PHI 2396 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Therapeutic Abortion, Moral Agency, Fetus
5 Feb 2016
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Document Summary
Thesis: abortion is, except in rare cases (therapeutic abortion or (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) rape), seriously immoral and its is in the same category as killing an innocent adult human being. First assumption the decision whether abortion is moral or (cid:1) immoral seems to depend upon the decision whether the fetus is considered a human being whose life it is seriously wrong to take. (cid:1) Both the standard anti-abortion and the standard pro-choice (cid:1) arguments suffer from the same argumentative flaws, resulting in a standoff w/o the possibility of resolving the issue. Standard anti-abortion position the sanctity of human life" position (cid:1) Standard pro-choice position the personhood" position. The personhood" position uses psychological characteristics to describe moral agent/person. The connections btwn the definitions of human being" and the assumption that it is wrong to kill an innocent human being, are arbitrary: doesn"t accept warren"s attempt to fill gaps. An additional point: the attempt of pro-choicers to define.
