Abstract

The main aim of this essay is to defend Don Marquis’s “future-like-ours“ argument against abortion from David Boonin’s recent critique to it. In the first two sections I show that Marquis’s FLO argument is much more plausible than the traditional argument against abortion, grounded on an appeal to the humanity of the fetus. The third section explains Boonin’s critique to the FLO argument. In the last section I show that: Boonin’s critique rests on a misunderstanding conceming the content of Marquis’s moral principle; We can restate Boonin’s position in order to avoid that misunderstanding, but such restatement leads to the conclusion that infanticide, and not only abortion, is morally permissible.