This is a review of David Boonin's A Defense of Abortion (Cambridge University Press, 2002)

Lovering, Rob

English

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214 Book Reviews© Society for Applied Philosophy, 2003NOTES[1] See S. CROOK (2002) Stephen Clark’s green holism, Heythrop Journal, Vol. 43, Number 4, pp. 444–462.[2] See S. CROOK (2002) Callicott’s land communitarianism, Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol. 19, Number2, pp. 175–184.[3] See S. CROOK (2002) Plumwood and Lomborg: crisis and anti-crisis in green thought, Imprints: AJournal of Analytic Socialism, Vol. 6, pp. 270–285.[4] P. TAYLOR (1986) Respect for Nature (New Jersey, Princeton University Press).A Defense of AbortionD B, 2002Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.xv + 350 pp., £47.50 (hb) £16.95 (pb)Given the scope and density of David Boonin’s A Defense of Abortion, it behoves me tobegin by saying that a review of this length fails miserably to do justice to the work.Boonin’s tome is tightly packed with seemingly every conceivable argument against —or objection to arguments for — the moral permissibility of abortion. And although hecovers so much in relatively few pages, his analyses and arguments rarely, if ever, seemoversimplified or heavy-handed. Rather, Boonin appears to have merely eliminated thesuperfluous without sacrificing philosophical rigour. As the title indicates, Boonindefends the view that abortion, at least in typical cases, is morally permissible. How-ever, he also contends that ‘to say that an action is permissible is not to say that thereare no moral reasons against doing the action, but only that it is a candidate fromwhich one is morally permitted to choose’ (p. 8). Hence his claim that ‘establishingthat an action would be morally permissible should represent only the beginning ofone’s moral deliberation, not the end it is too often taken to represent’ (p. 8).Regarding method, Boonin deftly employs that of reflective equilibrium, which hedescribes as the provisional acceptance of moral intuitions concerning various kinds ofactions with more initial weight given to those which seem clear or forceful, along withthe development of a credible moral theory that unifies and underwrites these judg-ments (pp. 9–10). ‘In seeking principles to underwrite our considered moral judgmentsabout particular types of actions,’ he writes, ‘the method directs us to give preferenceto those principles that are more general and more fundamental and which more fullyexemplify the general theoretical virtues [e.g., parsimony, salience, coherence]’ (p. 10).Even more noteworthy than Boonin’s employment of reflective equilibrium, however,is that he proceeds on methodological terms that the critic of abortion accepts. Adefence that proceeds otherwise, Boonin states, ‘reinforces the impression that thecontroversy over abortion arises from a simple clash of incommensurable viewpoints’(p. 14). Thus, ‘Only this kind of argument can contribute to resolving the abortioncontroversy’ (p. 14).Boonin divides the arguments against abortion into two categories: rights-based andnon-rights-based. The former are divided further into three subcategories: argumentsthat attempt to show that the foetus acquires a right to life at conception (e.g., theparsimony, potentiality, and future-like-ours arguments), arguments that attempt toshow that the foetus acquires a right to life sometime after conception (the implanta-Book Reviews 215© Society for Applied Philosophy, 2003tion, initial brain activity, and viability arguments), and arguments that attempt toshow that Judith Jarvis Thomson’s ‘Good Samaritan argument’ is fallacious (the tacitconsent, killing versus letting die, and intending versus foreseeing objections). As fornon-rights-based arguments, Boonin examines the golden rule, culture of death,pro-life feminist, and uncertainty arguments. The majority of the book is devoted torights-based arguments, and of those Boonin dedicates nearly half of his discussion toThomson’s Good Samaritan argument. Boonin’s objections to the arguments againstabortion are clear and incisive, comprising a cogent defence of abortion. Although allare worth discussing, for the sake of space I can only consider one. Nevertheless, it isan argument that I consider constitutes one of Boonin’s more significant contributionsto the abortion debate: viz., his objection to Don Marquis’s ‘future-like-ours’ (here-after FLO) argument against abortion.Boonin summarizes Marquis’s argument in the following way. Marquis assumes thatin cases B, C, and D in the following list, the individuals in question have the sameright to life as those in E: (A) foetus, (B) infant, (C) suicidal teenager, (D) temporarilycomatose adult, (E) you or me. Marquis inquires: What is the property the possessionof which most plausibly accounts for the wrongness of killing in cases B-E? Accordingto Marquis, it is that of ‘having a [FLO] that contains experiences of the sort that onenow values or will later come to value (if one is not killed)’ (p. 61). Marquis then asks:Does the foetus have a FLO? Marquis contends that it does and that, in Boonin’swords, ‘the best account of the wrongness of killing in general provides a sufficientreason to conclude that the foetus has the same right to life as you or I’ (p. 57).In his rebuttal to Marquis’s FLO argument, Boonin identifies and relies upon threedistinctions: (1) the ‘present or future’ versus the ‘present’ versions of the FLO prin-ciple; (2) occurrent versus dispositional desires; and (3) actual versus ideal desires.Briefly, Boonin argues that Marquis’s FLO account of the wrongness of killing involvesthe former of each disjunct (present or future occurrent actual desire), while his ownpreferred account includes the latter of each disjunct (present dispositional ideal de-sire). With this in mind, let us examine more closely each aforementioned distinctionand, subsequently, Boonin’s rebuttal as a whole.According to Boonin, Marquis uses statements of the form ‘P values (or will cometo value) X’ and ‘P desires (or will come to desire) that X continue’ interchangeably(p. 63). Thus, the FLO principle underlying Marquis’s account may be expressed as:If an individual P has a [FLO] F and if either (a) P now desires that F be preserved,or (b) P will later desire to continue having the experiences contained in F (if P is notkilled), then P is an individual with the same right to life as you or I (p. 63).The preceding ‘present or future desire’ version of the FLO principle is to bedistinguished from Boonin’s ‘present desire’ version of the FLO principle, which maybe stated as:If