Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

Vol. LXXVI No. 1, January 2008

Ó 2008 International Phenomenological Society

Animality and Agency: A Kantian

Approach to Abortion
lara denis1
Agnes Scott College

This paper situates abortion in the context of women’s duties to themselves.

I argue that the fundamental Kantian requirement to respect oneself as a rational
being, combined with Kant’s view of our animal nature, form the basis for a view
of pregnancy and abortion that focuses on women’s agency and characters without
diminishing the importance of their bodies and emotions. The Kantian view of
abortion that emerges takes abortion to be morally problematic, but sometimes
permissible, and sometimes even required.
After sketching Kant’s account of duties to oneself, I discuss the challenges preg-
nancy poses to women’s agency. I then argue that abortion is morally problematic
because it is antagonistic to an important subset of morally useful emotions that
we have self-regarding duties to protect and cultivate; thus, there is a rebuttable
deliberative presumption against maxims of abortion for inclination-based ends.
I close by considering objections.

1
I use the following abbreviations and translations of Kant’s texts. Volume:page
number citations refer to the Prussian Academy edition of Kant’s works. The page
citations in Conj are to the translation only. Ant: Anthropology from a Pragmatic
Point of View, trans. Mary J. Gregor (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974); C:
‘‘Moral philosophy: Collins’s lecture notes,’’ in Lectures on Ethics, trans. Peter
Heath, ed. Peter Heath and J.B. Schneewind (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997); Conj: ‘‘Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History,’’ in Kant:
Political Writings, trans. H.B. Nesbet, ed. Hans Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1970); G: Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. James
W. Ellington (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1981); H: ‘‘Kant’s Practi-
cal Philosophy: Herder’s Lecture Notes (Selections),’’ in Lectures on Ethics; KpV:
Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck (New York, Mcmillan
Publishing Company, 1993); KU: Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar
(Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987); M: ‘‘Morality According to
Prof. Kant: Mrongovius’s Second Set of Lecture Notes (Selections)’’ in Lectures on
Ethics; MS: Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991); N: Notes and Fragments, ed. Paul Guyer, trans. Curtis Bow-
man, Paul Guyer, and Frederick Rauscher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2005); Rel: Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, trans. Allen Wood and
George di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); V: ‘‘Kant on
the Metaphysics of Morals: Vigilantius’s Lecture Notes’’ in Lectures on Ethics.

ANIMALITY AND AGENCY 117

Moral questions about abortion are often framed in terms of the moral
status of the fetus or the right of the woman to control her body.
Within Kantian ethics, much of what has been written about abortion
asks whether maxims of abortion are universalizable.2 In this paper,
I situate abortion in the context of women’s duties to themselves.
I approach abortion by considering how a virtuous Kantian agent
regards her body, sexuality, reproductive capacities, and emotions—and
how such an agent integrates her various needs, drives, and feelings
into a morally ordered life.3 I show that Kant’s fundamental moral
requirement that one respect oneself (as well as others) as a rational
being, combined with Kant’s view of our animal nature, form the basis
for a view of pregnancy and abortion that focuses on women’s agency
and moral character without diminishing the importance of their physi-
cal and affective aspects. The Kantian view of abortion that emerges
takes abortion to be morally problematic,4 but often permissible.

Background: Kantian Virtue and Duties to Oneself 5

Looking at the Doctrine of Virtue of Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals
can help us develop a rough picture of Kant’s virtuous agent and how
she regards herself. There Kant explicitly discusses not only virtue, but
virtues and vices and the maxims that manifest them. Kant defines vir-
tue as ‘‘the moral strength of a human being’s will in fulfilling his duty,
a moral constraint through his own lawgiving reason, insofar as this
constitutes itself an authority executing the law’’ (MS 6:405). Kantian

2
See, for example, R.M. Hare, ‘‘A Kantian Approach to Abortion,’’ Social Theory
and Practice 15 (1) (1989): 1-14; and Harry J. Gensler, ‘‘A Kantian Argument
Against Abortion,’’ Philosophical Studies 49 (1986): 83-98. For my take on this
approach, see ‘‘Abortion and Kant’s Formula of Universal Law,’’ Canadian Journal
of Philosophy (forthcoming).
3
I have benefited from reading Susan Feldman, ‘‘From Occupied Bodies to Pregnant
Persons: How Kantians Should Treat Pregnancy and Abortion’’ in Autonomy and
Community: Readings in Contemporary Kantian Social Philosophy, ed. Jane Kneller
and Sidney Axinn (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998), pp. 265-282. I have benefited less
directly by reading Rosalind Hursthouse’s ‘‘Virtue Theory and Abortion,’’ Philo-
sophy and Public Affairs 20 (1991): 223-46; and Beginning Lives (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1987). I address Feldman’s arguments directly in ‘‘Abortion and
Women’s Agency: Learning from Feldman’s Kantian Approach’’ (unpublished man-
uscript).
4
The meaning of this vague term will become clearer in the context of later parts of
the paper. Provisionally, to say that abortion is morally problematic is to say that
there are moral considerations that weigh against it in all or almost all instances.
5
For a fuller picture of duties to oneself as I understand them, see ‘‘Kant’s Ethics
and Duties to Oneself,’’ Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 78 (4) (1997): 321-48; and
Moral Self-Regard: Duties to Oneself in Kant’s Moral Theory (New York: Garland
Press, 2001).

118 LARA DENIS

virtue is the form in which a human will expresses its supreme commit-
ment to morality; it is the cultivated capacity to master one’s inclina-
tions so as to fulfill all one’s duties.6 Unlike duties of right, which
pertain to external acts, protect external freedom, and whose fulfillment
can be externally compelled, duties of virtue pertain to ends and max-
ims, aim at inner (moral) freedom, and can be compelled only by the
agent herself.
Nearly all of Kant’s arguments for duties of virtue appeal explicitly
to the ideas and concepts found in the formula of humanity, ‘‘Act
always so that you treat humanity, in your own person or in the person
of another, always as an end and never simply as a means’’ (G 4:429).
The principle by which Kant grounds duties of virtue is the supreme
principle of the doctrine of virtue, ‘‘Act in accordance with a maxim of
ends that it can be a universal law for everyone to have.’’ Kant elabo-
rates: ‘‘In accordance with this principle the human being is an end for
himself as well as for others, and it is not enough that he is not autho-
rized to use either himself or others merely as a means, (since he could
then still be indifferent to them); it is in itself his duty to make the
human being in general his end’’ (MS 6:395). Thus, duties of virtue are
grounded in Kant’s claims that we must not treat the capacity to set,
organize, and pursue ends as something appropriately sacrificed for
arbitrary, inclination-based ends; that we must recognize rational nat-
ure, particularly the moral capacity, as the source of human dignity;
and that all rational beings are equally entitled to this fundamental,
basic respect. Respect for rational beings guides virtuous agents both
by limiting what they do in the pursuit of their goals and by motivating
them to promote their own perfection and others’ happiness.
Perfect duties to oneself prohibit acting on maxims of action that
express disrespect for one’s own rational nature. Imperfect duties to
oneself require sometimes acting on maxims of promoting ends whose
adoption constitutes a commitment to realize one’s rational nature.
Perfect duties to oneself concern ‘‘moral health’’; they require preserv-
ing the conditions of one’s agency, including not only one’s ability to
determine one’s will through reason alone, but also one’s natural pow-
ers. Additionally, perfect duties to oneself require asserting one’s dig-
nity, including one’s equality with others. Imperfect duties to oneself
concern ‘‘moral prosperity’’; they require promoting one’s natural and
moral perfection (MS 6:419). The former task involves developing one’s
natural abilities so that one can pursue a variety of ends; the latter,

