Mike Almeida has an interesting argument against abortion that assumes nothing about the moral status of the fetus. It relies on two commonsense claims:
1. We should remove a benign tumor that will eventually become malignant.
2. If we should remove something that’s not yet harmful because it will become harmful, then other things being equal we should not remove something not yet good that will become good.
Some will surely resist the second claim, which is what the parallel reasoning relies on. But it does seem to me to be a generally true principle. It’s why we shouldn’t pull up flowers before they finish growing.
November 25th, 2009 | 3:29 pm | #1
This is fascinating argument. Almeida does a great job of explaining it in a very succinct manner.
I wonder if the form of the argument holds under other conditions. Does anyone know of an example that could be plugged into this format that would result in a conclusion that most of us would accept as obvious?