Don Marquis Abortion Analysis

“An Argument that Abortion is Wrong”

The debate over abortion has been going on for years, as this controversial topic has never been settled and never will be. It is due to the fact that people are entitled to their own opinions and beliefs, of whether or not abortion is permissible or impermissible. One view on abortion comes from the scholarly paper of “An Argument that Abortion is Wrong,” by Don Marquis. In this paper, Marquis attempts to show that abortion is morally impermissible by appeal to his account of the wrongfulness of killing, the “Future Like Ours” (FLO) account. With this account, abortion is impermissible due to the FLO account because life is meant for one to experience and value it, one cannot do so if they are prematurely

For instance, he talks about The Potentially Objection, as he says, “one may try to generate an argument against abortion by arguing that because persons have the right to life, potential persons also have the right to life” (406). With this, it is saying that early term abortions are impermissible, despite the fact that a baby is not an individual in the first 14 days of a pregnancy, in which Marquis believes that this instance it is moral to abort a baby. He argues that this objection is clearly invalid because his FLO theory of the wrongness of killing adults is based on one’s potential to have a valuable future, as he uses examples such as “presidents don’t have the rights of the presidency; potential voters don't have the right to vote,” which make the premise of this argument false. (406). Also, Marquis references other objections, such as the Problem of Equality Argument, as it states that killing a younger person is far worse than killing an elderly person. But, he is quick to object to this as he multiple answers for this objection. One, he says that it is worse to kill someone who has done something admirable for someone, rather than a young person who hasn’t. Also, he says that “The FLO theory explains why we regard murder as one of the worst of crimes, since depriving someone of a future like ours deprives her of more than depriving her

Overall, he has a good point, in which makes me believe that his argument succeeds as it is morally impermissible to abort a fetus. Life is all about obtaining memories and experiencing the real thrills of what life has to offer. Marquis sums it up well when he says, “The goods of life are whatever we get out of life. The goods of life are those items toward which we take a “pro” attitude. They are completed projects of which we are proud, the pursuit of our goals, aesthetic enjoyments, friendships, intellectual pursuits, and physical pleasures of various sorts. The goods of life are what makes life worth living” (403). They say that when one has a baby, it is a miracle, which makes life itself a miracle. By aborting a baby, one is not giving a baby a chance to fulfill anything they might want to do in life. As everyone is born into different situations, but as a fetus, we aren’t able to control that. But, this makes life worth living, since you want to succeed and provide for the ones that have loved and cared for you. We hear it all over the news when someone comes from rags to riches, and those stories are heartfelt and inspiring, since it shows everyone that anyone can do whatever they want to do, no matter what situation you are in. This just shows that life shouldn’t be taken for granted, since one can die in any second,