In Dan Marquis’ article, “Why Abortion is Immoral”, he argues that aborting a fetus is like killing a human being already been born and it deprives them of their future. Marquis leaves out the possible exceptions of abortion that includes: a threat to the mom’s life, contraceptives, and pregnancy by rape. First, I will explain Marquis’ pro-life argument in detail about his statements of why abortion is morally wrong. Like in many societies, killing an innocent human being is considered morally wrong just like in the United States. Second, I will state my objection to Marquis’ argument through examining the difference between a human being already born future compared to a potential fetus’s future. Thus, Marquis’ argument for his pro-life
Marquis is arguing that fetuses, children, and adults are all human beings and have the right to life. Also, Marquis expresses that losing one’s life is one of the worst things that can happen to a human being. So he technically declares that it is horrible to die but not the worst thing to happen to someone. He starts out with the first premise about how the killing of a fetus deprives it of its potential future experiences. Which is a factual statement in that it states that if someone is dead they obviously cannot participate in future events. In Marquis’ second premise, he states that by not allowing a human being to have those future experiences your action is prima facie (accepted as correct until proven otherwise) morally wrong. Marquis argues about how it is wrong to kill someone but it is even worse than other crimes because you are taking away that person’s future and values. Marquis argues how not allowing a child to live is morally wrong to our society because they also have a future and experiences they would miss out on just like all human beings. So Marquis is communicating that fetuses, infants, adults are all human beings and it would be
Thirdly, Marquis concludes from the last two premises and says that if you kill a fetus then it is prima facie seriously morally wrong of you. By killing off a human being’s potential values it is cruel, especially to children because they are defenseless. Then, Marquis asserts that if fetuses and adults are in the same moral categories then the fetus can only be aborted if there is a serious moral concern. In the beginning, Marquis proclaims that there are special cases like rape and the mom’s life being threatened that it would override the “moral wrongness” of abortion. So if the premises that Marquis stated above are all true then we ought to accept his conclusion. The first premise expresses that if you kill someone then one is taking away from his or her future like ours. Marquis statement on the first premise is one we ought to accept because obviously if the person is dead they cannot have a future like ours. The
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Show MoreIn my opinion Marquis ' argument for why abortion is morally wrong has a couple of flaws, it’s biased towards the fetus and makes some unreasonable assumptions. Specifically, Marquis account of why killing adult human is wrong can potentially lead to some controversial conclusions. Marquis also doesn 't consider any consequences on the lives of the potential parents of the fetus. Due to the nature of the topic of abortion, it really only applies to women who are thinking of getting an abortion, and as such, we can 't make the standard assumptions that we will have with normal fetuses. In this essay I will explain Marquis ' argument, and try to show that his argument cannot conclude that abortion is morally wrong.
Marquis is not specific in his arguments in regards to when life begins, but rather a “majority of deliberate abortion is seriously immoral.” While Marquis is not taking the typical stance on pro-life, “It is always wrong to take a human life,” he does feel this viewpoint is too broad. Marquis enters his argument from a different angle than typical pro-life arguments. His primary argument is killing is not an act that is acceptable on any level. Additionally, when someone is killed, they are basically robbed of their future. What if the person killed was to have been the person who would have found a cure for cancer? Then the death of this person would be costly to society. This includes the case of an abortion where we basically are robbing the future of this unborn child. The unborn child taken because of an abortion could very well be the person that would have cured
In this analogy, Thomson describes a situation involving a really small house, a person, and a rapidly growing child. The child keeps growing and becoming larger and larger; the house cannot support such growth and the person in it is being crushed. Eventually the walls of the house will explode and the person in the house will die. The child, however, will just complete his or her growth and walk out of the house in perfect conditions. The person represents the woman, the house represents her body, and the growing child represents the fetus. From this analogy, it is evident that as the fetus grows and completes his or her nine months of growth, the woman is dying in the process. Thomson does not believe that the woman, knowing that she has a health condition that will kill her if she goes through with the pregnancy, should just sit and wait until the pregnancy kills her based on the fact that it would be immoral for her to abort. According to Thomson, it would be morally permissible for the woman to abort the baby based on her right to self-defense. Although Thomson states that, “in this case there are only two people involved, one whose life is threatened, and one who threatens it. Both are innocent: the one who is threatened is not threatened because of any fault, the one who threatens does not threaten because of any fault” (43), she does not believe that because both the woman and fetus are innocent, this should allow for no action to be taken or that they have equal say in the matter. Thomson believes the woman should exercise her right to protect her life from the fetus threatening it because she is the owner of her body, not the fetus. Once again, this supports her argument that the woman’s right to decide what to do with her body outweighs the fetus’ right to
So if we all agree that killing an adult who has a future of great values is morally wrong, then the action of abortion to kill a fetus who has the same valuable future like ours is morally wrong as well. That being said, abortion is permissible only if the same circumstances in which killing adult’s life is permissible. If we killed adult human beings, all our activities, such as experiences, projects, enjoyments, etc., in the future will be deprived. That he calls, the “natural property” which apply to adult human beings in the same manner that it does to fetuses. Since the reason and our awareness that are sufficient to explain why it is wrong to kill human beings is a reason that also applies to fetuses, it jumps to the conclusion that abortion is prima facie seriously morally
Marquis’s overall argument is abortion is seriously morally wrong because it involves killing. He states this is wrong because it robs a human of a natural property, which is a “future like ours,” or a FLO. It “deprives one of all experiences, activities, projects, and enjoyments that would otherwise have constituted one’s future.” Killing someone is wrong because it inflicts a great loss on the victim. He states describing this as a loss of life can be misleading because a change in a biological state does not make killing wrong, it is the effect of the killing, making one lose all of the experiences which would otherwise have been possible. The activities are valuable and are the means to something else, like a potential life, which would make ...
