Abortion and Infanticide - Essay Example

Abortion and Infanticide In this article, Tooley, tries to defend the basic moral principal which specifies that an organism should posses a condition so that the organism becomes eligible for a serious right to life. As is depicted by the arguments proposed to defend the point of view the writer belongs to liberal group and he has really tried to force to accept his arguments. As he mentioned in the very first sentences that “one is forced to conclude that these practices are normally accepted…”, in these sentences, though he uses the word force to be incorporated based on arguments but throughout in his article he forced the reader to accept his arguments based on intuition less and power more. Abortion is immoral if we accept the potentiality principle Potentiality principle described by the writer explains about the importance of possession of some property which makes some one eligible to have a serious right to life. For any organism to have this right the property should be there on continuous basis instead of that property is gained during the course of life. The author explains this issue of possession of some property to a further step by discussing the continuous ability of an organism having that property. He takes adult human as a model who has got that property but the human fetus still has not attained that level to be provided with that property so the fetus does not have the right to life based on the potentiality principle. This differentiation he makes by dividing the ability at two levels: physiological and psychological. He states that the physiological properties are same at the fetal level if compared across the species but this property based on physiological characteristics does not allow some organism to enjoy the right life. Once some one reaches a level to attain the psychological characteristics sufficient enough to be recognized as possessing that property with serious right to life. In fact, he tries to defend the idea that the serious right to life is not granted right at the beginning of some organism’s life at the zygote level, for example, in humans but there is some cut off point after which an organism belonging to some species may become eligible to serious right to life. The author takes the life process for his defense which passes through various phases. During this developmental process, a stage comes when an individual becomes psychologically mature alongwith physiological development. At this point in life time, according to the author, when an organism possesses both physiological as well as psychological properties the organism has got the serious right to life. As before this point in life time the psychological property is not possessed by the organism, as is the case of human fetus, and does not have had the serious right to life. Potentiality principle is not accepted The author tries to reject the potentiality principle by focusing on: a) self consciousness requirement which states that “the claim that only an organism that conceives of itself as a continuing subject of experiences has a right to life.” According to author this claim along with the possibility of possessing a property by the adult human ends up to the denial of potentiality principle. b) Valuation principle which explains that “the value of an object is related to the value of the things into which it can develop.” The author stresses that it should not be confused with potentiality principle. c) Moral symmetry principle where a pair of action looks alike. Do these Arguments Work? No. Arguments As far as the potentiality principle is concerned, I do agree with that phenomenon. But the grounds, on which the author defends liberal views and then based on his narration of the principle he denies the right of human fetus for the life, are not much strong rather unacceptable. The author brings fetuses of all the species to an equal level when they do not posses any psychological maturity but physiological differences, and based on physiological differences one cannot differentiate among various species and give a higher rank to humans. In fact having human physiological identity in itself has got the complete arguments that this fetus will end up in an adult human and if this fetus is subjected to abortion means killing a future human and in turn future human at fetus level is an adult human. The author talks about the issue of desires and other possessions and which are deficient at fetus level so he relates the fetus to non living things like machinery, this type of comparisons are themselves not proper. At any level during the conception and then through the process of development a human genetic material is always different from any non –living things. In genetics or any other basic sciences research, firstly, any experiment is performed at the lower animal level and then the results are extrapolated to be applied to the human. How can one compare human fetus with other species when it comes to the most important issue of deciding about keeping a living thing alive or not? In reality the fetus should be given more rights to life, as it happens in other matters where the complainant is minor and have not reached the age of maturity, till the fetus attains an age to decide about the abortion. When the fetus attains a maturity level to decide about the abortion following his/her desires as described by the author, he would no more be in that situation and be a candidate for abortion. Therefore, the author’s argument rejecting the right of the fetus to life based on the potentiality principle does not prove to be strong enough to be accepted on the ground the author defends it. Based on the potentiality principle, the author tries to prove that the conservative’s argument for the abortion being an immoral act is not accepted. This is because of the reason that there is no possession of the specific properties by the human fetus but these may develop as the human being advances in age. At the fetus level having missed the specific property of psychological maturity, human fetus can undergo abortion like the fetus of any other species. Arguments for the acceptance of potentiality principle The author takes the advantage of attacking the potentiality principle by adding the condition of self-consciousness requirement to the possession of a property by humans. Again he forced that the addition of one other claim of self consciousness goes against the potentiality principle. this way the author tries to refute the potentiality principle. Using moral symmetry principle, the author state those by giving an example of a person who kills someone or the other who does not kill but at the same time does not go to protect any one who is being attacked to death. There is a strong disagreement to this comparison when he states that he who does not go to help is not like a killer but can be said to be lazy. Actually, these are the authors perception which cannot be generalized unless proved to be so. In fact, those who are in a power to defend/protect some one from being killed and they in actuality do not protect the person they are like killers. The author gives another example of invention of an injection which when injected to a kitten may turn it to a level to attain brain of human and then it would be equal to human, so will also have the right to life. Interesting thing is that the author gives hypothetical example may happens in the future and based on those examples tries to refute today’s reality. The author tries to make arguments to defend the liberal views against the right to life in case of infanticide. But the arguments are most of the time his own perception of the author for various issue. The individual level of thinking, making arguments and defending some of his/her ideas is not necessarily to a level to be accepted. After reviewing all of the article, one may concludes that: The author has tried to defend liberal view on infanticide and at the same time to refute the conservative. In majority of the cases the arguments are not related to intellect rather emotional with some of the supernatural example far away in the future. The author has tried to compare most of the realistic things with the hypothetical things to appear in the future. Therefore, I do not agree with the arguments proposed by the author in this article on the issue of abortion and infanticide. salthough Read More