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REPUBLICANS ON ABORTION RIGHTS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 December 2014
Abstract
The Platform of the U.S. Republican Party in 2012 contains a promise to overturn the landmark Supreme Court decision, Roe. v. Wade, that laws prohibiting abortion are incompatible with the constitutional right to privacy of pregnant women. The Republican vice presidential nominee, Congressman Paul Ryan, opposes that decision as a matter of conviction. Congressman Ryan says that human life begins at conception, though he adds that abortion should be legal if a woman's pregnancy results from rape or incest, or if the life of the mother is at stake. Despite his reputation among Republicans as an astute thinker, Congressman Ryan's reasoning about abortion is faulty.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2015
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Notes
1 The argument goes as follows: The hare cannot catch the tortoise without traveling half the distance between his starting point and the tortoise, when the hare will occupy a place, call it P1, which is still at a distance from the place which the tortoise occupies. But then, in order to catch the tortoise, the hare must travel half the distance between P1 and the tortoise, when the hare will occupy a place, call it P2, which is half the distance from the place which the tortoise occupies. And since the hare must travel half the distance between P2 and the tortoise, and that will be true of any place at which the hare arrives, the hare can never catch the tortoise (even if the tortoise doesn't move at all; as Parmenides recognized, the argument can be used to show that motion through space is impossible).
2 Tooley, Michael (1974). A defense of abortion and infanticide, in Feinberg, Joel (ed.), The Problem of Abortion (Bellmont, CA: Wadsworth)Google Scholar.