Abortion

Framing the Abortion Debate

Aims, assumptions, and method

• Central aims: Marquis aims to explain why killing is wrong and apply that account to abortion; Hursthouse aims to present virtue ethics as a serious rival to utilitarianism and deontology and show its application to abortion.

• Scope limits: Marquis targets the “overwhelming majority” of deliberate abortions and largely sets aside “hard cases” (e.g., rape, threats to the woman’s life).

• Key assumption in Marquis: The fetus is assumed to be the sort of being such that ending its life is a serious moral wrong; the argument attempts to show why this is so.

• Shift in ethical focus in Hursthouse: The debate is redirected away from “rights talk” alone toward assessments of character, virtue/vice, and human flourishing (eudaimonia).

The Future-Like-Ours Account of Why Killing is Wrong

Two inadequate explanations of killing’s wrongness

• Brutalization critique: Explaining wrongness by “it brutalizes the killer” is circular because the act is brutalizing because it is immoral.

• Loss-to-others critique: Explaining wrongness by harm to friends/family is incomplete because it cannot explain why killing a hermit (with no close relations) is seriously wrong.

Core FLO argument

• Primary wrong-making feature: Killing is primarily wrong because it deprives the victim of a valuable future.

• Content of a future: The future includes experiences, activities, projects, and enjoyments that would have made up the person’s life.

• Value beyond current preferences: The loss includes goods the victim would later come to value, not only what they value at the moment.

• Abortion implication: Because a fetus has a “future-like-ours,” abortion is (at least) prima facie seriously immoral.

Theoretical advantages and implications of FLO

• Non-speciesist reach: If an alien (or non-human) has a future like ours, killing it would be wrong; the account is not tied narrowly to Homo sapiens.

• Animal ethics openness: Some non-human mammals might be wrong to kill if they have sufficiently valuable futures (a result “personhood-only” views tend to block).

• Euthanasia compatibility: If someone’s likely future contains only pain and despair (no value), then the FLO-based reason against killing may not apply.

• Infanticide explanation: Infants have valuable futures, so FLO explains why infanticide is wrong even if infants do not meet demanding “personhood” criteria.

Contrast with sanctity-of-life and personhood approaches

• Middle path framing: FLO avoids sanctity-of-life views that can be too broad and personhood views that can be too narrow.

• Victim-centered explanation: Like arguments about animal suffering that focus on harm to the victim (rather than effects on the agent), FLO grounds wrongness in what is taken from the being killed.

• Abortion parallel: Abortion’s seriousness is explained by the fetus’s loss (deprivation of a valuable future), not by religious premises or mere biological membership.

Objections to FLO and Marquis’s Replies

Desire-based account and reply

• Desire account claim: Killing is wrong because it frustrates a strong desire to continue living; fetuses lack such a desire, so abortion would be permissible.

• Sleeping/unconscious counterexample: We still judge it wrong to kill sleeping or unconscious persons who lack an occurrent desire to live.

• Suicidal counterexample: A suicidal person may lack a desire to live, yet killing them can still be seriously wrong.

• FLO priority: The wrongness is better explained by the loss of the goods of life (a valuable future) than by desire-frustration.

Discontinuation account and reply

• Discontinuation claim: Killing is wrong because it stops ongoing experiences and projects already underway; fetuses lack such projects, so abortion is permissible.

• Future-value dependence: Discontinuation is bad only if the future being discontinued is valuable.

• Symmetry point: If what matters is the value of the future, the central reason applies to embryos (future only) as well as adults (past and future).

• Explanatory clarity: “Future-like-ours” is presented as a clearer basis for wrongness than mere “interruption.”

Value-er objection and reply

• Value-er objection: A future is valuable only if there is a “valuer” who can value it; fetuses cannot value their futures.

• Benefit vs. valuing distinction: Something can be valuable to someone even if they do not currently value it (e.g., a suicidal person’s life may still be a real benefit to them).

• Objective-value emphasis: The key is being valuable (a benefit), not being currently valued (a subjective attitude).

Tooley’s interest-based right-to-life argument and reply

• Tooley’s claim: Rights depend on interests; interests require the capacity to desire continued existence; fetuses therefore lack a right to life.

• Future-as-interest reply: Having a future of value can constitute an interest even without the current conceptual capacity to care about it.

• Temporary incapacity counterexamples: Unconscious, drugged, or indoctrinated adults may lack immediate capacity to care yet plausibly retain a right to life.

Bassen’s victimization objection and reply

• Victimization objection: An embryo cannot be a “victim” because it lacks sentience or a mental life (like a plant).

• Empathy critique: Defining victimhood via empathy makes victimization depend on observers’ responses rather than the loss itself.

• Loss-without-mentation: One can be a victim of loss (theft, death) even without current mentation, if a valuable future is what is taken.

Contraception objection and reply

• Contraception challenge: If depriving a future of value is wrong, contraception might seem wrong as well.

• Subject requirement: Abortion deprives an identifiable existing subject (the fetus) of its future; contraception prevents a future from coming to exist without depriving an existing individual.

