The abortion debate is focussed almost exclusively on whether abortion is morally permissible or not, with the implicit assumption that if it is permissible then the foetus has no moral status and there are no limitations on what can be done to it.
"I am not suggesting that on this account abortion is provably immoral, or that it should be illegal" - why not? It seems obvious that irrespective of the phase of the human life it has an intrinsic value, in terms of legal, ethical, biological, metaphysical value. To put it simply - abortion is murder.
An action may be wrong (should not be done, for example because it is self-defeating) without being morally wrong (should not be done for moral reasons, such that all humans ought to obey). The distinction depends on what we take to be moral reasons, and this is a philosophically controversial topic. To avoid entering a debate about what makes reasons “moral”, I don’t make that claim; I am more interested in what is objectively wrong, irrespective of whether it is moral or immoral.
The intrinsic value that is present across all stages of development may not be enough of a value to make killing a murder at a particular stage. Perhaps there are higher levels of intrinsic value that obtain only at higher stages of development and only in virtue of that higher value a killing counts as murder. I don't know so I cannot make that argument in good faith. “Murder” is also a highly emotive term, a legal judgement of the highest rank, and applying it flatly to all stages of human development, even those incapable of bodily autonomy, may amount to devaluing the higher, consciousness-capable stages in favour of purely animal/biological stages. I am cautious not to claim too much. There may also be conflicting moral reasons involved, for example, by not aborting under some circumstances could be a moral wrong done to the mother, even if another wrong would be committed by aborting. In such cases the morally right choice is the one that responds to stronger moral (or otherwise normative) reasons.
"I am not suggesting that on this account abortion is provably immoral, or that it should be illegal" - why not? It seems obvious that irrespective of the phase of the human life it has an intrinsic value, in terms of legal, ethical, biological, metaphysical value. To put it simply - abortion is murder.
An action may be wrong (should not be done, for example because it is self-defeating) without being morally wrong (should not be done for moral reasons, such that all humans ought to obey). The distinction depends on what we take to be moral reasons, and this is a philosophically controversial topic. To avoid entering a debate about what makes reasons “moral”, I don’t make that claim; I am more interested in what is objectively wrong, irrespective of whether it is moral or immoral.
The intrinsic value that is present across all stages of development may not be enough of a value to make killing a murder at a particular stage. Perhaps there are higher levels of intrinsic value that obtain only at higher stages of development and only in virtue of that higher value a killing counts as murder. I don't know so I cannot make that argument in good faith. “Murder” is also a highly emotive term, a legal judgement of the highest rank, and applying it flatly to all stages of human development, even those incapable of bodily autonomy, may amount to devaluing the higher, consciousness-capable stages in favour of purely animal/biological stages. I am cautious not to claim too much. There may also be conflicting moral reasons involved, for example, by not aborting under some circumstances could be a moral wrong done to the mother, even if another wrong would be committed by aborting. In such cases the morally right choice is the one that responds to stronger moral (or otherwise normative) reasons.