No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Potential Persons and Murder: A Reply to John Woods
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2010
Extract
In his book Engineered Death: Abortion, Suicide, Euthanasia and Senecide, John Woods uses an argument from analogy to establish the following conclusion: even if one grants that foetuses are not persons but only potential persons, killing foetuses is murder. Murder, according to Woods, is the defeasibly wrongful violation of the right to life ascribed to persons. If this argument is successful, it would of course have profound consequences for the ongoing philosophical debate over the morality of abortion. Whether or not they hold that foetuses are persons, philosophers would be forced to adopt the same moral attitude toward foeticide as they would adopt toward the killing of persons. That is, the killing of foetuses and the killing of persons would be defeasibly wrong in the same way; their wrongfulness could be defeated only in special and limited circumstances, perhaps like those suggested by Judith Thomson in her “Defense of Abortion”.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , June 1982 , pp. 307 - 316
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1982
References
1 Like Woods, I will use the term “foetus” in a generic sense to refer to the human organism from the time ofconception until birth. Thus, the term “foetus” as I use it will include the earlier stages Of development in which biologists refer to the developing organism as a zygote or an embryo.
2 Woods, John, Engineered Death: Abortion, Suicide, Euthanasia and Senecide (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1978), 57.Google Scholar
3 Ibid., 18, 57, 63.
4 Woods himself prefers the term “foeticide” to “abortion”; he is concerned with “abortions which are also intended foeticides”. Woods defines abortion as “the untimely, that is to say, early, delivery ofa pregnant woman” and points out that it does not always result in the death of the foetus (17). Although Woods' definition would include both induced and spontaneous abortions, I think his major concern is to point out that the foetus may survive an induced abortion. Most, but not all, induced abortions are also foeticides. For the sake of clarity, I will follow Woods in using the term “foeticide” to refer specifically to the killing of a foetus.
5 See Thomson, Judith Jarvis, “A Defense of Abortion”, Philosophy and Public Affairs I (1971), 47–66.Google Scholar Woods, however, challenges the appropriateness of Thomson's violinist analogy (77–82).
6 In the following two paragraphs, I summarize Woods' description on 51–52, using, as much as possible, Woods' own words and phrases.
7 Woods offers the following definition of “potential”: “x is a potential F if and only if there is some distinct property G such that x has G, and such that if x is maintained in healthy and biologically normal G-hood for as long as it can remain a G, it will, if its development is not arrested, cease to be aG and become an F”. Woods holds that the foetus is a potential person according to this definition (44). I follow Woods' use of “potential” in this restricted sense.
8 Woods, , Engineered Death, 54.Google Scholar
9 The animal's right to life is grounded in this way in order to maintain the parallel with Woods' analogy, where the rights of membership are conferred by the Hockey Hall of Fame.
10 There is, however, one essential step in this process which is not a matter of course, namely, J. B.'s acceptance of the invitation. J. B. might decide not to accept the invitation for any number of reasons, e.g., he might wish to call attention to some disagreement he has with NHL administrators. In what follows, however, I will assume that J. B. would accept an invitation to the Hall.
11 The term “individual” used here and elsewhere in this essay must, of course, be understood in its broad sense as “a single organism”, rather than its narrow sense as “a single person”.
12 Thomson, , “A Defense of Abortion”, 57–59Google Scholar . For comments on traditional legal theory, see the introduction to Chapter 5, “Negligence, Recklessness, and Strict Liability”, in Freedom and Responsibility, ed. Morris, Herbert (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1961), 231–233Google Scholar.
13 Ibid., 47–66.