• Non-arbitrariness point: Prior to conception, there is no non-arbitrarily identifiable subject that is the bearer of the future allegedly lost.

Marquis’s concluding claim

• Secular resolution aim: The account aims to ground abortion’s wrongness in a general, non-religious explanation of why killing is wrong.

• Moral-status basis: The fetus is said to share the key property that makes killing adults wrong: possessing a valuable future.

• Bottom-line verdict: Abortion is prima facie morally impermissible because it deprives the fetus of a future-like-ours.

Virtue Ethics Framework and the Adequacy Challenge

Comparing deontology, utilitarianism, and virtue theory

• Deontological structure: Right action is following moral rules; rules are justified by God, rationality, or universal acceptability.

• Act-utilitarian structure: Right action is maximizing best consequences; “best” is typically maximizing happiness.

• Virtue-theoretic structure: Right action is what a virtuous agent would do; virtues are traits needed for human flourishing (eudaimonia).

• Linkage claim: Virtue ethics ties right action to the virtuous agent, to the virtues, and then to flourishing as the grounding notion.

Replies to early objections and action-guidance

• Eudaimonia obscurity reply: Flourishing is complex but no more obscure than “rationality” or “happiness” in rival theories.

• Circularity reply: The account is not viciously circular because virtues are grounded in flourishing as an independently intelligible notion.

• V-rules guidance: Virtue ethics yields practical directives—do what is honest/kind/charitable; avoid what is dishonest/cruel/unchaste.

Virtue conflict and moral dilemmas

• Conflict worry: Virtues can appear to conflict (e.g., charity vs. justice).

• Tu quoque response: Rival theories face parallel conflicts among rules or principles (e.g., preserve life vs. do not kill).

• Dilemma realism: Some cases may require practical wisdom to resolve; others may remain tragic dilemmas with no fully non-residual solution.

Rejecting the “condition of adequacy” demand

• Adequacy objection: A good theory must supply a decision procedure usable by any “clever adolescent” regardless of moral character.

• Moral wisdom emphasis: Right action often requires moral wisdom developed through experience, not mere cleverness (unlike solving math problems).

• Agent-quality reply: A theory is not defective just because wicked or ignorant agents misapply it due to distorted conceptions of flourishing.

Hursthouse’s Virtue-Ethical Assessment of Abortion

Rights are not the whole moral story

• Rights/virtue distinction: Having a legal or moral right to do something does not imply doing it would be virtuous.

• Property analogy: Even if one may have a right to destroy one’s property, doing so could still be vicious (e.g., wasteful or spiteful).

• Abortion implication: Even if a woman has a right to terminate, the decision can still be criticized in virtue/vice terms (selfishness, callousness, light-mindedness).

Biological facts and the demanded seriousness

• Anti-metaphysics stance: The virtue-ethical discussion can proceed without settling contentious metaphysical questions about personhood.

• Familiar factual framing: Pregnancy follows sexual intercourse, lasts about nine months, and typically results in a human baby embedded in familial and social meanings.

• Light-mindedness critique: Treating abortion as trivial fails to register the gravity of cutting off a developing human life.

• Seriousness requirement: Even when abortion is permissible, a virtuous agent treats it as a serious matter.

Virtues, vices, and appropriate emotions

• Callousness marker: Treating the fetus as “nothing” or disregarding the value-laden significance of pregnancy can express callousness.

• Selfishness marker: Avoiding parenthood for shallow reasons (e.g., pursuit of pleasure, refusal to “grow up”) is criticized as vicious.

• Worthwhile-exception space: Abortion may be non-vicious (or even appropriate) when one cannot care well for a child, is pursuing other significant goods, or is physically/psychologically overburdened.

• Tragic-remorse distinction: A virtuous agent may feel remorse (sorrow at loss) without guilt (judgment of wrongdoing) in tragic but justified abortions.

• Regretlessness warning: Complete lack of regret in tragic circumstances may signal a flaw in character.

Context, responsibility, and men’s role

• Circumstance sensitivity: The moral evaluation depends heavily on factors like poverty, health, and support networks.

• Shared responsibility: Men may share responsibility for both the pregnancy and the conditions that make abortion seem necessary.

• Vice in evasion: Pressuring for abortion to evade responsibility is characterized as selfishness/irresponsibility.

• Prior-vice possibility: An “unwanted” pregnancy can sometimes reflect earlier irresponsibility or lack of seriousness about sex, shaping the moral assessment.

Hursthouse’s overall position on abortion

• No algorithmic verdict: Virtue ethics does not deliver a single simple “yes/no” rule for all cases.

• Plural moral categories: Some abortions are vicious; some are tragic necessities; some may be morally neutral or permissible given harsh realities.

• Complexity as strength: The nuanced answer is presented as realism about moral life rather than theoretical weakness.

Final defense against rival theories

• Relativism denial: Virtue ethics is not automatically committed to cultural relativism more than other theories are.

• Rival-theory criticism: Utilitarianism and deontology are criticized for sometimes ignoring “obvious” moral facts (e.g., seriousness of fetal life, value of parenthood) to preserve rule-like consistency.