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Added by: Deryn Mair ThomasAbstract:
A threat to women is obscured when we treat “abortion-as-evacuation” as equivalent to “abortion-as-killing.” This holds only if evacuating a fetus kills it. As technology advances, the equivalence will fail. Any feminist account of abortion that relies on the equivalence leaves moral room for women to be required to give up their fetuses to others when it fails. So an account of the justification of abortion-as-killing is needed that does not depend on the equivalence.
Schouten, Gina. Fetuses, Orphans, and a Famous Violinist: On the Ethics and Politics of Abortion2017, Social Theory and Practice 43 (3): 637-665-
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Added by: Sara PeppeAbstract:
In this paper, I urge feminists to re-center fetal moral status in their theorizing about abortion. I argue that fundamental feminist normative commitments are at odds with efforts to de-emphasize fetal moral status: The feminist commitment to ensuring care for dependents supports surprising conclusions with regard to the ethics of abortion, and the feminist commitment to politicizing the personal has surprising conclusions regarding the politics of abortion. But these feminist insights also support the conclusion that, conditional on fetal moral status, care for unwanted fetuses would be a social obligation that only derivatively falls to women who are unwillingly pregnant.
Comment: Best discussed alongside Judith Thomson's "A Defense of Abortion" and Liam Murphy's "The Demands of Beneficence." Challenges a widely accepted intuition about the ethics of abortion and can be used to illustrate the vulnerabilities of thought experiments that appeal to intuitions. Demonstrates the useful argumentative move of assuming premise P for the sake of argument (even if you don't endorse P) in order to examine the implications that follow from P.
Steinbock, Bonnie. Life Before Birth: The Moral and Legal Status of Embryos and Fetuses1994, Ethics 104 (2):408-410.-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon Fokt
Abstract: This book provides a coherent framework for addressing bioethical issues in which the moral status of embryos and fetuses is relevant. It is based on the 'interest view,' which ascribes moral standing to beings with interests, and connects the possession of interests with the capacity for conscious awareness or sentience. The theoretical framework is applied to up-to-date ethical and legal topics, including abortion, prenatal torts, wrongful life, the crime of feticide, substance abuse by pregnant women, compulsory cesareans, assisted reproduction, and stem cell research. Along the way, difficult philosophical problems, such as identity and the nonidentity problem are thoroughly explored.Comment:
Thomson, Judith Jarvis. A Defense of Abortion1971, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1):47-66.-
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Added by: Simon Fokt
Content: Thomson aims to see if abortion can be defended even if the anti-abortion theorist is granted their key premise, i.e. that the foetus has the status of a person. Thomson argues that this is, in fact, irrelevant since we do not owe it to others to let them use our body in order to survive.Comment: This text offers one of the central arguments in favour of moral permissibility of abortion and features the 'famous violinist' thought experiment. It is a central reading for any module in applied ethics focusing on abortion.
Walda Heywat (Wäldä Hewat, Mitku), Sumner, Claude. Hatata [II] (~1692)1976, In Ethiopian Philosophy, Vol. 2. Addis Ababa, Addis Ababa University Press-
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Added by: Sara Peppe, Contributed by: Jonathan EgidPublisher’s Note:
Translating to 'an investigation', this is the second of two 17th century ethical and rational treatises from present-day Ethiopia. Walda Heywat (Wäldä Hewat) continued the work of his mentor, Zera Yacob (Zär'a Ya'eqob, Wärqe), and expanded on it, turning it into more of a practical guide. Hatata (II) is considered to be more in line with more traditional views in its approach to topics such as marriage and abortion. However, where as Zara Yacob's ideas were relatively individualistic, Walda Heywat was particularly known for his social ethics. In his writing, he states, "God did not create me only for myself, but placed me in the midst of other created [men] who are equal to me." He also adds, “Man cannot come to existence, grow and serve by himself without the help of other men."
Comment: Covering themes such as abortion, marriage, religion and morality this text represents a way to develop further knowledge of the Ethiopian philosophy in the 1600s. Also, it shows how some philosophical ideas developed from Zera Yacob to Walda Heywat. It may therefore be used as a supplemental text to the previous Hatata in offering an introduction to Ethiopian philosophy. As with the first Hatata, it may also be useful as a tool to explore enlightenment ideals as they predated work by European philosophers, such as Descartes and John Locke.
Warren, Mary Anne. Moral status: obligations to persons and other living things1997, Oxford: Oxford University Press.-
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Added by: Simon FoktPublisher’s Note:
Publisher's description: Mary Anne Warren investigates a theoretical question that is at the centre of practical and professional ethics: what are the criteria for having moral status? That is: what does it take to be an entity towards which people have moral considerations? Warren argues that no single property will do as a sole criterion, and puts forward seven basic principles which establish moral status. She then applies these principles to three controversial moral issues: voluntary euthanasia, abortion, and the status of non-human animals.Comment: Particular chapters are useful in teaching on the applied ethics of abortion, euthanasia and obligations towards non-human animals.
Warren, Mary Anne. On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion1973, The Monist, 57 (4): 43-61.-
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Added by: Rochelle DuFord
Summary: This paper is a response to Thomson's influential defense of abortion. Warren argues that Thomson is mistaken that if a fetus has full moral rights, then abortion is still morally permissible. Warren, instead, argues that while fetuses participate in genetic humanity, they do not participate in the category of personhood (the category which defines the moral community). For this reason, abortion is always morally permissible and thus ought to be legally permissible.Comment: This reading is a good response to Thomson's influential violinist case. The text is a bit complex, and would be better suited for a course that considered issues of abortion and infanticide in an in depth way.
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Reader, Soran. Abortion, Killing, and Maternal Moral Authority
2008, Hypatia 23 (1):132-149
Comment: This text explores a common justification for the permissability of abortion, which the author describes as an equivalence between "abortion-as-killing" and "abortion-as-evacuation". The author also examines a series of dilemmas which arise from traditional pro-choice discussions of abortion (at least at the time of writing), such the two-horned dilemma which appears to trap pro-choice advocates in only two camps: one in which the fetus is morally signficant (and therefore can only be aborted, but not killed), and another in which the fetus is morally negligible (in which case, it does not matter). Reader challenges this dichotomy and aims to show that fetal killing can be justified without claiming that fetuses are negligible by focusing on relationship, in general, and motherhood, in particular. Therefore, the text would be most useful as a primary or supplemental reading in an intermediate or advanced course studying contemporary analytic debates on abortion or feminist thought and critical gender studies.