Harm and Abortion

null, Karl Ekendahl, Jens Johansson (Uppsala University)

Time: 07:00 (EST) / 12:00 (UK) / 14:00 (Isr) / 20:00 (China)

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Abstract: A central claim in abortion ethics is the claim that abortion harms the fetus. Most notably, this claim is one of the main components of Don Marquis’s influential argument against the moral permissibility of abortion, the “future-like-ours” argument. In this paper, we suggest a simple and straightforward reason to reject this claim. Rather than invoking controversial assumptions about personal identity, or some nonstandard account of harm, as many other writers have done, we will suggest that the aborted fetus cannot be harmed for the simple reason that it does not occupy a well-being level.