At what stage of development is a fetus capable of experiencing pain? Somewhere between 5 and 6 months, it is now believed. If I have a prima facie reason to believe something, then I should presume it is true unless I have other evidence to the contrary that overrides the prima facie reason. If a type of action is prima facie wrong, what this means is that the type of action is wrong in most cases, with exceptions in special circumstances that would justify the action.
On the other hand, the anti-abortionist wants to find a moral principle so broad that even fetuses at an early stage will fall under it. These principles are often too broad. The pro-choicer will deny that fetuses are human beings in the moral sense. There seems to be no non-question-begging way in which either side can establish a definition of moral personhood that suits their interests.
The solution: An analysis of the wrongness of killing. Killing is wrong because it results in the loss of a future of value like ours. Points in favor of the analysis according to Marquis :. It makes sense that killing is fundamentally wrong for the same reason that death is bad.
Whether it is wrong depends on the expected value of the future of the patient. Can support abortion only if having desires is a necessary condition for having the right not to be killed.
Worse, it puts the cart before the horse: we desire life because we value it, not the other way around. Objection: Killing a person may be wrong because a person has a future of value. The category that is morally central to this analysis is the category of having a valuable future like ours; it is not the category of personhood. Is there a problem in determining which things can be said to have a future?
Thought experiment. Suppose there is a drug that can be injected into kittens to cause them to grow into cat people. It is morally okay not to inject the kittens. There is no morally relevant distinction between actions and omissions The Moral Symmetry Principle, a. Therefore, it is okay to neutralize the development of a PCP once you have injected the kitten e.
CPs have the same rights as HSPs. Therefore, it is okay to neutralize the development of a PHSP—abortion is morally permissible. Notice that PCPs are not merely potential persons, they are also things with futures of value. Thomson assumes, just for the sake of argument, that the fetus is a person from conception.
She then tries to show that, even given that the fetus has a right to life, it does not follow that abortion is morally impermissible. The anti-abortion argument:. For the sake of argument, Thomson assumes that 1 and 2 are true. She then argues that 4 does not follow from 3. This much is easy to see, since most of us agree that it is not wrong to kill in self-defense.
But Thomson argues that the gap between 3 and 4 is much wider than this. Along these lines, one suggestion is that a mother has a right to decide what happens in and to her body, and that this might outweigh the fetuses right to life.
Instead, she argues that the right to life has been misunderstood. Once it is understood correctly, it will be seen that 4 does not follow from 3.
Thomson proposes a thought experiment:. But if every human person has a right to life, the question arises of whether killing the attacker in self-defense violates the right to life of the attacker. Different interpretations of this situation are possible. Or one could say that rather than having a right to life per se, a human has a right not to be killed unjustly.
Killing a violent attacker is an instance of a just killing. Relevance of these issues to the abortion controversy: The morality of abortion depends to some extent on how the embryo or fetus deserves to be treated: in what sense it is a moral patient, whether it has the moral rights not to be harmed and to pursue a life, what kind of moral consideration it is owed.
We seem to take the moral status of a being to depend on its metaphysical or physical status. For example, we think humans and rocks deserve different kinds of treatment because they are different metaphysically or physically.
So it might be that the moral status of an embryo or fetus depends on its metaphysical or physical status: whether it is a person, whether it is conscious, whether it has a soul, etc. Moral status alone might not determine whether abortion is morally permissible, though, for some thinkers believe other factors might override the moral status of the fetus.
The situation is complicated by the fact that the embryo and fetus are undergoing continual physical development. The physical development of the embryo and fetus occur during a nine-month period. First an egg cell oocyte or ovum is fertilized by a sperm cell spermatozoon during a 24 hour long process. During this time the sperm cell moves through the area surrounding the egg cell, enters the egg cell, and merges its genetic material with the genetic material in the egg cell.
Completion of this process results in a single-celled zygote with chromosomes from both sperm and egg cells. About 30 hours after fertilization is complete the zygote begins cell division and the number of cells increases. This is different than fraternal twins from two distinct fertilized egg cells.
At nine cells, the cells start arranging themselves into a pattern. At four days after fertilization the organism moves to the uterus, floats for about two days, and then it attaches itself to the uterine wall between the seventh and twelfth day implantation.
