On how to interpret the role of the future within the abortion debate

Broadening the future of value account of the wrongness of killing

On Don Marquis's future of value account of the wrongness of killing, 'what makes it wrong to kill those individuals we all believe it is wrong to kill, is that killing them deprives them of their future of value'. Marquis has recently argued for a narrow interpretation of his future of value account of the wrongness of killing and against the broad interpretation that I had put forward in response to Carson Strong. In this article I argue that the narrow view is problematic because it violates some basic principles of equality and because it allows for some of the very killing that Marquis sets out to condemn; further, I argue that the chief reason why Marquis chooses the narrow view over the broad view-namely that the broad view would take the killing of some non-human animals to be also wrong-should rather be considered a welcome upshot of the broad view.

Embryo loss and double effect

I defend the argument that if embryo loss in stem cell research is morally problematic, then embryo loss in in vivo conception is similarly morally problematic. According to a recent challenge to this argument, we can distinguish between in vivo embryo loss and the in vitro embryo loss of stem cell research by appealing to the doctrine of double effect. I argue that this challenge fails to show that in vivo embryo loss is a mere unintended side effect while in vitro embryo loss is an intended means and that, even if we refine the challenge by appealing to Michael Bratman's three roles of intention, the distinction is still unwarranted.