Reconsidering the impairment argument against abortion

Area of Science:

• Moral Philosophy
• Bioethics
• Applied Ethics

Background:

• The impairment argument attempts to establish abortion's immorality without direct reference to fetal moral status.
• It relies on logical consistency: impairing a fetus is immoral, thus causing death (a greater impairment) is more immoral.
• Perry Hendricks proposed a ceteris paribus requirement for this argument, focusing on valuable goods from impairments.

Purpose of the Study:

• To critically evaluate Hendricks's refined impairment argument.
• To demonstrate the inadequacy of Hendricks's formulation of the ceteris paribus clause.
• To show that the impairment argument is ultimately superfluous.

Main Methods:

• Philosophical argumentation and conceptual analysis.
• Development of counterexamples to Hendricks's refined argument.
• Examination of the role of harms and reasons for immorality in impairment.

Main Results:

• Hendricks's new formulation of the ceteris paribus clause is too narrow.
• Fatal counterexamples arise when only valuable goods are considered.
• The argument must also account for the harms of impairment and the underlying reasons for its immorality.

Conclusions:

• The impairment argument, as refined by Hendricks, is unsuccessful.
• A comprehensive evaluation requires considering harms and reasons for immorality, which depend on fetal moral status.
• The impairment argument is rendered superfluous as it ultimately relies on the very concept it sought to avoid.