According to Tooley, the potentiality of the fetus or infant to become a
person is irrelevant. He seeks to show this irrelevancy by the example
of a kitten that is injected with a special serum developed by scientists
to enhance and develop super-feline rationality (Tooley 1972, p. 60).
This serum can turn any young Boots, Whiskers, or Snowball in your
neighborhood into a being as rational as Salem the talking cat from the
TV show
available and you also have your three cuddly kittens nearby.
Would you have an obligation to turn Boots, Whiskers, and Snowball
into talking cats? It might be quite kind to do so, but you certainly would
not be obliged to do so. You have no duty to chase around the entire
neighborhood collecting all stray kittens and changing them all into
rational cats, even though (after the invention of the serum) all kittens
are potentially rational.
To see how the kitten example is relevant to the potentiality of the
fetus and newborn, Tooley introduces a distinct consideration which he
calls the “symmetry principle.” The symmetry principle is, “if it is not
seriously wrong to refrain from initiating such a causal process, neither is
it seriously wrong to interfere with such a process” (Tooley 1972, p. 58).Similarly, consider two cases (Rachels 1975). Smith enters the bathroom
of his young nephew and drowns the child to get an inheritance. Jones
has exactly the same plan, is going into the bathroom to drown the child,
but watches with delight as the child hits his head and begins to drown
right in front of him. Jones could easily save the child but doesn’t lift a
fi nger, and the young nephew drowns. Jones and Smith are equally at
fault, even though one did something and the other did nothing. One
man performed an act of commission, the other man an act of omission;
but there is no important difference between the two.
Similarly, if you do not inject the kitten with special serum, a functioning
rational animal, a talking cat, will not come to be. If you have an abortion
or destroy a newborn, a functioning rational animal, a human person, will
not come to be. Not injecting the kitten is an act of omission—the failure
to start a process that will have as its end the existence of a functioning
rational animal. Having an abortion or destroying an infant is an act of
commission—interrupting a process that will have as its end the existence
of a functioning rational animal.
According to the moral symmetry principle, there is no important
moral difference between act and omission, between not starting a
process and interrupting a process. We certainly do not seem to have
an obligation to make all kittens rational, thus we have no obligation to
let all human fetuses or all human infants develop into rational animals
(Tooley 1972, p. 62). Since the human infant and the human fetus have
at best the potential to become functioning adult persons (some of course
never make it), the right to life position fails if based on the potentiality
principle.
In sum, there is no duty to turn potential rational beings into actually
rational beings. Further, there is no moral difference between not starting
a process and interrupting a process that is already started (the symmetry
principle). So, since there is nothing wrong with not making potentially
rational beings (the kittens) into rational beings (Salem), so too there
is nothing wrong with interrupting the process whereby a potentially
rational being (the fetusSabrina the Teenage Witch. Let’s imagine such serum is readily
