Chapter 42 Chapter Summary

Hursthouse argues that the considerations that dominate the discussion of abortion—namely, women’s rights and the status of the fetus—are fundamentally irrelevant to the morality of abortion. Answering the question of whether women have a right to abortion does nothing to determine whether a particular woman who terminates a pregnancy in particular circumstances is acting virtuously or viciously. Moreover, the status of the fetus is relevant only in the way that the undisputed biological facts—for example, that human reproduction follows sexual intercourse, that only women become pregnant, that human parents tend to care deeply about their offspring—figure into the feelings, actions, and practical reasoning of virtuous and vicious agents confronted with an undesired pregnancy. Some abortions done for some reasons would be viciously callous or foolish, Hursthouse claims, whereas others might indicate an appropriate humility. No general rule can be laid down in advance for correctly applying the virtue- and vice-related terms of the sort Hursthouse advocates. This is not a failing of a virtue-theory approach to abortion, however, but an acknowledgment that a genuine understanding of moral issues cannot proceed in abstraction from the concrete facts or from difficult issues about what is worthwhile, serious, and important in human lives.