Why Don Marquis's Essay 'Why Abortion Is Immoral'

Abortion: Should be illegal & is immoral Many people believe that abortions should be legal because women should have the right to choose whether or not they want to bring a baby into the world. They believe a woman should have property rights which include the body and the fetus. They also believe a woman should have privacy rights which means the state should not interfere with private matters. These people are called pro choice. At the same time many people are anti-abortion because they believe “Life is present from the moment of conception” (526). In Don Marquis’s essay, “Why Abortion is Immoral” he takes the position that abortion is “morally unjustified” (525). The purpose of the essay is to go against the belief that “The anti-abortion position is either a symptom of irrational religious dogma or a conclusion generated by seriously confused philosophical argument” (525). Abortions should be illegal because they are morally wrong except, in cases beyond our control.
Marquis’s essay is based “on a major assumption” (525). The argument of the essay assumes that the writers on ethics of abortion are correct. Marquis believes that abortion is “morally unjustified” (525). His argument is that “it is wrong to kill us because such killing deprives us of all the value of our futures” (525). He also argues that fetuses are close enough to being like us and that is it just as wrong to kill them as it is to kill us. The conclusion of his argument is that not all abortions are wrong since there may be other conditions in some cases such as “abortion before implantation, when the life of the woman is threatened by a pregnancy or abortion and abortion after rape”