The two articles I found on the Internet have to do with the topic of abortion. The first article puts forth a nonreligious argument against why abortion is immoral. The author of this article, Don Marquis argues that we have to start with the question of if we are actually killing a person or a thing. He says that we must evaluate whether a fetus has the right to live. In his main argument, Marquis states, "having a future of value is the basis for the right not to be killed and fetuses have a future of value, therefore fetuses have the right not to be killed." This means that he believes that abortion is immoral because we are when a person aborts a baby, they are actually killing the future aspirations of a human adult.
The second article is in opposition to Marquis statements. It points out various flaws in the support that Don Marquis has put forth in his article. In this article, the author, C Strong, points out that a fetus does not necessarily have a "future value" that Marquis bases his article on. He says that there is no interruption of ongoing plans for the fetus and states, "a morally significant part of the wrongness of killing an adult is that it deprives the person of the continuation of projects of value." From this he says that since a fetus is being deprived of something different than this, a fetus can not be related to an adult or in sense a human being.
I think that the first article is more convincing because uses more support and has an overall better argument. I think that the second author uses the petitio principle which means he uses a lot of circular arguments.
The articles overall did not really change my stance on the controversial topic but rather made me think about it in new, different ways. If I had to add to the argument I would pose the question to Marquis, when he says we are taking away from the fetus "future value" asking (1) how do we measure that value and (2) if that fetus contributes negative does that put itself into the equation?
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