. 2, june 1999, pp. 352-64, https://doi.org/10.1080/106351599260337.

Sanger, Margaret. The Pivot of Civilization. Project Gutenberg, 2008.www. gutenberg.org/files/1689/1689-h/1689-h.htm.

Tien, H. Yuan. “Induced Abortion and Population Control in Mainland China.” Marriage and Family Living, vol. 25, no. 1, 1963, pp. 35–43. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/349006.

Tietze, Christopher. “The Effect of Legalization of Abortion on Population Growth and Public Health.” Family Planning Perspectives, vol. 7, no. 3, 1975, pp. 123–127. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2133730.

United States, U.S. Supreme Court (U.S.). Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, Inc. Docket no. 18-483, 28 May 2019. Casetext, casetext.com/case/box-v-planned-parenthood-of-indiana-andkentucky-inc.