Is Abortion "Healthcare" and Does That Even Matter?

One common pro-choice argument goes something like this:

“Abortion is healthcare. Denying access to healthcare is wrong. It is therefore wrong to deny access to abortion.”

Unfortunately, not all abortion is “healthcare” on a satisfying definition of healthcare, and even if all abortions were instances of healthcare, that wouldn’t matter morally.

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The concept of “healthcare” is quite vague - there are several definitions of this term that spring to my mind. Is healthcare just any procedure performed by a medical professional? Abortion would be healthcare on that definition, but that’s a terrible definition. Medical professionals can administer procedures that don’t improve or maintain your health (cosmetic surgeries). It would be odd to call a procedure that does not maintain or enhance health “healthcare”.

Is healthcare any procedure that improves or maintains health? If so, then not all abortion is healthcare. It is not as if pregnancy necessarily harms the health of the mother. There is such a thing as a healthy pregnant woman. Pregnancy changes the body of the mother, it is true, but this does not necessarily amount to a diminution in her body’s health. Not all abortions improve or maintain the health of the mother.

The more serious issue is that healthcare is not always ethical. An immoral procedure can improve your health. Therefore, even if every abortion was an instance of healthcare, that wouldn’t entail that abortion is okay.

Suppose a medical professional recommends I hook myself up to a fancy device that pulls nutrients from the bodies of other people and then filters those nutrients into my body. Suppose that medical professional and I capture some homeless people and hook them up to this machine. If the medical professional and I use this machine to improve my health, we would be doing something wrong.

Would such a procedure be an instance of “healthcare”? If healthcare is any medical procedure administered by a medical professional that maintains or enhances health, then yes. Maybe you think this procedure is not healthcare because it is not necessary to maintain a sufficient level of health. If that’s the case, then many abortions are not instances of healthcare either; not all abortions are necessary to maintain a sufficiently high level of health. In any case, we can just imagine that I will suffer a debilitating illness unless I use the nutrient-sucking machine - thus, the use of the machine would be necessary to maintain a sufficient level of health - it would still be wrong to use the machine in that case.

“But the fancy machine procedure is morally wrong, and that’s why it’s not healthcare. Abortion is morally okay and so it’s healthcare.”

If you wish to use the term “healthcare” to only refer to those medical procedures which are morally permissible, be my guest. Unfortunately, this move makes the argument entirely powerless to convince anybody who isn’t already pro-choice:

“Denying access to abortion is wrong (abortion is not wrong) because abortion is healthcare (and it’s healthcare only because it’s not wrong)”.

Just in case the problem isn’t obvious:

P1: Abortion is healthcare (all healthcare is morally permissible).

P2: It’s wrong to restrict access to healthcare.

C: So it’s wrong to restrict access to abortion

If “healthcare” only refers to morally permissible procedures, then in calling abortion “healthcare” one simply asserts that abortion is permissible. You can make the claim that abortion is permissible the first premise of your argument if you want, but what’s the use of giving an argument at that point? The point of giving an argument (in this context, anyways) is to give reasons to believe some claim. You’re not giving any reasons to believe that abortion is permissible by just declaring that abortion is permissible in premise one of your argument. You ought to spend your time directly defending that claim with some other argument.