Contents 1 Problems, Exams of Pre-Calculus

Download Contents 1 Problems and more Exams Pre-Calculus in PDF only on Docsity! Virtue Theory and Abortion Author(s): Rosalind Hursthouse Source: Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Summer, 1991), pp. 223-246 Published by: Wiley Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2265432 Accessed: 29-12-2018 17:53 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2265432?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Wiley is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Philosophy & Public Affairs This content downloaded from 12.167.141.140 on Sat, 29 Dec 2018 17:53:11 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms ROSALIND HURSTHOUSE Virtue Theory and Abortion The sort of ethical theory derived from Aristotle, variously described as virtue ethics, virtue-based ethics, or neo-Aristotelianism, is becoming better known, and is now quite widely recognized as at least a possible rival to deontological and utilitarian theories. With recognition has come criticism, of varying quality. In this article I shall discuss nine separate criticisms that I have frequently encountered, most of which seem to me to betray an inadequate grasp either of the structure of virtue theory or of what would be involved in thinking about a real moral issue in its terms. In the first half I aim particularly to secure an understanding that will reveal that many of these criticisms are simply misplaced, and to articulate what I take to be the major criticism of virtue theory. I reject this criticism, but do not claim that it is necessarily misplaced. In the second half I aim to deepen that understanding and highlight the issues raised by the criticisms by illustrating what the theory looks like when it is applied to a particular issue, in this case, abortion. VIRTUE THEORY Virtue theory can be laid out in a framework that reveals clearly some of the essential similarities and differences between it and some versions of deontological and utilitarian theories. I begin with a rough sketch of fa- Versions of this article have been read to philosophy societies at University College, Lon- don, Rutgers University, and the Universities of Dundee, Edinburgh, Oxford, Swansea, and California-San Diego; at a conference of the Polish and British Academies in Cracow in I988 on "Life, Death and the Law," and as a symposium paper at the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association in I989. I am grateful to the many people who contributed to the discussions of it on these occasions, and particularly to Philippa Foot and Anne Jaap Jacobson for private discussion. This content downloaded from 12.167.141.140 on Sat, 29 Dec 2018 17:53:11 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 226 Philosophy & Public Affairs P. 2. A virtue is a character trait a human being needs to flourish or live well. This premise forges a conceptual link between virtue and flourishing (or living well or eudaimonia). And, just as deontology, in theory, then goes on to argue that each favored rule meets its specification, so virtue ethics, in theory, goes on to argue that each favored character trait meets its. These are the bare bones of virtue theory. Following are five brief com- ments directed to some misconceived criticisms that should be cleared out of the way. First, the theory does not have a peculiar weakness or problem in vir- tue of the fact that it involves the concept of eudaimonia (a standard criticism being that this concept is hopelessly obscure). Now no virtue theorist will pretend that the concept of human flourishing is an easy one to grasp. I will not even claim here (though I would elsewhere) that it is no more obscure than the concepts of rationality and happiness, since, if our vocabulary were more limited, we might, faute de mieux, call it (human) rational happiness, and thereby reveal that it has at least some of the difficulties of both. But virtue theory has never, so far as I know, been dismissed on the grounds of the comparative obscurity of this central concept; rather, the popular view is that it has a problem with this which deontology and utilitarianism in no way share. This, I think, is clearly false. Both rationality and happiness, as they figure in their respective theories, are rich and difficult concepts-hence all the disputes about the various tests for a rule's being an object of rational choice, and the disputes, dating back to Mill's introduction of the higher and lower pleasures, about what constitutes happiness. Second, the theory is not trivially circular; it does not specify right ac- tion in terms of the virtuous agent and then immediately specify the vir- tuous agent in terms of right action. Rather, it specifies her in terms of the virtues, and then specifies these, not merely as dispositions to right action, but as the character traits (which are dispositions to feel and react as well as act in certain ways) required for eudaimonia.2 2. There is, of course, the further question of whether the theory eventually describes a larger circle and winds up relying on the concept of right action in its interpretation of eudaimonia. In denying that the theory is trivially circular, I do not pretend to answer this intricate question. It is certainly true that virtue theory does not claim that the correct