At the end of the first week the organism is attached to the uterine wall and is being nourished by the mother. After implantation, cells further differentiate and the embryo is increasingly structured. There is some indication that brain waves can be recorded by about six weeks. At nine weeks the organism is a fetus, the heart is almost fully developed by the tenth week, within a few more weeks the brain is fully formed, and by the fifteenth week the eyes face forward and the ears are on the side of the head.
Birth is usually after thirty-nine weeks. During the process of embryonic and fetal development, the organism is alive, attached to the mother for life support, and increasingly resembling a human baby in appearance.
Some thinkers believe that the moral status of the embryo or fetus changes depending on its particular stage of physical development. For those thinkers, before a particular point abortion is morally permissible, while after that point it is impermissible. But there is disagreement about where that line of demarcation is: viability when it can survive outside the womb , quickening detectable movement within the womb , brain waves occurring, resembling a baby in appearance, etc.
Unfortunately, due to the tremendous acrimony each camp feels toward the other, usually neither side attempts to understand the other. People hold views about the morality of abortion for various reasons, some political or emotional. But it is possible to depict one or more lines of reasoning each side implicitly relies on when they are thinking and arguing rationally.
The basic pro-life position depends on an analogy drawn or assumed between the embryo or fetus and a normal, innocent human being or person. It is believed that the embryo or fetus is relevantly similar to the normal human being or person and so it has the same right to life and should be treated in the same way as any other being with a right to life.
There are two basic lines of reasoning assumed by different pro-choice groups. One line of reasoning sees the embryo or fetus as not a person and so not having the right to life possessed by a person. The other line of reasoning grants that an embryo or fetus might be a person but sees other factors or considerations as outweighing or overriding any right to life of the fetus. The second argument might be used by pro-lifers who believe that rape, incest, or saving the life of the mother are such overriding factors, but most pro-choicers have in mind others factors such as the following:.
There might be debate among pro-choicers over whether the fact that a new child would be a minor inconvenience would be sufficient as a factor to override or outweigh a right to life.
Because the pro-choicer wishes to adopt a narrow criterion for the right to life so that fetuses will not be included, the scope of her major premise is too narrow.
Her problem is the opposite of the problem the classic opponent of abortion faces. The argument of this section has attempted to establish, albeit briefly, that the classic anti-abortion argument and the pro-choice argument favored by most philosophers both face problems that are mirror images of one another.
A stand-off results. The abortion debate requires a different strategy. Why do the standard arguments in the abortion debate fail to resolve the issue?
The general principles to which partisans in the debate appeal are either truisms most persons would affirm in the absence of much reflection, or very general moral theories. All are subject to major problems. A different approach is needed. Opponents of abortion claim that abortion is wrong because abortion involves killing someone like us, a human being who just happens to be very young.
Supporters of choice claim that ending the life of a fetus is not in the same moral category as ending the life of an adult human being. Surely this controversy cannot be resolved in the absence of an account of what it is about killing us that makes killing us wrong.
On the one hand, if we know what property we possess that makes killing us wrong, then we can ask whether fetuses have the same property. On the other hand, suppose that we do not know what it is about us that makes killing us wrong. If this. Surely, we will not understand the ethics of killing fetuses, for if we do not understand easy cases, then we will not understand hard cases.
Both pro-choicer and anti-abortionist agree that it is obvious that it is wrong to kill us. Thus, a discussion of what it is about us that makes killing us not only wrong, but seriously wrong, seems to be the right place to begin a discussion of the abortion issue. Who is primarily wronged by a killing?
The wrong of killing is not primarily explained in terms of the loss to the family and friends of the victim. Perhaps the victim is a hermit. Perhaps one's friends find it easy to make new friends. The wrong of killing is not primarily explained in terms of the brutalization of the killer.
The great wrong to the victim explains the brutalization, not the other way around. The wrongness of killing us is understood in terms of what killing does to us. Killing us imposes on us the misfortune of premature death. That misfortune underlies the wrongness. Premature death is a misfortune because when one is dead, one has been deprived of life.
This misfortune can be more precisely specified. Premature death cannot deprive me of my past life. That part of my life is already gone.
If I die tomorrow or if I live thirty more years my past life will be no different. It has occurred on either alternative.
