Med Ethics Paper Para

The author’s central argument is that killing a fetus is not as morally wrong as killing an adult or a person (contrasts with Marquis). Marquis stated that killing a fetus will deprive it of “a future like ours” which is false. This is because fetuses do not have plans or wishes to do things in its future. Adults have personhood, unlike fetuses. They are thought of as persons and not organisms. There personhood can change throughout their lives and they can develop into different persons. Therefore, an adult is a person and would not be identical to the fetus from which he or she was developed. Lastly, adults also have autonomy while Fetuses lack autonomy. Due to these important disanalogies between killing adults and fetuses, one should not assume that whatever is a sufficient condition for the prima facie serious moral wrongness of killing adults is also a sufficient condition for the prima facie serious moral wrongness of killing fetuses. Thus, the standoff continues between whether personhood is crucial to the morality of abortion or not.