Why is abortion morally wrong

Violinist example. Objection: Sometimes you can be killed by being deprived of something you have no right to. Also, there is self-defense. Henry Fonda example. Clearly Not. Sex using birth control? You don't want children, so you fix up your windows with fine mesh screens, the very best you can buy. As can happen, however, and on very, very rare occasions does happen, one of the screens is defective, and a seed drifts in and takes root. Does the person-plant who now develops have a right to the use of your house?

Surely not--despite the fact that you voluntarily opened your windows, you knowingly kept carpets and upholstered furniture, and you knew that screens were sometimes defective. Implicit Argument:. Ordinary consensual sex without contraception? If the room is stuffy, and I therefore open a window to air it, and the burglar climbs in, it would be absurd to say, 'Ah, now he can stay, she's given him the right to the use of her house, for she is partially responsible for his presence there, having voluntarily done what enabled him to get in, in full knowledge that there are such things as burglars, and that burglars burgle.

Objection: A fetus is innocent, not a burglar trying to do you harm. But, Thomson would say, this makes no difference: I have the right to eject an innocent person from my home, if that person falls through my window. At this point it may be objected: getting pregnant due to voluntary, unprotected sex is not like having a person stumble into your home or fall through your window. It is more like having someone over because you invited them into your home…. Thomson recognizes that not all moral obligations stem from rights.

For example, if a child finds a chocolate bar, then his sister has no right to it, but decency requires that he share it with her anyway. When is it indecent? In fact, no one is even required to be a Minimally Decent Samaritan. Thomson: Abortion is permissible in many cases, but this does not mean we have the right to secure the death of the fetus.

Were it possible to remove a fetus without killing it, then it must not be killed. Pro-choice lobbies are concerned about laws and policies that may implicitly recognize the fetus as a person e. Would such laws and policies be cause for concern for Thomson?

What about a personhood theory? Abortion and Implicit Consent. Under what conditions does the fetus have the consent of the mother? I am fully aware of what this will involve. This is what we do when we sign a contract. This is not what we do when we decide to have a child. If women give consent to fetuses, it is not explicit consent.

You might be required to dress in a certain way, refrain from shouting, etc. If you fail to follow these rules, you may be expelled. The fact that you are there of your own free will is interpreted as an agreement on your part that you will obey the house rules. In other words, you have implicitly given your consent to be subject to those rules. Similarly, if you enroll in a class, then you are subject to certain requirements necessary for getting a passing grade usually detailed in the syllabus.

Depending on what nation, state and county you live in, you will be subject to different laws. Citizens do not give explicit consent to obey the laws, but it is arguable that they give implicit consent. For example, suppose Smith lives in a county where pornography is illegal. He could easily move to a different county, but he chooses not to. If Smith is caught displaying pornography, he could be fined. The above examples of implicit consent all have two things in common: i the consenting person makes a voluntary choice to engage in a certain type of activity, ii the activity in question is generally understood to entail certain responsibilities.

Because the person involved, like most other people, understands that certain responsibilities come with the activity, there is no need for the individual to explicitly agree to take on the responsibilities—they take them on automatically.

In a typical case of unwanted pregnancy, the pregnant woman. A Engaged in an activity sexual intercourse that is known to cause pregnancy, and in fact is the usual way in which people get pregnant.

B The now pregnant woman knew this at the time. C Either i she was not using birth control, and she knew this, or ii She was using birth control, but she knew that birth control sometimes fails.

D The woman voluntarily chose to have sex. In a case where all of these conditions are met, has the woman given implicit consent to give birth to a child? The FLO account of the wrongness of killing also explains why this is so.

Furthermore, these two unconsciousness cases explain why the FLO account of the wrongness of killing does not include present consciousness as a necessary condition for the wrongness of killing.

Consider now the issue of the morality of legalizing active euthanasia. Proponents of active euthanasia argue that if a patient faces a future of intractable pain and wants to die, then, ceteris paribus, it would not be wrong for a physician to give him medicine that she knows would result in his death. This view is so universally accepted that even the strongest opponents of active euthanasia hold it.

The official Vatican view Sacred Congregation, is that it is permissible for a physician to administer to a patient morphine sufficient although no more than sufficient to control his pain even if she foresees that the morphine will result in his death. Notice how nicely the FLO account of the wrongness of killing explains this unanimity of opinion.

A patient known to be in severe intractable pain is presumed to have a future without positive value.

Accordingly, death would not be a misfortune for him and an action that would foreseeably end his life would not be wrong. Contrast this with the standard emergency medical treatment of the suicidal.

Even though the suicidal have indicated that they want to die, medical personneI will act to save their lives. This supports the view that it is not the mere desire to enjoy an FLO which is crucial to our understanding of the wrongness of killing. Having an FLO is what is crucial to the account, although one would, of course, want to make an exception in the case of fully autonomous people who refuse life-saving medical treatment. Opponents of abortion can, of course, be willing to make an exception for fully autonomous fetuses who refuse life support.