Rather than my past, my death deprives me of my future, of the life that I would have lived if I had lived out my natural life span. The loss of a future biological life does not explain the misfortune of death. Compare two scenarios: In the former I now fall into a coma from which I do not recover until my death in thirty years.
In the latter I die now. The latter scenario does not seem to describe a greater misfortune than the former. The loss of our future conscious life is what underlies the misfortune of premature death. Not any future conscious life qualifies, however. Suppose that I am terminally ill with cancer. Suppose also that pain and suffering would dominate my future conscious life.
Thus, the misfortune of premature death consists of the loss to us of the future goods of consciousness. What are these goods? Much can be said about this issue, but a simple answer will do for the purposes of this essay. The goods of life are whatever we get out of life. The goods of life are those items toward which we take a "pro" attitude. They are completed projects of which we are proud, the pursuit of our goals, aesthetic enjoyments, friendships, intellectual pursuits, and physical pleasures of various sorts.
The goods of life are what makes life worth living. In general, what makes life worth living for one person will not be the same as what makes life worth living for another.
Nevertheless, the list of goods in each of our lives will overlap. The lists are usually different in different stages of our lives. What makes the goods of my future good for me? One possible, but wrong, answer is my desire for those goods now. This answer does not account for those aspects of my future life that I now believe I will later value, but about which I am wrong.
Neither does it account for those aspects of my future that I will come to value, but which I don't value now. What is valuable to the young may not be valuable to the middle-aged. What is valuable to the middle-aged may not be valuable to the old. Some of life's values for the elderly are best appreciated by the elderly.
Thus it is wrong to say that the value of my future to me is just what I value now. What makes my future valuable to me are those aspects of my future that I will or would value when I will or would experience them, whether I value them now or not. It follows that a person can believe that she will have a valuable future and be wrong. Furthermore, a person can believe that he will not have a valuable future and also be wrong. This is confirmed by our attitude toward many of the suicidal.
We attempt to save the lives of the suicidal and to convince them that they have made an error in judgment. This does not mean that the future of an individual obtains value from the value that others confer on it. It means that, in some cases, others can make a clearer judgment of the value of a person's future to that person than the person herself.
This often happens when one's judgment concerning the value of one's own future is clouded by personal tragedy. Compare the views of McInerney, , and Shirley, Premature death is a misfortune. Premature death is a misfortune, in general, because it deprives an individual of a future of value. An individual's future will be valuable to that individual if that individual will come, or would come, to value it.
We know that killing us is wrong. What makes killing us wrong, in general, is that it deprives us of a future of value. Thus, killing someone is wrong, in general, when it deprives her of a future like ours. I shall call this "an FLO. At least four arguments support this FLO account of the wrongness of killing. The FLO account of the wrongness of killing is correct because it fits with our considered judgment concerning the nature of the misfortune of death.
The analysis of the previous section is an exposition of the nature of this considered judgment. This judgment can be confirmed. If one were to ask individuals with AIDS or with incurable cancer about the nature of their misfortune, I believe that they would say or imply that their impending loss of an FLO makes their premature death a misfortune.
If they would not, then the FLO account would plainly be wrong. The FLO account of the wrongness of killing is correct because it explains why we believe that killing is one of the worst of crimes. My being killed deprives me of more than does my being robbed or beaten or harmed in some other way because my being killed deprives me of all of the value of my future, not merely part of it.
This explains why we make the penalty for murder greater than the penalty for other crimes. As a corollary the FLO account of the wrongness of killing also explains why killing an adult human being is justified only in the most extreme circumstances, only in circumstances in which the loss of life to an individual is outweighed by a worse outcome if that life is not taken.
Thus, we are willing to justify killing in self-defense, killing in order to save one's own life, because one's loss if one does not kill in that situation is so very great. We justify killing in a just war for similar reasons. We believe that capital punishment would be justified if, by having such an institution, fewer premature deaths would occur. The FLO account of the wrongness of killing does not entail that killing is always wrong.
A fetus has a future like ours of great value and killing the fetus deprives the fetus of that future. Killing a fetus is morally wrong. Abortion is killing a fetus. Abortion is morally wrong. Killing X is morally wrong because X has a future like ours of great value and killing X deprives X of that future.
IF [Killing X is morally wrong because X has a future like ours of great value and killing X deprives X of that future.
0コメント