6
See also G 4:405, 435; KpV 5:32-33, 84, 128; MS 6:380, 382, 390, 394, 408; Rel
6:29, 35-38; and my ‘‘Kant’s Conception of Virtue’’ in The Cambridge Companion to
Kant and Modern Philosophy, ed. Paul Guyer (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2006).

ANIMALITY AND AGENCY 119

striving for moral self-knowledge, purity of moral motivation, and ful-
fillment of all one’s duties (MS 6:441-42, 444-47).
Kant divides perfect duties to oneself into duties to oneself as an
animal and moral being, and duties to oneself as a moral being only.
Duties to oneself as a moral being only prohibit acting on maxims con-
trary to one’s inner freedom and dignity. Through maxims of avarice
and servility, for example, agents subordinate themselves to material
goods or other people, implying that those things or people are more
valuable than they are (MS 6:420, 429-37). Duties to oneself as an ani-
mal and moral being prohibit agents from acting on maxims of using
their bodies in ways that suggest that the beings so embodied lack dig-
nity, or on maxims that display a willingness to undermine their bodies’
ability to play their reason-supporting role—for example, maxims that
place the satisfaction of physical urges above the preservation of
rational efficacy. The duties Kant identifies as duties to oneself as an
animal and moral being are duties to avoid what Kant calls the ‘‘vices’’
of suicide and self-mutilation, gluttony and drunkenness, and sexual
self-degradation (MS 6:421-28).
One manifests the vice of sexual self-degradation through a willing-
ness to engage in sexual activity at the expense of one’s dignity as a
rational being, or of one’s health as a human agent with sexual organs
and capacities. The duty to avoid sexual self-degradation forbids acting
on maxims that express such a willingness. According to Kant, sexual
desire is an appetite for another human being. When one person sexu-
ally desires another, the rational nature of the desired person is
obscured by the desiring person’s focus on the sexual attributes of the
one desired. In Kant’s view, entering a sexual relationship or presenting
oneself to others for their sexual stimulation prima facie involves self-
degradation, for it invites others to see one as an object of carnal
enjoyment.7 Self-respect requires agents to engage in sex only in a
context in which their status as rational beings with dignity is recog-
nized. (Kant views monogamous marriage, in which the parties gain
equal, reciprocal, permanent rights over each other as whole persons,

7
This passage provides a representative glimpse of Kant’s view of sexual desire and
its moral dangers:

In loving [merely] from sexual inclination, they make the person into an
object of their appetite. As soon as the person is possessed, and the appetite
sated, they are thrown away, as one throws away a lemon after sucking the
juice from it. ... [A]s soon as anyone becomes the object of the other’s appe-
tite, all motives of moral relationship fall away; as the object of the other’s
appetite, that person is in fact a thing, whereby the other’s appetite is sated
... . (C 27:384-85)

120 LARA DENIS

as the only such context.8) Virtuous agents will also avoid sexual activi-
ties that threaten their agency—such as unprotected sex with someone
who may have HIV.
Kant’s accounts of duties to oneself as an animal and moral being
often refer to nature’s ends for particular drives, feelings, and organs
constitutive of our animal nature.9 For example, Kant might describe
gluttony as using our drive for food not as a means to nature’s end of
our nourishment, but merely as a means to pleasure—even at the risk
of agency-defeating lethargy or obesity (MS 6:427). The maxim ‘‘I will
eat as much as I like in order to give myself maximum gastronomic
pleasure’’ manifests the vice of gluttony in that an agent who has this
maxim does not recognize the fitness of her animal nature for the sup-
port of her rational nature as a constraint on her eating. The maxim
‘‘I will eat to nourish myself, choosing the tastiest foods consistent with
that end,’’ by contrast, is not similarly objectionable. When Kant talks
about nature’s ends for our drives, he does not mean that nature liter-
ally has ends for them. Kant talks about nature’s ends because he
believes that, given the nature of our cognitive powers, human beings
must ascribe purposes to our physical organs and drives in order to
understand them (MS 6:424; KU 5:179-86, 377-89). Thus, our under-
standing of our drives’ proper functioning (and so the health of the
animal nature that they comprise) will refer to what we see as nature’s
ends for them. Since respect for our rational nature requires concern
for the conditions of its existence and efficacy, and since animal nature
constitutes such a condition, respect for our rational nature requires
concern for the fitness of our drives and organs to their natural ends.

8
See, e.g., C 27:384-89. See also Barbara Herman, ‘‘Could It Be Worth Thinking
About Kant on Sex and Marriage?’’ in A Mind of One’s Own: Feminist Essays on
Reason and Objectivity, ed. Louise M. Antony and Charlotte Witt (Boulder: West-
view Press, 1993); Elizabeth Brake, ‘‘Justice and Virtue in Kant’s Account of Mar-
riage,’’ Kantian Review 9 (2005): 58-94; and my ‘‘From Friendship to Marriage:
Revising Kant,’’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63 (1) (2001): 1-28.
9
Thus, the ‘‘unnatural’’ sexual vices (those, such as masturbation, that are necessarily
non-procreative) fit more neatly into Kant’s Doctrine of Virtue classification of
duties to oneself as an animal and moral being than do the ‘‘natural’’ sexual vices
(those, such as promiscuity, that may result in sexual reproduction). For a number
of reasons, however, it seems appropriate to describe all sexual self-degradation as
contrary to duties to oneself as an animal and moral being. These reasons include
Kant’s (brief) discussion of natural sexual vices in the Doctrine of Virtue discussion
of ‘‘defiling oneself by lust’’ (MS 6:424), and his treatment of the natural sexual
vices along with gluttony and drunkenness and suicide and self-mutilation in his
Lectures on Ethics account of duties to oneself regarding the use of one’s body
(V 27:632, 637-40, 602). For a discussion of nature’s ends for our drives, especially
our sexual drive, see my ‘‘Kant on the Wrongness of ‘Unnatural’ Sex,’’ History of
Philosophy Quarterly 16 (2) (1999): 225-48.

