Don Marquis Abortion

The right for a woman to receive an abortion has been argued endlessly throughout political, moral, and religious debates. Of these three topics, the morality of an abortion is the most detrimental decision, because an individual’s moral standpoints lead to their political and religious beliefs, resulting in their actions. When analyzing the issue of abortion there are many factors that support the view that abortion is moral in almost all cases. This perspective can be supported with the basis of three different assumptions: the fetus is a person at the moment of conception, the fetus is not a person until birth, and the personhood of a fetus cannot be decided at a given point, excluding this aspect from the argument. For each of these assumptions …show more content…
In objection to this justification one could argue Don Marquis’s view that killing is wrong not because of how it effects the mother or her family/friends, but how it effects the victim. For this scenario, abortion would be immoral because the victim suffers a lost future and is given no right to life. In response to this, one could argue that the effect on the mother’s life plays a huge role in deciding the morality of an abortion because outside factors influence the type of future that the child would be subject to. For example, if the mother cannot afford a child the child and mother would both live an unhappy, stressful life because they could not support themselves. Also, the mother of the child could have certain mental/physical health concerns that would not allow her to adequately care for the child. This list could extend continuously, but the point that derives from it is that the fetus’s future is not the sole deciding factor on the morality of an abortion. It must be taken into account during the decision, but if it greatly diminishes the quality of life for the mother than act of abortion deems