Reading Notes by Christopher Lay

Los Angeles Pierce College

Department of History, Philosophy, and Sociology

Marquis's "An Argument That Abortion Is Wrong"

Marquis	"An Argument That Abortion Is Wrong"
Marquis and Killing	Killing adults, when it is wrong, is wrong because it robs adults their future worth living, a Future Like Ours, or FLO. Killing fetuses, when it is wrong, is wrong for the same reason: it robs fetuses their future worth living, or FLO. "Killing us imposes on us the misfortune of premature death," and "my death deprives me of my future, of the life that I would have lived if I had lived out my natural life span."
FLO	An FLO consists of "the goods of life are those items toward which we take a "pro" attitude. They are completed projects of which we are proud, the pursuits of our goals, aesthetic enjoyments, friendships, intellectual pursuits, and physical pleasures of various sorts. The goods of life are what makes life worth living."
FLO Fits	This account of why it is wrong to kill adults and fetuses when it is wrong fits with our notions of the world. It explains: 1) why murdering the innocent is wrong, 2) "why killing is one of the worst crimes," 3) many of our beliefs about euthanasia, 4) why we disagree with the suicidal, 5) the possibility we think exists that there are aliens, 6) why infanticide is wrong, and 7) why we think, when we do, that abortion is wrong.
Potentiality Objection and Marquis's Reply	It would be bad of Marquis if he had anything like the following premise in his argument: "If Xs have the right to Y, then potential Xs have the right to Y." For us, it would be, "If adult humans have the right to life, then potential adult humans have the right to life." Such a premise would fit into the following argument: P1) Persons have a right to life, P2) If Xs have the right to Y, then potential Xs have the right to Y, so C) Fetuses, as potential persons, have a right to life. Premise two is a bad premise. Just consider this premise when we make X = adults, and Y = right to vote As you can see, this premise is bad, and if Marquis used it in his argument, his argument would be bad. Marquis uses no such premise, but instead builds potentiality into the heart of both adults and fetuses. Adults have a potential future, and so too do fetuses. In both cases, it is their potential futures that are at stake.
Interests Objection and Marquis's Reply	The objection can be formulated this way: P0) Entities without interest have no moral standing, P1) "Without conscious awareness, beings cannot have interests," P2) Fetuses are not consciously aware beings, so C) Fetuses have no moral standing. Marquis shows how this story doesn't work: P0) Entities without interest have no moral standing, P1) "Without conscious awareness, beings cannot have interests," P2) Entities that are temporarily unconscious are not consciously aware beings, so C) Entities that are temporarily unconscious have no moral standing. As Marquis puts it, "the counter-example of the temporarily unconscious human being shows that there is something internally wrong" with the interests argument. It exploits an ambiguity. You can take an interest in something, but this is different from having an interest in something. To take an interest, you must be aware, but to have something be in your interests, you need not be aware of it, or aware at all. When you go to sleep, it is in your interest not to stop breathing, so while you may be temporarily unconscious, you nevertheless have an interest, even though you are obviously not taking an interest in continued breathing.
Equality Objection and Marquis's Reply	Since fetuses have a potentially longer future and the elderly have potentially shorter futures, then it seems that it is more permissible to kill the elderly and less permissible to kill a fetus–the FLO argument seems to imply. Marquis seems to come up short here: 1) We can come up with other reasons to show why the killing would be equal (since we can show how the murdered elderly person had an admirable past). Problem: what about someone who was a grouch for their whole life? 2) We could, for practical reasons, adopt a doctrine of legal equality since it is almost impossible to judge people's lives and the possible future life like ours that would be deprived in the case of murder. We don't know what the grouch's future would have entailed. This impossibility of weighing the different FLO's missing in different murders makes the project seem "difficult, if not impossible," and so we should adopt a doctrine of legal equality. Problem: this is just a practical problem, not a principled one. 3) The deprivation of an FLO is bad in the elder, and we punish accordingly, and there's no reason to, and in deed we ought not, punish more for killing someone younger, since the punishment is already the severest. Problem: he does not explain the force of his "ought."
Abstinence Objection and Marquis's Reply	If killing a fetus is bad because it robs what could have an FLO from that FLO, then isn't it also bad abstain from sex since that prevent things which could have an FLO from having that FLO? Marquis argues that this doesn't work, since we cannot identify the thing that would have an FLO determinately. From there he basically argues that since there is no determinate individual wronged, there is no individual wronged: "There seems to be no non-arbitrary determinate subject of harm in the case of successful contraception. But if there is no such subject of harm, then no determinate thing was harmed. If no determinate thing was harmed, then (in the case of contraception) no wrong has been done." Do you think this flies?