Non-Religious Argument Against Abortion

[NeilC]

The main issue I find with these arguments is that I can't see why people limit them to abortion and not say kidney donation. In both you are forcing someone to undergo medical procedures they do not want for the sake of another's life.

Sorry who is being forced to give up their kidneys? Are they being killed for their kidneys? What is the relevance of this?

 

[rocketdodger]

What options? A woman who is pregnant and does not wish to give birth can

a) terminate the pregnancy,
b) carry to term and give birth,
or ... ?

Yeah, so if a woman becomes pregnant she should exhaustively consider option B. I doubt there are very many women that don't so I guess it was kind of a pointless thing to say.

My point was that I don't know of anyone who doesn't find some aspect of abortion disturbing. Its one of those things that we all wish there was a better solution but given the state of our technology there isn't.

 

[scratchy]

Same. While I defend it as an ethical choice (same goes for infanticide), I find it disturbing, and I would stress that anyone exhaust the other options before doing such a thing.

Well, i would never stress anything to anyone regarding the ethics. Its just my personal discomfort, and ill have to deal with it on my own.

On the one hand my mother would probably have ended me if she had the option. On the other hand, if they were wise they would have used a condom, wich also would have resulted in no me. And maybe i came to be just because i was the fastets swimmer in the load, a chanse among millions. So i dont know...

ETA: I wonder now, how would i react if i made a woman pregnant, and she wanted an abortion. If that happens i think i prefer to not know.

 

[Beerina]

I'm actively non religious and somewhat anti-abortion, at least late term. The argument really comes down to when life begins to me. I don't for a moment accept that it is at conception, but I do think it is before birth.

A fetus' "FLO" hasn't started doing any experiencing, yet, and, at the younger stages, I doubt it has ever had the consciousness of a dog. So even if you accept "FLO", the fetus isn't missing anything, yet.

Epicurus, (?? IIRC), pointed out that there's no reason to fear death, per se. Once dead, you won't be experiencing anything; presumably the billions of years will "pass", so to speak, just like the billions before you were born did. This isn't to say there might be something fearful about the process of dying, especially protracted pain and reduced quality of life.

 

[Beerina]

If abortion would have been legal at the time of my birth im quite certain i wouldnt have been born. Instead my teenaged mother gave me up for adoption. While im not against abortion - on the grounds of a womans right to decide over her own body - that fact makes me somewhat uncomfortable with it.

That would be a bit creepy, to be sure. But freedom, and the resultant modernization, has lead to families with far fewer children, abortion or otherwise. How many people weren't born in the West because of its relative wealth?

I wouldn't go about lamenting those unborn, either.

 

[Stone Island]

I feel that the entire argument collapses in the face of a single person who doesnt fear death. If argument 1 doesnt hold true 100% of the time then the rest of the logic cant hold either.

In the paper Marquis talks about people with terminal diseases. They don't have futures like ours, or their futures are filled with insufferable pain. He doesn't think that his argument prevents or is contrary to assisted suicide.

 

[Stone Island]

A fetus' "FLO" hasn't started doing any experiencing, yet, and, at the younger stages, I doubt it has ever had the consciousness of a dog. So even if you accept "FLO", the fetus isn't missing anything, yet.

Young children, say younger than five, aren't conscious of themselves as having futures either. This is why Peter Singer thinks that infanticide is as permissible as abortion. According to most operational definitions of personhood, Young children aren't people either.

 

[Rasmus]

...

Whoever wrote that should have been busy at the time making as many baby's as possible.

I'll buy into the argument as soon as whoever makes it will instantly agree to have sex with me should I so request. Any refusal to do so would deprive a potential child of their future life, after all!

(Alternatively, I'll accept a sound, logical explanation as to why it should matter if the conception has already occurred...)

 

[Stone Island]

I wouldn't agree with premise 1) "What makes murder the worst of crimes is that it deprives a person of her future experience."

I'd say what makes murder one of the worst crimes, is that it deprives the person's family and other close relations with the experience of that person and causes them grief due to the experience they have had with them already and the expectations they had up to that point. From this it follows that terminating a very young or very sick foetus is not necessarily going to cause a lot of heartache to the mother who wants the termination.

Is it wrong to kill a bum or a hermit who has neither friends nor family?

Marquis wrote in his Journal of Philosophy article:

In order to develop such an account, we can start from the following
unproblematic assumption concerning our own case: it is wrong to
kill us. Why is it wrong? Some answers can be easily eliminated. It
might be said that what makes killing us wrong is that a killing brutalizes
the one who kills. But the brutalization consists of being inured
to the performance of an act that is hideously immoral; hence, the
brutalization does not explain the immorality. It might be said that
what makes killing us wrong is the great loss others would experience
due to our absence. Although such hubris is understandable, such an
explanation does not account for the wrongness of killing hermits, or
those whose lives are relatively independent and whose friends find it
easy to make new friends.

 

[Stone Island]

Marquis wrote,

A more obvious answer is better. What primarily makes killing
wrong is neither its effect on the murderer nor its effect on the
victim's friends and relatives, but its effect on the victim. The loss of
one's life is one of the greatest losses one can suffer. The loss of one's
life deprives one of all the experiences, activities, projects, and enjoyments
that would otherwise have constituted one's future. Therefore,
killing someone is wrong, primarily because the killing inflicts
(one of) the greatest possible losses on the victim. To describe this as
the loss of life can be misleading, however. The change in my biological
state does not by itself make killing me wrong. The effect of the
loss of my biological life is the loss to me of all those activities,
projects, experiences, and enjoyments which would otherwise have
constituted my future personal life. These activities, projects, experiences,
and enjoyments are either valuable for their own sakes or are
means to something else that is valuable for its own sake. Some parts
of my future are not valued by me now, but will come to be valued by me as I grow older and as my values and capacities change. When I
am killed, I am deprived both of what I now value which would have
been part of my future personal life, but also what I would come to
value. Therefore, when I die, I am deprived of all of the value of my
future. Inflicting this loss on me is ultimately what rnakes killing me
wrong. This being the case, it would seem that what makes killing any
adult human being prima facie seriously wrong is the loss of his or
her future.