ANIMALITY AND AGENCY 121

 Respect for ourselves as human rational beings usually requires pre-
serving the fitness of our capacities for promoting their natural ends.
For example, Kant condemns a young man’s maxim of being castrated
‘‘in order to earn an easier livelihood as a singer’’ as manifesting the
vice of self-mutilation (MS 6:423). But self-respect does not require lim-
iting one’s every use of one’s natural powers to activities that promote
nature’s ends for them. Kant says, for example, ‘‘[j]ust as love of life is
destined by nature to preserve the person, so sexual love is destined to
preserve the species’’ (MS 6:424).Yet both self-preservation and procre-
ation must sometimes be subordinated to other ends, and their corre-
sponding drives frustrated. Nature’s ends for our drives are not
obligatory ends, nor ends it is always permissible to promote, nor ends
it is never permissible to act against (Ant 7:325; Conj. 8:228, nt; H
27:48, C 27: 375-78). The principle behind all perfect duties to oneself
is ‘‘‘live in conformity with nature’ ... that is, preserve yourself in the
perfection of your nature’’ (MS 6:419). The perfection of our nature
that we are to preserve includes the proper relation among our predis-
positions to animality (physical self-love ‘‘wherein no reason is
demanded’’), humanity (self-love that is physical and social, and that
involves reason), and personality (morality) (Rel 6:26-27). Kant regards
animality and its drives as good, not as things to be extirpated. But
only the predisposition to personality is unconditionally good, and can
never be used wrongly. Kant states that ‘‘as a being capable of ends ...
[the human being] must owe the use of his powers not merely to natu-
ral instinct but rather to the freedom by which he determines their
scope’’ (MS 6:444; cf. KU 5:431-32). So although there is a presump-
tion in favor of preserving the fitness of our natural drives’ and organs’
abilities to achieve nature’s ends for them, it is only the holistic sense
of our nature—i.e., our nature as rational, responsible, human
beings—that bears directly on the morality of our maxims regarding
our bodies.10
A virtuous Kantian agent recognizes that how she treats her body
reveals how she views and values herself as a rational being. Such an
agent sees her body as an extension and a condition of her agency; she
appreciates her animal nature for its reason-supporting role. She views
her body, life, and health as essential and irreplaceable means for her
rational nature’s expression. Thus, her decisions about how to use her
body, including how to give and receive pleasure with it, are guided in
part by her recognition of her agency’s inseparability from her physical

10
For supporting argument and for clarification as to where I reject Kant’s claims
about specific sexual vices, see ‘‘Kant on the Wrongness of ‘Unnatural’ Sex,’’ esp.
pp. 233-39.

122 LARA DENIS

self. The virtuous Kantian agent does not view pushes and pulls from
her animal nature as authoritative in determining her will; she governs
herself through reason. But insofar as she recognizes her animal drives
as good, she endeavors to preserve the fitness of her drives for achiev-
ing nature’s ends for them. Furthermore, if there are impulses or feel-
ings in her animal nature that are especially conductive to morality, a
virtuous agent is cautious when she is tempted to stifle them for merely
inclination-based ends. She does not act as though the value of her ani-
mal nature depended more on its relation to her happiness than on its
relation to her morality.

Pregnancy
Pregnancy is something that should concern a virtuous Kantian
agent regarding her treatment of herself as an animal and moral
being. The related drives for sex, reproduction, and care of offspring
are inherent to human nature (Rel 6:26-28). Most women of repro-
ductive age have a sex drive directed toward men and engage in sex-
ual activities that naturally lead to pregnancy. Many women at some
point in their lives have a strong urge to have a child. Kant sees
the drives for sex, reproduction, and care of off-spring as compatible
with and conducive to morality. Bearing and raising children are
meaningful, worthwhile activities for individuals and important con-
tributions to society. Nevertheless, the impulses connected with our
animality raise moral problems. The pleasures we associate with sat-
isfying these impulses give rise to temptations to act on them in
ways destructive to our animal nature or otherwise demeaning to
our rational nature.
Pregnancy threatens a woman’s agency and dignity in a variety of
ways. Some ways pregnancy threatens agency directly pertain to her life
and health, and so to her existence and efficacy as an agent. Pregnancy
is, as it has always been, physically dangerous. Indeed, Kant says that
in addition to being ‘‘cannibalistic in principle’’ sex can also be canni-
balistic ‘‘in its effect,’’ such as when ‘‘the woman is consumed by preg-
nancy and the perhaps fatal delivery resulting from it’’ (MS 6:359; see
also V 27:638). Death in childbirth is not uncommon in developing
countries, especially when women are at early or late extremes of fertil-
ity, or when they have had a number of children in quick succession.
Pregnancy-related illnesses that can threaten the health and life of
the woman include gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia (high blood
pressure), and thrombophlebitis (blood clot formation); all three of
these are more common in older pregnant women (especially women

ANIMALITY AND AGENCY 123

over forty).11 During pregnancy, a woman can suffer a number of tem-
porary effects that interfere with her agency—morning sickness, exhaus-
tion, cognitive fuzziness, lack of coordination, impaired vision or
movement, and emotional volatility. Postpartum pain and depression
are common.
Because of their physical and emotional demands, pregnancy and
child-rearing can also interfere with a woman’s promotion of permissi-
ble, discretionary ends, including significant life plans. In many cases,
the ends with which pregnancy or motherhood interfere may be ends
chosen by the agent as ways for her to promote the morally obligatory
ends of her natural development and the happiness of others. Thus,
even apart from risks to material conditions of agency, pregnancy and
motherhood can impair a woman’s flourishing as a moral agent.
Pregnancy poses threats to women’s agency and dignity in ways that
are less directly tied to the woman’s animal nature. One way is through
making her financially dependent on others. An economically marginal
woman could find herself vulnerable to exploitation, forced to rely on
the help of a controlling family member, or dependent on the state or
charity. Having to ask others for financial or other sorts of help, the
woman’s freedom in her pursuit of her ends is compromised. The
woman’s sense of herself as an autonomous agent, equal to all others,
can be weakened by this sort of dependence (MS 6:436; C 27:341-42,
442-43, 455-56). Although Kant may over-emphasize the degree to
which financial independence is important for respecting oneself and
maintaining the respect of others, a woman would nonetheless have to
consider whether her agency and self-respect would be compromised by
circumstances a given pregnancy would force upon her.
Finally, pregnancy can lead other people, and the woman herself, to
view the pregnant woman as valuable primarily as a source of suste-
nance and life for her developing child. This is especially likely to hap-
pen in societies in which women do not have many opportunities to
use their talents to contribute to the community, or in which having
many children is essential to the group’s survival.12 Being viewed and
valued primarily as an incubator is degrading even beyond the attitude
that being a mother is crucial to a woman’s value. In this country, for
example, people touch pregnant women’s bellies without asking permis-
sion; offer unsolicited advice about weight-gain; ask intrusive questions;
and criticize pregnant women for exercising or eating in ways they

11
See, for example, Jane Brody, ‘‘The Risks of Pregnancy After 20,’’ The New York
Times (May 11, 2004), D8.
12
Of course, such a view of women can degrade pregnant and non-pregnant alike. In
societies where this attitude is strongest, those without children arguably suffer
more than those with them.