conception of eudaimonia can be got from "an independent 'value-free' investigation of This content downloaded from 12.167.141.140 on Sat, 29 Dec 2018 17:53:11 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 227 Virtue Theory and Abortion Third, it does answer the question "What should I do?" as well as the question "What sort of person should I be?" (That is, it is not, as one of the catchphrases has it, concerned only with Being and not with Doing.) Fourth, the theory does, to a certain extent, answer this question by coming up with rules or principles (contrary to the common claim that it does not come up with any rules or principles). Every virtue generates a positive instruction (act justly, kindly, courageously, honestly, etc.) and every vice a prohibition (do not act unjustly, cruelly, like a coward, dis- honestly, etc.). So trying to decide what to do within the framework of virtue theory is not, as some people seem to imagine, necessarily a matter of taking one's favored candidate for a virtuous person and asking one- self, "What would they do in these circumstances?" (as if the raped fif- teen-year-old girl might be supposed to say to herself, "Now would Soc- rates have an abortion if he were in my circumstances?" and as if someone who had never known or heard of anyone very virtuous were going to be left, according to the theory, with no way to decide what to do at all). The agent may instead ask herself, "If I were to do such and such now, would I be acting justly or unjustly (or neither), kindly or unkindly [and so on]?" I shall consider below the problem created by cases in which such a question apparently does not yield an answer to "What should I do?" (because, say, the alternatives are being unkind or being unjust); here my claim is only that it sometimes does-the agent may employ her concepts of the virtues and vices directly, rather than imagining what some hypothetical exemplar would do. Fifth (a point that is implicit but should be made explicit), virtue the- ory is not committed to any sort of reductionism involving defining all of our moral concepts in terms of the virtuous agent. On the contrary, it relies on a lot of very significant moral concepts. Charity or benevolence, for instance, is the virtue whose concern is the good of others; that con- cept of good is related to the concept of evil or harm, and they are both related to the concepts of the worthwhile, the advantageous, and the pleasant. If I have the wrong conception of what is worthwhile and ad- human nature" (John McDowell, "The Role of Eudaimonia in Aristotle's Ethics," in Essays on Aristotle's Ethics, ed. Amelie Rorty IBerkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, I980]). The sort of training that is required for acquiring the correct conception no doubt involves being taught from early on such things as "Decent people do this sort of thing, not that" and "To do such and such is the mark of a depraved character" (cf. Nico- machean Ethics i i ioa22). But whether this counts as relying on the concept of right (or wrong) action seems to me very unclear and requiring much discussion. This content downloaded from 12.167.141.140 on Sat, 29 Dec 2018 17:53:11 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 228 Philosophy & Public Affairs vantageous and pleasant, then I shall have the wrong conception of what is good for, and harnful to, myself and others, and, even with the best will in the world, will lack the virtue of charity, which involves getting all this right. (This point will be illustrated at some length in the second half of this article; I mention it here only in support of the fact that no virtue theorst who takes her inspiration from Aristotle would even con- template aiming at reductionism.)3 Let me now, with equal brevity, run through two more standard criti- cisms of virtue theory (the sixth and seventh of my nine) to show that, though not entirely misplaced, they do not highlight problems peculiar to that theory but, rather, problems that are shared by familiar versions of deontology. One common criticism is that we do not know which character traits are the virtues, or that this is open to much dispute, or particularly sub- ject to the threat of moral skepticism or "pluralism"4 or cultural relativ- ism. But the parallel roles played by the second premises of both deon- tological and virtue theories reveal the way in which both sorts of theory share this problem. It is at the stage at which one tries to get the right conclusions to drop out of the bottom of one's theory that, theoretically, all the work has to be done. Rule deontologists know that they want to get "don't kill," "keep promises," "cherish your children," and so on as the rules that meet their specification, whatever it may be. They also know that any of these can be disputed, that some philosopher may claim, of any one of them, that it is reasonable to reject it, and that at least people claim that there has been, for each rule, some culture that 3. Cf. Bernard Williams' point in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London: William Collins, I985) that we need an enriched ethical vocabulary, not a cut-down one. 4. I put pluralism in scare quotes to serve as a warning that virtue theory is not incom- patible with all forms of it. It allows for "competing conceptions" of