The analysis assumes that killing me (or you, reader) is
prima facie seriously wrong.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Sorry who is being forced to give up their kidneys? Are they being killed for their kidneys? What is the relevance of this?

No one. And I don't get why those who are so in favor of forcing others into unwanted medical situations to save the life of another don't all donate their kidneys, it would be a good symbol of putting their body where their belief system is.

 

[Stone Island]

Flaw: 5 does not follow from 4 and in fact, 5 is completely false. Death is not an equally grave misfortune for the fetus.

4. The fetus is equally capable of sustaining a loss of future experience.
5. Therefore, death is an equally grave misfortune for the fetus.

Flaw highlighted:

1. What makes murder the worst of crimes is that it deprives a person of her future experience.

Marquis wrote,

This argument does not rely on the invalid inference that, since it
is wrong to kill persons, it is wrong to kill potential persons also. The
category that is morally central to this analysis is the category of
having a valuable future like ours; it is not the category of personhood.
The argument to the conclusion that abortion is prima facie
seriously morally wrong proceeded independently of the notion of
person or potential person or any equivalent.

 

[Stone Island]

This argument fails to consider that some self-aware humans welcome death, as it brings an end to human suffering.

It does not. In fact, Marquis clearly and concisely deals with the question of suicide and euthanasia.

 

[sophia8]

If abortion would have been legal at the time of my birth im quite certain i wouldnt have been born. Instead my teenaged mother gave me up for adoption. While im not against abortion - on the grounds of a womans right to decide over her own body - that fact makes me somewhat uncomfortable with it.

That makes no sense at all as an argument against abortion. If you had been aborted, you wouldn't be here to contemplate your mother's decision.
If your mother had had a miscarriage, you wouldn't be here. If your parents had had sex on a different day, you wouldn't be here. If your mother had never met your father, you wouldn't be here. If one of your grandmothers had had an abortion, you wouldn't be here. If your grandparents had never met, you wouldn't be here. If one of your ancestors hadn't survived the Black Death, you wouldn't be here. If another of your ancestors hadn't been raped and made pregnant by some invader in the 7th century, you wouldn't be here......
Need I go on? We are all where we are now by a vast infinite series of accidents, a particular woman's decision at a particular moment in time being only one of them.

 

[NeilC]

Is it wrong to kill a bum or a hermit who has neither friends nor family?

Marquis wrote in his Journal of Philosophy article:

Yes of course but then I didn't imply that. Just because I think that the effect on those left behind is the worst aspect doesn't mean there are no other bad aspects.

 

[Stone Island]

Yes of course but then I didn't imply that. Just because I think that the effect on those left behind is the worst aspect doesn't mean there are no other bad aspects.

It seems to me to be common sense that the most important bad effects of something are the effects on the person subject to the bad thing.

In any case, if one's family is rather hard-hearted, or didn't particularly care for you, I don't see how that would effect the underlying moral consideration of whether it was wrong or right to kill you. Because their attitudes are at a remove, they can't be the worst aspect of the action.

What if your family didn't know that you were killed? Does that make you killing less bad and then more bad when they find out?

 

[Stone Island]

As much as I hate to consider it, Marquis always acknowledges that the FLO argument may also include certain other, possibly quite delicious, non-human animals.

 

[Michael Redman]

Life doesn't begin at conception. This is religious dogma, the idea that God breaths life into an inanimate object, and thus each of us is a miracle. On the contrary, life began once, and continues.

The question is, at what point does a separate person exist?

 

[Stone Island]

Life doesn't begin at conception. This is religious dogma, the idea that God breaths life into an inanimate object, and thus each of us is a miracle. On the contrary, life began once, and continues.

The question is, at what point does a separate person exist?

Again, we're not talking about a person's right to life. A fetus, like very young child, is not a person (according to most operational definitions of personhood) but like a young child has a FLO.

 

[scratchy]

That makes no sense at all as an argument against abortion. If you had been aborted, you wouldn't be here to contemplate your mother's decision.
If your mother had had a miscarriage, you wouldn't be here. If your parents had had sex on a different day, you wouldn't be here. If your mother had never met your father, you wouldn't be here. If one of your grandmothers had had an abortion, you wouldn't be here. If your grandparents had never met, you wouldn't be here. If one of your ancestors hadn't survived the Black Death, you wouldn't be here. If another of your ancestors hadn't been raped and made pregnant by some invader in the 7th century, you wouldn't be here......
Need I go on? We are all where we are now by a vast infinite series of accidents, a particular woman's decision at a particular moment in time being only one of them.

I wasnt making an argument against abortion. I was making a comment on my personal reasons for discomfort with it. A pregnancy isnt just any sneeze. It brings the posibility of a future for an individual. I happened to get such a future, but i would argue every day of the week for any womans right to decide for herself. Not because my fate could as well have been decided by the black plague 657 years ago, but solely because the pregnancy is happening inside a woman, and no one has the right to decide over anyone over ones own body. That ends it for me, discomfort or not.