124 LARA DENIS

assume could interfere with fetal health. Women can find themselves
questioning their well-reasoned choices based on this sort of pressure
and putting much of their lives on hold in order to focus on the preg-
nancy. So pregnancy puts one in a position of having to struggle for
recognition that one’s ends and oneself are valuable apart from the
fetus one is carrying.
I see nothing objectionable from the standpoint of virtue generally
or duties to oneself in particular about choosing not to become preg-
nant or raise children—even for women who are having heterosexual
relations in marriage. Animal nature is to support rational nature. If
pregnancy and motherhood are not compatible with a woman’s ends,
she need not pursue them. Given the significance of the procreative
drive in the lives of women, families, and our species, consideration of
the proper functioning of their animal nature should lead most healthy
young women to preserve their fertility—choosing other methods of
birth control over sterilization, for example. But for some women, self-
respect may demand forfeiting the ability ever to become pregnant
(e.g., undergoing treatment for uterine cancer) even if they want
children.13
The preceding considerations about pregnancy are important not
only for a virtuous Kantian agent who must decide whether to pursue
or avoid pregnancy, but also for one who becomes pregnant, and so
must decide whether to continue or abort that particular pregnancy.
But of course we must look beyond the preceding considerations
regarding pregnancy in thinking about abortion, for abortion is not
obviously morally equivalent to avoiding pregnancy. We must con-
sider what moral significance the fetus—or killing the fetus—has in
Kantian ethics. And we must consider not merely if abortion is some-
times permissible, but how it relates to the character14 of the virtuous
agent.

13
There are also, of course, other-regarding duties relevant to sexuality and preg-
nancy. For example, increasing women’s access to safe, reliable birth control is a
good way to support women’s satisfaction of true natural needs, and thus to fulfill
one’s duties of beneficence.
14
I here mean ‘‘character’’ in a broad, non-technical sense: as including not just a
person’s fundamental maxim or the strength of her will’s commitment to the ends
of reason, but also all those practical dispositions and intellectual and emotional
tendencies that make her the sort of person she is (generous, curious, witty, etc.),
and that are thus of at least indirect moral relevance.

ANIMALITY AND AGENCY 125

 Abortion
I take it as a plausible assumption that the human fetus should not be
viewed as a rational, free being and hence as an end in itself.15 Fetuses
are not the sort of beings to whom we can reasonably attribute max-
ims, whom we can hold responsible, or with whom we can cooperate.
Unlike young children, fetuses do not have, but are only developing,
the physical bases for agency in humans; and unlike young children,
fetuses display not even incipient, undeveloped agency, but only stimu-
lus-response behavior and (eventually) rudimentary sentience and con-
sciousness. Nevertheless, I will argue that, even on the assumption that
the fetus should not be considered a rational being, Kantian ethics
shows fetuses and abortion to be morally significant.
An obvious source of moral significance for a fetus is its being loved
or wanted by the pregnant woman or her family.16 It seems like a
stretch early in pregnancy to say that someone loves the embryo as
opposed to wanting it, being concerned for it, or being excited about
it. Even later it is implausible to suppose that the feeling of the people
involved other than the pregnant woman (and perhaps, eventually, her
mate), is really love for this particular fetus as opposed to joy—merely
occasioned by this fetus—at the prospect of a little brother or a first
grandchild. A virtuous pregnant agent would recognize the value others
place on the fetus if she is considering an abortion, though rarely
would such a consideration appear to her as decisive.17
A more interesting consideration regarding the moral significance of
the fetus and abortion, and the one I will focus on for the remainder
of the paper, pertains to the woman’s duty to herself to show due
concern for the proper functioning of her animal nature—including
by preserving and cultivating her morally useful sentiments.18 This

15
Kant may be read as regarding the fetus as a free being, despite what I say below
about why it makes sense not to. See, e.g., MS 6:280, 422. I discuss the question of
whether to consider the fetus a rational being more deeply in ‘‘Abortion and
Kant’s Formula of Universal Law.’’
16
There may be others who care about or are invested in the fetus, such as its pro-
spective adoptive parents.
17
No amount of interest in the fetus (or objection to the pregnancy) seems to justify
other people in physically interfering with a woman in order to affect the health of
the fetus. One would need to justify the hindrance of the woman’s external freedom
(to continue or end the pregnancy); and that would be difficult to do (unless the
fetus were a person and the woman were doing something clearly destructive to it).
18
In developed countries where abortion is legal, it is usually physically safer than
childbirth. So I am not discussing physical dangers of abortion. Of course, if a
woman were somewhere where having an abortion is medically more dangerous
than carrying the pregnancy to term, that would be an important consideration
against it. For current information on mortality rates for pregnancy, childbirth,
and abortion, consult the Alan Guttmacher Institute’s website, www.agi-usa.org.

126 LARA DENIS

consideration shows that a fetus receives derivative moral significance
due to its relation to the pregnant woman even if she does not want it,
and that abortion is morally problematic (though less often wrong)
because it demands that the agent act against her morally useful
feelings.19
According to Kant, human agents have duties to themselves and to
others that require them to guard and further feelings of kindness,
love,20 and sympathy for others generally, as well as feelings of protec-
tiveness of and concern for their children in particular. These feelings
facilitate our fulfillment of our duty to promote others’ happiness.
Sympathy, for example, not only supplies empirical incentives to help
others, but also makes agents more perceptive regarding the needs of
others (MS 6:456-57).21 Parental love is especially important, given how
dependent and needy children are, and how much their parents are
obligated to do for them.22 We have duties to others to cultivate love
and sympathy and to avoid the vices opposed to them (such as envy
and malice) (MS 6:457). More fundamentally, since the predispositions
to these morally useful feelings constitute part of the ‘‘perfection of our
nature,’’ we have duties to ourselves as animal and moral beings to
preserve and foster them. Indeed, according to Kant, we have duties to

