The deprivation argument against abortion.

Area of Science:

• Bioethics
• Philosophy of Medicine
• Moral Philosophy

Background:

• Pro-life arguments often center on abortion depriving a fetus of a valuable future.
• Recent philosophical arguments by Don Marquis and Jim Stone articulate this claim.
• These arguments posit that a fetus possesses a future containing valuable experiences or conscious goods.

Purpose of the Study:

• To critically examine two prominent versions of the pro-life argument based on foetal deprivation.
• To evaluate the logical consistency and ethical implications of these arguments.
• To propose an alternative framework for understanding harm and deprivation in relation to a fetus's future.

Main Methods:

• Philosophical analysis and argumentation.
• Examination of Marquis's 'future like ours' argument.
• Analysis of Stone's 'future containing conscious goods' argument.
• Exploration of thought experiments and hypothetical cases.
• Application of the concept of psychological connectedness.

Main Results:

• The paper presents three main objections to Marquis's and Stone's arguments.
• These arguments lead to unacceptable inequalities in the perceived wrongness of killing.
• The arguments yield counterintuitive results in various hypothetical scenarios.
• The role of psychological connectedness in assessing harm is critically overlooked.

Conclusions:

• The pro-life arguments examined are found to be flawed.
• The fetus's weak psychological connectedness to its future diminishes the seriousness of deprivation-based harm.
• Depriving a fetus of its future does not constitute a serious harm in the same way it would for a psychologically connected individual.