Don Marquis's Essay 'Abortion Is Immoral'

Don Marquis claims that abortion is morally wrong and should not be acceptable until and unless if there is an exception. He is basically trying to explain why killing is wrong. He says killing a fetus is wrong not because the mother is getting affected but because it is affecting fetus’s life because he is suffering through the loss of all the potential for value of his or her future. In his article “Abortion Is Immoral”, he says “Therefore, when I die, I am deprived of all of the value of my future”, here he is trying to explain that if he dies, he won’t be aware of what god must have kept for him in future, he is unaware what he would have done in the future, he would be dispossessed from his future life. He thinks that fetus has the right to live and they should not be aborted because when the fetus develops, he incur all the rights which a human being should have. However, on the other hand, Bonnie Steinbock in her article “Most Abortions Are Morally Legitimate”, she says that abortions and morally acceptable because fetuses are not living beings, hence they are unconscious and don’t have any moral status because they are unaware about their interests and doesn’t feel pain or anything. She says fetuses does not have any human being rights and it depends on the mother what she wants for her body and she has all the rights to decide whether she wants to be pregnant or not because she is a living being.

However, people who abort their babies because of the gender should be punishable. If the babies are unwanted because of their gender and that is the reason why people choose abortion, in those cases, it should not be