19
When I speak of morally useful ‘‘feelings,’’ ‘‘emotions,’’ or ‘‘sentiments,’’ I mean
not only occurrent feelings, but also emotional dispositions, tendencies, and predis-
positions. Moreover, in much of my discussion of morally useful feelings, I have in
mind also the morally useful inclinations, instincts, and drives that are bound up
with them—such as ‘‘the instinct of humaneness,’’ (V 27:710), ‘‘love as an inclina-
tion’’ (G 4:399), parents’ ‘‘innate inclination towards their children’’ (V 27:670),
and the ‘‘impulse to protect’’ others in danger (V 27:671).
20
At issue here is not ‘‘practical love,’’ the morally required maxim of promoting oth-
ers’ happiness (MS 6:448-53), but types of love that cannot be directly commanded
and yet can be morally useful. They include immediate pleasure in benefiting
another (G 4:398; C 27:413), delight in others (or in the perfections of others) (MS
6:402, 449), and an immediate inclination to help others (G 4:397-98; C 27:417).
‘‘Love of one’s neighbor’’ (or ‘‘love of other human beings,’’ an impartial love for
human beings) is not merely a morally useful feeling, but a ‘‘predisposition[] on the
side of feeling,’’ a ‘‘natural predisposition[] of the mind ... for being affected by
[certain] concepts of duty’’ (MS 6:399). Like moral feeling, self-respect, and con-
science, love of one’s neighbor is presupposed by the moral law rather than com-
manded by it. It is a feeling the consciousness of which ‘‘is not of empirical origin’’
but follows ‘‘from consciousness of a moral law, as the effect this has on the mind’’
(MS 6:399, see also 400-402).
21
Sympathetic feelings may sometimes rise to the level of emotional agitation, but
they need not—and in a virtuous agent, they usually will not. See my ‘‘Kant’s Cold
Sage and the Sublimity of Apathy,’’ Kantian Review 4 (2000): 48-73.
22
Kant explicitly lists parental love along with sympathy as a natural drive helpful to
morality (N 19:77). The Doctrine of Virtue says little about duties special to partic-
ular relationships, such as parent to child (MS 6:468-69); but the Doctrine of Right
hints at the sorts of things expected of parents as a matter of justice (MS 6:280-82).
See also V 27:670-71.

ANIMALITY AND AGENCY 127

ourselves with regard to (nonrational, nonhuman) animals, for how we
treat them can bolster or dull our morally useful feelings, and can show
whether we value these feelings.23 On the Kantian conception of virtue
as moral strength of will, it is not necessary to be loving or sympathetic
in order to be virtuous. Yet sympathy and love are characteristic of,
and proper to, a virtuous human being. One expects to find them in a
virtuous person both because we have duties to cultivate them, and
because they naturally result from fulfilling our duties of love (MS
6:402; C 27:417). Moreover, they harmonize with, reflect, embody, and
reinforce important moral commitments.24
Women’s set of emotional resources includes feelings special to preg-
nancy, such as attachment to and protectiveness toward the fetus she is
carrying.25 If we accept Kant’s view that feelings of love and sympathy
that aid us in fulfilling duties of love to rational human beings may be
fostered by kind treatment of animals and stunted by callous treatment
of them, we may assume also that such feelings can be encouraged by
attentiveness toward one’s fetus and weakened by destructiveness

23
See MS 6:442-43; C 27:440-41, 459-60; V 27:710; and my ‘‘Kant’s Conception
of Duties Regarding Animals: Reconstruction and Reconsideration,’’ History of
Philosophy Quarterly 17 (4) (2000): 405-423.
24
Indeed, Paul Guyer argues that, according to Kant’s mature empirical moral psy-
chology, there are always some feelings or desires through which an agent’s pure
practical reason determines her actions. Sympathy is certainly one Kant frequently
mentions in this context, though he gives it a less fundamental role than respect for
the law or moral feeling (KpV 5:73-75; MS 6:399-400, 456-57). See Guyer, ‘‘Hume
and Kant on Reason, Desire, and Action’’ (presented to the 33rd Hume Society
Meeting in Koblenz, Germany, in August, 2006), a revised version of which will
appear as chapter 5 of Guyer’s Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Kant’s Responses
to Hume (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). Also see Guyer’s ‘‘Duty
and Inclination,’’ in Kant and the Experience of Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993).
25
Kant (amusingly) describes women’s ‘‘fear in the face of physical harm and timidity
in the face of physical dangers’’ as having been designed by nature to facilitate
their protection of their offspring in-utero (Ant 7:305-306). Yet might not such
fearfulness encourage women to (sometimes) avoid or (sometimes) end pregnancies,
and thus be seen (a) as designed by nature to facilitate women’s self-preservation,
and (b) as morally useful on that basis? My aside here reminds us that how we
individuate and teleologically explain morally useful sentiments is a normative
enterprise, engaging reflective judgment. It also suggests that morally useful feelings
may pull us in opposing directions, so that bolstering one sometimes entails simul-
taneously frustrating another. In the remainder of the paper, I will neither assume
that there is a pervasive timidity among women, nor proffer an account of its
natural purpose or moral utility.

128 LARA DENIS

toward it.26 Accommodating one’s own schedule and preferences to the
needs of the fetus requires patience, generosity, humaneness, and other
traits one morally must exercise in raising a child, caring for an elderly
parent, or tending to an ill spouse.27 Moreover, caring for one’s off-
spring, even as a fetus, may bolster the maternal attachment so helpful
in facilitating nurturing treatment of a (sometimes difficult) child.
A virtuous Kantian agent values her tendencies to sympathy and love,
and attachment to or protectiveness toward her fetus, and recognizes
them as aspects of her animal nature to be preserved and fostered.
Killing her developing fetus goes against a woman’s morally signifi-
cant tendencies toward love and sympathy generally, and toward
attachment to her fetus in particular.28 Abortion does not simply make
a woman un-pregnant. It kills and removes her own growing offspring

26
There is some empirical support linking violence toward animals with violence
toward people (or relevant affective problems). See Alan R. Felthouse and Stephen
R. Kellert, ‘‘Childhood Cruelty to Animals and Later Aggression against People: A
Review,’’ The American Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 144 (1987): 710-17; Frank R.
Ascione, ‘‘Battered Women’s Reports of Their Partners’ and Their Children’s Cru-
elty to Animals,’’ Journal of Emotional Abuse, vol. 1 (1998): 119-33; and Temple
Grandin, ‘‘Behavior of Slaughter Plant and Auction Employees Toward the Ani-
mals’’ Anthrozoos (1988): 205-13. All are reprinted in Cruelty to Animals and Inter-
personal Violence, ed. Randall Lockwood and Frank R. Ascione (Indiana: Purdue
University Press, 1998). There is no reason to think that a large percentage of
women who have abortions emerge with extreme affective problems (or that there
exists what some have dubbed ‘‘post-abortion syndrome’’), though some women
certainly do emerge with emotional difficulties that outlast immediate hormonal
responses to a pregnancy’s end. See Brenda Major, et al., ‘‘Psychological Responses
of Women after First-Trimester Abortion,’’ Archives of General Psychiatry, 57 (8)
(2000): 777-84; Candace De Puy and Dana Dovitch, The Healing Choice: Your
Guide to Emotional Recovery After an Abortion (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1997); and Linda Bird Francke, The Ambivalence of Abortion (New York: Random
House, 1978). Abortion can also create emotional strains for abortion providers,
see Sallie Tisdale, ‘‘We Do Abortions Here,’’ Harper’s, October, 1987, pp. 66-70.
27
Protectiveness of one’s fetus also facilitates treatment of it that will allow it, if born
and nurtured, to become a more efficacious agent than it might have been if not
cared for in-utero. In a sense, then, fostering these feelings can be seen as an indi-
rect duty to future people. Just as Kant says we may have duties of gratitude
toward past people (MS 6:455), I think we may have duties to future people. This
does not amount to a duty not to kill a given fetus, because, of course, if one kills
it there will be no such person.
28
An exception of sorts would be if the fetus were so horribly malformed that abort-
ing it seemed like the kind, loving thing to do. I discuss this type of case further
on.

