Future Like Ours
The two essays I will discuss are “Why abortion is Immoral”, by Don Marquis and “Killing Embryos for Stem Cell Research, by Jeff McMahan. I will illustrate the dispute of when we begin to have a future like ours between Marquis and McMahan. Marquis argues that we stay equal as a fetus to the being we are later. However, McMahn argues that we are numerically distinct from the time we are a fetus to the human being we become.
The source of disagreement between Marquis and McMahan is about FLO when we start to become a human with moral status. Marquises main argument is that we have FLO from the very start of our existence. He explains that losing one’s life is considered the ultimate loss one can encounter. In particular, he explains that it deprives someone of future experiences
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McMahan believes that we start to exist in late pregnancy when we start to develop consciousness. We start to have moral status at this time. McMahan response to Marquis would be until this point, there would be no sense to talk about a fetus having a FLO. McMahan’s answer depends on the distinction between killing a being and preventing one from existing. McMahan explains that a sperm and ovum are not developed as a human like us, therefore, we are not killing a being only preventing one from existing. The fetus is not the same human organism that we are this is why killing it would not be morally wrong. HESC (harvest embryonic stem cells) research shows that people do not see the embryo as having the same moral rights as we do. In other words, fetuses are not believed to have an equivalent moral status compared to adult humans, but we do not act this way. Furthermore, embryos are used for assisted conception leaving many of them frozen preventing them from existing or being killed off (McMahan, 188). It restricts the scope of the FLO argument against