>A better
>answer is this: killing is wrong because it deprives the victim of all
>possible future experience. "When I die," says Marquis, "I am deprived of
>all the value of my future."
He just doesn't get it al all.
We think murder is wrong because we are averse to ourselves (or those close to us) being murdered. Not wanting to be killed personally, we support a universal prohibition against killing anyone, simply out of self-interest. Naturally, we are averse to any exceptions that might conceivably weaken our own individual right to be protected under this convention.
Since all conscious individuals have already been born, a process which is irreversible, killing an unborn foetus is not an exception which is personally threatening. Unless it is our own unborn child of course, we don't want anybody killing our offspring either. But so long as a mother has complete control over this decision, the mother is not threatened by such an exception. Forced abortion however is unacceptable. Naturally enough, those who have less control over the decision (such as fathers) are somewhat more threatened by the exception, which explains why they are correspondingly more likely to be opposed to abortion. To them, it is forced.
But of course for a mother to surrender this control amounts to surrendering her own body to someone else's control. A repugnant notion in the modern era. So there is a serious conflict of interest that cannot be resolved to everyone's satisfaction. It is no co-incidence that those opposing abortion almost always subscribe to one of the traditions which hold that women's rights are subservient to that of their husbands/fathers/clan. What these people are essentially resisting is the modern status of women, which resolves the conflict of interest between the right of an individual to control her own body, versus the right of a father or other interested party to control the body of a woman who bears their offspring. But only one side can ultimately prevail and the mutually exclusive interests must be determined one way or the other.
>Marquis offers two bits of intuitive evidence for this:
>
> 1. It explains why we regard killing as an especially evil crime: it
>deprives the victim of more than virtually any other crime.
> 2. It explains the regret and sense of loss felt by people who know
>they are dying.
This misses the point. It is stating the obvious that we don't want to die. This requires no explanation at all.
>Marquis uses another case as a sort of test for this general approach. We
>believe it is wrong to inflict pain on other people wantonly. He suggests
>that there are strong parallels between what he -- and, he thinks, we --
>would say about this and what he has to say about abortion. We believe it
>is wrong not because of some extrinsic considerations, such as what it
>does to the character of the person inflicting the pain, but because of
>its effects on the victim -- because the suffering of the victim is an
>evil. This is like what he has to say about killing; killing is wrong not
>because of its effects on the killer, but because of its effects on the
>victim -- the loss of all potential for value in his or her future...
Its the effect on us, and those we care about, that motivate us to want to end suffering. We don't want to suffer ourselves, so we take the view that inflicting suffering is wrong.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas