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<p>The impairment argument aims to establish the immorality of abortion without relying on the fetus’s moral status. Instead, it appeals to logical consistency in moral reasoning: if it is immoral to impair a fetus by causing injury, then it must be even more immoral to impair it by causing death. For this reasoning to succeed, all the morally relevant details between these impairments must be held constant, which the author of the argument, Perry Hendricks, refers to as the <i>ceteris paribus</i> requirement. This requirement has proven difficult to define, and in his latest work, Hendricks suggests a more precise explanation of the <i>ceteris paribus</i> clause based on the valuable goods that obtain from impairments. He also outlines a test to determine if the <i>ceteris paribus</i> clause is broken, thereby causing the impairment argument to fail. In this paper, I argue that this new formulation is too narrow, resulting in fatal counterexamples. Accordingly, I show that in addition to valuable goods, the harms of impairment must be considered, as well as the reasons why impairing a fetus is considered immoral. I demonstrate that these reasons ultimately rest on one’s view of the fetus’ moral status, rendering the impairment argument superfluous.</p>

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Reconsidering the impairment argument against abortion

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年12月6日

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  • Bruce P. Blackshaw

摘要

The impairment argument aims to establish the immorality of abortion without relying on the fetus’s moral status. Instead, it appeals to logical consistency in moral reasoning: if it is immoral to impair a fetus by causing injury, then it must be even more immoral to impair it by causing death. For this reasoning to succeed, all the morally relevant details between these impairments must be held constant, which the author of the argument, Perry Hendricks, refers to as the ceteris paribus requirement. This requirement has proven difficult to define, and in his latest work, Hendricks suggests a more precise explanation of the ceteris paribus clause based on the valuable goods that obtain from impairments. He also outlines a test to determine if the ceteris paribus clause is broken, thereby causing the impairment argument to fail. In this paper, I argue that this new formulation is too narrow, resulting in fatal counterexamples. Accordingly, I show that in addition to valuable goods, the harms of impairment must be considered, as well as the reasons why impairing a fetus is considered immoral. I demonstrate that these reasons ultimately rest on one’s view of the fetus’ moral status, rendering the impairment argument superfluous.