ANIMALITY AND AGENCY 129

from her body.29 Some women—even those most sure that they do not
want a child (at the time)—find abortion a traumatic experience of loss.
Women may quickly form strong emotional attachments even to
unwanted fetuses. The frustration of sympathy, love, and maternal
attachment may be more severe the further developed the fetus is, given
its greater similarity to full-fledged human beings, and the woman’s
greater awareness of its life and dependence on her.30 Hearing its heart
beat, feeling it move, or remembering an ultrasound of an existing child
at the stage this one is now might increase the emotional burden of
aborting it.
Even if a woman does not feel love or attachment for a fetus at a
particular time, one can see abortion as going against her morally use-
ful sentiments. To be sure, there are all sorts of reasons why a woman
might have weak or nonexistent occurrent feelings of attachment to her
fetus. Perhaps she has just found out she’s pregnant, and the reality
has yet to sink in. Or perhaps she is still dealing with the trauma of
having been raped or with the sadness of a recent miscarriage. A lack
of protectiveness toward or sympathy for a fetus may suggest a moral
failing on the part of the agent—e.g., self-absorption, resistance to fac-
ing difficult truths, or cultivated callousness—but it need not. Never-
theless, according to Kant, we are to assume that all human agents
have at least some basic predispositions to sympathy and love, which
can be eroded by acts against them or bolstered by acts in accordance
with them, and which we are to cultivate and protect.31 Furthermore,
given how widespread the maternal protective drive is, it would be

29
Throughout the paper, I assume that abortion entails the death of the fetus. Proce-
dures that end a woman’s pregnancy before labor naturally occurs, but that do not
harm, kill, or seriously endanger the health of the fetus, might still raise versions of
some of the concerns that I discuss below. These non-fatal procedures are (to vary-
ing degrees, some very much) less problematic than abortion; I can here explore
neither the concerns an approach like mine might have about them, nor how these
concerns would weigh against other considerations. See note 35 for slight
elaboration.
30
Indeed, once a child is born, a woman planning to give it up for adoption may find
her drives to nurture, protect, and raise her own child overpowering. Some women
choose abortion over adoption because they cannot face the prospect of having
and then surrendering their child.
31
This is true both of feelings Kant associates primarily with our animal nature
(pathological feelings, consciousness of which is of empirical origin), and those
Kant associates primarily with our moral nature (moral feelings, consciousness of
which is not of empirical origin). Kant thinks that a tendency toward a sort of ‘‘fel-
low feeling’’ like sympathy extends through much of the animal kingdom, including
us (MS 6:456; H 27:66; M 29:626; V 27:671). As already mentioned, he describes
‘‘love of one’s neighbor,’’ as a ‘‘moral endowment’’ that every human agent has as
part of the ‘‘subjective conditions’’ of her ‘‘receptiveness to the concept of duty’’
(MS 6: 399, 401-402).

130 LARA DENIS

unwarranted for a woman ever to assume that because she does not
feel attachment at any given time, she lacks the predisposition to it. It
is plausible to think that continuing the pregnancy is likely to
strengthen the predispositions to love, sympathy, and attachment (and
might bring such latent feelings to the surface), whereas aborting it
is likely to weaken those predispositions (and might give rise to
unexpected feelings of loss).32
So abortion is antagonistic to an important aspect of a woman’s
moral health, increasingly so as the fetus develops, for it involves her
thwarting some of her morally important sentiments. Thus, abortion is
problematic for a virtuous Kantian agent. Birth control does not pose
the moral problems of abortion. Even methods of birth control that
prevent only implantation and not fertilization prevent pregnancy in
the full sense—the relation between a woman and an embryo or fetus
that is physically attached to her and drawing on her for its life. More-
over, at its earliest stages, the conceptus may seem lack the animality
to which sympathy responds.33
This argument reveals why virtuous Kantian agents would often find
abortion a difficult choice. This argument also grounds what we may
call, following Barbara Herman, a deliberative presumption against
abortion for inclination-based ends34—such as on the maxim ‘‘I will
have an abortion so that I can maintain my 24-inch waist.’’ A woman
may have no duty to her fetus, but she has duties to herself with regard
to her fetus. These duties are grounded in the moral usefulness of
certain of her sentiments, and in their role in constituting the animal
nature which supports her rational nature. This argument does not
show that virtuous agents would not sometimes choose abortion. The

32
Certainly a woman planning to carry the fetus to term should foster whatever feel-
ings of attachment she has. But if a woman who feels little or no attachment is in
a situation where continuing a pregnancy is clearly not consistent with respect for
her own rational nature, she would reasonably view the lack of bonding not as
something to be fought against, but something for which to be grateful.
33
But note that, according to Kant, we have a duty to ourselves to work against a
propensity to wanton destruction even of plant life (MS 6:442-43; V 27:682).
34
Barbara Herman introduces the notion of deliberative presumptions in the context
of explaining how the categorical imperative procedure can be used to test generic
maxims (or ‘‘maxim types’’ such as ‘‘to make a false promise in order to further
my own interests’’); the verdicts on these generic maxims are deliberative presump-
tions (e.g., against maxims of making false promises to further one’s own interests)
which an agent can rebut by showing that the actual maxim she is considering act-
ing on is different from the generic one in a morally relevant way (e.g., if the per-
son with whom I am interacting is trying to extract a promise from me through
torture and threats, and making this promise is the only way I can see to escape
his clutches and alert the authorities). See Herman, The Practice of Moral Judgment
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 117-19, 148-51.

