Recognizing Arguments
1. Conclusion-and Premiss-Indicators:
1.1. Conclusion-Indicators:
1.2. Premiss-Indicators:
2. Arguments and Explanations:
Abortion and Euthanasia
Basic Concepts
1. The fundamental issue in justifying abortion: The moral status of the fetus
1.1. The fetus has full moral status and hence has a serious right to life.
1.2.The fetus has almost no moral status until birth and lacks a serious right to life.
2. The distinction between killing and letting die: Killing is morally worse than letting die.
3. A contrast between intentional killing and unitentional letting die:
4. The doctrine of double effect:
5. Positive and negative duties:
6. Obligation:
7. Just:
8. Obligation:
The U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v Wade (1973)
The Court decided that the constitutional right to privacy, protected by the due process clause of Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, entails that
(1) no law may restrict the right of a woman to be aborted by a physician during the first three months (trimester) of her pregnancy;
(2) during the second trimester abortion may be regulated by law only to the extent that the regulation is reasonably related to the preservation and protection of maternal healthy;
(3) when the fetus becomes viable (not before the beginning of the third trimester) a law may prohibit abortion, but only subject to an exception permitting abortion whenever necessary to protect the woman’s life or health (including any aspects of her physical or mental health)
13. A Defense of Abortion
Argument 1 to against abortion:
Premise: The fetus is a human being from the moment of conception.
The development of a human being from conception through birth into childhood is continuous.
There is no a point on which one can claim that before this point the thing is not a person, after this point it is a person.
Conclusion: The fetus is a human, and to kill a fetus is to kill a person.
Judith J. Thomson’s argument 1 to against the above argument
:The development of an acorn into an oak tree dose not follow that acorns are oak trees. Therefore the development of a fetus into an human dose not follow that the fetus is a human.
[Logical weakness in her argument:
A fetus is not a grown up.
A fetus will develop into a human.
To kill a fetus means to kill a human.
An acorn is not an oak tree.
An acorn will develop into an oak tree.
To destroy an acorn means to destroy an oak tree.]
Judith J. Thomson’s argument 2 to against the above argument:
She is of great interest to ask what happens. For example, the case of a rape.
Questions about right to life:
Premise: Everyone has an equal right to life.
The fetus has a right to life.
The fetus has a right to be born and grows
Conclusion: Abortion is moral wrong.
The mother has a right to life.
The mother has a right to decide what shall happen in and to her body
Conclusion: Abortion is not morally wrong.
In fact, there is a conflict between the fetus’ right and the mother’s right.
Contradiction:
She points out a logical fallacy:
Contradiction:
Everyone has an equal right to life.
Some have less of a right to life than others.
Argument 2 to against abortion:
Killing is worse than letting die
Premise: The fetus is a person.
Abortion is intentionally to kill an innocent person.
Killing an innocent person is murder.
Any murder is absolutely impermissible.
Conclusion: Abortion may not be performed.
Premise: Killing is morally wrong.
Conclusion: Killing is worse than letting the mother die.
Judith J. Thomson’s argument 3 to against the above argument
Premise: The woman has the right to her life.
She has the right to do the self-defense for saving her life.
She has the right to "unplug" the person whom she is unwilling to share her life.
She has no obligation for a result of a "kidnap"(or rape).
Conclusion: Abortion is only her personal choice.
Obligation:
Does the third party (Doctor) have the right to abort the fetus?
The right to life consists not in the right not to be killed, but rather in the right not to be killed unjustly
Just:
Due to rape, mother has not give the unborn the right to use her body.
Does she have partial responsibility for its being there itself gives it a right to the use of her body?
Judith J. Thomson’s Conclusion:
Abortion is neither impermissible, not always permissible. There is no general yes or no answer for the issue.
The permissibility of abortion in some case does not mean that the right to secure the death of unborn child is unnecessary.
14. Why Abortion is Immoral
Don Marquis’s argument:
Purpose: To show that abortion is, except possibly in rare cases, seriously immoral.
It is in the same moral category as killing an innocent adult human being.
Premise: The fetuses are human beings.
Assumption: Fetuses are in the same category as adult human beings.
Both fetuses and adult human being are with respect to the moral value of their lives.
Right to life is over than a woman’s right to privacy.
Any particular abortion is immoral.
Conclusion: Abortions are seriously immoral.
Premise: The wrongness of killing.
Assumption: It is wrong to kill us.
A killing brutalizes the one who kills.
Others will experience due to our absence.
The loss of one’s life is one of the greatest losses one can suffer.
The killing inflicts (one of) the greatest possible losses on the victim.
The effect of the loss of one’s biological life is the loss to one of all those activities, projects, experience and enjoyments in my future life.
Killing causes the loss to the victim of the value of his/her future.
Conclusion: Killing any adult human being is seriously wrong.
Premise: The value of a human’s future makes killing wrong
Assumption: Children/infants have futures of value.
To kill defenseless little babies causes the loss of children/infants’ the value of their future.
To kill defenseless little babies is seriously wrong.
Fetuses, infants and human being all are in the same category.
Abortion causes the lose of fetuses’ future.
Conclusion: Abortion is seriously wrong.