The Abortion Issue

In our Readings on Abortion in the course site, if you haven't already done so, take a look at the three main items: the papers by Thomson and Marquis, and the recorded streaming video of the Princeton colloquium with Peter Singer and Don Marquis.

Marquis argues that the reason why it is prima facie wrong to kill human embryos, fetuses, indeed a single-cell conceptus, is the same as the reason why it is wrong to kill an adult human, a person like you or me; namely, killing would deprive the individual of a future of value. Having a valuable future is a property that fetuses, etc. have that makes killing them no less wrong (perhaps in some sense even more so in virtue of their greater potentiality) than depriving us of our future.

Singer comes back with an interesting counter-argument that he presents as a reductio ad absurdum. Basically, he points out that Marquis' morally relevant property is not mental or social but biological: being an identifiable human individual (gametes are not, hence they are excluded from moral consideration). So, being an identifiable individual having a valuable 'future-like-ours' is the basis of our moral status. Now, Singer points out that blastocysts of 2, 4, 8, 16 . . . cells are not necessarily individuals -- but clusters of individual cells, each of which could develop into a separate human being. So, we can't really say, as Marquis wants to, that, at conception, there is an identifiable individual with moral standing. It is even worse, however, because if you grant the possibility of cloning -- and given the fact that mammals have already been cloned, and accordingly there is nothing in principle preventing human cloning -- then each of us consists of trillions of cells, each of which could be cloned into a separate individual . . . with a future of value. Unlike ordinary gestation, however, their potential is not temporally actuated but rather is in a state of 'arrested development.' They still *could* have a valuable future, however, if they were successfully cloned.

Thomson's argument takes a different tack. She assumes for the sake of argument that fetuses are *persons* but then argues that someone's being a person does not entail that that person has a right to life - or rather, a claim against you or me that we do whatever is necessary to prevent the death of that person, especially if doing so imposes sacrifices that have a significant impact on our life prospects. Take for example, my "Salman Rushdie" example in the Abortion Argument Database in the course site. The basic point is this: is there a slam dunk argument that proves that everyone has a moral obligation to make significant personal sacrifices to prevent the death of another person? If the only thing that would save Rush Limbaugh's life (Rush is in a cave in Tibet) is your cool hand on his fevered brow -- do you have a moral obligation to leave family and job and fly at your own expense to Tibet to save Rush? If you don't and he dies, are you morally responsible for his death?

Some of you would perhaps sacrifice almost everything to save the life of another person. Others would not. Moral intuitions differ. Absent a slam dunk argument supporting one moral intuition or the other . . . what should our stance be? Tolerance or intolerance?