Interesting Abstract

I saw this abstract on SSRN and thought it might be of interest to MOJ readers:

"The Pro-Life Argument from Substantial Identity and the
Pro-Choice Argument from Asymmetric Value: A Reply to Patrick
Lee"
     Bioethics, Vol. 21, No. 6, pp. 329-341, July 2007
   

  Contact:  JEFFREY REIMAN
              American University - Department of Philosophy
    Email:  [email protected]
Auth-Page:  http://ssrn.com/author=635321

Full Text:  http://ssrn.com/abstract=990897

ABSTRACT: Lee claims that foetuses and adult humans are phases of
the same identical substance, and thus have the same moral status
because: first, foetuses and adults are the same physical
organism, and second, the development from foetus to adult is
quantitative and thus not a change of substance. Versus the first
argument, I contend that the fact that foetuses and adults are
the same physical organism implies only that they are the same
thing but not the same substance, much as living adults and their
corpses are the same thing (same body) but not the same
substance. Against Lee's second argument, I contend that Lee
confuses the nature of a process with the nature of its result. A
process of quantitative change can produce a change in substance.
Lee also fails to show that foetuses are rational and thus have
all the essential properties of adults, as required for them to
be the same substance. Against the pro-choice argument from
asymmetric value (that only the fact that a human has become
conscious of its life and begun to count on its continuing can
explain human life's asymmetric moral value, i.e. that it is
vastly worse to kill a human than not to produce one), Lee claims
that foetus's lives are asymmetrically valuable to them before
consciousness. This leads to counterintuitive outcomes, and it
confuses the goodness of life (a symmetric value that cannot
account for why it is worse to kill a human than not produce one)
with asymmetric value.