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Abortion
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Don Marquis: “Why Abortion is Immoral”
Marquis’ Project
• Thesis: In the overwhelming majority of cases, deliberate
abortions are seriously immoral.
• Marquis is attempting to dispel the belief that the anti-abortion
position arises from religious dogma or poor philosophy.
• Marquis chooses to ignore “hard cases” such as those where
the life of a woman is threatened by the fetus.
• Marquis assumes for the sake of argument that whether or not
abortion is morally permissible stands or falls on whether a
fetus is the sort of being whose life it is seriously wrong to end.
• As such, Marquis’ argument depends upon his account of
when it is seriously wrong to end any life.
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The Form of Marquis’ Argument
• Killing is seriously immoral when it robs the victim of a future
of value.
• Killing a fetus robs the fetus of a future of value.
• (Aborting a fetus kills the fetus.)
• Therefore, it is seriously immoral to abort a fetus.
The Wrongness of Killing
• “[A] necessary condition of resolving the abortion
controversy is a … theoretical account of the wrongness
of killing.” (293)
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“Why My Theory is Better than Your Theory” (I)
• Killing is wrong not because it brutalizes the killer.
- Presumably, if a murderer is “brutalized”, it is because he
performs an immoral act.
• Killing is wrong not because of the loss to others (family,
etc.).
- Presumably, it is still wrong to murder hermits and other
solitary individuals.
• Killing is wrong because it robs the victim of “all the
experiences, activities, projects, and enjoyments that
would otherwise have constituted one’s future.” (293)
- This would seem to at least be the case with killing any
adult human.
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Killing is wrong because it deprives the victim of his or her
future.
• The activities, experiences, and so on, that would have
constituted my future personal life are either valuable for
their own sakes, or for the sake of some other thing
(which, in turn, is valuable for its own sake).
• Some parts of my future are valued by me now, and
other parts will be valued by me later.
• When I die, I will be deprived of the value of both.
• Inflicting this loss on me is ultimately what makes killing
me wrong.
• What makes the killing of any adult human wrong is the
loss of his or her future (which has value).
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Implications:
Some natural property will ultimately explain the wrongness
of killing only if:
1. The explanation fits our intuitions about the matter.
2. There is no other natural property that would better
explain the wrongness of killing.
That what makes killing wrong is the loss of the victim’s
future is supported by:
1. Our intuition that killing is one of the worst possible
crimes.
- Killing someone deprives them of more than any other
crime against them does.
2. The belief held by the dying that dying is very bad for
them because it deprives them of future experiences.
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Implications (cont’d)
1. This view is incompatible with the problematic view
that it is only wrong to kill biologically human beings.
2. This view entails the possibility that the futures of some
actual nonhuman mammals on our own planet are
sufficiently like ours that it is seriously wrong to kill
them also.
3. This view does not entail the questionable thesis that
active euthanasia is wrong.
4. This view straightforwardly entails that it is seriously
wrong to kill infants and children (where views
depending on a notion of personhood, like Warren’s,
may not).
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The Argument from Personhood:
• It is wrong to kill “persons” (usually defined as a thing
having rationality, or some particular kinds of desires).
• If it is wrong to kill persons, it is wrong to kill beings with
the potential to become persons.
• Children and fetuses have the potential to become
persons.
• Therefore it is wrong to kill children and fetuses.
Problematic premise!
• Unlike the argument from personhood, or Warren’s
argument, Marquis’ argument does not depend on any
notion of personhood.
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Since the loss of a future to a fetus, if killed, is at least as great
as the loss to a standard adult human, abortion, like ordinary
killing, could only be justified by the most compelling reasons.
• Abortion could be justified in some circumstances only if the
loss consequent on failing to abort would be at least as
great.
• Presumably, morally permissible abortions would be very
rare, indeed.
• So abortions should be considered presumably wrong
unless it can be shown that failure to abort will result in an
even greater loss.
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“Why My Theory is Better than Your Theory” (II)
• This account does not have to be an account of the
necessary conditions for the wrongness of killing; it
provides sufficient conditions.
Recall:
• If A is a necessary condition for B, then if not-A then not-B.
• If A is a sufficient condition for B, then if A, then B.
• Marquis is arguing that inflicting the loss of a valuable
future on an individual by killing him makes the action
wrong, not that any killing lacking this feature fails to be
wrong.
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The Victim’s Past:
On the “value-of-a-future” account, it makes no difference
whether an individual’s immediate past contains intolerable
pain, or consists in being in a coma, or consists in a life of
value.
• What is critical is what the future will bring: if the future is
one of value, we want it to be wrong to kill that
individual; if the future is intolerable, we want it to be
permissible to kill that individual.
• As such, whether killing is wrong does not depend on
the value of the victim’s past experiences, or whether he
has any at all.
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Possible Counterarguments:
1. Does value imply a valuer? In other words, if the fetus is
not capable of valuing its future life, does that future life
have no value?
• My (future) life can be of value to me even if I do not
(currently) value it. The same will be true of a fetus,
who is simply unaware of the future value of its life.
2. If an individual is incapable of desiring or having an
interest in some thing, can the individual have a right to
that thing? That is, if a fetus cannot desire or have an
interest in life, can it have a right to life?
• Certainly one who has been drugged has a right to
life, even if he is literally incapable of having a desire
for, or interest in, that life.
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Possible Counterarguments:
3. Presumably plants cannot be victims because they are
not sentient. Can a fetus be a victim if it isn’t sentient?
• Unlike a plant, a fetus has prospects for sentient life
experiences. Killing a plant is not wrong because it
does not deprive it of a future-like-ours; killing a fetus
does.
4. Since contraception likewise prevents the actualization of
a possible future of value, doesn’t that make
contraception wrong, too?
• As we cannot say which sperm is so harmed, we
cannot assign harm to any sperm in particular.
• Assigning harm to some ovum is arbitrary, for no
reason can be given to assigning harm to an ovum
rather than a sperm.
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Discussion
 Under Marquis’ view, would a pregnant woman be morally
required to carry a baby to term if she knew that the baby
would survive, but she would not?
 Under Marquis’ view, would a pregnant woman be morally
required to carry a baby with spina bifida or Down’s
syndrome to term?