eudaimonia and the worthwhile, for instance, in the sense that it allows for a plurality of flourishing lives-the theory need not follow Aristotle in specifying the life of contemplation as the only one that truly constitutes eudaimonia (if he does). But the conceptions "compete" only in the sense that, within a single flourishing life, not everything worthwhile can be fitted in; the theory does not allow that two people with a correct conception of eudaimonia can disagree over whether the way the other is living constitutes flourishing. Moreover, the theory is com- mitted to the strong thesis that the same set of character traits is needed for any flourishing life; it will not allow that, for instance, soldiers need courage but wives and mothers do not, or that judges need justice but can live well despite lacking kindness. (This obviously is related to the point made in note i above.) For an interesting discussion of pluralism (dif- ferent interpretations thereof) and virtue theory, see Douglas B. Rasmussen, "Liberalism and Natural End Ethics," American Philosophical Quarterly 27 (1990): 153-6I. This content downloaded from 12.167.141.140 on Sat, 29 Dec 2018 17:53:11 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 23I Virtue Theory and Abortion any reasonably clever adolescent could follow if she chose. But such a condition of adequacy is implausible. Acting rightly is difficult, and does call for much moral wisdom, and the relevant condition of adequacy, which virtue theory meets, is that it should have built into it an expla- nation of a truth expressed by Aristotle,7 namely, that moral knowl- edge-unlike mathematical knowledge-cannot be acquired merely by attending lectures and is not characteristically to be found in people too young to have had much experience of life. There are youthful mathe- matical geniuses, but rarely, if ever, youthful moral geniuses, and this tells us something significant about the sort of knowledge that moral knowledge is. Virtue ethics builds this in straight off precisely by couch- ing its rules in terms whose application may indeed call for the most delicate and sensitive judgment. Here we may discern a slightly different version of the problem that there are cases in which applying the virtue and vice terms does not yield an answer to "What should I do?" Suppose someone "youthful in char- acter," as Aristotle puts it, having applied the relevant terms, finds her- self landed with what is, unbeknownst to her, a case not of real but of apparent conflict, arising from a misapplication of those terms. Then she will not be able to decide what to do unless she knows of a virtuous agent to look to for guidance. But her quandary is (ex hypothesi) the result of her lack of wisdom, and just what virtue theory expects. Someone hesi- tating over whether to reveal a hurtful truth, for example, thinking it would be kind but dishonest or unjust to lie, may need to realize, with respect to these particular circumstances, not that kindness is more (or less) important than honesty or justice, and not that honesty or justice sometimes requires one to act unkindly or cruelly, but that one does peo- ple no kindness by concealing this sort of truth from them, hurtful as it may be. This is the type of thing (I use it only as an example) that people with moral wisdom know about, involving the correct application of kind, and that people without such wisdom find difficult. What about the virtue theorist's reliance on concepts such as that of the worthwhile? If such reliance is to count as a fault in the theory, what condition of adequacy is implicitly in play? It must be that any good nor- mative theory should provide answers to questions about real moral is- sues whose truth is in no way determined by truths about what is worth- 7. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I142ai2-i6. This content downloaded from 12.167.141.140 on Sat, 29 Dec 2018 17:53:11 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 232 Philosophy & Public Affairs while, or what really matters in human life. Now although people are initially inclined to reject out of hand the claim that the practical conclu- sions of a normative moral theory have to be based on premises about what is truly worthwhile, the alternative, once it is made explicit, may look even more unacceptable. Consider what the condition of adequacy entails. If truths about what is worthwhile (or truly good, or serious, or about what matters in human life) do not have to be appealed to in order to answer questions about real moral issues, then I might sensibly seek guidance about what I ought to do from someone who had declared in advance that she knew nothing about such matters, or from someone who said that, although she had opinions about them, these were quite likely to be wrong but that this did not matter, because they would play no determining role in the advice she gave me. I should emphasize that we are talking about real moral issues and real guidance; I want to know whether I should have an abortion, take my mother off the life-support machine, leave academic life and become a doctor in the Third World, give up my job with the firm that is using animals in its experiments, tell my father he has cancer. Would I go to someone who says she has no views about what is worthwhile in life? Or to someone