The deprivation argument against abortion.
The most plausible pro-life argument claims that abortion is seriously wrong because it deprives the foetus of something valuable. This paper examines two recent versions of this argument. Don Marquis's version takes the valuable thing to be a 'future like ours', a future containing valuable experiences and activities. Jim Stone's version takes the valuable thing to be a future containing conscious goods, which it is the foetus's biological nature to make itself have. I give three grounds for rejecting these arguments. First, they lead to unacceptable inequalities in the wrongness of killing. Second, they lead to counterintuitive results in a range of imaginary cases. Third, they ignore the role of psychological connectedness in determining the magnitude or seriousness of deprivation-based harms: because the foetus is only weakly psychologically connected to its own future, it cannot be seriously harmed by being deprived of that future.
Stretton
Dean
D
19 Bass Gardens, Griffith, ACT 2603, Australia. dean@tip.net.au
D000028:Abortion, Induced / Q000941:ethics*; D003243:Consciousness; D026689:Ethical Analysis; D005260:Female; D005333:Fetus; D006708:Homicide / Q000941:ethics; D006801:Humans; D008678:Metaphysics; D026684:Personal Autonomy; D028723:Personhood; D011247:Pregnancy; D012649:Self Concept; D026712:Value of Life