One might wonder how experimental psychology could possibly inform the abortion debate. Given that the debate largely rests on whether a fetus is a sentient agent that possesses well-developed mental capacities, psychology can speak to two major components of the abortion issue.
Psychology has made progress in determining (1) the factors that cause people to perceive mental capacities in other entities, and (2) the consequences that result from perceiving other entities to have mental capacities, both of which Kurt Gray, Nick Epley, Dan Wegner reviewed in an article in Trends in Cognitive Science. What's more, insights into the causes and consequences of mind perception are particularly relevant to two news stories on the topic.
The first is a report from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in the UK suggesting that the human fetus does not experience pain at 24 weeks old. This report cites evidence that connections in the fetal brain are not yet fully developed, the fetus lacks awareness, and the fetus is essentially in a state of sleep and lacks consciousness. Psychologically speaking, the perception of pain and the perception of another's capacity for suffering considerably influences people's judgments on whether abortion is permissible at 24 weeks. When people perceive an entity to have a mind, they tend to deem it worthy of moral care and concern. When people do not perceive an entity to have a mind, they typically don't afford it the same level of concern.
The second relevant story is on the enactment of abortion laws in the state of Missouri that require women electing abortion to be offered the opportunity to view the ultrasound of their fetus and listen to its heartbeat within 24 hours of the procedure. Missouri has now become one of at least 21 states to encourage or require that women electing abortion view the ultrasound of the fetus or listen to its heartbeat. Because a major factor that causes people to perceive an entity to have a mind is the appearance of humanlike features—such as a body or a heartbeat—laws of this nature may sway women toward viewing the fetus as mentally capable. Indeed, some legal scholars have argued against the constitutionality of these laws, suggesting they bias women against electing abortion because of a very simple psychological fact: The more something looks like a human, the more people treat it like a human.
Although psychology cannot determine whether abortion is right or wrong, it can help determine when people will view abortion as acceptable or unacceptable. Encountering perceptible features of a fetus such as an image of its body or the sound of its heartbeat likely cue people to perceive the fetus as having a mind, and the more people consider a fetus to have mental capacities, the more they will consider abortion to be wrong. On the other hand, the less people consider the fetus to have a mind, the more permissible they will view abortion.
Abortion has persisted as a topic of political debate because people perceive mind on a continuum, rather than perceiving entities as mindful or not mindful in a binary fashion. As the debate rages on, research that assesses where people lie on this continuum may be able to contribute usefully to the discussion.
