Are We Animals? Abortion, Identity and a Modified Future-of-Value Account

Abstract

Donald Marquis"™s Future-of-Value Account of the wrongness of killing provides one of the strongest arguments against the permissibility of abortion. According to his argument, we have very strong reasons against abortion when killing a foetus deprives it of a valuable future. Since Marquis assumes that we are essentially human animals who begin to exist very early in pregnancy, these reasons apply from a very short time after conception. In this article I will argue that we need not accept this ontological premise and that, instead, we may embrace a Lockean view about what we essentially are. I will show how, then, it is possible to reformulate Marquis"™s argument in a way that allows us to infer that it is not until late in pregnancy that the foetus"™s valuable future can give us reasons against killing it.