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Abortion for fetal defects: two current arguments

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Abstract

A common utilitarian argument in favor of abortion for fetal defects rests on some controversial assumptions about what counts as a life worth living. Yet critics of abortion for fetal defects are also in need of an argument free from controversial assumptions about the future child's quality of life. Christopher Kaczor (in: Kaczor (ed), The ethics of abortion: women's rights, human life, and the question of justice, Routledge, New York, 2011) has devised an analogy that apparently satisfies this condition. On close scrutiny, however, Kaczor's analogy is too weak to debunk the common-morality intuition that at least some abortions for fetal defects are morally permissible. The upshot of this discussion is that, on the moral permissibility of abortions for fetal defects, a case-by-case approach is to be preferred.

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Notes

  1. Accordingly, a morally right or obligatory decision is the one that would maximize the total amount of wellbeing over harm for those affected by it, and a morally permissible or neutral decision is one that would increase the total amount of wellbeing over harm at least as much as its alternatives.

  2. I am indebted to an anonymous referee from this journal for noticing these flaws in White’s reply.

  3. When prosecutors appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, however, that judgment was reversed, and in 2001 Latimer was given the maximum sentence: ten years imprisonment, to be served before eligibility for parole.

  4. Abortion for Down syndrome is among the hardest to decide because of the variable severity of inherent impairments. The extent of cognitive deficiency unpredictably ranges between 20 and 60 IQ points, with some individuals scoring below, others above. One-third to one-half Down infants also have one or more physical impairments such as congenital heart defect (40%), high susceptibility to pneumonia and gastroenteritis, esophageal or duodenal atresia, and childhood leukemia. For more on this, see Weir 1984.

  5. Theorists of different moral persuasions such as Glover 2006, Robertson 1994, and Savulescu 2002, among others, converge on acknowledging the special moral significance of this individual liberty. .

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  1. St. Cloud State University, Saint Cloud, MN, USA

    Susana Nuccetelli

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  1. Susana Nuccetelli
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Correspondence to Susana Nuccetelli.

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Nuccetelli, S. Abortion for fetal defects: two current arguments. Med Health Care and Philos 20, 447–450 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-017-9765-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-017-9765-2

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