| Two stalemates in the philosophical debate about abortion and why they cannot be resolved using analogical arguments. | |
| | |
MedLine Citation:
|
PMID: 20377572 Owner: NLM Status: In-Data-Review |
Abstract/OtherAbstract:
|
Philosophical debate about the ethics of abortion has reached stalemate on two key issues. First, the claim that foetuses have moral standing that entitles them to protections for their lives has been neither convincingly established nor refuted. Second, the question of a pregnant woman's obligation to allow the gestating foetus the use of her body has not been resolved. Both issues are deadlocked because philosophers addressing them invariably rely on intuitions and analogies, and such arguments have weaknesses that make them unfit for resolving the abortion issue. Analogical arguments work by building a kind of consensus, and such a consensus is virtually unimaginable because (1) intuitions are revisable, and in the abortion debate there is great motive to revise them, (2) one's position on abortion influences judgments about other issues, making it difficult to leverage intuitions about other ethical questions into changing peoples' minds about abortion, and (3) the extent of shared values in the abortion debate is overstated. Arguments by analogy rely on an assumption of the commensurability of moral worldviews. But the abortion debate is currently unfolding in a context of genuinely incommensurable moral worldviews. The article ends by arguing that the default position must be to permit abortion as a consequence of the freedom of conscience protected in liberal societies. |
| | |
Authors:
|
Chris Kaposy |
Publication Detail:
|
Type: Journal Article Date: 2010-04-05 |
Journal Detail:
|
Title: Bioethics Volume: 26 ISSN: 1467-8519 ISO Abbreviation: Bioethics Publication Date: 2012 Feb |
Date Detail:
|
Created Date: 2012-01-19 Completed Date: - Revised Date: - |
Medline Journal Info:
|
Nlm Unique ID: 8704792 Medline TA: Bioethics Country: England |
Other Details:
|
Languages: eng Pagination: 84-92 Citation Subset: E; IM |
Copyright Information:
|
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. |
Affiliation:
|
Memorial University of Newfoundland. |
Export Citation:
|
APA/MLA Format Download EndNote Download BibTex |
| MeSH Terms | |
Descriptor/Qualifier:
|
|
From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine
Previous Document: On using people merely as a means in clinical research.
Next Document: Does infectious disease cause global variation in the frequency of intrastate armed conflict and civ...