Hursthouse’s Virtue Ethics and Abortion: Abortion Ethics without Metaphysics?
This essay explicates and evaluates the roles that fetal metaphysics and moral status play in Rosalind Hursthouse’s abortion ethics. It is motivated by Hursthouse’s puzzling claim in her widely anthologized paper “Virtue Ethics and Abortion” that fetal moral status and (by implication) its underlyin...
| Autore principale: | |
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| Tipo di documento: | Elettronico Articolo |
| Lingua: | Inglese |
| Verificare la disponibilità: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Pubblicazione: |
2011
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| In: |
Ethical theory and moral practice
Anno: 2011, Volume: 14, Fascicolo: 1, Pagine: 51-71 |
| Altre parole chiave: | B
Rosalind Hursthouse
B Fetal ontology B Applied virtue ethics B Abortion B Fetal moral status |
| Accesso online: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Riepilogo: | This essay explicates and evaluates the roles that fetal metaphysics and moral status play in Rosalind Hursthouse’s abortion ethics. It is motivated by Hursthouse’s puzzling claim in her widely anthologized paper “Virtue Ethics and Abortion” that fetal moral status and (by implication) its underlying metaphysics are “in a way, fundamentally irrelevant” to her position. The essay clarifies the roles that fetal ontology and moral status do in fact play in her abortion ethics. To this end, it presents and then develops her fetal metaphysics of the potential and actual human being, which she merely adumbrates in her more extensive treatment of abortion ethics in her book Beginning Lives. The essay then evaluates her fetal ontology in light of relevant research on fetal neural and psychological development. It concludes that her implied view that the late-stage fetus is an actual human being is defensible. The essay then turns to the analysis of late-stage abortions in her paper and argues that it is importantly incomplete. |
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| ISSN: | 1572-8447 |
| Comprende: | Enthalten in: Ethical theory and moral practice
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s10677-010-9230-2 |
