Hawking Michael
Bioethics. 2016 Jun;30(5):312-6. doi: 10.1111/bioe.12206. Epub 2015 Sep 30.
In the aftermath of the Kermit Gosnell trial and Giubilini and Minerva's article 'After-birth abortion', abortion-rights advocates have been pressured to provide an account of the moral difference between abortion, particularly late-term abortion, and infanticide. In response, some scholars have defended a moral distinction by appealing to an argument developed by Judith Jarvis Thomson in A defense of abortion. However, once Thomson's analogy is refined to account for the morally relevant features of late-term pregnancy, rather than distinguishing between late-term abortion and infanticide, it reinforces their moral similarity. This is because late-term abortion requires more than detachment - it requires an act of feticide to ensure the death of the viable fetus. As such, a Thomsonian account cannot be deployed successfully as a response to Giubilini and Minerva. Those wishing to defend late-term abortion while rejecting the permissibility of infanticide will need to provide an alternative account of the difference, or else accept Giubilini and Minerva's conclusion.
在克米特·戈斯内尔案审判以及朱比利尼和米内尔瓦发表《产后堕胎》一文之后，堕胎权利倡导者面临压力，需要说明堕胎，尤其是晚期堕胎与杀婴之间的道德差异。对此，一些学者通过诉诸朱迪思·贾维斯·汤姆森在《为堕胎辩护》中提出的论点来捍卫一种道德区分。然而，一旦汤姆森的类比经过完善以考虑到晚期妊娠的道德相关特征，它非但没有区分晚期堕胎和杀婴，反而强化了它们在道德上的相似性。这是因为晚期堕胎不仅仅是分离——它需要实施杀胎行为以确保可存活胎儿死亡。因此，基于汤姆森观点的解释无法成功用于回应朱比利尼和米内尔瓦。那些希望为晚期堕胎辩护同时又拒绝杀婴的可允许性的人，将需要提供一种关于两者差异的替代解释，否则就得接受朱比利尼和米内尔瓦的结论。