who says that, as a matter of fact, she tends to think that the only thing that matters is having a good time, but has a normative theory that is consistent both with this view and with my own rather more pu- ritanical one, which will yield the guidance I need? I take it as a premise that this is absurd. The relevant condition of adequacy should be that the practical conclusions of a good normative theory must be in part determined by premises about what is worth- while, important, and so on. Thus I reject this "major criticism" of virtue theory, that it cannot get us anywhere in the way that a normative moral theory is supposed to. According to my response, a normative theory that any clever adolescent can apply, or that reaches practical conclusions that are in no way determined by premises about what is truly worth- while, serious, and so on, is guaranteed to be an inadequate theory. Although I reject this criticism, I have not argued that it is misplaced and that it necessarily manifests a failure to understand what virtue the- ory is. My rejection is based on premises about what an adequate nor- mative theory must be like-what sorts of concepts it must contain, and what sort of account it must give of moral knowledge-and thereby claims, implicitly, that the "major criticism" manifests a failure to under- This content downloaded from 12.167.141.140 on Sat, 29 Dec 2018 17:53:11 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 233 Virtue Theory and Abortion stand what an adequate normative theory is. But, as a matter of fact, I think the criticism is often made by people who have no idea of what virtue theory looks like when applied to a real moral issue; they drasti- cally underestimate the variety of ways in which the virtue and vice con- cepts, and the others, such as that of the worthwhile, figure in such dis- cussion. As promised, I now turn to an illustration of such discussion, applying virtue theory to abortion. Before I embark on this tendentious business, I should remind the reader of the aim of this discussion. I am not, in this article, trying to solve the problem of abortion; I am illustrating how vir- tue theory directs one to think about it. It might indeed be said that thinking about the problem in this way "solves" it by dissolving it, insofar as it leads one to the conclusion that there is no single right answer, but a variety of particular answers, and in what follows I am certainly trying to make that conclusion seem plausible. But, that granted, it should still be said that I am not trying to "solve the problems" in the practical sense of telling people that they should, or should not, do this or that if they are pregnant and contemplating abortion in these or those particular cir- cumstances. I do not assume, or expect, that all of my readers will agree with ev- erything I am about to say. On the contrary, given the plausible assump- tion that some are morally wiser than I am, and some less so, the theory has built into it that we are bound to disagree on some points. For in- stance, we may well disagree about the particular application of some of the virtue and vice terms; and we may disagree about what is worthwhile or serious, worthless or trivial. But my aim is to make clear how these concepts figure in a discussion conducted in terms of virtue theory. What is at issue is whether these concepts are indeed the ones that should come in, that is, whether virtue theory should be criticized for employing them. The problem of abortion highlights this issue dramati- cally since virtue theory quite transforms the discussion of it. ABORTION As everyone knows, the morality of abortion is commonly discussed in relation to just two considerations: first, and predominantly, the status of the fetus and whether or not it is the sort of thing that may or may not be innocuously or justifiably killed; and second, and less predominantly This content downloaded from 12.167.141.140 on Sat, 29 Dec 2018 17:53:11 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 236 Philosophy & Public Affairs conclusion: that the status of the fetus-that issue over which so much ink has been spilt-is, according to virtue theory, simply not relevant to the rightness or wrongness of abortion (within, that is, a secular moral- ity). Or rather, since that is clearly too radical a conclusion, it is in a sense relevant, but only in the sense that the familiar biological facts are rele- vant. By "the familiar biological facts" I mean the facts that most human societies are and have been familiar with-that, standardly (but not in- variably), pregnancy occurs as the result of sexual intercourse, that it lasts about nine months, during which time the fetus grows and devel- ops, that standardly it terminates in the birth of a living baby, and that this is how we all come to be. It might be thought that this distinction-between the familiar biolog- ical facts and the status of the fetus-is a distinction without a differ- ence. But this is not so. To attach relevance to the status of the fetus, in the sense in which virtue theory claims it is not relevant, is to be gripped by the conviction that we must go beyond the familiar biological facts, deriving some sort of conclusion from them, such as that the fetus has rights, or is not a person, or something similar. It is also to believe that