Beyond Infanticide: How Psychological Accounts of Persons Can Justify Harming Infants

Cooper, David K. C.; Blackshaw, Bruce P.; Miller, Calum

doi:10.1080/20502877.2018.1438771

Cited by 15 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…The more original feature of this argument is that, unlike many similar defences of the prolife position, it does not rely on the personhood of newborn infants or of severely disabled adults, a premise denied by some leading defenders of abortion 7–10. While I believe that this premise is intuitively compelling and made still more persuasive by supplementary arguments which have not yet been countered,11 some continue to resist this premise. At this point, many prolife philosophers have declared an impasse: infanticide and killing certain disabled people are bullets of considerable magnitude to bite, and if our intuitions differ on an issue like this, maybe there is no realistic possibility of agreement.…”

Section: The Argumentmentioning

confidence: 97%

Human equality arguments against abortion

Miller

2022

J Med Ethics

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In this paper, I argue that a commitment to a very modest form of egalitarianism—equality between non-disabled human adults—implies fetal personhood. Since the most plausible bases for human value are in being human, or in a gradated property, and since the latter of which implies an inequality between non-disabled adult humans, I conclude that the most plausible basis for human equality is in being human—an attribute which fetuses have.

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Section: The Argumentmentioning

confidence: 97%

Human equality arguments against abortion

Miller

2022

J Med Ethics

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“…Because newborns have little to no psychological connection to the valuable future they would have were they to survive, McMahan is forced to conclude that infanticide is morally permissible in a number of cases, such as if an orphan's organs are needed for an organ transplant. 28 Moreover, even if the relevant determiners of moral status are additive in this case, it is likely that pre-conscious fetuses will have a far higher moral status than many people would be comfortable with. Consider a point made by Harman.…”

Section: The Me Taphys I C S Of Mor Al S Tatus De Terminationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The differentiation argument: If newborns outrank animals, so do fetuses

Blanchette

2020

Bioethics

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Common‐sense morality seems to dictate that newborn babies strictly outrank non‐human animals on an ordered list of subjects of moral consideration. This is best described as the view that newborn babies have a higher moral status than any non‐human animal. In this article, I will argue that this common‐sense claim about the special moral status of newborn babies makes it hard to avoid the conclusion that fetuses, including pre‐conscious fetuses, also have a higher moral status than any non‐human animal—indeed, as high as newborn babies. While this conclusion does not quite entail that abortion is generally seriously immoral, it does seem to follow that it would be no less difficult to justify (even relatively early) abortion than it would be to justify killing a newborn.

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“… 36 Rodger, Blackshaw, and Miller (2018) offer some further examples in the context of the beginning of life. …”

Section: Footnotesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Scourges: Why Abortion Is Even More Morally Serious than Miscarriage

Miller

2023

The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine

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Several recent papers have suggested that the pro-life view entails a radical, implausible thesis: that miscarriage is the biggest public health crisis in the history of our species and requires radical diversion of funds to combat. In this paper, I clarify the extent of the problem, showing that the number of miscarriages about which we can do anything morally significant is plausibly much lower than previously thought, then describing some of the work already being done on this topic. I then briefly survey a range of reasons why abortion might be thought more serious and more worthy of prevention than miscarriage. Finally, I lay out my central argument: that reflection on the wrongness of killing reveals that the norms for ending life and failing to save life are different, in such a way that could justify the prioritization of anti-abortion advocacy over anti-miscarriage efforts. Such an account can also respond to similar problems posed to the pro-lifer, such as the question of whom to save in a “burning lab” type scenario.

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Beyond Infanticide: How Psychological Accounts of Persons Can Justify Harming Infants

Cited by 15 publications

References 23 publications

Human equality arguments against abortion

Human equality arguments against abortion

The differentiation argument: If newborns outrank animals, so do fetuses

The Scourges: Why Abortion Is Even More Morally Serious than Miscarriage

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