Elective abortion should be legalized

IntroductionIn this round, my primary target will be to focus on Pro’s case for abortion choice - that of bodily rights. It seems to me that a pretty strong case can be given for such a position (even if I still think it’s ultimately flawed), although Pro’s presentation of this argument is unnecessarily weak. I’ll get to why later.To begin with however, I want to respond to Pro’s rebuttal of my case.The case for the moral impermissibility of abortionThe Future-Like-Ours (FLO) argumentReaders will remember that the argument I presented and defended was predicated on providing a general account for the wrongness of killing. Using philosopher Don Marquis’ examples (as well as others), I examined Pro’s possible explanations for this general account and found 2 of them to be ably dismissed with trivial ease. Pro’s only remaining viable account Pro was deemed hopelessly flawed by working through cases A-E. I then showed how the FLO account for the wrongness of killing was a successful explanation in dealing with these examples and how this then provided justification for the impermissibility of abortion.Before I get into specifics, I want to give a general impression of Pro’s response.Pro simply doesn’t engage *at all* with the main features of the argument - Marquis’ 4 examples (plus my additional 2 cases), the desire account or the FLO account for the wrongness of killing. As such, not only has Pro effectively dropped an argument she gave in defence of abortion, but my argument stands almost entirely unscathed.As for Pro’s specific points, they fare no better.Pro’s first criticism is that her 3 possibilities for the wrongness of killing (inflicted pain, objecting to death, harm to loved ones) were not to be taken as exhaustive. She says:“Those are just some harms that could come from killing. They aren't an all-or-none thing; lack of one does not eliminate all the other reasons.”The problems with this are obvious. First, it’s self-refuting. If a foetus can’t feel pain, doesn’t object to death or doesn’t have loved ones, I could respond as Pro does, that Pro’s conditions “are just some of the harms that come from killing and . . . lack of one does not eliminate all other reasons.”Second, I already anticipated this in presenting my argument, warning Pro that she had to provide a necessary account for the wrongness of killing because anything else leaves open the possibility that these “other reasons” may extend to the unborn. Third, I actually provided an account that justifies the condemnation of murder in cases B-E that supports my view of abortion (FLO). Unless and until Pro can (i) show that this is flawed by actually working through the argument and (ii) provide her own general account which supports her view from Cases A-E, she’s simply not responding to my argument.Next, Pro rhetorically asks what harm comes from abortion, given that a foetus would “never (have) existed as a sentient, feeling being.”Simple. I gave an argument that killing was wrong because it (among other things) deprives us and the unborn of a Future of Value (or FLO). As for Pro’s insistence that sentience is relevant to the right to life, without an argument such a claim is obviously question-begging. Pro then asserts that killing is wrong not due to the harm it causes the victim, but because of the “malicious intent” of the would-be murderer.This both false and irrelevant. Manslaughter, for example, is still a serious offence and of great harm to the victim, regardless of intent. Also, “malicious intent” alone doesn’t explain why, in general, killing is seriously morally wrong. Lots of acts have such intent, but very few, if any, are as serious as killing. As such, we must look at why killing itself is seriously morally wrong and Pro simply hasn’t done so as of yet.As such, on the balance we must conclude that abortion is prima facie seriously morally wrong.The case for the permissibility of abortionBodily autonomyPro asserts that women have the right to an abortion because the unborn use a woman’s body without their consent. Further, given their lack of sentience and parasitic use of this body, the unborn don’t have bodily autonomy themselves. It’s important to note that Pro drastically (and wholly detrimentally) departs from the typical bodily rights position in a couple of ways. First, she doesn’t appeal to analogy (e.g. Thomson’s violinist). As such, I struggle to see that Pro has actually made an argument here at all, rather than just asserted her position. In any case, at the very least, it has lost much of its intuitive appeal.Second, Pro doesn’t grant, as Thomson does, that the unborn is a person (at least for the sake of argument). Instead, she conveys the unborn as parasitic, living inside the mother’s body to “suck up their nutrients.” The huge problem this needlessly creates is that it makes the argument beg the question. Pro hasn’t argued (like Singer or Warren do, for example) that personhood requires a certain level of cognitive ability. It’s just asserted by Pro. As for the parasite point, this is obviously false for 2 reasons.First, women have the biological equipment present specifically to bear children (uterus, ovum). Second, pregnancy is a prima facie good. Women can reasonably want children. Not only that but any abortion should be explicitly consensual (unlike treating an unconscious parasite victim), ceteris paribus. This obviously differentiates the unborn from a tapeworm, say, or any other parasite, if such a point wasn’t obvious enough (1). Given that Pro’s account rests solely on these 2 conditions, it’s completely discredited, even among those who’d advocate this very argument, I’d suggest. However, I don’t want to rely on the fallibility of Pro’s presentation, so let’s suppose a good case for bodily rights had been made. It would still face numerous challenges:1. Foetal Bodily rights - Given I’ve already shown Pro’s denial of foetal bodily autonomy to be nonsense, I’ll proceed as such. Even if it were the case that, following Thomson, one could “unplug” from the unborn, such a position is practically useless for abortion choice, given that the vast, vast majority of abortion methods “directly attack the body of the human foetus” (2).To use Thomson’s analogy, this would be like unplugging oneself from the violinist by hacking his body to pieces. 2. The Responsibility objection - On elective abortion, every pregnancy is the foreseeable consequence of a consensual act. As such, the women (rather than the foetus) is responsible for the existence of the foetus inside the womb, and as such, seems to undermine the bodily rights position:Suppose I grab you onto my boat and set sail. In the middle of the ocean, I realise that I’ve mistaken you for a friend. Knowing this I have two choices: either I share my boat and all its resources (food, etc) with the innocent bystander I’m responsible for bring on the boat, or I enact “property rights”, throwing you off the boat and causing certain death.I submit that this is more analogous to pregnancy than the violinist example and elicits a position closer to mine than Pro’s. It’s just trivially true that people are responsible for not just their intentions, but the foreseeable consequences of their actions. ConclusionThere’s much more I could say on the bodily rights argument, but given Pro’s presentation of it, there’s not much point going any deeper. I’ve given numerous criticisms of Pro’s position and 2 responses to a much stronger version of Pro’s argument. As for the case against abortion, I’d ask Pro to actually get involved and engage with the argument at hand (FLO), rather than rely on the ultra-concise, general and transparently superficial assertions offered thus far.Sources 1. Beckwith, Francis, Defending life: A moral and legal case against abortion choice, P1762. Kaczor, Christopher, The ethics of abortion, P153