[5.] Abortion

 

 

[5.1.] Don Marquis’s Pro-Life Argument.

 

Don Marquis (pronounced “Mar-kwiss”)[1], a professor of philosophy at the University of Kansas, gives an argument against abortion that is not based on any religious considerations or on assumptions about whether the fetus has a soul or is a person.

 

 

[5.1.1.] Why is Killing Wrong, in General?

 

According to Marquis, before we can answer the question “is abortion immoral?” we first need to answer a more fundamental question: “why is killing wrong, in general?”

 

In other words, in order to see whether or not it is wrong to kill fetuses, we need to understand why it is wrong to kill an adult human being.

 

Marquis suggests that the following is the reason why it is wrong to kill an adult human being: It inflicts one of the greatest losses a being can suffer. But what is it that someone loses when he is killed? The obvious answer is: his life.

 

But to say only that it is the loss of his life that makes killing an adult wrong is too simple. Marquis’s theory of the wrongness of killing is more complicated and subtle than that:

 

·         Killing an adult does not deprive him of his life up to the moment of the killing. In other words, it does not deprive him of his past life, the life he has already lived. It only deprives him of his future life, the part of his life that he has not lived yet.

 

·         What is primarily important is not that killing him deprives him of his future biological life. Rather, what matters is that it deprives him of the experiences for which biological life is necessary.

 

To see Marquis’s point, think about how immoral it would be to put an adult into a permanent coma. You are not depriving him of his biological life, but rather his future experiences. Putting someone in a coma so that he can no longer have experiences seems just as immoral as killing him outright. And this suggests that what is wrong with killing him is that it deprives him, not simply of his biological life, but of his future experiences.

 

·         What is important is not every sort of future experience, but valuable future experiences: “activities, projects, experiences and enjoyments” that are “valuable for their own sakes or are means to something else that is valuable for its own sake.” (RTD 88)

 

Contrast this sort of future with the future of someone who is about to be kidnapped and tortured, perhaps in the hopes that he will reveal political secrets that (unbeknownst to the kidnappers) he in fact does not know, and then killed when he does not divulge anything in which they’re interested. This person has a future of experiences, but they are not valuable experiences.

 

In summary, the primary reason that it is wrong to kill an adult human being is that it deprives him of the value of his future. Marquis calls a valuable future (one characterized by “activities, projects, experiences and enjoyments”) a future-like-ours (FLO). So what makes killing an adult human being wrong is that it deprives him or her of an FLO.

 

 

[5.1.1.1.] Sufficient, but not Necessary.

 

Marquis’s view is that depriving a being of an FLO is a sufficient condition of the wrongness of killing: it is enough to make killing wrong. On his view, there need not be anything else that makes killing someone wrong: if by killing her, you deprive her of an FLO, that’s enough to make killing her wrong.

 

He also holds that depriving a being of an FLO is not a necessary condition of the wrongness of killing: it is not required to make a killing wrong. Perhaps there are other things that make killing someone wrong, e.g., it causes grief and suffering to that person’s loved ones.

 

So Marquis is not saying that it is morally permissible to kill anyone who does not have an FLO. Baby Theresa (the infant born with anencephaly) did not have an FLO, but Marquis could still say that it would have been immoral for a stranger to sneak into her hospital room and kill her against her parents’ wishes.

 

 

[5.1.1.2.] A Prima Facie Moral Obligation.

 

According to Marquis, it is prima facie morally wrong to deprive a being of an FLO.

 

In other words, the moral obligation not to deprive a being of an FLO is a prima facie moral obligation:

 

prima facie moral obligation (df): a genuine moral obligation that may, in certain circumstances, be overridden or outweighed or “trumped” by other, stronger, moral obligations.

 

For example, you may have a moral obligation not to lie, but you may also have a stronger moral obligation not to cause someone undue pain.

 

So if your 90-year-old great-grandmother asks you how her hair looks, although it would be prima facie immoral to lie (and tell her that it looks great when it really looks awful), it would be much worse to hurt her feelings. In this case, your obligation not to hurt your great-grandmother’s feelings trumps (overrides) your prima facie obligation not to lie.

 

A prima facie moral obligation is the opposite of an absolute moral obligation, an obligation that always overrides or wins out over other obligations or considerations.

 

Presumably, Marquis says that depriving a being of an FLO is prima facie morally wrong because he does not want his view to imply anything about special cases in which it may be morally permissible to deprive someone of an FLO (e.g., killing someone in self-defense). He wants to leave questions about such special cases as open questions.

 

But even if there are cases in which it is morally permissible to deprive someone of an FLO, that does not mean that killing, in general, is morally acceptable. 

 

So Marquis’s claim is this: depriving a being of an FLO is a sufficient (but not a necessary) condition of the prima facie moral wrongness of killing that being.

 

 

[5.1.2.] Why is Killing a Fetus Wrong?

 

Now Marquis is ready to argue that killing a fetus is immoral.

 

According to Marquis, killing a fetus deprives the fetus of an FLO, just like killing an adult human being deprives him or her of an FLO.  For example, if it is now wrong to kill a 40-year-old (let’s call him Bill) because it would deprive him of an FLO, then it would have been wrong to kill Bill when he was a fetus. Just like Bill now, Bill-as-a-fetus had an FLO... in fact, he had the exact same FLO as Bill-as-a-40-year-old. This is true, even if Bill-as-a-fetus was not a person and even if Bill-as-a-fetus was not conscious.

 

Here is one possible formulation of Marquis’s FLO Argument:

 

1.      If performing an action will prevent a being from having an FLO, then it is prima facie morally wrong to perform that action.

2.      Killing a fetus prevents it from having an FLO.

3.      Therefore, it is prima facie morally wrong to kill fetuses. [supposed to follow from 1 and 2]

4.      In the vast majority of abortions, there are no other moral considerations that trump the prima facie obligation not to kill a fetus.

5.      Therefore, the vast majority of abortions are immoral. [supposed to follow from 3 and 4]

 

a note about the word “fetus”: Sometimes the word “fetus” is used in a narrow sense, to refer only to pre-birth humans during and after the ninth week of pregnancy. But Marquis is using the word “fetus” in a broader sense, to mean a pre-birth human from around day 14 of pregnancy to birth.

 

Why around day 14? One reason may be that by that time, twinning (the division of a single pre-birth human into two) is no longer possible. Although he doesn’t say so explicitly, it seems that Marquis intends his account to apply only after the embryo can no longer split to become twins.[2]

 

Marquis is arguing that abortion is prima facie immoral:

·         The conclusion of his argument leaves room for special cases in which the obligation not to kill a fetus might be overridden (e.g., cases in which the mother’s life would be threatened by bringing the fetus to term).

·         But the fact that there are such special cases does not mean that abortion, in general, is morally acceptable. Marquis believes that in the vast majority of cases, abortion is morally wrong.

 

 

Stopping point for Monday September. For next time, begin reading “A Defense of Abortion” by Judith Jarvis Thomson, (RTD ch.12), pp.92-102. As always, be prepared for a pop quiz over the reading and today’s lecture notes.