this exhausts the relevance of the familiar biological facts, that all they are relevant to is the status of the fetus and whether or not it is the sort of thing that may or may not be killed. These convictions, I suspect, are rooted in the desire to solve the prob- lem of abortion by getting it to fall under some general rule such as "You ought not to kill anything with the right to life but may kill anything else." But they have resulted in what should surely strike any nonphilos- opher as a most bizarre aspect of nearly all the current philosophical lit- erature on abortion, namely, that, far from treating abortion as a unique moral problem, markedly unlike any other, nearly everything written on the status of the fetus and its bearing on the abortion issue would be consistent with the human reproductive facts' (to say nothing of family life) being totally different from what they are. Imagine that you are an alien extraterrestrial anthropologist who does not know that the human race is roughly 50 percent female and 50 percent male, or that our only (natural) form of reproduction involves heterosexual intercourse, vivipa- and which can, albeit with difficulty, be reconciled with the idea that moral knowledge can be acquired by anyone who really wants it would be a major task. This content downloaded from 12.167.141.140 on Sat, 29 Dec 2018 17:53:11 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 237 Virtue Theory and Abortion rous birth, and the female's (and only the female's) being pregnant for nine months, or that females are capable of childbearing from late child- hood to late middle age, or that childbearing is painful, dangerous, and emotionally charged-do you think you would pick up these facts from the hundreds of articles written on the status of the fetus? I am quite sure you would not. And that, I think, shows that the current philosoph- ical literature on abortion has got badly out of touch with reality. Now if we are using virtue theory, our first question is not "What do the familiar biological facts show-what can be derived from them about the status of the fetus?" but "How do these facts figure in the practical reasoning, actions and passions, thoughts and reactions, of the virtuous and the nonvirtuous? What is the mark of having the right attitude to these facts and what manifests having the wrong attitude to them?" This immediately makes essentially relevant not only all the facts about hu- man reproduction I mentioned above, but a whole range of facts about our emotions in relation to them as well. I mean such facts as that hu- man parents, both male and female, tend to care passionately about their offspring, and that family relationships are among the deepest and strongest in our lives-and, significantly, among the longest-lasting. These facts make it obvious that pregnancy is not just one among many other physical conditions; and hence that anyone who genuinely believes that an abortion is comparable to a haircut or an appendectomy is mistaken. 12 The fact that the premature termination of a pregnancy is, in some sense, the cutting off of a new human life, and thereby, like the procreation of a new human life, connects with all our thoughts about human life and death, parenthood, and family relationships, must make it a serious matter. To disregard this fact about it, to think of abortion as 12. Mary Anne Warren, in "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion," Monist 57 (1973), sec. i, says of the opponents of restrictive laws governing abortion that "their con- viction (for the most part) is that abortion is not a morally serious and extremely unfortu- nate, even though sometimes justified, act, comparable to killing in self-defense or to let- ting the violinist die, but rather is closer to being a morally neutral act, like cutting one's hair" (italics mine). I would like to think that no one genuinely believes this. But certainly in discussion, particularly when arguing against restrictive laws or the suggestion that re- morse over abortion might be appropriate, I have found that some people say they believe it (and often cite Warren's article, albeit inaccurately, despite its age). Those who allow that it is morally serious, and far from morally neutral, have to argue against restrictive laws, or the appropriateness of remorse, on a very different ground from that laid down by the premise "The fetus is just part of the woman's body (and she has a right to determine what happens to her body and should not feel guilt about anything she does to it)." This content downloaded from 12.167.141.140 on Sat, 29 Dec 2018 17:53:11 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 238 Philosophy & Public Affairs nothing but the killing of something that does not matter, or as nothing but the exercise of some right or rights one has, or as the incidental means to some desirable state of affairs, is to do something callous and light-minded, the sort of thing that no virtuous and wise person would do. It is to have the wrong attitude not only to fetuses, but more generally to human life and death, parenthood, and family relationships. Although I say that the facts make this obvious, I know that this is one of my tendentious points. In partial support of it I note that even the most dedicated proponents of the view that deliberate abortion