Strengthening the impairment argument against abortion

Journal of Medical Ethics 47 (7):515-518 (2020)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Perry Hendricks’ impairment argument for the immorality of abortion is based on two premises: first, impairing a fetus with fetal alcohol syndrome is immoral, and second, if impairing an organism to some degree is immoral, then ceteris paribus, impairing it to a higher degree is also immoral. He calls this the impairment principle. Since abortion impairs a fetus to a higher degree than FAS, it follows from these two premises that abortion is immoral. Critics have focussed on the ceteris paribus clause of TIP, which requires that the relevant details surrounding each impairment be sufficiently similar. In this article, we show that the ceteris paribus clause is superfluous, and by replacing it with a more restrictive condition, the impairment argument is considerably strengthened. There are no data in this work.

Author Profiles

Bruce P. Blackshaw
University of Birmingham
Perry Hendricks
Purdue University

Analytics

Added to PP
2020-06-06

Downloads
467 (#32,563)

6 months
97 (#36,222)

Historical graph of downloads since first upload
This graph includes both downloads from PhilArchive and clicks on external links on PhilPapers.
How can I increase my downloads?