Abortion is immoral

Presenter: Tran Hoang Mai Professor: John Basourakos Writing and Ideas

Why abortion is immoral?

Claim: abortion is, except possibly in rare cases, seriously immoral, that it is in the same moral category as killing an innocent adult human being
Question : "whether a fetus is the sort of being whose life is seriously wrong to end

Fetus is a full-fledged human being

Life is present from the moment of conception The pro-lifer tends to rely on a biological category: "genetically human Moral principles: It is always prima facie seriously wrong to take a human life.

Marquiss approach

His strategy:
Examine
Then

what makes killing wrong

look at abortion in light of that more general discussion Wrongness of killing: Brutalization Harm to survivors Loss of valued experienced Loss of a future like ours

Brutalization of the killer & Harm to survivors

A killing brutalize the one who kills. The great loss others would experience due to our absence =>WRONG Marquiss claims that the wrongfulness of killing consists in the effects on survivors friends, lovers and family of the victim.

The loss of valued experiences

The wrongness of killing consists in having a being lose something it valuesits own future experiences

Claim: 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

The loss of a future like ours

The wrongness of killing beings like us consists in the loss of all the experiences, activities, projects and enjoyments that would otherwise have constituted ones future

Further support FLO

Fits with our considered judgments about the wrongness of killing

Explain why we regard killing as one of the worst possible crime

It is wrong to kill non-human animals The straightforward implication of this view is that its prima facie wrong to kill children and infants

Conclusion

All abortions are morally wrong.

Prima facie very seriously wrong =>having an abortion must be at least as compelling as other reasons we would give for killing

Attempts to avoid a tyranny of perfectionism