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Outline of lectures on abortion


When does the fetus become a person (acquire same right not to be killed as an adult)?

  • Potentiality argument: tends to show that egg+sperm is also a person
  • - Viability:  should not depend on geographical location or state of medical technology
  • consider moral significance of various stages in development (quickening, viability, etc.)

    •         why do these changes confer rights?
            would such a characteristic confer rights in other contexts?
  • English: fetus acquires rights gradually; not an all or nothing question
  • Sherwin:  fetus has value assigned to it by mother

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    Arguments against abortion even before fetus becomes a person

  • potentiality - value of future experiences

    •      raises problem that we should maximize population
  •  personlike characteristics
  •  derivative rights (from rights of others)

    •     father
        prospective adoptive parents

    After the fetus becomes a person, is abortion permissible?

  • Duties to others (in general)

    •     not to kill
            exceptions:  self-defense
        to save life where you are the only one who can (with what degree of inconvenience to you?)
  • Duties to others when you are responsible for the situation in which choice must be made about whether to save them

    •     degrees of responsibility for pregnancy: continuum from rape to intended pregnancy
  • Special obligations of parents

    •     to save lives of children even at considerable inconvenience
        when are parental obligations assumed?

    What should the law require?

  •   law should not prohibit everything that is morally wrong

    •         enforcement problems
            privacy
            side effects:  eroding respect for law