the desire account.10
Consider first the desire account as a rival account of the ethics of killing which would provide the basis for rejecting the anti‐abortion position. Such an account will have to be stronger than the value of a future‐like‐ours account of the wrongness of abortion if it is to do the job expected of it. To entail the wrongness of abortion, the value of a future‐like‐ours account has only to provide a sufficient, but not a necessary, condition for the wrongness of killing. The desire account, on the other hand, must provide us also with a necessary condition for the wrongness of killing in order to generate a pro‐choice conclusion on abortion. The reason for this is that presumably the argument from the desire account moves from the claim that what makes killing wrong is interference with a very strong desire to the claim that abortion is not wrong because the fetus lacks a strong desire to live. Obviously, this inference fails if someone’s having the desire to live is not a necessary condition of its being wrong to kill that individual.
One problem with the desire account is that we do regard it as seriously wrong to kill persons who have little desire to live or who have no desire to live or, indeed, have a desire not to live. We believe it is seriously wrong to kill the unconscious, the sleeping, those who are tired of life, and those who are suicidal. The value‐of‐a‐human‐future account renders standard morality intelligible in these cases; these cases appear to be incompatible with the desire account.
The desire account is subject to a deeper difficulty. We desire life, because we value the goods of this life. The goodness of life is not secondary to our desire for it. If this were not so, the pain of one’s own premature death could be done away with merely by an appropriate alteration in the configuration of one’s desires. This is absurd. Hence, it would seem that it is the loss of the goods of one’s future, not the interference with the fulfillment of a strong desire to live, which accounts ultimately for the wrongness of killing.
It is worth noting that, if the desire account is modified so that it does not provide a necessary, but only a sufficient, condition for the wrongness of killing, the desire account is compatible with the value of a future‐like‐ours account. The combined accounts will yield an anti‐abortion ethic. This suggests that one can retain what is intuitively plausible about the desire account without a challenge to the basic argument of this paper.
It is also worth noting that, if future desires have moral force in a modified desire account of the wrongness of killing, one can find support for an anti‐abortion ethic even in the absence of a value of a future‐like‐ours account. If one decides that a morally relevant property, the possession of which is sufficient to make it wrong to kill some individual, is the desire at some future time to live – one might decide to justify one’s refusal to kill suicidal teenagers on these grounds, for example – then, since typical fetuses will have the desire in the future to live, it is wrong to kill typical fetuses. Accordingly, it does not seem that a desire account of the wrongness of killing can provide a justification of a pro‐choice ethic of abortion which is nearly as adequate as the value of a human‐future justification of an anti‐abortion ethic.
The discontinuation account looks more promising as an account of the wrongness of killing. It seems just as intelligible as the value of a future‐like‐ours account, but it does not justify an anti‐abortion position. Obviously, if it is the continuation of one’s activities, experiences, and projects, the loss of which makes killing wrong, then it is not wrong to kill fetuses for that reason, for fetuses do not have experiences, activities, and projects to be continued or discontinued. Accordingly, the discontinuation account does not have the anti‐abortion consequences that the value of a future‐like‐ours account has. Yet, it seems as intelligible as the value of a future‐like‐ours account, for when we think of what would be wrong with our being killed, it does seem as if it is the discontinuation of what makes our lives worthwhile which makes killing us wrong.
Is the discontinuation account just as good an account as the value of a future‐like‐ours account? The discontinuation account will not be adequate at all, if it does not refer to the value of the experience that may be discontinued. One does not want the discontinuation account to make it wrong to kill a patient who begs for death and who is in severe pain that cannot be relieved short of killing. (I leave open the question of whether it is wrong for other reasons.) Accordingly, the discontinuation account must be more than a bare discontinuation account. It must make some reference to the positive value of the patient’s experiences. But, by the same token, the value of a future‐like‐ours account cannot be a bare future account either. Just having a future surely does not itself rule out killing the above patient. This account must make some reference to the value of the patient’s future experiences and projects also. Hence, both accounts involve the value of experiences, projects, and activities. So far we still have symmetry between the accounts.
The symmetry fades, however, when we focus on the time period of the value of the experiences, etc., which has moral consequences. Although both accounts leave open the possibility that the patient in our example may be killed, this possibility is left open only in virtue of the utterly bleak future for the patient. It makes no difference whether the patient’s immediate past contains intolerable pain, or consists in being in a coma (which we can imagine is a situation of indifference), or consists in a life of value. If the patient’s future is a future of value, we want our account to make it wrong to kill the patient. If the patient’s future is intolerable, whatever his or her immediate past, we want our account to allow killing the patient. Obviously, then, it is the value of that patient’s future which is doing the work in rendering the morality of killing the patient intelligible.
This being the case, it seems clear that whether one has immediate past experiences or not does no work in the explanation of what makes killing wrong. The addition the discontinuation account makes to the value of a human future account is otiose. Its addition to the value‐of‐a‐future account plays no role at all in rendering intelligible the wrongness of killing. Therefore, it can be discarded with the discontinuation account of which it is a part.
IV
The analysis of the previous section suggests that alternative general accounts of the wrongness of killing are either inadequate or unsuccessful in getting around the anti‐abortion consequences of the value of a future‐like‐ours argument. A different strategy for avoiding these anti‐abortion consequences involves limiting the scope of the value of a future argument. More precisely, the strategy involves arguing that fetuses lack a property that is essential for the value‐of‐a‐future argument (or for any anti‐abortion argument) to apply to them.
One move of this sort is based upon the claim that a necessary condition of one’s future being valuable is that one values it. Value implies a valuer. Given this one might argue that, since fetuses cannot value their futures, their futures are not valuable to them. Hence, it does not seriously wrong them deliberately to end their lives.
This move fails, however, because of some ambiguities. Let us assume that something cannot be of value unless it is valued by someone. This does not entail that my life is of no value unless it is valued by me. I may think, in a period of despair, that my future is of no worth whatsoever, but I may be wrong because others rightly see value – even great value – in it. Furthermore, my future can be valuable to me even if I do not value it. This is the case when a young person attempts suicide, but is rescued and goes on to significant human achievements. Such young people’s futures are ultimately valuable to them, even though such futures do not seem to be valuable to them at the moment of attempted suicide. A fetus’s future can be valuable to it in the same way. Accordingly, this attempt to limit the anti‐abortion argument fails.
Another similar attempt to reject the anti‐abortion position is based on Tooley’s claim that an entity cannot possess the right to life unless it has the capacity to
