Infanticide and the liberal view on abortion

Bioethics

Volumn 14, Issue 4, 2000, Pages 340-351

  Card, Robert F ^a  

^a FERRIS STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ABORTION; ETHICS; HUMAN; INFANTICIDE; LAW; MORALITY; REVIEW; UNITED STATES;

ANALYTICAL APPROACH; DEATH AND EUTHANASIA; GENETICS AND REPRODUCTION; MORAL POLICY;

ABORTION, INDUCED; CONSCIOUSNESS; FEMALE; FETAL VIABILITY; FETUS; HUMAN; HUMAN RIGHTS; INFANT, NEWBORN; INFANTICIDE; PREGNANCY;

EID: 0033805772     PISSN: 02699702     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8519.00201     Document Type: Review

References (25)

1. All references to this article will be to the version reprinted in Biomedical Ethics, eds. Thomas Mappes and David DeGrazia (McGraw Hill, New York, 1996). pp. 439-440. This reprinted version also contains Warren's 'Postscript On Infanticide'. [Originally appearing in The Problem of Abortion, ed. Joel Feinberg (Wadsworth, Belmont, 1984).]
2. All references to this article will be to the version reprinted in Biomedical Ethics, eds. Thomas Mappes and David DeGrazia (McGraw Hill, New York, 1996). pp. 439-440. This reprinted version also contains Warren's 'Postscript On Infanticide'. [Originally appearing in The Problem of Abortion, ed. Joel Feinberg (Wadsworth, Belmont, 1984).]
3. Ibid., p. 440.
4. Ibid., p. 439.
5. Ibid., p. 438.
6. I do not think this means that potentiality can serve no role at all in the liberal view; the fact that a fetus or neonate is a potential person may perhaps be used to ground moral interests for these entities if there are no competing interests on the part of existing persons.
7. Warren, 'Postscript', p. 439.
8. Ibid., p. 439.
9. I am indebted to an anonymous commentator for Bioethics for clarity regarding this point.
10. Would supporters of the conservative view be morally opposed to separation? They may argue that since this person possesses the right to life, it has a right to the use of the mother's body for the full term. This argument assumes that the right to life implies the existence of a right to whatever is necessary for survival, a claim famously interrogated by Judith Thomson, 'A Defense of Abortion', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1, 1 (1971), pp. 47-66. More to the point, the use of the mother's body for the full term is (presumably) not necessary for the fetus's survival once it is viable. Hence, conservatives need not necessarily be opposed to separation.
11. Can Warren sensibly think that separation is morally acceptable, even if it entails a serious risk of harm to the fetus? Viability now technically occurs at 22-24 weeks, yet this is no guarantee that the fetus will live: the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology estimates that fewer than 4% of babies born during weeks twenty-three and twenty-five of the normal forty week gestation period survive. Many of those that do survive will have irreversible physical and mental defects. (On this, see Intervention and Reflection, ed. Ronald Munson (Wadsworth, Belmont, 1996), p. 65) Liberals must think that we have a duty to avoid grave, preventable harm to this (future) person on pain of consistency, since (I should hope) they would be morally appalled if a mother ingested copious amounts of alcohol and drugs while pregnant with a fetus she intends to deliver. If this is plausible, then if a woman has carried a fetus until it is viable and separation threatened great harm to the fetus, it seems that in at least some cases the woman would be obliged to carry the fetus to term.
12. See note 10 above.
13. Mary Anne Warren, 'The Moral Significance of Birth', Hypatia, 4, 3 (1989), pp. 46-65. am indebted to an anonymous referee for Bioethics for bringing Warren's later paper to my attention. Warren discusses some of these issues in her recent book, Moral Status: Obligations to Persons and Other Living Things, (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1997). In this book, she still attempts to defend the liberal view on abortion, but in a way which includes not simply the intrinsic features of the fetus, but its relational properties as well. As far as I can see, both the later paper and recent book afford Warren the same resources for attempting to address the concerns developed in these pages. However, since the argument in Warren's later paper more clearly applies the multi-criterial view to the problem of infanticide for the liberal view on abortion, I have focused on this way of developing Warren's argument in my discussion.
14. Mary Anne Warren, 'The Moral Significance of Birth', Hypatia, 4, 3 (1989), pp. 46-65. am indebted to an anonymous referee for Bioethics for bringing Warren's later paper to my attention. Warren discusses some of these issues in her recent book, Moral Status: Obligations to Persons and Other Living Things, (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1997). In this book, she still attempts to defend the liberal view on abortion, but in a way which includes not simply the intrinsic features of the fetus, but its relational properties as well. As far as I can see, both the later paper and recent book afford Warren the same resources for attempting to address the concerns developed in these pages. However, since the argument in Warren's later paper more clearly applies the multi-criterial view to the problem of infanticide for the liberal view on abortion, I have focused on this way of developing Warren's argument in my discussion.
15. Warren, 'Moral Significance', p. 58
16. Ibid., p. 47
17. L.W. Sumner, Abortion and Moral Theory, (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1983).
18. Michael Tooley, Abortion and Infanticide, (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1983).
19. Warren, 'Moral Significance', p. 58.
20. Ibid., p. 46.
21. Ibid., p. 56-57.
22. Ibid., p. 63.
23. Ibid., p. 62.
24. Ibid., p. 49-52.
25. Ibid., p. 56 (emphasis added).