Don Marquis's Essay 'Why Abortion Is Immoral'

Don Marquis publishes his argument “Why Abortion Is Immoral” operating under the assumption that the moral status of the fetus stands or falls on the question of whether or not it is the sort of being whose life it is seriously wrong to take. He notes that he does not argue for cases that involved special situation pregnancies like implantation or those that threaten the life of the women, but only ‘most’ cases. His argument is a significant change from many other anti-abortion arguments because Marquis attempts to distance himself from the assumption that a fetus is a person. Instead, he uses what he titles the “future-like-ours” argument. This asserts that the wrongness of killing drives from the unproblematic assumption that killing you or me is prima facie wrong. Furthermore, the reason killing you or me is wrong is because, as victims of death, we would assume the greatest possible loss of any conceivable crime. That is the loss of our future; our future holds every activity, project, experience, and enjoyment that we will ever have. Marquis continues that the …show more content…
Steinbock’s argues that a non-sentient being lacks moral status. To support this assertion, she supports the moral theory called “the interest view” which “limits a moral status to beings who have interest, and restricts the possession of interest to conscious, sentient beings”. She proposes that a first trimester fetus, as a non-sentient being has no interests, and as such, lacks moral status. If a being lacks moral status, it is not wrong to kill, provided there is an adequate reason. Steinbock argues that not wanting a child is an adequate reason to kill a fetus, given that it has no moral status. Since 90% of abortions occur during the first trimester, and most occur because a woman does not want a child, she concludes that most abortions are not