RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Strengthening the impairment argument against abortion
JF Journal of Medical Ethics
JO J Med Ethics
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and Institute of Medical Ethics
SP 515
OP 518
DO 10.1136/medethics-2020-106153
VO 47
IS 7
A1 Bruce Philip Blackshaw
A1 Perry Hendricks
YR 2021
UL http://jme.bmj.com/content/47/7/515.abstract
AB Perry Hendricks’ impairment argument for the immorality of abortion is based on two premises: first, impairing a fetus with fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is immoral, and second, if impairing an organism to some degree is immoral, then ceteris paribus, impairing it to a higher degree is also immoral. He calls this the impairment principle (TIP). Since abortion impairs a fetus to a higher degree than FAS, it follows from these two premises that abortion is immoral. Critics have focussed on the ceteris paribus clause of TIP, which requires that the relevant details surrounding each impairment be sufficiently similar. In this article, we show that the ceteris paribus clause is superfluous, and by replacing it with a more restrictive condition, the impairment argument is considerably strengthened.There are no data in this work.