Abortion is wrong because it deprives the fetus of a future like ours.
Takes a look at the abortion debate through a psychological lens: determines that abortion starts to lose its generally universal permissibility when the fetus starts resembling a person.
Pro-lifers argue against abortion with much too broad of an argument: their definition of ‘human’ ends up encompassing/protecting things like cancer cells.
The right to life that someone else has cannot automatically override your right to your bodily autonomy; no one is entitled to use you for survival without your permission.
Tells the story of hypnotized murderers in order to demonstrate why it is sometimes okay to kill an innocent person -- or a more developed fetus.
Tells the story of the violinist in order to demonstrate that it is sometimes okay to kill an innocent person -- whether a fetus or a grown man.
Argues that non-persons -- including fetuses -- do not have the same rights as us (though we cannot treat them however we want, i.e. with strange cruelty) and so early-development abortions are nearly always permissible.
This author thinks it is clear that the different stages of a fetus are not a person. As non-persons, they don’t have any of the rights or protections that we do — but, they are not morally insignificant, and we cannot merely treat them however we want due to the quality they do have: respect-worthiness.
Pro-choicers approach the abortion debate through a view of personhood that is too specific: it ends up excluding, from what counts as a person, not just fetuses but also infants, children, the mentally handicapped, coma patients, etc.
This author wants to highlight something often ignored: the changes to a mother's *practical identity* that pregnancy inflicts.
