his obligation to provide financial support, may severely limit his freedom and even require months or, indeed, years, of extremely burdensome physical labor. Historically, many men have rightly seen that their basic responsibility to their family (and country) has entailed risking, and in many cases, losing, their lives. Different people in different circumstances, with different talents, will have different responsibilities. It is no argument against any of these responsibilities to point out their distinctness.
So, the burden of carrying the baby, for all its distinctness, is significantly less than the harm the baby would suffer by being killed; the mother and father have a special responsibility to the child; it follows that intentional abortion (even in the few cases where the baby’s death is an unintended but foreseen side effect) is unjust and therefore objectively immoral.
References
1 Boonin, David (2003). A Defense of Abortion. New York: Cambridge University Press.
2 Carlson, Bruce (1994). Human Embryology and Developmental Biology. St. Louis, MO: Mosby.
3 Dworkin, Ronald (1993). Life’s Dominion: An Argument about Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom. New York: Random House.
4 George, Robert and Lobo, Gòmez (2002). “Personal statement.” In The President’s Council on Bioethics, Human Cloning and Human Dignity: The Report of the President’s Council on Bioethics. (2002, pp. 294–306). New York: Public Affairs.
5 Gilbert, Scott (2003). Developmental Biology, 7th edn. Sunderland, MA: Sinnauer Associates.
6 Larson, William J. (2001). Human Embryology, 3rd edn. New York: Churchill Livingstone.
7 Lee, Patrick (1996). Abortion and Unborn Human Life. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press.
8 Little, Margaret Olivia (1999). “Abortion, intimacy, and the duty to gestate.” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 2: 295–312.
9 McDonagh, Eileen (1996). Breaking the Abortion Deadlock: From Choice to Consent. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
10 Moore, Keith, and Persaud, T. V. N. (2003). The Developing Human, Clinically Oriented Embryology, 7th edn. New York: W. B. Saunders.
11 Muller, Werner A. (1997). Developmental Biology. New York: Springer Verlag.
12 O’Rahilly, Ronan, and Mueller, Fabiola (2000). Human Embryology and Teratology, 3rd edn. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
13 Singer, Peter (1993). Practical Ethics, 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
14 Stretton, Dean (2004). “Essential properties and the right to life: a response to Lee.” Bioethics, 18/3: 264–82.
15 Thomson, Judith Jarvis (1971). “A defense of abortion.” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1: 47–66; reprinted, among other places, in Joel Feinberg (ed.) The Problem of Abortion, 2nd edn. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth (1984, pp. 173–87).
16 Thomson, Judith Jarvis (1995). “Abortion.” Boston Review. Available at [http://bostonreview.net/archives/BR20.3/thomson.php]
17 Tooley, Michael (1983). Abortion and Infanticide. New York: Oxford University Press.
18 Warren, Mary Ann (1984). “On the moral and legal status of abortion.” In Joel Feinberg (ed.) The Problem of Abortion, 2nd edn. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth (1984, pp. 102–19).
Further reading
1 Bailey, Ronald, Lee, Patrick, and George, Robert P. (2001). “Are stem cells babies?” Reason Online. Available at https://reason.com/2001/07/11/are‐stem‐cells‐babies/
2 Beckwith, Francis (1993). Politically Correct Death: Answering the Arguments for Abortion Rights. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker.
3 Beckwith, Francis (2000). Abortion and the Sanctity of Human Life. Joplin, MO: College Press.
4 Chappell, T. D. J. (1998). Understanding Human Goods: A Theory of Ethics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
5 Finnis, John (1999). “Abortion and health care ethics.” In Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer (eds.), Bioethics: An Anthology (pp. 13–20). London: Blackwell.
6 Finnis, John (2001). “Abortion and cloning: some new evasions.” Available at http://lifeissues.net/writers/fin/fin_01aborcloneevasions.html
7 George, Robert (2001). “We should not kill human embryos – for any reason.” In The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion, and Morality in Crisis (pp. 317–23). Wilmington, DL: ISI Books.
8 Grisez, Germain (1990). “When do people begin?” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 63: 27–47.
9 Lee, Patrick (2004). “The pro‐life argument from substantial identity: A defense.” Bioethics, 18(3): 249–63.
10 Marquis, Don (1989). “Why abortion is immoral.” Journal of Philosophy, 86: 183–202.
11 Oderberg, David (2000) Applied Ethics: A Non‐Consequentialist Approach. New York: Oxford University Press.
12 Pavlischek, Keith (1993). “Abortion logic and paternal responsibilities: One more look at Judith Thomson’s ‘Defense of abortion’.” Public Affairs Quarterly, 7: 341–61.
13 Schwarz, Stephen (1990). The Moral Question of Abortion. Chicago: Loyola University Press.
14 Stone, Jim (1987). “Why potentiality matters.” Journal of Social Philosophy, 26: 815–30.
15 Stretton, Dean (2000). “The argument from intrinsic value: A critique.” Bioethics, 14: 228–39.
Notes
1 1 See, for example: Carlson (1994: chs. 2–4); Gilbert (2003: 183–220, 363–90); Larson (2001: chs. 1–2); Moore and Persaud (2003: chs. 1–6); Muller (1997: chs. 1–2); O’Rahilly and Mueller (2000: chs. 3–4).
2 2 For a discussion of the issues raised by twinning and cloning, see George and Lobo (2002).
3 3 Some defenders of abortion have seen the damaging implications of this point for their position (Stretton, 2004), and have struggled to find a way around it. There are two leading proposals. The first is to suggest a mean between a capacity and an actual behavior, such as a disposition. But a disposition is just the development or specification of a capacity and so raises the unanswerable question of why just that much development, and not more or less should be required. The second proposal is to assert that the historical fact of someone having exercised a capacity (say, for conceptual thought) confers on her a right to life even if she does not now have the immediately exercisable capacity. But suppose we have baby Susan who has developed a brain and gained sufficient experience
