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the university
For the sake of argument
Philosophy professor asks questions behind abortion
THE PAPER
Ideas from Don Marquis' paper, "Why Abortion is Immoral."
"This essay sets out an argument that purports to show, as well as any argument in ethics can show, that abortion is, except possibly in rare cases, seriously immoral that it is in the same category as killing an innocent adult human being."
"Since a fetus possesses a property, the possession of which in adult human beings is sufficient to make killing an adult human being wrong, abortion is wrong."
"The argument [in this paper] rests neither on religious claims nor on Papal dogma. It is not subject to the objection of 'speciesism.' Its soundness is compatible with the moral permissibility of euthanasia and contraception. It deals with our intuitions concerning young children."
story by marcelo vilela $\bullet$ photo by tara bradle)
"What primarily makes killing wrong is neither its effect on the murderer nor its effect on the victim's friends and relatives, but its effect on the victim.
The loss of one's life is one of the greatest losses one can suffer."
"Clearly, it is wrong to kill adult human beings. Clearly, it is not wrong to end the life of some arbitrarily chosen single human cell. Fetuses seem to be like arbitrarily chosen human cells in some respects and like adult humans in other respects. The problem of the ethics of abortion is the problem of determining the fetal property that settifies this moral controversy."
"The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race."
This epigram on Don Marquis' door was signed by another Don Marquis, who was a humor columnist. Even though uttered by a different Marquis, this epigram may as well the University of Kansas Marquis' philosophy about life.
The Marquis here is a professor of philosophy and author of renowned anti-abortion paper "Why Abortion is Immoral."
Marquis is a specialist in applied ethics and deals with current problems such as abortion and euthanasia. He is interested in coming to grips with moral issues in contemporary society.
Marquis has written ad nauseam about abortion. His academic paper, written in 1989, is cited in 32 anthologies about moral problems for ethics classes. It defends the anti-abortion position.
Even though Marquis is not involved in any anti-abortion activism group, he is a fierce advocate for the cause.
"I'm not specially interested in the politics of the issue," he said. "I'm interested in the philosophy of it.
In Marquis' opinion, the recent 25th anniversary of the Supreme Court case Roe vs. Wade ruling that made it legal to have abortions in this country is a disaster.
"The court in Roe vs. Wade assumed that one could not show in any objective way that the fetus was a person," he said. "I think you can show, independently of religious considerations, that the fetus is a person."
Based on that line of thinking, Marquis said he thought that the grounds for reversal of the ruling were simple. In his opinion, Roe vs. Wade allowed for homicide.
To Marquis, one always had the right to stay alive, whether one was an adult or a fetus.
"It doesn't look like age makes a difference in respect to having the right to life," he said.
The suggestions to differentiate the fetus from out-of-the-womb people, Marquis said, make as much sense as saying that Jews don't have a right to life.
"The criteria for denying the fetus the right to life are no better than those the Nazis used to deny the Jews the right to life," he said. "I decided to write about abortion because I thought I had something to say about the subject that other people had not said."
His paper is an abbreviated theory for the wrongness of killing. In it, Marquis uses strictly philosophical arguments to defend the fetus' right to life. Differing from some other anti-abortion advocates, he doesn't use religi-
ious or moralistic arguments to defend his position.
"Who knows whether the fetus has a soul or not?" he said. "Who knows if you have a soul? I don't know."
According to Marquis' paper, abortion eliminates the future possibilities of the unborn fetus.
"The reason why it's wrong to kill people in general is because they have a valuable future," he said. "The fetus you once were had a valuable future, and part of that is your present life, which you are now valuing."
Marquis disputed the standard abortion-rights' argument about the morality of abortion: if the fetus isn't a person, abortion is moral.
In the philosophical definition, a person is a being who is rational, can communicate in complex ways and have notions of his or her future. This definition excludes infants, yet it's not considered morally correct to kill newborns. Marquis said.
Even though Marquis supports antiabortion notions, he's not satisfied with the traditional abortion debates. Abortion-rights advocates and antiabortion activists don't say much about why killing is wrong, he said.
"The line that the fetus is a human life, therefore abortion is wrong, is a wrong line, too," he said. "There are things that are human and alive, and it's perfectly all right to kill them, like cancer cells."
As his paper approaches its first decade of existence, Marquis said he looked back at it and realized some of his arguments could be better developed today.
"There are better ways of dealing with why contraception is OK than the way I dealt with it," he said.
His paper deliberately omits cases such as abortion when the woman's life is threatened and abortion after rape.
"Rapes are tricky," Marquis said. "In non-rape cases, the woman has some responsibility for being pregnant. In rape cases, people make the case that it would not be wrong to have an abortion. I don't know if I'm convinced by it."
Marquis has been a professor at the University since 1967, after receiving his doctorate from Indiana University. This semester, Marquis was assigned to teach a class about medical ethics and one about ethical theory.
He only required that his students read his paper when he taught introductory ethics classes.
"It's one of the absurdities at KU," he said. "Abortion is not a subject in the classes I'm teaching, so I haven't been teaching my paper for a couple of
"His goal in teaching is to get students engaged in philosophical arguments to defend their positions.\\ They're not graded on which position they choose, but on how well they defend it."
Anthony Genova philosophy department chairman
Karen Hachten, Omaha, Neb., junior, is taking Marquis' medical ethics class. She's been having moral conflicts with dissecting animals in her physiology lab, and she asked Marquis for assistance.
"He's an ethicist, very strong in his beliefs," Hachten said. "It's inspiring to think about these topics differently from the way you were brought up."
Anthony Genova, chairman of the philosophy department and Marquis' friend, said that some students might get upset because Marquis challenged their basic beliefs.
"His goal in teaching is to get students engaged in philosophical arguments to defend their positions," Genova said. "They're not graded on which position they choose, but on how well they defend it."
Marquis is known for taking the least supported side of any issue and then when people start supporting him, he chooses the opposite side. He would rather side with positions that are not popular than swim with the majority.
Because of his style, his classes cause positive and negative reactions, Genova said.
"That's his main motivation. He makes things interesting by making people come up with arguments to defend their points of view," he said.
"He challenged me in every single issue that has ever come up in the history of the department," Genova said. "But it's purely intellectual, and he holds no grudges against anyone."
However, Marquis' intellectual prowess is not a unanimity. Ann Cudd, associate professor of philosophy, wrote a riposte to Marquis in a paper entitled "Sensationalized Philosophy: A Reply to Marquis."
In her paper, Cudd expressed doubts about Marquis' assumptions. She advocated the rights of mothers instead of those of the fetus.
Don Marquis, professor of philosophy, leads a discussion with his philosophy class. Marquis wrote a famous anti-abortion paper which has given him national recognition
"I don't think there's anything morally wrong with killing a fetus," she said. "Abortion is more a failure to rescue rather than a case of killing. It's not immoral to fail to rescue."
"It's fun to go to conventions, people know who I am," he said. "Sometimes they like the paper, sometimes they want to argue about it, which is fine because in our society there are far too few situations where people talk about real fundamental issues."
Marquis' paper originally appeared in the Journal of Philosophy a week before federal courts were discussing obstacles to abortion. Cudd thought the Journal of Philosophy was making a sensationalist point by publishing Marquis' material.
Perhaps if they did, human race could stop being an obstacle to itself.
Sensationalist or not, Marquis' paper yielded him national recognition.
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