I believe killing people is wrong, because the moral value of a person's life profoundly exceeds any trivial happiness that any murderer can gain from killing.
Humans are morally valuable because they can experience suffering and satisfaction, make plans, form long-term goals, have desires, have wants, and above all they are rational creatures with an expressed interest in their continued existence. When you kill a person, you violate all of those, and you gain next to nothing for it; even more, the harm that you do for killing the person can never ever be recovered, whereas the pleasure someone gets for killing is fleeting and trivial at best. So, killing is wrong by a simple utilitarian calculation, that it causes profoundly more harm than satisfaction.
However, notice everything above, particularly the points about the capacity to suffer and be a rational being. Everything I listed above is a measure of moral value, but none of those measures of moral value apply to the fetus (at least not for the first 26 weeks). During the period of time when 99% of abortions occur, I can think of no measures of moral value that apply to the fetus.
For this reason, I find it incredibly difficult to accept that abortion is morally wrong.
My claim has nothing to do directly with whether a woman has a choice, its really a claim that questions the centrally important tenet of the pro-life movement: that the fetus has moral value. I don't believe this is true, and I don't believe the pro-life movement has shown this to be the case.
Postscript:
Believe me, I love human life more than most people, however I value human life for the morally relevant capacities (like the ability to suffer) that people have. If a creature lacks the capacity to suffer, see itself over time, be rational, or desire to live, then it is really hard to me to pin down just what moral value it has at all.
Before everyone jumps all over me saying that its a life, I agree. It is a life. But, it just doesn't have any moral value. Killing living things is not wrong in itself, otherwise eating plants and disinfecting countertops would be as morally wrong as murder of an adult human; its not wrong to kill plants because they cannot suffer or want anything at all. This clearly implies that its not the fact that something is alive that matters morally, its the experiences; and the reason why we protect the continued existence of life is to protect the experiences. However, I do not believe an unborn fetus has any experiences at all, so I'm not convinced there is anything being protected by criminalizing abortion.
And I understand that an unborn fetus is a human life, but I don't believe being a member of human species matters any more than being a member of the cat species or snails species. Species membership is not a moral quality, but rather the experiences of an organism matter morally.
Finally, I don't believe the argument that the fetus is a potential human has any merit. After all, condoms and menstruation thwart the existence of potential humans, but no one (except a tiny minority of religious conservatives) believes that condoms and menstruation are acts of murder. The implications of the previous sentence indicate that isn't sensible to measure the status of the fetus according to properties that it only potentially has, but rather the moral status of the fetus should be weighed on the morally relevant capacities that it actually has.
Humans are morally valuable because they can experience suffering and satisfaction, make plans, form long-term goals, have desires, have wants, and above all they are rational creatures with an expressed interest in their continued existence. When you kill a person, you violate all of those, and you gain next to nothing for it; even more, the harm that you do for killing the person can never ever be recovered, whereas the pleasure someone gets for killing is fleeting and trivial at best. So, killing is wrong by a simple utilitarian calculation, that it causes profoundly more harm than satisfaction.
However, notice everything above, particularly the points about the capacity to suffer and be a rational being. Everything I listed above is a measure of moral value, but none of those measures of moral value apply to the fetus (at least not for the first 26 weeks). During the period of time when 99% of abortions occur, I can think of no measures of moral value that apply to the fetus.
For this reason, I find it incredibly difficult to accept that abortion is morally wrong.
My claim has nothing to do directly with whether a woman has a choice, its really a claim that questions the centrally important tenet of the pro-life movement: that the fetus has moral value. I don't believe this is true, and I don't believe the pro-life movement has shown this to be the case.
Postscript:
Believe me, I love human life more than most people, however I value human life for the morally relevant capacities (like the ability to suffer) that people have. If a creature lacks the capacity to suffer, see itself over time, be rational, or desire to live, then it is really hard to me to pin down just what moral value it has at all.
Before everyone jumps all over me saying that its a life, I agree. It is a life. But, it just doesn't have any moral value. Killing living things is not wrong in itself, otherwise eating plants and disinfecting countertops would be as morally wrong as murder of an adult human; its not wrong to kill plants because they cannot suffer or want anything at all. This clearly implies that its not the fact that something is alive that matters morally, its the experiences; and the reason why we protect the continued existence of life is to protect the experiences. However, I do not believe an unborn fetus has any experiences at all, so I'm not convinced there is anything being protected by criminalizing abortion.
And I understand that an unborn fetus is a human life, but I don't believe being a member of human species matters any more than being a member of the cat species or snails species. Species membership is not a moral quality, but rather the experiences of an organism matter morally.
Finally, I don't believe the argument that the fetus is a potential human has any merit. After all, condoms and menstruation thwart the existence of potential humans, but no one (except a tiny minority of religious conservatives) believes that condoms and menstruation are acts of murder. The implications of the previous sentence indicate that isn't sensible to measure the status of the fetus according to properties that it only potentially has, but rather the moral status of the fetus should be weighed on the morally relevant capacities that it actually has.
