PHI 1102 Lecture 7: Abortion II
11 Jul 2016
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Symmetrical problem: pro-choicers risk setting scope of creatures with moral rights too narrowly, pro-lifers risk setting the same limits too broadly. What gives fetuses rights, if they have them? (other ways people have tried to explain: being biologically human - but a cancer culture is biologically human. Does not work: having the psychological capacities of a person. Clearly fetuses do not have these: kantian accounts of duties to non-persons. The way he quali es a person does not work for a fetus. Basic approach: it"s not that non-persons have rights and that we have duties towards them, but it"s that there are some things that persons do not have the right to do: feinberg"s approach that infants have social utility. Marquis believes this is restricted because it only proves that only infants who have utility should be protected. Being pregnant for 9 months is not as bad as being killed.
