PHI 240: Ethics of Fetal Development & Abortion (Daniels)

One of the most famous, and most derided, arguments against the morality of abortion is the argument from potential, which maintains that the fetus' potential to become a person and enjoy the valuable life common to persons, entails that its destruction is prima facie morally impermissible. In this paper, the author will revisit and offer a defense of the argument from potential.

Abstract: On 22 January 2019, New York state passed the Reproductive Health Act (RHA), which specifies three circumstances under which a healthcare provider may perform an abortion in New York: (1) the patient is within twenty-four weeks of pregnancy, (2) the fetus is non-viable, or (3)
the abortion is necessary to protect the patient’s life or health. This paper will focus on these latter two circumstances. The author will first argue that any debate or discussion about (2) must go beyond the conventional debate about the ethics of abortion and incorporate, more appropriately, a discussion on euthanasia and the ethics of end-of-life care for nascent human life.

In ’Why Abortion is Immoral’, Don Marquis argues that abortion is wrong for the same reason that murder is wrong, namely, that it deprives a human being of an FLO, a ’future like ours,’ which is a future full of value and
the experience of life. Marquis’ argument rests on the assumption that the human being is somehow deprived by suffering an early death. The author argue that Marquis’ argument faces the ’Epicurean Challenge’.

In my essay, Why abortion is immoral, I criticised discussions of the morality of abortion in which the crucial issue is whether fetuses are human beings or whether fetuses are persons. Both argument strategies
are inadequate because they rely on
indefensible assumptions.

Francis Beckwith’s Defending life: a moral and legal case against abortion choice defends the pro-life position on moral, legal and political grounds. In this critical notice I
consider three key issues and argue that Beckwith’s treatment of each of them is unpersuasive.
Database: ProQuest Central

Judith Jarvis Thomson's argument in defense of abortion rests upon an analogy between a woman being pregnant and a person being plugged into a famous violinist who needs the use of that person's kidneys for nine months. Thomson's argument is sustainable over two objections concerning morally relevant differences between abortion and the violinist analogy related to the way the relationship ends. One objection is based on killing versus letting die, the other on intending versus foreseeing.
Database: ProQuest Central

I explore two thought-experiments in Judith Jarvis Thomson's important article, "A Defense of Abortion": the violinist example and the people-seeds example. I argue (contra Thomson) that you have a moral duty not to unplug yourself from the violinist and also a moral duty not to destroy a people-seed that has landed in your sofa. Nevertheless, I also argue that there are crucial differences between the thought-experiments and the contexts of pregnancy due to rape or to contraceptive failure. In virtue of these differences, it would not follow from my conclusions about the violinist and people-seeds cases that abortion would not be permissible in a case of rape or in a case of voluntary intercourse with contraceptive failure.
Database: ProQuest Central

Mary Anne Warren explores a theoretical question which lies at the heart of practical ethics: what are the criteria for having moral status? In other words, what are the criteria for being an entity towards which people have moral obligations? Some philosophers maintain that there is one intrinsic property—for instance, life, sentience, humanity, or moral agency. Others believe that relational properties, such as belonging to a human community, are more important. In Part I of the book, Warren argues that no single property can serve as the sole criterion for moral status; instead, life, sentience, moral agency, and social and biotic relationships are all relevant, each in a different way. She presents seven basic principles, each focusing on a property that can, in combination with others, legitimately affect an agent's moral obligations towards entities of a given type. In Part II, these principles are applied in an examination of three controversial ethical issues: voluntary euthanasia, abortion
Database: eBook Collection (EBSCOhost)

Database: EBSCOhost