DON MARQUIS ~  "An Argument that Abortion is Wrong" 

Can death ever be “a blessing” or timely?

This question lead us to several points:

• Someone can be mistaken about what they will value in the future.
• We can learn to value new things.
• What an individual will value in the future might not be what is valued now.
• Someone else might know better than us what we will value in the future.
• No specific, fixed properties of a future life must be present in order to make it a valuable future (one possible exception: the absence of constant suffering).
• One can have an interest in some future situation that one does not currently take any interest in.
• A premature death is a misfortune, when it is, if it deprives an individual of a future of value.
• An intentional premature death is morally wrong, when it is, if it deprives an individual of a future of value. Such a future is an FLO, a future like ours.

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Test cases to demonstrate the FLO approach:

Timing of Death Case (p. 130)

(a) I fall into a coma. I recover immediately before my death.

(b) I fall into a coma, and then I die right away.

For the person who dies, (b) seems no worse than (a).

Second Timing of Death Case:

(a) I am terminally ill with cancer, but treatment will limit my pain and I will die in six months.

(b) I am terminally ill with cancer and treatment will keep me alive for six months, but pain and suffering will dominate my conscious life during that time.

(b) is a worse future than (a), and in case (b), death will not be a misfortune. (b) would be a reason not to continue life-prolonging treatment.

Together, the coma example and the cancer examples show that continued consciousness is necessary but not sufficient for a valuable future.

Case of Withholding Medical Treatment. (p. 131)

(a) we withhold medical treatment from a comatose patient who is permanently unconscious, knowing that death will result.

(b) we withhold medical treatment from a patient who is temporarily unconscious, knowing that death will result.

(b) is much worse than (a)

As a general rule, killing is wrong when it deprives someone of a FLO. Therefore abortion is almost always wrong.

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Four arguments against Marquis:

1. Potentiality Argument

If adults have a right to life, potential adults also have this right. So early term abortions are immoral.

Response: The FLO theory is the theory that actual beings with potential valuable futures have a right, not that potential beings with potential futures do.

2. Argument from Interests

To have a valuable future, one must take an interest in that future. Early fetuses lack awareness, so they can’t take an interest in their future, so fetuses lack interests. Lacking interests, we do not wrong them if we kill them.

Response: Someone who is unconscious (however temporarily) takes no interest in the future. But life support can be in the interests of someone who takes no interest in it. So fetuses can have interests that they do not take any interest in, and killing them can be wrong.

3. Problem of Equality Argument

If prematurely killed, the young are deprived of more things of value than are the elderly. The FLO theory makes it worse to kill the young. But that’s not true, so the FLO theory is wrong.

Response: There is more than one reason why killing is wrong. It is worse to kill an admirable person than one who has never done anything for anyone. The very young have not done anything admirable. By this standard, it is usually worse to kill the elderly than the young. Also, even if it’s true that killing some people is worse than killing others, it is just too complicated to figure out each person’s likely future. So LEGAL prohibitions against killing should treat all killings as more or less the same.

4. Contraception Argument

If the FLO theory is correct, then contraception is just as bad as killing. Furthermore, abstaining from sexual intercourse is also wrong. But these things are not wrong, so the FLO theory must be wrong.

Response: The problem here is like the problem with the Potentiality Argument. To do wrong, we must deprive an ACTUAL individual of their likely future. To do wrong, there must be an actual individual whom we wrong, not just a potential being. In cases of contraception and abstinence, there is no individual who is wronged. (If someone wants to say that the sperm and egg are wronged, this cannot distinguish any one individual. The individual who would emerge from their union is very different, genetically, than either of the contributing “beings.”)

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CONCLUSIONS

Since almost every fetus has an FLO, most abortions are wrong.

Which abortions are moral?

Pregnancies due to rape.

The first 14 days of pregnancy (the fertilized egg “is not definitely an individual”).

Cases where continuing the pregnancy threatens the woman’s life.

The fetus is anencephalic (it has a brain stem but lacks the cerebral hemispheres, and will never be conscious of its environment).

Why fourteen days? He doesn’t say, but two facts are relevant about this date. Until then, you have a blastocyst, a group of cells which will contain both what will become the fetus, but most of which will develop in other ways to support the fetus (by becoming, in part, the placenta). At fourteen days, the cells begin to differentiate. And until then, there still might be a division into twins, triplets, etc.