The Main topic is: Is Abortion wrong , and the branch topic is Marquis and His Critics - Book Report/Review Example

Is Abortion Wrong If it isn’t a baby, then you aren't pregnant, so what are you aborting?  Unknown Issue of abortion is usually seen from twodifferent ethical perspectives, that of a fetus and that of relationship between a fetus and a pregnant woman. The position that abortion is morally impermissible is based on two premises: 1) human fetus has the same right to life as an adult human being; and 2) if we agree with premise number one, it means that abortion is morally impermissible as it means depriving a fetus of life or, as Don Marquis refers to, “future-like-ours”.

One of the major arguments against abortion is based on the principle that killing (no matter whom) is morally wrong in the first place. Human fetus is morally and ethically equaled to an adult human being. Therefore, killing an innocent unborn baby is morally wrong. In his essay Why Abortion is Immoral Marquis proves that the most of the deliberate abortions are morally wrong and, hence, impermissible. However, Marquis’ major argument against abortion was met with much criticism. Loss of one’s life (plans, dreams, projects, activities, etc.) is one of the greatest losses of humanity.

Abortion is the direct pass to such a loss, while life itself is like a gift we receive only once. Therefore, abortion is morally wrong. Furthermore, since killing leads to no future, it is morally wrong. The major arguments here are based on “the personhood theories of the wrongness of killing” (Whats Wrong? Applied Ethicists and Their Critics 63). All the anti-abortion arguments mentioned above lead to the inference that killing potential person is as wrong as killing actual person. Such logical reasoning on the issue is similar to the argument presented for the wrongness of infliction of pain on animals.

Marquis’ arguments presented in his essay were to prove that abortion is prima facie wrong that does not cover each and every case of abortion. In section IV of his essay the author discuses property of value of a fetus. Lack of value which comes from a valuer implies that a fetus cannot value his future. However, a person attempting to commit suicide also lacks value of his/her life, which is a good counter argument to the anti-abortion statement mentioned above. Marquis discusses issue of contraception from the perspective of future-like-ours argument.

He clearly concludes that contraception is not actually killing of anybody and hence is not morally wrong (or as wrong) as abortion itself when a baby is already conceived. Personally, I think that lack of some adult property or value of future of a fetus (because it is too young and, to some extent, unconscious of his values), does not really give anybody a right to kill the would-be adult human being. If to ask anyone of us, “would you be happy if your mom agreed to abortion when you were tiny fetus inside her?

”, very few (unhappy ones) would reply positively. Gerald H. Paske presents criticism of Marquis anti-abortion argument in his essay Abortion and the Neo-Natal Right to Life. So, he argues that Marquis’s argument based on the concept having future-like-ours is “neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for having a right to life” (Whats Wrong? Applied Ethicists and Their Critics 63). In his argumentation Paske compares Marquis’s reasoning about immorality of abortion with euthanasia.

Moreover, Paske claims that Marquis’s arguments about neonates who are not fully developed persons are unsound (p. 74). Furthermore, the author makes a parallel between contraption and abortion. If abortion is morally wrong, so must be contraception. Paske concludes since neonates do not have brains yet (death of brain constitutes biological death of a person), they lack consciousness. It is matter of potentiality. Finally, he concludes that “since a potential person is not a person, its loss is not equivalent to the loss of a person”.

I agree to such a conclusion, but I disagree that such thinking justifies abortion and gives the right to kill unborn babies. Only at the end of the author talks about woman, persons who are, in most cases, responsible for making a final decision whether to do abortion or not. I think that a woman’s interests and rights have to be respected. Only existing risk to woman’s life can be the only justifiable argument to make abortion. After having read these two essays representing opposite views on the issue, I have made a conclusion that I belong to the group of philosophers who are against abortion.

Works Cited Whats Wrong? Applied Ethicists and Their Critics, 2nd ed., David Boonin & Graham Oddie, eds., Oxford U. Press 2010.