RT Article
T1 Against the impairment argument: A reply to Hendricks
JF Bioethics
VO 34
IS 8
SP 862
OP 864
A1 Räsänen, Joona
A2 Hendricks, Perry
LA English
YR 2020
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1735929468
AB In an article of this journal, Perry Hendricks makes a novel argument for the immorality of abortion. According to his impairment argument, abortion is immoral because: (a) it is wrong to impair a fetus to the nth degree, such as causing the fetus to have fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS); (b) it is wrong to impair a fetus to the n+1 degree (to cause the fetus to be more impaired than to have FAS); (c) killing the fetus impairs the fetus to the n+1 degree (causes it to be more impaired than to have FAS); (d) abortion kills the fetus; (e) therefore, abortion is immoral. The impairment argument is a promising account for the wrongness of abortion because it does not rely on the controversial metaphysical premise that a fetus is a person. This article aims to show, that despite some immediate advantages over the rival theories of the immorality of abortion there is a reason to believe that the impairment argument is untenable. That is because there are goods that can be achieved by abortion but that cannot be achieved by impairing the fetus.
K1 Abortion
K1 Ethics
K1 Fetus
K1 Harm
K1 Impairment
K1 Killing
K1 Pro-life
DO 10.1111/bioe.12720