Abortion, infanticide and bodily rights: a response to Robinson.

Abstract

James Robinson defends the claim that abortion and infanticide are morally distinct. This claim is defensible, he argues, because we have good reasons to condemn infanticide that do not apply to abortion. Specifically, Robinson claims that infanticide involves violation of infants' bodily rights. Abortion does not involve the violation of fetuses' bodily rights, however, because fetuses do not have bodily rights. Here, I offer a response. Robinson provides two reasons for thinking that fetuses lack bodily rights: (1) they do not possess bodies of their own and (2) we have clear duties to infants-which seemingly implies that infants have rights-whereas the same duties do not apply to fetuses. Robinson's first claim, that fetuses do not possess bodies of their own, rests on a mistaken view of the metaphysics of pregnancy (ie, the 'parthood view'). Further, Robinson assumes that to have bodily rights, one must be functionally independent from others' bodies. I argue that this is false. Second, I argue that the same duties listed by Robinson-which he claims apply to infants-apply to fetuses too. By Robinson's own lights, therefore, we should conclude that fetuses (like infants) have bodily rights. Alternatively, we would have to explain the wrongness of harming fetuses along some other lines (ie, in a way that does not posit fetal rights). This would be unjustifiably ad hoc. Hence, Robinson fails to provide compelling reasons to support the claim that abortion and infanticide are morally distinct.