The Pregnancy Rescue Case: why abortion is immoral.

In cases in which we must choose between either (i) preventing a woman from remaining unwillingly pregnant or (ii) preventing a fetus from being killed, we should prevent the fetus from being killed. But this suggests that in typical cases abortion is wrong: typical abortions involve preventing a woman from remaining unwillingly pregnant over preventing a fetus from being killed. And so abortion is typically wrong-and this holds whether or not fetuses are persons.

Unauthorized Pelvic Exams are Sexual Assault.

The pelvic exam is used to assess the health of female reproductive organs and so involves digital penetration by a physician. However, it is common practice for medical students to acquire experience in administering pelvic exams by performing them on unconscious patients without prior authorization. In this article, we argue that such unauthorized pelvic exams (UPEs) are sexual assault. Our argument is simple: in any other circumstance, unauthorized digital penetration amounts to sexual assault. Since there are no morally significant differences between UPEs and other instances of digital penetration, UPEs are sexual assault. So, insofar as one is against sexual assault, one should be against UPEs.

Fine-tuning the impairment argument.

Perry Hendricks' original impairment argument for the immorality of abortion is based on the impairment principle: if impairing an organism to some degree is immoral, then ceteris paribus, impairing it to a higher degree is also immoral. Since abortion impairs a fetus to a higher degree than fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) and giving a fetus FAS is immoral, it follows that abortion is immoral. Critics have argued that the ceteris paribus is not met for FAS and abortion, and so we proposed the modified impairment principle (MIP) to avoid these difficulties. Dustin Crummett has responded, arguing that MIP is open to various counterexamples which show it to be false. He also shows that MIP can generate moral dilemmas. Here, we propose a modification to MIP that resolves the issues Crummett raises. Additionally, Alex Gillham has criticised our appropriation of Don Marquis' 'future like ours' reasoning about the wrongness of impairment. We show that his objections have minimal implications for our argument.

Strengthening the impairment argument against abortion.

Perry Hendricks' impairment argument for the immorality of abortion is based on two premises: first, impairing a fetus with fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) 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 (TIP). 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.

Why the embryo rescue case is a bad argument against embryonic personhood.

The embryo rescue case (ERC) is a thought experiment that is used to argue against the view that embryos have a right to life (i.e., are persons). I will argue that cognitive science undermines the intuition elicited by the ERC. I will show that whether or not embryos have a right to life, our mental tools will make it very difficult to believe that they do have the said right. This suggests that the intuition elicited by the ERC is not truth-indicative. The upshot of this is that we have an undercutting defeater for our intuition that embryos do not have a right to life. Thus, the ERC is a bad argument against embryonic personhood.

Even if the fetus is not a person, abortion is immoral: The impairment argument.

Much of the debate about the ethics of abortion has centered on whether the fetus is a person. In an attempt to sidestep this complex issue, I argue that, even if the fetus is not a person, abortion is immoral. To arrive at this conclusion, I argue that giving a fetus fetal alcohol syndrome is immoral, and that if this is so, then killing the fetus is immoral. Roughly, this is because killing the fetus impairs it more than giving it fetal alcohol syndrome. Since abortion (in most cases) amounts to killing the fetus, this means that abortion (in most cases) is immoral. I defend the premises of this argument against a plethora of objections, concluding that they either do not work, or commit their proponent to a controversial position.

There is no right to the death of the fetus.

Joona Räsänen, in his article 'Ectogenesis, abortion and a right to the death of the fetus' (this journal), has argued for the view that parents have a right to the death of the fetus. In this brief article, I will explicate the three arguments Räsänen defends, and show that two of them have false or unmotivated premises and hence fail, and that the support he offers for his third argument is inconsistent with other views he expresses in his article. Therefore, I conclude that there is no right to the death of the fetus, or, if there is one, Räsänen has not shown it.