is just like an appendectomy or haircut rarely hold the same view of spontaneous abor- tion, that is, miscarriage. It is not so tendentious of me to claim that to react to people's grief over miscarriage by saying, or even thinking, "What a fuss about nothing!" would be callous and light-minded, whereas to try to laugh someone out of grief over an appendectomy scar or a botched haircut would not be. It is hard to give this point due prom- inence within act-centered theories, for the inconsistency is an inconsis- tency in attitude about the seriousness of loss of life, not in beliefs about which acts are right or wrong. Moreover, an act-centered theorist may say, "Well, there is nothing wrong with thinking 'What a fuss about nothing!' as long as you do not say it and hurt the person who is grieving. And besides, we cannot be held responsible for our thoughts, only for the intentional actions they give rise to." But the character traits that virtue theory emphasizes are not simply dispositions to intentional actions, but a seamless disposition to certain actions and passions, thoughts and re- actions. To say that the cutting off of a human life is always a matter of some seriousness, at any stage, is not to deny the relevance of gradual fetal development. Notwithstanding the well-worn point that clear boundary lines cannot be drawn, our emotions and attitudes regarding the fetus do change as it develops, and again when it is born, and indeed further as the baby grows. Abortion for shallow reasons in the later stages is much more shocking than abortion for the same reasons in the early stages in a way that matches the fact that deep grief over miscarriage in the later stages is more appropriate than it is over miscarriage in the earlier stages (when, that is, the grief is solely about the loss of this child, not about, as might be the case, the loss of one's only hope of having a child or of having one's husband's child). Imagine (or recall) a woman who already has children; she had not intended to have more, but finds herself un- This content downloaded from 12.167.141.140 on Sat, 29 Dec 2018 17:53:11 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 241 Virtue Theory and Abortion of a pregnancy, which is a condition of a woman's body and results in her having a child if it is not aborted. This fact is given due recognition not by appeal to women's rights but by emphasizing the relevance of the familiar biological and psychological facts and their connection with hav- ing the right attitude to parenthood and family relationships. But it may well be thought that failing to bring in women's rights still leaves some important aspects of the problem of abortion untouched. Speaking in terms of women's rights, people sometimes say things like, "Well, it's her life you're talking about too, you know; she's got a right to her own life, her own happiness." And the discussion stops there. But in the context of virtue theory, given that we are particularly con- cerned with what constitutes a good human life, with what true happi- ness or eudaimonia is, this is no place to stop. We go on to ask, "And is this life of hers a good one? Is she living well?" If we are to go on to talk about good human lives, in the context of abortion, we have to bring in our thoughts about the value of love and family life, and our proper emotional development through a natural life cycle. The familiar facts support the view that parenthood in general, and motherhood and childbearing in particular, are intrinsically worth- while, are among the things that can be correctly thought to be partially constitutive of a flourishing human life. '4 If this is right, then a woman who opts for not being a mother (at all, or again, or now) by opting for abortion may thereby be manifesting a flawed grasp of what her life should be, and be about-a grasp that is childish, or grossly materialistic, or shortsighted, or shallow. I said "may thereby": this need not be so. Consider, for instance, a woman who has already had several children and fears that to have an- other will seriously affect her capacity to be a good mother to the ones she has-she does not show a lack of appreciation of the intrinsic value of being a parent by opting for abortion. Nor does a woman who has been a good mother and is approaching the age at which she may be looking forward to being a good grandmother. Nor does a woman who discovers that her pregnancy may well kill her, and opts for abortion and adoption. Nor, necessarily, does a woman who has decided to lead a life centered 14. I take this as a premise here, but argue for it in some detail in my Beginning Lives (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, I987). In this connection I also discuss adoption and the sense in which it may be regarded as "second best," and the difficult question of whether the good of parenthood may properly be sought, or indeed bought, by surrogacy. This content downloaded from 12.167.141.140 on Sat, 29 Dec 2018 17:53:11 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 242 Philosophy & Public Affairs around some other worthwhile activity or activities with which mother- hood would compete. People who are childless by choice are sometimes described as "irre- sponsible," or "selfish," or "refusing to grow up," or "not knowing what life is about." But