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Why Don Marquis's Essay 'Why Abortion Is Immoral'

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Anthony Miller Dr. Shane Duarte Philosophy University Seminar March 23, 2024 The Permissibility of Abortion I, Anthony Miller, did not use any sort of AI to write this paper. In Don Marquis’s paper, “Why Abortion is Immoral,” he carefully explains why he considers abortion to be wrong and morally impermissible. His first claim is that if we believe that killing an adult is impermissible, then we have no way to prove that killing a fetus is permissible. Marquis claims that killing a fetus is seriously wrong and is only considered permissible in a few circumstances. He states that the only circumstances where killing a fetus is permissible is when the fetus is killed before implantation, when a woman's life is threatened due to pregnancy, and …show more content…

All in all, I believe that Marquis' argument could have been way more clear in order to come to his conclusion that abortion is impermissible. I believe that his argument is missing many different scenarios in the process of pregnancy that lead to abortion. While his argument does prove that abortion can be impermissible due to the loss of a valuable future, he does not take into account many different situations when abortion can also be permissible. For example, he does not take into account whether the mother truly wants the fetus or not. He does not mention whether the mother gave the child the right to use her body or not. His argument could have been more sound if he were to mention this, but I believe that he did not take this into account because he knew that he could easily be proved wrong. Everything he said in his argument was based on things that he knew his audience would agree with. He had a good idea that his audience would agree with the fact that killing an adult is wrong, so therefore killing a fetus is

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