Don Marquis was an atheist philosopher best known for his argument against abortion, which makes absolutely no appeal to religion, the soul, or God. So, how does Marquis reason to his conclusion?
He begins with common ground among those who are pro-choice and those who are pro-life. If someone kills you or me right now, that person would do something wrong. What makes it wrong to kill you or me?
If you or I are killed today, it doesn’t take away the good things we enjoyed yesterday: the friendships we shared, the knowledge we learned, and the beauty we enjoyed. But if you or I are killed today, we are deprived of the friendships we could have enjoyed, the knowledge we could have gained, and the beauty we could have experienced in the future. So, killing you or me is wrong because it deprives us of the chance to enjoy goods in the future. Put another way, one reason killing is wrong is because it deprives an individual of a future-like-ours.
So too, if a newborn baby is killed, he is deprived of the friendships he would have formed, the knowledge he would have learned, the beauty he would have experienced. He won’t joke with friends, he won’t master penalty kicks in soccer, and he won’t become a dad. Infanticide is wrong because it deprives an individual of his chance for a valuable future.
But the same thing is true of the human being deprived of life prior to birth. She won’t graduate from kindergarten, she won’t have her first kiss, and she won’t be able to learn jiu jitsu. Abortion is wrong because it deprives an individual of her chance for a future-like-ours.
One objection raised to Marquis’s argument is that his argument shows not only that infanticide and abortion are wrong but also that contraception is wrong. This conclusion may not trouble those who think contraception is wrong, but it would trouble people in favor of contraception. So, if you think contraception is sometimes permissible, then you should also reject Marquis’s future-like-ours argument.
The possibility that we may have a bad future does not change the fact that killing you or me now would be wrong.
But Marquis points out that the future-like-ours argument does not imply that contraception is impermissible. What is contraception? It is any action before, during, or after a sexual act intended to render the sexual act non-procreative. As the name suggests, contra-ception acts against conception. But until a human being is conceived, there is no new individual that exists. If there is no new individual that exists, then there is no individual deprived of a future-like-ours. The premise of Marquis’s argument is that it is wrong to deprive an individual of a future-like-ours; he does not hold that failing to bring an individual into existence is wrong. We have no obligation to bring as many human individuals into existence as we can. Thus, there is no inconsistency in holding both that contraception is permissible and that it is wrong to deprive an individual of a chance for a future-like-ours. In other words, even if you hold that contraception is permissible, that is no grounds for rejecting the future-like-ours argument against abortion.
Another objection to the future-like-ours argument is that maybe the individual in question will have a bad future. Indeed, it could turn out that the newborn or the human being in utero will have a very bad future indeed. They may end up wandering the streets homeless, addicted, and friendless.
But the same thing is true for you and me. What will happen to us in ten years’ time? Can anyone know with certainty that we won’t be wandering the streets homeless, addicted, and friendless? But the possibility that we may have a bad future does not change the fact that killing you or me now would be wrong.
Moreover, isn’t it wrong to kill the homeless, the addicted, and the friendless? Yes, if we kill them today, we would prevent their suffering tomorrow, but it is still wrong to kill them. If we have compassion for those who suffer, we should try to end their suffering, not destroy those who suffer.
So, it is wrong to deprive an individual of a chance for a valuable future. And if it is wrong to kill you or me because killing us deprives us of our chance for a valuable future, so too it is wrong to kill an infant or a human being in utero. In fact, we have no certain knowledge of their future and no certain knowledge of our own future. For, as Yogi Berra is said to have quipped, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”