Simkulet William
Park University, Parkville, Missouri.
Bioethics. 2021 Jun;35(5):400-406. doi: 10.1111/bioe.12844. Epub 2021 Feb 1.
Most opposition to abortion stands or falls on whether a fetus is the sort of being whose life it is seriously wrong to end. In her influential paper 'A defense of abortion,' Judith Jarvis Thomson effectively sidesteps this issue, assuming the fetus is a person with the right to life yet arguing this alone does not give it the right to use the mother's body. In a recent article, Perry Hendricks takes inspiration from Thomson and assumes the fetus is not a person, arguing that abortion is wrong because causing fetal impairment is wrong and abortion is worse than causing fetal impairment. Here I argue Hendricks' impairment argument fails. For Hendricks, risking fetal impairment is wrong because it risks harm to a future person, but if we assume the fetus is not a person, abortion doesn't harm anyone, it merely prevents them from existing.
大多数对堕胎的反对意见成败与否取决于胎儿是否属于那种其生命被终结是严重错误的存在。朱迪思·贾维斯·汤姆森在其颇具影响力的论文《为堕胎辩护》中有效地避开了这个问题，她假定胎儿是一个拥有生命权的人，但同时认为仅此一点并不能赋予它使用母亲身体的权利。在最近的一篇文章中，佩里·亨德里克斯从汤姆森那里获得灵感并假定胎儿不是一个人，他认为堕胎是错误的，因为导致胎儿受损是错误的，且堕胎比导致胎儿受损更糟糕。在此我认为亨德里克斯的受损论证是失败的。对亨德里克斯而言，冒着胎儿受损的风险是错误的，因为这冒着伤害一个未来之人的风险，但如果我们假定胎儿不是一个人，堕胎就不会伤害任何人，它仅仅是阻止了他们的存在。
