Abortion, Impairment, and Well-Being

Area of Science:

• Moral Philosophy
• Bioethics
• Fetal Rights

Background:

• The Impairment Argument (TIA) posits that impairing a fetus with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) is immoral.
• TIA extends this to argue that abortion, a greater impairment, is also immoral.
• This argument relies on the concept of impairment and its moral implications for a fetus.

Purpose of the Study:

• To critically evaluate and reject Hendricks' The Impairment Argument (TIA) regarding the morality of abortion.
• To demonstrate that TIA is philosophically unsound and does not advance the abortion debate.
• To analyze the conditions under which TIA could potentially succeed and why it ultimately fails.

Main Methods:

• Philosophical argumentation and critical analysis of The Impairment Argument (TIA).
• Examination of the necessary conditions for TIA's success, including explaining the moral objection to FAS and abortion.
• Analysis of the role of well-being theories in supporting TIA and its ceteris paribus clause.

Main Results:

• TIA fails because it cannot adequately explain why causing FAS is morally objectionable.
• TIA cannot establish that abortion causes a greater moral objection than FAS.
• No theory of well-being can satisfy all the requirements for TIA to succeed.

Conclusions:

• The Impairment Argument (TIA) is philosophically untenable and should be rejected.
• Even if TIA could be supported by a theory of well-being, it would merely restate existing anti-abortion arguments.
• TIA does not offer a novel or substantial contribution to the ethical discourse on abortion.