Don Marquis pointed out that abortion is serious wrong morally.His’ article,”Why Abortion Is Immoral?”,has been highly anthologized at April 1989. Marquis just explains why abortion is immoral without assuming the personhood of the fetus.It totally skips the argument of Judith Thomson, which is about the right of the mother to choose abortion. Also, Marquis criticizes the argument between anti-abortion and pro-choice always uses the same points to attack each other.It is the result of the stand-off results and forming a vicious cycle. However, he claims his argument can avoid the stand-off result in the debate of whether the fetus has the right or not by the FLO theory alone. And then, is it really correct in ethics aspect?In my opinions,
My goal in this essay is to show that Tooley’s response to the Potentiality Argument (that is, the argument formulated in the essay question) is not successful and that the fetus ' potential for a valuable life and future does morally justify extending to it a right to life. I begin with a formulation of the Potentiality Argument. Next, I present Tooley’s response to this argument. Finally, I argue that this response fails to establish the claim that killing a person and letting a person die both have an equal moral standpoint.
Once a person chooses the pro-life argument that “life is present from the moment of conception” (Marquis, 365), or the pro-choice argument that “fetuses are not persons” (Marquis, 365) and cannot live outside the mother’s body, the next focal point of the argument concerns whether or not the mother has a moral obligation to sustain the life of this child. What criteria dictate...
However, many people may understand Marquis’ argument to mean abortion is immoral because it causes the loss of life, which is not the argument that Marquis is presenting. To begin, the loss of life is merely a change in the status of the biological state. In other words, it is to go from alive- breathing, sentient, animate, to dead or passed away, lifeless. The loss of life is distressing not because of this change in state, but because of the effects of this change. That is to say, a loss of life results in a loss of future, which is not just a change in the biological state but a loss of future “experiences, activities, projects, and enjoyments that would otherwise have constituted one’s future” (321). This point is important to note as Marquis suggests that the primary reason for killing being wrongful is not due to the negative effects of the death on the victim’s family and friends. Rather, killing is wrongful because of its effect on the one who has been killed. According to Marquis, the greatest loss someone can suffer is the loss of their life as they will no longer be able to have a valuable future (321). Thus, the loss of a valuable future is so devastating that Marquis argues that almost all cases of abortion are prima facie
An argument against the viewpoint of Marquis’s is in the situation where the mother's life is at risk when it comes to continuing the pregnancy. Marquis would argue that by getting an abortion you are murdering the fetus and taking away their chance at a future (Marquis, 184). Thomson would counter argue by saying that it is the mother's right to her body to decide between herself and her child’s life. This extreme situation in my opinion should be an exception and considered an extreme case to Marqus. But he would still argue that the fetus has just as much of a right to be saved because they have the absolute right to have what we have. Even if the mother’s life was at risk Marquis would still choose to continue the pregnancy based on the
He states that contraception would be wrong "only if something were denied a human future of value by contraception. Nothing at all is denied such a future by contraception, however." (Marquis, 201). Marquis then lists four candidates in which contraception might harm; 1. Some sperm 2. Some ovum 3. A sperm and an ovum separately and 4. A sperm and an ovum together. For options 1 and 2, Marquis asserts that "assigning the harm is utterly arbitrary" (201). In other words, there is no reason that a sperm or an ovum would be the subject of harm. For option 3, Marquis states that "too many futures were lost". If option 3 was true, then there will be a loss of two futures; one for the sperm and one for the ovum. Finally for the option 4, he states "At the time of contraception, there are hundreds of millions of sperms, one (released) ovum and millions of possible combinations of all of these. There is no actual combination at all. Is the subject of the loss to be a merely possible combination? Which one? This alternative does not yield an actual subject of harm either. Accordingly, the immorality of contraception is not entailed by the loss of a future-like-ours argument simply because there is no non-arbitrary identifiable subject of the loss in the case of contraception."(Marquis, 201). Marquis assumes that in order for something to be deprived of a future, we must
His second argument deals with the value of life. Pro-abortionists claim that because a fetus cannot value its life, its life has no value. Marquis says, however, that
Granted that killing is wrong; the act of killing alone is not enough to make it immoral, and Marquis argues that it is not the effect it has on the murderer, or the effect of the victims family or friends, but the effect on the victim that makes killing wrong. The fact he/she is deprived of life experiences is the ultimate loss. He uses the example that when people are diagnosed with cancer (or any terminal illness) they experience firsthand what it means to deprive someone of their life and future. The experience of a premature death is one of the hardest challenges to face. This argument supports why abortion is immoral because we get to form a picture of what a fetus would feel if it was aware of what was happening, and Marquis uses pathos to helps create a deeper understanding and a paint a picture that everyone could understand. Even though many argue a fetus is not yet a person...
...le standard of living, and invocation of wisdom and benevolence. Although her action is the morally right one to to take, that is not to say abortion is an act without inequities. Hursthouse refers to this injustice as a “moral failing”. (262) In this case, it would be attributed to the society of Country X, which has allowed for the killing of a human fetus to be morally preferable to its birth.
According to Marquis, abortion is immoral since it involves the killing of the fetus and “the loss of the future to a standard fetus” (194). Abortion can only be justified in some circumstances, for example, the life of the pregnant woman is in danger, or “the loss consequent on failing to abort would be at least as great”(Marquis 194). In order to strongly support the statement that killing a fetus is seriously wrong, Marquis offers two accounts as demonstration. One is