Abortion Is Morally Permissible

Let me begin by thanking my opponent for his time and trenchant response to my arguments. You'll remember that I said I was going to defend two basic contentions. First, there are no good reasons to think that abortion is morally wrong. And secondly, there are good reasons to think that abortion is morally permissible. In his previous response, Con has presented two different arguments to demonstrate that abortion is morally impermissible. I suppose that there is power in numbers. We shall see in a moment if either of these two arguments succeed. C1: It is not always prima facie wrong to kill an innocent human being. Con has outlined a slightly reformulated argument against the permissibility of abortion that is also based on the substance view of persons. Nonetheless, my prior critiques apply in excelsis to this new formulation of the argument, since both are dependent upon the truth of the substance view. And apart from giving a descriptive explanation of what the substance view entails, Con has essentially one argument for the truth of this position, which I shall refer to as the "infant objection." I maintain that infants up to a certain point don't have a serious right to life, and so Con's argument does not go through. 1. First, it is not the case that all cultures have prohibitions against infanticide. Peter Singer, an eminent moral philosopher at Princeton University, has explained how infanticide has traditionally been accepted around the world. According to Singer, "Killing unwanted infants or allowing them to die has been a normal practice in many societies throughout human history and prehistory."[1] Moreover, some countries such as the Netherlands also have laws allowing infanticide.[2] The view that infanticide is morally wrong is thus far from a universally shared moral intuition. 2. Second, people can clearly be blinded by failures of moral intuition. Paul Slovic, a research scientist at the University of Oregon, has proven this conclusively with his psychological research on human responses to genocide.[3] In general, people tend to care a great deal about the plight of individuals in trouble; however, these same people are often blithely indifferent to mass-murder. This is what Slovic calls "genocide neglect." As he argues, we simply can't rely on moral feelings alone to guide us because they can be unreliable. These feelings must also be supported by moral reasoning. So, for my opponent's objection to succeed, he must demonstrate why his moral intuitions are correct with an actual argument. 3. Third, as philosopher Michael Tooley argues, appeals to moral intuitions are only proper when basic moral principles are being established.[4] The claim that human infanticide is wrong cannot be a basic moral principle because it references physical properties - namely, species membership. My opponent could try to establish the underlying moral significance of human infants by appealing to the substance view of persons or his FLO argument. But, unfortunately for my opponent, I've already negated both arguments, thereby eliminating any possibility that his objection could be successful. Contrary to what Con has claimed, I think it should be clear that the right to life is an accidental property. If the substance view is true and the right to life is an essential property, anencephalic fetuses, the irreversibly comatose and brain-dead individuals would all have a right to life, as Patrick Lee has pointed out.[5] That is a conclusion that I think no rational person should be willing to accept. Josh Brahm, the Education Director for Fresno Right to Life, has even gone so far as to suggest that "it is morally justified to pull the plug on a truly brain-dead adult."[6] I submit that Josh is completely right on this topic. Clearly, even people who passionately oppose abortion recognize how absurd it is to argue that brain-dead individuals have a right to life. The substance view of persons thus has no support and should be rejected. C2: Brain death is not always the death of the human being. I've previously given very strong scientific evidence to show that brain dead individuals can persist as living human organisms. The reason this evidence is significant is because it would entail that brain-dead individuals have a right to life under the substance view. C3: The future like ours argument is not valid. There is no denying that a fetus has a "future like ours." The problem with Marquis's argument is that a fetus does not value such a future, unlike a six-year-old who can value their future. This is why it isn't wrong to deprive a fetus of a valuable future.[7] Of course, my opponent saw this objection coming. This is why he raises the example of someone suicidal who no longer has a desire to continue living. However, there is a problem with this objection. The problem is best characterized by what philosopher David Boonin describes as the moral significance between "actual" and "ideal" desires. Boonin uses an analogy with a hiker to help make this point.[8] Imagine that a hiker is at a fork in the road and must choose to go right or left. In this situation, the hiker ends up choosing to go left because the left path is more scenic. But little does the hiker know there is a landmine on the left trail which will kill the hiker if he takes that path. The hiker's "actual" desire was to go left, but his "ideal" desire was to go right and not hit the landmine. If this particular hiker knew about the landmine, he would certainly have gone right. Likewise, the suicidal person might have an "actual" desire to not go on living, but if this person was in a situation with better circumstances, his "ideal" desire would be to live. Thus, as Boonin argues, it is a persons "ideal" desires that more accurately establish their right to life. Accordingly, my opponent is incorrect in arguing that the desire based view of rights is incapable of showing why it's wrong to kill suicidal people. C4: A fetus is not a person and thus cannot have a serious right to life. You'll remember that I previously argued that a human fetus is not a person and therefore cannot have a serious right to life. I defended Marry Anne Warren's five psychological criteria for personhood. While arguing for this position, I gave three different reasons why these criteria should be accepted. First, these criteria have explanatory power in accounting for why it isn't wrong to kill brain-dead individuals or anencephalic fetuses. Second, these criteria are non-arbitrary and allow for other non-human entities (e.g., extra-terrestrials) to be considered persons. And finally, it is plausible that rights function to protect interests. This theory of rights should be self-evident because a being that has never been conscious cannot be "harmed" in any logically meaningful way. Con has objected to this view by appealing to the infant objection and the suicide objection. Both of those objections have already been addressed and refuted. They do nothing to detract from my arguments or to affirm the arguments that Con has presented. Therefore, there are good reasons to affirm that a human fetus does not have a right to life. | Conclusion | In summary, I think we've seen good reasons to accept Warren's psychological criteria for personhood, which necessarily entails that fetuses don't have a right to life. By contrast, my opponent's only argument in support of the substance view is wrong for at least two reasons. In particular, brain-dead individuals do not possess a right to life. Likewise, the FLO argument is incorrect because a fetus does not actually have an interest in its future. If killing mindless fetuses is morally comparable to killing fully conscious human beings, stronger arguments are needed to demonstrate that, since my opponent's do not. Sources: http://tinyurl.com...