4 marquis on abortion (1)

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Oct 30, 2023

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Don Marquis: “Why Abortion is Immoral”
Don Marquis University of Kansas I knew him pretty well. Got tenure by accident. This is an excellent essay. I don't know how he managed to write it.
Some stage-setting
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An issue Marquis sets aside Most of the debate about abortion concerns facts about the capabilities of the fetus at the time of abortion. For example, a fetus cannot live by itself, it cannot interact or think or, at early stages, feel. The bible is a very insecure basis for arguing that abortion is immoral.
Why care what the fetus is or does? Implicitly, the argument in the background is this: The fetus is/does/has X (a baby, a person, a human, a heartbeat, a soul, feels pain, thinks, etc.) Because the fetus has/does/is X, it is seriously wrong to kill a fetus . So it is seriously wrong to kill a fetus.
What is really at issue What's really at issue is whether or not a fetus is the kind of thing it is seriously wrong to kill . It is pointless to argue about whether a fetus has/does/is any of these things unless these things make it wrong to kill something. So you ought first to look at what makes it wrong to kill something. If the fetus has the features that make it wrong to kill something, then abortion is wrong.
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What makes it wrong to kill?
Marquis' central case The paradigm example of wrong killing is murdering us , adult humans. What's wrong with that?
Some bad answers It deprives others of our company. So killing hermits would be O.K.? It brutalizes the killer. But to use the word 'brutalize' supposes that the thing is wrong . The doesn't answer the question, it presumes it has already been answered. (It begs the question .)
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Marquis argues that: What's bad about killing us is that there is something valuable which killing deprives us of. It deprives us of our future life . We don't have the “activities, projects, experiences, and enjoyments” (p.708) we would otherwise have in the future. (We might not feel this deprivation, but we'd be deprived nonetheless.)
Why abortion is immoral Abortion deprives someone of their future. That person might not exist right now, but they will exist if the abortion is not performed. So abortion is immoral because it is immoral to do anything that deprives something of a human future. We know this because that is what is wrong with killing us (adult humans, or children). A fetus is a thing (maybe not human yet) with a human future. That's what makes it wrong to kill it.
An objection to Marquis: “What about people who have no good things left in their future?” “For example, very sick and elderly people, or people with fatal diseases?” “Because they have no good future, it wouldn't be wrong to kill them.” “but that's false. It is wrong to kill these people.”
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Marquis' reply (p. 709) It could be that sometimes these killings are not wrong. A mercy-killing, or a killing at the end of life where the person wants to die painlessly, could be morally justified. So Marquis' argument is not anti-euthanasia, even though it is anti-abortion.
Another objection to Marquis “What is wrong with killing humans is not depriving them of a future by itself . Something else is needed.” “In particular, we need to add that the future plans, enjoyments etc. have already begun , so that some already existing person can anticipate and value their continuation.” “But a fetus is not in this situation. It's plans/enjoyments/experiences haven't yet started. So the killing is not wrong.”
The reply Marquis gives (p. 711) The value of a future state doesn't depend upon what is happening now to the subject, or what has happened in the past. What matters is what will happen in that future state. A future of complete misery is not valuable. But a past or present of unconsciousness or misery doesn't affect the pleasantness or value of a future. So as long as its future is valuable, the present or past of a thing doesn't matter much.
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Another objection “What makes our future valuable is that people strongly and fundamentally desire that future” “When people don't desire their future, and never in fact will, killing doesn't seem as bad. (That's one reason suicide is not as bad as murder SWM.)” “But the fetus doesn't desire anything. So it isn't wrong to deprive it of a future.”
Marquis' reply (p. 710) It's still wrong to kill the suicidal, or the temporarily unconscious. We (typically) desire life because it is good. So the desire is explained by the goodness, which is what we value. So something of value is removed by abortion. A future life is not valuable because we desire it. We desire it because it is valuable. For we cannot make an immanent death something neural or good by taking a pill that removes our desire for a future.
Yet another objection “If Marquis were right, then contraception would be immoral too!” “For, using contraception also removes a human future.” (“And not only that, we'd be morally obliged to breed as much as possible , to create millions of futures.” SWM.)
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Marquis' reply There isn't a thing that is deprived of a future by (most kinds of) contraception. A sperm/egg just by itself isn't valuable because it requires an egg/sperm to get a future. But if we say that an egg/sperm pair has a right to life, we have no idea which sperm/egg pair we mean. There is no actual pair of sperm and egg which would possess the future life. (This seems to me to be a weak point of the argument S.W.M.)
Replies to the contraception reply Although we don’t know which pair of sperm and egg will have a future, if conception will occur, then one pair will. This pair, then, has a human future, and contraception is wrong. But contraception is not wrong, or we get absurd consequences. Something in addition to a (potential) desirable human future is needed to explain why contraception is wrong. Candidate explanations, though, show that most abortions aren’t wrong too.
Also... Marquis depends upon arbitrary facts about human reproduction. If there were only one sperm released by males, he’d have to say that fact makes even contraception wrong. But the biological fact of billions of sperm is morally irrelevant. It is irrelevant, morally, that we don’t reproduce by budding too. Marquis would have to say that it was wrong to pinch off any human-bud. That’s very odd if there are millions of them.
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Upshot of this It’s more than just the existence of a human future that’s needed to make killing wrong. The thing that has the human future ought (Sam thinks) to be capable of knowing about its future and valuing it in the present. That’s why (again, Sam thinks) it would be wrong to kill a particularly intelligent chimpanzee, but not wrong to kill a chicken.
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Michael Tooley's kitten argument
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The argument Suppose in the far future we developed a serum which, when injected into the brain of a kitten, would cause it to develop into a cat with the mental capacities of a human, so it could live a life that is as worthwhile as ours. Are we then morally obliged to inject this into every kitten in the world? Would not doing so be a serious moral wrong because the thing would not have a human future?
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For next time... Please read John Stewart Mill, in the textbook, beginning at page 790.
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