Some puzzles about prenatal injury

Daniel B Cohen (Charles Sturt University)

Abstract: Many people believe that abortion is morally permissible, but that it is wrong to injure a fetus, for instance by binge drinking. I will spell out and critique a familiar way of justifying this distinction, which relies on the claim that only binge drinking will harm a future person. But the claim that prenatal injury is wrong only if the fetus will in fact develop into a future person gives rise to a puzzle. Suppose a pregnant woman has engaged in binge drinking. Is she now morally *obligated* to have an abortion? After all, if the woman has an abortion, her binge drinking was permissible, whereas if she doesn’t, her binge drinking was wrong. However, the claim that the woman is obligated to have an abortion is counterintuitive, especially if, despite the binge drinking, her future child will have a life worth living. In this paper, I will propose a solution to this puzzle.

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