The FLO theory of the wrongness of killing also deals correctly with issues that have concerned philosophers. It implies that it would be wrong to kill peaceful persons from outer space who come to visit our planet even though they are biologically utterly unlike us. Presumably, if they are persons, then they will have futures that are sufficiently like ours so that it would be wrong to kill them. The FLO account of the wrongness of killing shares this feature with the personhood views of the supporters of choice.

Classical opponents of abortion who locate the wrongness of abortion somehow in the biological humanity of a fetus cannot explain this. The FLO account does not entail that there is another species of animals whose members ought not to be killed. Neither does it entail that it is permissible to kill any non-human animal. On the one hand, a supporter of animals' rights might argue that since some non-human animals have a future of value, it is wrong to kill them also, or at least it is wrong to kill them without a far better reason than we usually have for killing non-human animals.

On the other hand, one might argue that the futures of non-human animals are not sufficiently like ours for the FLO account to entail that it is wrong to kill them.

Since the FLO account does not specify which properties a future of another individual must possess so that killing that individual is wrong, the FLO account is indeterminate with respect to this issue. The fact that the FLO account of the wrongness of killing does not give a determinate answer to this question is not a flaw in the theory.

A sound ethical account should yield the right answers in the obvious cases; it should not be required to resolve every disputed question. A major respect in which the FLO account is superior to accounts that appeal to the concept of person is the explanation the FLO account provides of the wrongness of killing infants. There was a class of infants who had futures that included a class of events that were identical to the futures of the readers of this essay.

Thus, reader, the FLO account explains why it was as wrong to kill you when you were an infant as it is to kill you now. This account can be generalized to almost all infants. Notice that the wrongness of killing infants can be explained in the absence of an account of what makes the future of an individual sufficiently valuable so that it is wrong to kill that individual. If the FLO account is the correct theory of the wrongness of killing, then because abortion involves killing fetuses and fetuses have FLOs for exactly the same reasons that infants have FLOs, abortion is presumptively seriously immoral.

This inference lays the necessary groundwork for a fourth argument. Why do we believe it is wrong to cause animals suffering? We believe that, in our own case and in the case of other adults and children, suffering is a misfortune.

It would be as morally arbitrary to refuse to acknowledge that animal suffering is wrong as it would be to refuse to acknowledge that the suffering of persons of another race is wrong. It is, on reflection, suffering that is a misfortune, not the suffering of white males or the suffering of humans. Therefore, infliction of suffering is presumptively wrong no matter on whom it is inflicted and whether it is inflicted on persons or nonpersons.

Arbitrary restrictions on the wrongness of suffering count as racism or speciesism. Not only is this argument convincing on its own, but it is the only way of justifying the wrongness of animal cruelty. Cruelty toward animals is clearly wrong. This famous argument is due to Singer, The FLO account of the wrongness of abortion is analogous. We believe that, in our own case and the cases of other adults and children, the loss of a future of value is a misfortune.

It would be as morally arbitrary to refuse to acknowledge that the loss of a future of value to a fetus is wrong as to refuse to acknowledge that the loss of a future of value to Jews to take a relevant twentieth-century example is wrong.

To deprive someone of a future of value is wrong no matter on whom the deprivation is inflicted and no matter whether the deprivation is inflicted on persons or nonpersons. Arbitrary restrictions on the wrongness of this deprivation count as racism, genocide or ageism. This argument that abortion is wrong should be convincing because it has the same form as the argument for the claim that causing pain and suffering to non-human animals is wrong.

Since the latter argument is convincing, the former argument should be also. Thus, an analogy with animals supports the thesis that abortion is wrong. The four arguments in the previous section establish that abortion is, except in rare cases, seriously immoral. Not surprisingly, there are objections to this view. There are replies to the four most important objections to the FLO argument for the immorality of abortion. The FLO account of the wrongness of abortion is a potentiality argument.

To claim that a fetus has an FLO is to claim that a fetus now has the potential to be in a state of a certain kind in the future. It is not to claim that all ordinary fetuses will have FLOs. Fetuses who are aborted, of course, will not. To say that a standard fetus has an FLO is to say that a standard fetus either will have or would have a life it will or would value. To say that a standard fetus would have a life it would value is to say that it will have a life it will value if it does not die prematurely.

The truth of this conditional is based upon the nature of fetuses including the fact that they naturally age and this nature concerns their potential. Some appeals to potentiality in the abortion debate rest on unsound inferences. For example, one may try to generate an argument against abortion by arguing that because persons have the right to life, potential persons also have the right to life.

Such an argument is plainly invalid as it stands. The premise one needs to add to make it valid would have to be something like: "If Xs have the right to Y, then potential Xs have the right to Y. Potential presidents don't have the rights of the presidency; potential voters don't have the right to vote. In the FLO argument potentiality is not used in order to bridge the gap between adults and fetuses as is done in the argument in the above paragraph.

