Abortion is ethical when the mother is in danger.

The argument

It is generally accepted that some lives are more valuable than others. If we did not accept that, we would not kill living things and eat them. Because of that principle, a mother's life is more valuable than that of the child, and it is morally acceptable to abort a pregnancy if her life is in danger. The mother is fully self-conscious and rational. Furthermore, she has an established life. That means she has a past and a future that she is aware of, and she has relationships with other people. She has a job, friends, family that she knows and has relationships with. She contributes to and has an established place in society. A fetus is not fully self-aware or rational, by many, that alone makes it less valuable than the mother's life. Furthermore, it is not aware of a past or future, and it does not have an established place in society or extensive relationships. Because of that, it would be worse to lose the life of the mother than that of the fetus. Therefore, if the mother's life is in danger, it is morally permissible to abort the fetus.

Premises

Counter-arguments

With the advances of modern medicine, doctors have sufficient knowledge to save both the mother and child. It is rarely truly necessary to abort the fetus to save the life of the mother. Because of that, it is wrong to take action to kill the fetus to supposedly save the mother.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The comparative-value criterion is set out in a way most of the argument's own supporters would reject. Ranking lives by self-awareness, rationality, relationships and 'established place in society' would rank adults against each other on the same scale, and would place the isolated, the very old and the profoundly cognitively impaired below others — a consequence the argument does not accept and does not address. The supporting comparison, that we accept killing living things and eating them, is a cross-species point that establishes nothing about members of the same species. [Rejecting P2] Weighing lives is also not what the case requires. A pregnancy that threatens the mother's life is standardly analysed as a conflict of claims in which one party's continued existence depends on the other's body, and that analysis needs no ranking of whose life is worth more — so the premise takes on a heavy commitment it does not need. [Rejecting P3] The counter-argument on record disputes the factual premise underlying the whole case, holding that modern obstetric care can usually preserve both lives and that situations requiring the pregnancy to be ended to save the mother are rare — on which view the permission being sought would apply to very few cases. [Rejecting C] The conclusion also underdetermines the position it supports. Establishing one circumstance in which abortion is permissible leaves entirely open which other circumstances qualify, which is the substance of the debate.