one can hold that having children is intrinsically worthwhile without endorsing this, for we are, after all, in the happy po- sition of there being more worthwhile things to do than can be fitted into one lifetime. Parenthood, and motherhood in particular, even if granted to be intrinsically worthwhile, undoubtedly take up a lot of one's adult life, leaving no room for some other worthwhile pursuits. But some women who choose abortion rather than have their first child, and some men who encourage their partners to choose abortion, are not avoiding parenthood for the sake of other worthwhile pursuits, but for the worth- less one of "having a good time," or for the pursuit of some false vision of the ideals of freedom or self-realization. And some others who say "I am not ready for parenthood yet" are making some sort of mistake about the extent to which one can manipulate the circumstances of one's life so as to make it fulfill some dream that one has. Perhaps one's dream is to have two perfect children, a girl and a boy, within a perfect marriage, in financially secure circumstances, with an interesting job of one's own. But to care too much about that dream, to demand of life that it give it to one and act accordingly, may be both greedy and foolish, and is to run the risk of missing out on happiness entirely. Not only may fate make the dream impossible, or destroy it, but one's own attachment to it may make it impossible. Good marriages, and the most promising children, can be destroyed by just one adult's excessive demand for perfection. Once again, this is not to deny that girls may quite properly say "I am not ready for motherhood yet," especially in our society, and, far from manifesting irresponsibility or light-mindedness, show an appropriate modesty or humility, or a fearfulness that does not amount to cowardice. However, even when the decision to have an abortion is the right deci- sion-one that does not itself fall under a vice-related term and thereby one that the perfectly virtuous could recommend-it does not follow that there is no sense in which having the abortion is wrong, or guilt inappro- priate. For, by virtue of the fact that a human life has been cut short, some evil has probably been brought about,15 and that circumstances 15. I say "some evil has probably been brought about" on the ground that (human) life This content downloaded from 12.167.141.140 on Sat, 29 Dec 2018 17:53:11 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 243 Virtue Theory and Abortion make the decision to bring about some evil the right decision will be a ground for guilt if getting into those circumstances in the first place itself manifested a flaw in character. What "gets one into those circumstances" in the case of abortion is, except in the case of rape, one's sexual activity and one's choices, or the lack of them, about one's sexual partner and about contraception. The virtuous woman (which here of course does not mean simply "chaste woman" but "woman with the virtues") has such character traits as strength, independence, resoluteness, decisiveness, self-confidence, re- sponsibility, serious-mindedness, and self-determination-and no one, I think, could deny that many women become pregnant in circumstances in which they cannot welcome or cannot face the thought of having this child precisely because they lack one or some of these character traits. So even in the cases where the decision to have an abortion is the right one, it can still be the reflection of a moral failing-not because the de- cision itself is weak or cowardly or irresolute or irresponsible or light- minded, but because lack of the requisite opposite of these failings landed one in the circumstances in the first place. Hence the common universalized claim that guilt and remorse are never appropriate emo- tions about an abortion is denied. They may be appropriate, and appro- priately inculcated, even when the decision was the right one. Another motivation for bringing women's rights into the discussion may be to attempt to correct the implication, carried by the killing-cen- tered approach, that insofar as abortion is wrong, it is a wrong that only women do, or at least (given the preponderance of male doctors) that only women instigate. I do not myself believe that we can thus escape the fact that nature bears harder on women than it does on men,i6 but virtue theory can certainly correct many of the injustices that the em- phasis on women's rights is rightly concerned about. With very little amendment, everything that has been said above applies to boys and men too. Although the abortion decision is, in a natural sense, the wom- an's decision, proper to her, boys and men are often party to it, for well is (usually) a good and hence (human) death usually an evil. The exceptions would be (a) where death is actually a good or a benefit, because the baby that would come to be if the life were not cut short would be better off dead than alive, and (b) where death, though not a good, is not an evil either, because the life that would be led (e.g., in a state of permanent coma) would not be a good. (See Foot, "Euthanasia.") i6. I discuss this point at greater length in Beginning Lives. This content downloaded from 12.167.141.140 on Sat, 29 Dec 2018 17:53:11 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms