phil 356 abortion

what is marquis's positive aregument for why abortion is immoral?

first Marquis argues that killing someone is generally wrong because it deprives them of their (valuable) fugure. Hence, a sufficent condition for having a serious right to life is to have a valuable future. Second, he notes that human fetuses typically have a future that is as valuable as the future of a typical adult human being or a typical human child. Hence it is wrong to kill a human fetus because it deprives them of their valuable future

what are the kep differences between Marquis's anti-abortion argument and the anti-abortion argument of Tooley's opponent based on the potentiality principle?

Marquis's argument appeals to "having a valuable future like ours" as the morally relevant sufficent confition for a serious right to lide. This has nothing to do with whether the organism in question is a person or potentially a perosn. Indeed Maruis velieves that the potentiality principle argument for abortion is invalid.

In contrast, the potentiality principle does not depend on whether or not the fetus will have a valuable future. It appeals only to the fact that the human fetus potentially will become a person at a later stage. For instance, Tooley argues that whether or not an organism is valuable has nothing to do with whether or not it has a right to life.

what are some of the objections that Marquis faces?

if we could know that a particular fetus is destined not to have a valuable future like ours, it would not (necessarily) have a serious right to life. this raises a number of questions: at what point is someone’s life unlikely to be valuable that this organism does not automatically have a right to life? does someone have less of a right to life if their life is (destined to be) less valuable?

Marquis contraception objection

if Marquis is correct, then some forms of contraceptive may be morally equivalent to murder (since they deprive the organism -eg sperm or egg- of its valuable future). this claim might seem implausable or clearly false. we typically do not take ourselves to be murderes if we use contraceptives.

note that this objection focuses on the particular sperm and the particular egg that would have formed a fertalized zygote if not for the contraceptive. none of the other sperm or eggs actually have a valuable future (they were destined to die anyways)

how does Marquis respond to this contraceptive objection

marquis tries to show that his arguement does not actually imply the immorality of most forms of contraceptive. according to him, his argument does not require that we maximize the number of possible organisms with valuable future like ours. (thus we do not have to try to have every sperm or every eff lead to a person). furthermore, his arguement only applies to subjects that are denied a valaubel future. he argues that niether sperm or eggs qualify as an appropriate subject that can be harmed. unless they have been combined into a fertalized egg there is no particular subject that can be harmed.
furthermore marquis argues that picking out any particular sperm or any particular egg would be arbitary

do you find marquis’s rebuttal compelling? what is one way to object to it?

Marquis is correct that we cannot know which particular sperm or which particular egg were the ones denied a valuable future. However, this does not change the fact that a particular sperm and a particular egg very well migth ahve been deined a valuable future (eg if the following counterfactual is true: if you had not used contraceptive, then this sperm and this eff would have created a fertalized cell that would have led to the birth of a child,etc) furthermore, to claim that neither a sperm nor a egg are subjects, marquis would need to give a principled account of subjecthood. why should a sperm be any less a subject than a fetus?
marquis agrees with Tooley that anti-abortionist cannot take belonging to the species Homo sapiens as a sufficient condition for having a serious right to life. this sufficent condition is too broad. for instance, it would give human cancer cells in a petri dish a serious right to life.