The FLO theory of the wrongness of killing adults is. Potentiality is in the argument from the very beginning. Thus, the plainly false premise is not required.

Accordingly, the use of potentiality in the FLO theory is not a sign of an illegitimate inference. A second objection to the FLO account of the immorality of abortion involves arguing that even though fetuses have FLOs, non sentient fetuses do not meet the minimum conditions for having any moral standing at all because they lack interests. Steinbock , p. Beings that have moral status must be capable of caring about what is done to them. They must be capable of being made, if only in a rudimentary sense, happy or miserable, comfortable or distressed.

Whatever reasons we may have for preserving or protecting non sentient beings, these reasons do not refer to their own interests. For without conscious awareness, beings cannot have interests. Without interests, they cannot have a welfare of their own. Without a welfare of their own, nothing can be done for their sake.

Hence, they lack moral standing or status. Medical researchers have argued that fetuses do not become sentient until after 22 weeks of gestation Steinbock, , p. If they are correct, and if Steinbock's argument is sound, then we have both an objection to the FLO account of the wrongness of abortion and a basis for a view on abortion minimally acceptable to most supporters of choice. Steinbock's conclusion conflicts with our settled moral beliefs.

Temporarily unconscious human beings are nonsentient, yet no one believes that they lack either interests or moral standing. Accordingly, neither conscious awareness nor the capacity for conscious awareness is a necessary condition for having interests. The counter-example of the temporarily unconscious human being shows that there is something internally wrong with Steinbock's argument.

The difficulty stems from an ambiguity. One cannot take an interest in something without being capable of caring about what is done to it. However, something can be in someone's interest without that individual being capable of caring about it, or about anything. Thus, life support can be in the interests of a temporarily unconscious patient even though the temporarily unconscious patient is incapable of taking an interest in that life support.

If this can be so for the temporarily unconscious patient, then it is hard to see why it cannot be so for the temporarily unconscious that is, non sentient fetus who requires placental life support.

Thus the objection based on interests fails. The FLO account of the wrongness of killing seems to imply that the degree of wrongness associated with each killing varies inversely with the victim's age.

However, we believe that all persons have an equal right to life. Thus, it appears that the FLO account of the wrongness of killing entails an obviously false view Paske, However, the FLO account of the wrongness of killing does not, strictly speaking, imply that it is worse to kill younger people than older people. The FLO account provides an explanation of the wrongness of killing that is sufficient to account for the serious presumptive wrongness of killing.

It does not follow that killings cannot be wrong in other ways. For example, one might hold, as does Feldman , p. Now the amount of admirability will presumably vary directly with age, whereas the amount of deprivation will vary inversely with age. This tends to equalize the wrongness of murder. However, even if, ceteris paribus , it is worse to kill younger persons than older persons, there are.

Suppose that we tried to estimate the seriousness of a crime of murder by appraising the value of the FLO of which the victim had been deprived. How would one go about doing this? In they first place, one would be confronted by the old problem of interpersonal comparisons of utility. Second place, estimation of the value of a would involve putting oneself, not into the shoes of the victim at the time she was killed, but rather into the shoes the victim would have worn had the victim survived, and then estimating from that perspective the worth of that person's future.

This task difficult, if not impossible. Accordingly, there are reasons to adopt a convention that murders equally wrong. Furthermore, the FLO theory, in a way, explains why we do adopt the doctrine of the legal equity of murder. The FLO theory explains why we murder as one of the worst of crimes, since depriving someone of a future like ours deprives more than depriving her of anything else.

This gives us a reason for making the punishment for younger victims very harsh, as harsh as is compatible with civiliazed society. One should not make the punishment younger victims harsher than that. Thus, the doctrine of the equal legal right to life does not seem incompatible with the FLO theory. The strongest objection to the FLO argument immorality of abortion is based on the claim that, because contraception results in one less FLO, the FLO argument entails that contraception, indeed, abstention from sex when conception is possible, is immoral.

Because neither contraception nor abstention from sex when conception is possible is immoral, the FLO account is flawed. There is a cogent reply to this objection. If argument of the early part of this essay is correct, then the central issue concerning the morality of abortion is the problem of whether fetuses are individuals who are members of the class of individuals whom it is seriously presumptively wrong to kill.

The properties of being human and alive, of being a person, and of having an FLO are criteria that participants in the abortion debate have offered to mark off the relevant class of individuals. The central claim of this essay is that having an FLO marks off the relevant class of individuals. A defender of the FLO view could, therefore, reply that since, at the time of contraception, there is no individual to have an FLO, the FLO account does not entail that contraception is wrong.

The wrong of killing is primarily a wrong to the individual who is killed; at the time of contraception there is no individual to be wronged.

People who don't believe abortion is always morally wrong use arguments like this:. Search term:. Read more. This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets CSS enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets CSS if you are able to do so.