Why Abortion is Immoral Donald B. Marquis

1
Why Abortion is Immoral Donald B. Marquis

• Marquis holds that to resolve the morality of
  abortion it is necessary to first determine why
  it is that killing is wrong.
• Uncontroversial assumption It is wrong to kill
  us

2
-Some faulty reasons against killing

• The effect killing has on the person doing the
  killing.
• The loss others would experience at my being
  killed.

3
Wrongness of Killing

• Killing deprives one of all the activities
  projects and enjoyments that would have been
  part of ones future.
• Killing deprives one of what they value now
  would have continued to value and what one would
  have come to value in the future.
• The infliction of these great losses is what
  ultimately makes killing wrong.

4
Analysis of the wrongness of killing

• Relies upon the notion of a natural property and
  not the derivation of an ought from an is.
• We begin with the assumption that killing is a
  prima facie serious wrong.
• Next a natural property is identified which
  explains why killing is wrong given that it is
  wrong.

5
Naturalist account explains the wrongness of
killing only if it does the following

• Fits with our intuitions about the matter.
• There is no other natural property that provides
  the basis for a better explanation of the
  wrongness of killing.

6
Further support for this account of the wrongness
of killing

• This theory explains why we regard killing as one
  of the worst possible crimes.
• Compatible with the idea shared by individuals
  suffering from terminal diseases that what makes
  their impending premature death bad is the fact
  that it denies them the future they would have
  experienced.
• This view is incompatible with the view that it
  is only wrong to kill being who are biologically
  human.

7
Wrongness of Killing (Cont.)

• This view is compatible with the notion that it
  is sometimes wrong to kill non-human animals.
• Does not entail that active euthanasia is wrong.
• The straightforward implication of this view is
  that it is prima facie wrong to kill children and
  infants.
• This account also entails that abortion is prima
  facie morally wrong.

8
Further clarification of Marquis position

• This argument does not rely on the idea that
  since it is wrong to kill person it is also
  wrong to kill potential persons.
• This argument relies on the category (or set) of
  things which have the property of having a
  valuable future like our own.

9
Argument against inflicting of wanton pain on
animals

• It is prima facie wrong to inflict pain on you or
  I.
• The infliction of pain causes suffering and
  suffering is a misfortune.
• Suffering caused by the infliction of pain is
  what makes the wanton infliction of pain on me
  wrong.
• The wanton infliction of pain on animals causes
  sufferingand so on.

10
Concluding Observation

• Marquis does not hold that his position entails
  that all abortions are morally wrong. His claims
  is that they are prima facie very seriously
  wrong and that the reasons for having an
  abortion must be at least as compelling as other
  reasons we would give for killing.