ASK A QUESTION

RECENT RESPONSES

CONCEPT CLOUD


CATEGORIES

  • Panelist Login

Abortion

SEE ANOTHER QUESTION
in Abortion

How should we think of abortion in view of common sense beliefs about death? In Question #1596, Professor Gentzler's solution to the problem of death-as-punishment was to suggest that we should see death, not as placing a person in some worse state (since a dead person is in no state at all), but as depriving him of what benefits he might have enjoyed had he lived. Yet by this same brand of reasoning, couldn't we argue that aborted fetuses are harmed in an analogous way? In both cases we have a puzzle about people who in some sense don't exist; the dead person because he is no longer conscious, the fetus because it is not sufficiently developed.

December 8, 2007

Response from Jyl Gentzler on December 20, 2007
I think that you are right to see the relevance of these considerations to the question of abortion. I briefly address some of the complex issues that the question of the moral permissibility of abortion raises at http://www.askphilosophers.org/question/1247 .

Print PRINT Send2friends E-MAIL
E-MAIL THIS ENTRY

Recipient's e-address: required
(separate multiple e-addresses with commas)
Your name: required
Your e-address: required
Message:

Track TRACK

TRACK THIS ENTRY

If you provide your e-mail address, you will be automatically notified whenever this question receives a response. Your e-mail address will not be used for any other purpose, and it will not be given or sold to anyone.

E-mail:

SHARE
SHARE THIS ENTRY

del.icio.us
Digg! Digg
Facebook
reddit
StumbleUpon