The Viable Violinist

In the aftermath of the Kermit Gosnell trial and Giubilini and Minerva's article ‘After-birth abortion’, abortion-rights advocates have been pressured to provide an account of the moral difference between abortion, particularly late-term abortion, and infanticide. In response, some scholars hav...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Hawking, Michael (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Wiley-Blackwell [2016]
In: Bioethics
Year: 2016, Volume: 30, Issue: 5, Pages: 312-316
IxTheo Classification:NBE Anthropology
NCH Medical ethics
Further subjects:B Ethics
B Fetus
B fetal viability
B Infanticide
B Abortion
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Volltext (doi)
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Summary:In the aftermath of the Kermit Gosnell trial and Giubilini and Minerva's article ‘After-birth abortion’, abortion-rights advocates have been pressured to provide an account of the moral difference between abortion, particularly late-term abortion, and infanticide. In response, some scholars have defended a moral distinction by appealing to an argument developed by Judith Jarvis Thomson in A defense of abortion. However, once Thomson's analogy is refined to account for the morally relevant features of late-term pregnancy, rather than distinguishing between late-term abortion and infanticide, it reinforces their moral similarity. This is because late-term abortion requires more than detachment - it requires an act of feticide to ensure the death of the viable fetus. As such, a Thomsonian account cannot be deployed successfully as a response to Giubilini and Minerva. Those wishing to defend late-term abortion while rejecting the permissibility of infanticide will need to provide an alternative account of the difference, or else accept Giubilini and Minerva's conclusion.
ISSN:1467-8519
Contains:Enthalten in: Bioethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/bioe.12206