3 8 4C H A P T E R 1 9 ■ M o r a l R e a s o n i n gWe share a conception of justice that includes, among other things, equality
of opportunity and equality before the law. Most people also have a concep-
tion of human dignity: A human being is not a thing to be used and dis-
posed of for personal advantage.
With all this agreement, how does moral disagreement arise at all? One
answer is that in certain circumstances, our moral principles conflict with one
another, and people are inclined to resolve these conflicts in different ways.
People often agree on principles about welfare, justice, and human dignity,
and yet, by weighing these principles differently or seeing the situation in a
different light, they arrive at opposing moral conclusions.
Another kind of moral disagreement concerns the range or scope of moral
principles. Even if everyone agrees that death and suffering are bad, they
often disagree about whose death and suffering count. With few exceptions,
it is thought to be wrong to inflict death and suffering on human beings.
Most people have a similar attitude toward their pet dogs or cats. Some,
however, go further and claim that it is also immoral to kill any animals—
including cows, chickens, and fish—just to produce tasty food for humans.
The hardest problems combine issues of range with conflicts of principles.
It is a disagreement of this complex kind that we will focus on in this chap-
ter. The problem is abortion. The main issues are (1) whether fetuses lie
within the range of a standard moral principle against killing, and (2) how
to resolve conflicts between the principles that protect fetuses and other
principles concerning, for example, human welfare and a woman’s control
over her body.The Problem of Abortion
When faced with a moral problem, it often seems clear what the problem is,
but this assumption can be mistaken. Sometimes a problem is formulated
so vaguely that there is no way even to begin to solve it. People can argue
for hours or even years without realizing that they are really talking about
different things.
To clarify a moral problem, the first step is to specify precisely what is
being judged—which action or kind of action is at issue. In the problem
of abortion, the first step is to specify exactly what counts as an abortion.
It is common to define abortion as the termination of a pregnancy. This
includes spontaneous abortions or miscarriages, but these raise no moral
problems because they are not the result of human action. Furthermore,
the moral problem of abortion arises only when the death of the fetus is
an expected consequence of terminating the pregnancy. To focus on these
problematic cases, from now on we will take “abortion” to mean the inten-
tional termination of a pregnancy with the expected consequence that the
fetus dies as a result.97364_ch19_ptg01_383-422.indd 384 11/15/13 5:45 PM
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