ANIMALITY AND AGENCY 131

deliberative presumption against abortion can be rebutted by further
considerations of respect for rational nature. Depending on their max-
ims, some abortions are morally permissible (e.g., to avoid having to
drop out of school); some morally required (e.g., to preserve one’s
life).35 Given all the ways that pregnancy endangers and interferes with
women’s agency, women often have reasons for abortion sufficiently
compelling to justify acting against tendencies toward sympathy gener-
ally or protection of the fetus in particular.36
Note finally that there may be rare cases in which, though a
woman’s feelings of protectiveness, attachment, and so on, toward her
fetus may be thwarted to some degree by an abortion, an abortion may
better agree with and support those feelings on balance than completing
the pregnancy would. For example, if a fetus has been prenatally diag-
nosed with a devastating and untreatable illness, the woman carrying
the fetus may well feel that it would be kinder to abort the fetus than
to bring it into a short, excruciating life. Such an abortion would be
justified (in part) because, on the whole, it accords with and fosters the
woman’s morally useful feelings of love, sympathy, and protectiveness.
Such abortions can still be considered problematic, though in a weaker
sense than normal. For although the abortion is the better choice, both
options go against the agent’s sympathetic tendencies and maternal
drives to some degree: after all, with abortion, she must sever her phys-
ical attachment to the fetus, and have it killed.37
To sum up: Because it recognizes the threats pregnancy poses to
women’s agency, this Kantian approach views abortion as something
that is often permissible and sometimes required. But because this
approach also recognizes the value of our natural, animal impulses to

35
Following up on note 29: Presumably, less weighty reasons could justify a termina-
tion of pregnancy that did not entail the death of (or serious harm or risk to) the
fetus. Moreover, such terminations would, prima facie, be preferable to abortion
when abortion would be justified in absence of an alternative method of termina-
tion, but an alternative method could achieve the end just as well (e.g., when the
end is avoiding a possibly fatal, full-term delivery); still, one would have to con-
sider in each case whether the alternative presented problems abortion did not.
36
Abortion is, in this respect, unlike killing animals for food in parts of the world
with the knowledge and means to meet nutritional needs otherwise.
37
This situation is roughly analogous to that of a person whose dog is incurably and
painfully ill, such that his love and sympathy for the dog pull him in contrary
directions: they make him want to euthanize the poor dog so that the she will not
suffer any further, but they make him recoil at the idea of killing this beloved
dependent being. Even if killing the dog wins out by appearing to be the kindest
thing the man can do for her (and thus turns out to be what best accords with his
morally useful sentiments), doing this nevertheless forces him to act against what at
least some of his feelings of love and protectiveness dictate, and thus exerts a moral
cost upon him.

132 LARA DENIS

protect one’s own fetus and to care for beings who share our animality,
it nevertheless treats abortion as morally problematic. This approach
does not use women’s feelings as the basis for an argument to limit
their access to abortion. Nor does it say that women should not have
abortions because they might regret it and so be less happy. Instead, it
registers at least some of abortion’s emotional costs to women as moral
costs. This approach focuses on the woman’s character and agency.
It treats both her rationality and her sentiments as important, for it
recognizes that for human rational beings, our emotional predisposi-
tions constitute part of our moral health, part of the perfection of our
nature.

Objections
There are many objections one might have to this Kantian approach
to abortion. I will consider three. First, it might seem that this view of
abortion rests on implausible assumptions about the effects of abortion
on women’s emotional capacities—such as that a single abortion would
significantly impair a woman’s ability to love a future infant.38 This
objection exaggerates what the Kantian approach assumes and claims.
The argument I have sketched does not assume that abortion usually
or severely damages a woman’s ability to love her future children or
other people. If there were reason to think there were such extreme,
commonly-occurring damage, the presumption against abortion would
be far stronger than I take it to be. The causal connection between
abortion and damage to morally useful sentiments that I postulate is
more tenuous. I take it that, for example, having an abortion may
sometimes (at least temporarily) impair a woman’s ability to bond with
a subsequent fetus. More specifically, all this argument assumes is that
abortion may begin, encourage, or contribute to the erosion of an
aspect of animal nature of high moral utility. The willingness to risk
weakening one’s morally useful sentiments, to endanger the proper
functioning of one’s animal nature, prima facie suggests a lack of
respect for one’s rational nature. Kantians need not assume that having
an abortion is likely to impair irrevocably the agent’s capacity for
parental love in order to hold the view of abortion outlined above any
more than Kant must hold that selling or giving away a tooth seriously
impairs an agent’s ability to eat in order to say that doing so manifests
the vice of self-mutilation (MS 6:423).

38
Research does not indicate that having an abortion makes a woman a less fit or
loving mother. See Christine F. Bradley, ‘‘Abortion and Subsequent Pregnancy,’’
Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 29 (1984): 494-98.

ANIMALITY AND AGENCY 133

 Moreover, even if it were true that acting against these sentiments
could not damage them, it would still be the case that abortion requires
stifling or opposing love, sympathy, and maternal protectiveness.39 A
virtuous Kantian agent will not thwart such morally useful feelings in
order to promote relatively insignificant, inclination-based ends. To be
loving and nurturing, to embrace attachment to and protectiveness
toward one’s fetus, are good—as long as one can do so in a manner
compatible with one’s dignity, true natural needs, and central commit-
ments. This will not always be possible: maybe one cannot support
oneself and take care of a mother with Alzheimer’s while also complet-
ing a pregnancy; or maybe becoming a mother is so deeply at odds
with one’s temperament and situation that it would be intolerable. But
if a virtuous agent becomes pregnant, she will take her emotional pre-
dispositions seriously, regardless of her ultimate decision.
Second, one might object that on this account of abortion, women’s
reasoning seems objectionably self-regarding: everything is about her
virtue, her self-respect, and her animal nature, rather than about her
fetus or potential child. This objection wrongly assumes that the ulti-
mate basis for the presumption against abortion is identical with the
content of the virtuous agent’s thought. Although the ground of the
presumption against abortion is a woman’s required respect for her
own rational nature and so concern for the proper functioning of her
animal nature, her animal nature includes a predisposition to feel
attached to and protective of the fetus, and to care for the fetus for the
fetus’s own sake.40 A virtuous Kantian agent who becomes pregnant
will usually be subject to (largely) brute feelings of attachment to her
fetus, along with attendant imaginings of what it might be like to have
this child—what the child would be like as it grew up, how it would

39
Again, however, if—for whatever reason—the future facing the fetus is so terrible
that abortion seems like kindest thing, abortion would presumably fit better with
the drive to protect the fetus than carrying it to term would. In other circum-
stances, abortion may seem the kindest thing on balance, though perhaps not for
the particular fetus: for instance, when the abortion is a selective termination of
one poorly developing fetus in order to give the three other fetuses a woman is car-
rying a better chance of developing well. I cannot consider this sort of case in suffi-
cient depth to say anything illuminating or definitive about it.
40
Kant titles the MS section discussing duties with regard to animals (and some other
things), ‘‘On an Amphilobly in Moral Concepts of Reflection, Taking What Is
Man’s Duty to Himself for a Duty to Other Beings’’ (MS 6:443). We would not
make the mistake of thinking our duties with regard to animals were really duties
to animals if our experience of moral constraint with regard to them felt as though
it were all about us. The confusion occurs because we do (e.g.,) sympathize directly
with animals, feeling their suffering as something to be prevented (if morally possi-
ble) for their own sake. I am saying that a similar thing happens in the case of
fetuses.