P has a [FLO] that P now desires to be preserved, then P has the same right to lifeas you or I (p. 64).Of the two, Boonin submits, the latter is more parsimonious than the former andit can account for the wrongness of case of E. But can it account for the wrongnessof cases A-D as well? It can, according to Boonin, and he attempts to demonstrate thisby making additional distinctions, one of which concerns occurrent and dispositionaldesires. An occurrent desire, Boonin suggests, is one that is being consciously enter-tained, while a dispositional desire is one that is not being consciously entertained216 Book Reviews© Society for Applied Philosophy, 2003but nonetheless is already actually desired (pp. 65–66). Understanding ‘desire’ in thedispositional sense, Boonin’s present desire version of the FLO principle may beexpressed as:If P has a FLO that P now dispositionally desires to be preserved, then P has thesame right to life as you or I.This present dispositional desire version of the FLO principle is able to account fornot only E, but D as well.In order for the present dispositional desire version of the FLO principle to accountfor C, however, a final distinction must be made between actual and ideal desires.Boonin writes, ‘we distinguish between the actual content of the desire that a personhas given her actual circumstances and the content the desire she actually has wouldhave had if the actual desire had been formed under more ideal circumstances’ (p. 70).Boonin holds that ideal desires are supervenient on actual desires; thus, a necessarycondition for having ideal desires is having actual desires (p. 80).If P has a FLO that P now dispositionally and ideally desires to be preserved, thenP has the same right to life as you or I.With the addition of this ‘ideal desire’ qualification, Boonin’s version of the FLOprinciple now accounts for C-E.What about B? Boonin states that since ideal desires are supervenient on actualdesires, ‘all that is required for the newborn infant to satisfy the conditions sufficientfor having the same right to life as you or I is that he have a [FLO] and that he haveactual conscious desires that can be satisfied only if his personal future is preserved’(p. 84). Since Boonin does not believe that it is controversial to hold that the newborninfant has such conscious desires, he maintains that his version of the FLO principlecan account for newborn infants as well (p. 84).In summary, Boonin contends that the wrongness of killing in cases B-E is ac-counted for by his present dispositional ideal desire version of the FLO principle, whileMarquis holds that the wrongness of killing in cases B-E is accounted for by thepresent or future occurrent actual desire version of the FLO principle. If Boonin isright, then the standard foetus does not have the property the possession of which mostplausibly accounts for the wrongness of killing in cases B-E. For since ideal desires aresupervenient on actual desires and the preconscious foetus lacks actual desires, it lacksideal desires also. According to Boonin, then, the best account of why you and I,temporarily comatose adults, suicidal teenagers, and infants have a right to life doesnot entail that the preconscious foetus does.A successful rebuttal to Marquis’s argument, Boonin contends, must do three things(p. 63). First, the rebuttal must identify another property that the individuals in B-Ealso have in common, and thus an alternative account of the wrongness of killing youor me which produces the same results in cases B-E. Boonin’s account does this byproposing a present dispositional ideal rather than present or future occurrent actual desirethat one’s FLO be preserved. Second, it must show that, given that the alternativeaccount and Marquis’s account produce the same results in these cases, there is reasonto prefer the alternative account to Marquis’s. Boonin’s account does this as well, as itis more parsimonious, morally salient, and able to account for a counterexample thatMarquis’s version is unable to account for (see p. 76). Finally, it must show that thealternative account of the wrongness of killing in B-E produces substantively differentresults in A. Boonin’s account does this, for present dispositional ideal desires areBook Reviews 217© Society for Applied Philosophy, 2003supervenient on actual desires; thus, this property is one that is only possessed by thetypical human foetus after it has reached a relatively advanced stage of development. Itis hoped that my (simplified) account of Boonin’s rebuttal to Marquis serves to giveyou a glimpse of the care and precision, endemic to the work as a whole, with whichBoonin addresses arguments concerning abortion. For anyone even minimally inter-ested in the abortion debate, Boonin’s book is highly recommended.ROBERT P. LOVERINGTexas Tech UniversityThe Limits of NationalismC G, 2003Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.ix + 192 pp, £15.95 (pb)Moral Philosophy and the HolocaustE G and G S (eds), 2003Aldershot, Ashgate.xix + 277 pp, £18.99 (pb)An Introduction to Global CitizenshipN D, 2003Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press.xv + 184 pp, £12.99 (pb)Rethinking Human RightsD C (ed), 2002Palgrave Macmillan.xiii + 246 pp, £47.50 (hb)While nationalists of a most illiberal stamp wreak havoc around the world, manyphilosophers have spent the last dozen years attempting to defend some version ofliberal nationalism. Chaim Gans’s book is one of the most ingenious and attractive ofwhat is, to my mind, a misguided genre. Like its seminal predecessor, Yael Tamir’sLiberal Nationalism (Princeton NJ, Princeton UP 1993), its subtext is to justify fromliberal premises the existence of the state of Israel. But, far from this being a drawback,it gives the book’s application of philosophical considerations to pressing politicalquestions a particular bite and urgency.Gans starts by distinguishing the kind of nationalism he favours, ‘cultural national-ism’, from ‘statist nationalism’. The first holds that the members of a nation have amorally significant interest in their culture which warrants protection by a state. Thesecond, conversely, regards an homogeneous national culture as merely a means wherebya state’s interests are promoted. Either kind of nationalism can come in liberal or non-liberal versions, Gans claims, thereby distinguishing his distinction from the familiarethnic/civic one. Cultural nationalism is liberal if its valuation of national groups is

A Defense of Abortion

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A Defense of Abortion

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