14.4.09

Part 6 - Abortion, Marquis and a "Prima Facie" Moral Obligation


According to Marquis, it is a prima facie morally wrong to deprive a being of a future like ours.

In other words, the moral obligation not to deprive a being of a future like ours is a prima facie moral obligation.

A "prima facie moral obligation" is a genuine moral obligation that may, in certain circumstances, be overridden or outweighed or "trumped" by other, stronger, moral obligation. For example, you may have a moral obligation not to lie, but you may also have a stronger moral obligation not to cause someone undue pain. So if your 89-year-old great-grandmother asks you how her hair looks, although it would be prima facie immoral to lie and tell her that it looks great when it really looks awful, it would be much worse to hurt her feelings. In this case, your obligation not to hurt your grandmother's feelings trumps or overrides your prima facie obligation not to lie.

A prima facie moral obligation is the opposite of an absolute moral obligation, an obligation that always overrides or wins our over other obligations or considerations.

Now, let's apply this to the issue of abortion. Marquis says that depriving a being of a future like ours is prima facie morally wrong because he does not want his view to imply anything about special cases in which it may be morally permissible to deprive someone of an future like ours, such as the killing of someone in self defense. He wants to leave questions about such special cases as open questions.

But even if there are cases in which it is morally permissible to deprive someone of a future like ours that does not mean that killing, in general, is morally acceptable. Therefore, Marquis' claim is that depriving a being of a future like ours is a sufficient condition but not a necessary condition of the prima facie moral wrongness of killing that being.