Abortion Con: Don Marquis

1
AbortionCon Don Marquis

• Assumption whether or not abortion is morally
  permissible stands or falls on whether or not a
  fetus is the sort of being whose life it is
  seriously wrong to end.
• Prima facie - all other things being equal. A
  prima facie principle is one which holds as a
  matter of course but which can be overriden by
  other considerations.

2
AbortionCon Don Marquis

• Is it prima facie wrong to kill a human being?
• Something with a human genetic code?
• A person? ( rational, self-conscious being,
  social being?)

3
AbortionCon Don Marquis

• Pro-lifer Must show why biological
  characteristics should make a moral difference.
• Pro-choicer Must show why psychological
  characteristics should make a moral difference

4
AbortionCon Don Marquis

• the pro-choicer may attempt to find reasons
  why killing infants, young children, and the
  severely retarded is wrong which are independent
  of her major principle that is supposed to
  explain the wrongness of taking human life, but
  which will not also make abortion immoral. This
  is no easy task. (p. 100)

5
AbortionCon Don Marquis

• What makes murder wrong the deprivation of a
  worthwhile future
• The deprivation of a worthwhile future is present
  in abortion, but not in contraception, because
  there is no existing being who is being deprived
  of a future, only bare potential

6
AbortionCon Don Marquis

• There is no duty to maximize potential.
• There IS a duty to NOT to deprive existing beings
  of worthwhile futures.

7
AbortionPro Little

• Early human life as valuable and respect-worthy
  but neither sacred nor having rights
• Gradualism
• Gestational assistance
• Violinist example
• Wrongness increases as fetus value grows with
  development