Article Text
Abstract
According to the two-tragedies argument proponents of pro-life can justifiably prioritize efforts to prevent abortion rather than miscarriages due to the fact that abortions in contrast to miscarriages involves usually the act of killing. William Simkulet has recently argued against this argument claiming that it fails as it (a) is in conflict with the common sense pro-life view on abortion and (b) leads to an overestimation of the moral value of preventing the ‘second tragedy’, namely the act of killing, compared with the value of preventing the death of an individual. In this article, I argue against to his charges against the two tragedies argument by demonstrating that this argument is not only compatible but also in line with the common sense pro-life view and that the argument does not overestimate moral significance of the act of killing.
- abortion
- embryos and fetuses
- ethics
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
Contributors HF-F is the sole contributor.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.
Linked Articles
Read the full text or download the PDF:
Other content recommended for you
- The Two tragedies argument
- Two Tragedies Argument: Two Mistakes
- Cursed lamp: the problem of spontaneous abortion
- Within the limits of the defensible: a response to Simkulet’s argument against the pro-life view on the basis of spontaneous abortion
- Infanticide and moral consistency
- Responding to Simkulet’s objections to the two tragedies argument
- Meeting the Epicurean challenge: a reply to ’Abortion and Deprivation'
- Prolife hypocrisy: why inconsistency arguments do not matter
- Are those who subscribe to the view that early embryos are persons irrational and inconsistent? A reply to Brock
- Spontaneous abortion and unexpected death: a critical discussion of Marquis on abortion