Don Marquis Rhetorical Analysis

In this paper I will argue that except in the case where the conception was happened unwillingly such as rape, and pregnancy which might harm the mother of the fetus, abortion is morally wrong and thus should not be allowed. In the following paragraph of this paper, I will discuss, evaluate, and raise an objection to Don Marquis’s main argument of his essay “Why Abortion is Immoral”.

In this section I will explain Don Marquis’s arguments in the essay “Why abortion is wrong”. Marquis believes since killing a person, the effect of murder on the victim, will cause the victim loss one’s future life including experiences, enjoyments and other activities that are valuable for the person, hence it is morally wrong to kill an actual person. Based on

For example, if a college kicked a current student out due to college’s own selfish reason will cause the student loss his value of future benefits from enrolling in a college is unjustified and wrong, then it is not difficult for us to agree to do such thing to a accepted but not yet enrolled high school student is also unjustified and wrong. The main argument from the above claim is that if we agree if killing a person after one’s birth will cause them to loss their value of future is wrong, then we must also agree killing a fetus who we presume has a value of future just like ours is also seriously morally

I see Marquis’s argument as a combination of fallacies. First of all, the basic argument of Marquis can be seen as the following: 1.it is wrong to kill someone which will cause one to loss their valuable future; 2.Abortion will cause the fetus to loss it’s valuable future; 3.Therefore it is morally wrong, unless in rare circumstances, to abort a fetus. It seems logical and easy to follow with his claims and premises to come out to such conclusion. Although I personally agree that it is morally wrong to abort a upcoming life, but Marquis has some error in his reasoning on his definition of valuable life, and the loss of it. By talking about the loss of a valuable life, we have to first have a clear idea of what does a valuable life stands for and what does the ‘loss’ of it means.(Sinnott) Marquis explained a valuable life contains future experiences, activities, and etc. And killing one is wrong because by killing one will cause one to loss these ‘upcoming’ future experiences. But, can you actually loss a ‘future’? He is having fallacies of inadequate evidence in some way and also a fallacy of equivocation in his conclusion.(Sinnott) We can only lose something, if and only if we had it at once. Obviously, a ‘future’ is not something we can own right now, not even in the future. For example, you want to win a scholarship during a writing competition. There aren’t many people at the contest,