134 LARA DENIS

get along with its siblings, what it would do in the world, and so on.
There is nothing objectionably self-regarding about these feelings and
thoughts, though some of them are relational. Indeed, if asked why she
decided to continue an unexpected, ill-timed pregnancy, a virtuous
Kantian agent would be less likely to say ‘‘Because I valued my animal
nature’’ than ‘‘This vulnerable, little being depended on me for its life’’
or ‘‘I already felt like its mother.’’
Third, one might object that this account of abortion, and indeed
my reply to the second objection, does not adequately recognize the
moral significance of a fetus as a potential rational being. To do this,
one might argue, one would need an account of the sort recently sug-
gested by Allen Wood.41 Wood argues that one better interprets the
requirement to respect rational nature if one respects rational nature
not only in persons (as Kant says), but also ‘‘in the abstract, which
entails respecting fragments of it or necessary conditions of it, even
when these are not found in fully rational beings or persons.’’42 Inter-
preting the formula of humanity this way could allow one to claim that
fetuses deserve moral consideration in virtue of their status as beings
developing the natural physical bases for human agency, and with the
potential to become rational beings.
It is unclear precisely what this moral consideration would amount
to; Wood himself does not develop his suggestion into an account of
the morality of abortion.43 But let me make three brief responses to this
objection. In the first place, though I concede that my account does
not attribute intrinsic value to the fetus in virtue of its potential to
become a rational being, I am not convinced that such an attribution is
necessary to do justice to the fetus’s status as a potential rational being.
Even without the fetus’s potential rational nature being set forth as an
object of respect, a virtuous Kantian agent’s thinking about pregnancy,
parenthood, and abortion will be influenced by her recognition that
(most) fetuses are potential rational beings. The virtuous Kantian
agent, in understanding what the fetus may become, recognizes what
duties she may come to have to it, what sort of relationship she may
come to have with it, and so on. Indeed, her morally significant feelings

41
See Allen W. Wood, ‘‘Kant on Duties Regarding Nonrational Nature,’’ Proceed-
ings of the Aristotelian Society LXXII (1998): 189-210; and Kant’s Ethical Thought
(New York: Cambridge University Press), pp. 142-45, 370-71.
42
Wood, ‘‘Kant on Duties Regarding Nonrational Nature,’’ p. 198.
43
At least, he does not do this in the published writings I draw on here. Wood fur-
ther develops his thoughts on the moral status of the fetus in ‘‘Humanity, Personal-
ity, and Dignity,’’ lecture three of his Isaiah Berlin Lectures on Kantian Ethics,
Oxford University, October 25, 2005.

ANIMALITY AND AGENCY 135

regarding her fetus will themselves be infused with this recognition.44
Much of what a pregnant woman imagines about what her child might
be like has to do with the child’s developing agency and character. Her
worries about the demands of parenthood reveal her recognition of the
responsibilities involved in raising a human infant into a rational (and
virtuous) adult. Her feelings of protectiveness toward her fetus are
often colored by her awareness of the fetus’s potential to become a
rational being if properly cared for. Many choices a woman makes
when she is committed to carrying a pregnancy to term—such as start-
ing a college fund—show she has this potential in view. Finally, some
of the loss a woman feels after a miscarriage or abortion has to do
with never getting to know the person her child would have become.
In the second place, a Kantian account of abortion based on
Wood’s suggestion need not be incompatible with mine, nor render
mine redundant. My account accepts that there are many consider-
ations a virtuous Kantian agent must take into account when contem-
plating abortion. If Wood’s suggested account were developed, it
would simply offer another consideration for the virtuous agent.
Wood’s account would not render mine superfluous because (as far as
I can see) it would neither capture the morally important aspects of
abortion mine does, nor provide an analysis of abortion sufficiently
clear, deep, and comprehensive as to make mine seem misguided or
useless. For example, while it is undoubtedly true that one damages
one’s morally useful sentiments by killing a person who does not want
to die, offering that as a primary reason (or even as one of several sig-
nificant reasons) why such killing is almost always wrong suggests a
profound moral confusion. The same would not be true regarding
abortion, unless Wood’s approach were developed to show that abor-
tion is clearly almost always wrong because it clearly almost always
fails to respect the rational nature potentially in the fetus.45
In the third place, though there are attractive aspects of Wood’s
suggestion, my account has the advantage of fitting more neatly into
Kant’s own ethical framework: it works within Kant’s taxonomy of
duties, builds on analogies with duties Kant recognizes, and allows

44
Furthermore, it may be emotionally impossible for a virtuous Kantian agent to
perceive as intrinsically worthless a potential rational being (or a formerly rational
being, such as a human in an irreversible vegetative state), even if her understand-
ing of the formula of humanity is that respect is owed only to persons.
45
Wood himself does not intend that implication. See ‘‘Humanity, Personality, and
Dignity.’’

136 LARA DENIS

us to follow Kant’s stated understanding of the formula of
humanity.46

Conclusion
We can develop a rich account of abortion by focusing on the virtuous
Kantian agent and her duties to herself. Virtuous Kantian agents rec-
ognize the moral value not only of their rational natures, but also
(derivatively) of their bodies, its drives, and its emotional predis-
positions. This recognition infuses their approach to sexuality, preg-
nancy, and abortion. Abortion involves a frustration of some morally
useful sentiments. The moral costs of abortion generate a deliberative
presumption against abortion for inclination-based ends. This presump-
tion may be rebutted when the agent’s reasons for abortion have to do
with such things as physical risks of pregnancy, or conflicts between
the demands of pregnancy and agents’ significant, morally grounded
commitments. Thus, abortion is morally problematic, but often
permissible.47

46
Onora O’Neill wants to extend ‘‘the scope of moral concern’’ to include ‘‘incipient
agents,’’ though she does not challenge Kant’s understanding of the formula of
humanity as explicitly as Wood does. See chapter 4 of Toward Justice and Virtue:
A Constructivist Account of Practical Reasoning (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996), and ‘‘Kant on Duties Regarding Nonrational Nature,’’ Proceedings of
the Aristotelian Society LXXII (1998): 211-28.
47
Thanks to Roger Wertheimer and John Bishop for comments on an earlier draft of
this paper. Thanks also to the audiences at the 2005 American Philosophical Asso-
ciation Pacific Division symposium on sex and virtue, and the 2006 North Ameri-
can Kant Society Eastern Study Group, especially Jennifer Uleman, Helga Varden,
and Paul Abela.

ANIMALITY AND AGENCY 137