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David Vizcaino

Charmaine Boswell

PHIL-111

15 February 2016

Brief summary about abortion

In the essay called: An Almost Absolute Value in History, written by John T. Noonan,

abortion is analyzed using different approaches all based how this new life can be characterized as

a human being or not. The author expose his arguments under three big umbrellas: the criterion of

humanity, the humanity of fetus and biological probabilities. Under each of this umbrellas he show

a premise supporting abortion and then use different attempts to refute each premise. Finally, he

offer a well sustained conclusion: once the humanity of the fetus is perceived, abortion is never

right except in self-defense.

Under the first umbrella, the criterion of humanity, one question lead: how to know a man

is a man? Based on this he explains why the varying potentialities of this conceived beings are not

enough to discriminate them among human beings. In fact, the author states that if you are

conceived by human parents, you are human.

In the second umbrella, the humanity of fetus, he contrasts different distinctions on why

abortion is not wrong and consequently why it is. The first distinction is about the viability of

abortion. The author states that the total dependence of the fetus on his or her mother is sufficient

to deny his or her humanity. The author disprove this distinction stating that since two guides, the

weight and length. This are used to determine the viability and therefore the state of the fetus and

actually, this norms vary among different racial groups and races and so many individual

circumstances. The author then refutes this reasoning showing that as fetus is still absolutely
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dependent on someone's care in order to continue existence, so the children are. Therefore

“unsubstantial lessening in dependence at viability does not seem to signify any special acquisition

of humanity.” The next distinction says that a human life requires experience, but since the “lack”

of experience of this new life, therefore the fetus cannot be conceived as a human being. The

opposing view to this point is that the embryo is responsive to touch after eight weeks, it is actually

responding to the environment. Then exposes that this lack of experience, present also in children,

or human beings who have failed to love or to learn, does not exclude them from the class called

man. The next distinction regards to the grief felt people when the life ends. He compares the death

of a 90 years old or a newborn baby with the death of a ten-year old boy. Finally states that the

extinguished potentialities involved on each of this hypothetical deaths, do not point a difference

on the humanity of each. The author exposes more points under this umbrella.

The third and last umbrella talks about the biological probabilities this new being has gone

through. He exposes that something as valuable as life is already present of a fetus, and that

destroying “it” will be take the chance to live of someone who “possesses a genetic code, organs,

and sensitivity to pain, and one which had an 80 percent chance of developing further into a baby,

outside the womb, who, in time, would reason.” Finally he states that a being with a human genetic

code is a man.

Personally, I totally agree with the arguments pointed by the author. I find them well

sustained, explained and based on real facts and moral-logical comparisons. I think that life is

something so valuable that the fact that someone else’s is taken, for me, it is just not fair. I find

murdering logical only when someone who is really damaging the society is condemned. I do not
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find abortion as a way to escape from the consequences of our own actions. The only way I find it

logical is if it is threatening the mother’s life, anatomically, and she decides to abort.