Though Hursthouse advocates many good points in her piece, “Virtue Theory and Abortion,” there are some points that are somewhat unclear in her dissertation; one of these being her later argument that the status of a fetus (as a matter of “biological fact”) is not relevant in the determining the morality of abortion. Though Hursthouse advocates the virtues (or lack thereof), as well as the circumstances of the particular situation, are of primary importance, shouldn’t the virtues involved pertain to the fetus, if biology supported that it is a living thing? Hursthouse herself mentioned that the inconsistency between treating a miscarriage as serious and an appendectomy scar as not serious was “an inconsistency in attitude about the seriousness of loss of life, not in beliefs about which acts are right or wrong.” However, the “status of the fetus” that she dismisses as irrelevant, often pertains to whether or not the fetus is “living.” How can such a fact be irrelevant if the problem is due to an inconsistent view of life and death?
Additionally, although Hurshouse argues that biological facts are irrelevant to virtue ethics, she states that the right question to ask (concerning such isssues as abortion) is “How do these facts [presumably meaning the “familiar biological facts”] figure in the practical reasoning, actions and passions, thoughts and reactions, of the virtuous and nonvirtuous?” This question seems to imply that while biological facts do not take priority over virtues, they are a large reason the actions of the virtuous and nonvirtuous (and presumably the virtues they possess or lack) are being considered in the first place. If this is the case, then “familiar biological facts” would certainly be relevant to virtue ethics (at least as applied to abortion), if only as a point of secondary importance.
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Moira points out an apparent confusion on the part of Hursthouse, and if her understanding of Hursthouse is accurate, then she does indeed identify a difficulty that Hursthouse has. However, I think that Moira is misunderstanding one of Hursthouse’s claims. Moira says here that Hursthouse calls the status of the fetus “not relevant” – I contend that Hursthouse holds, not that the status of the fetus is irrelevant, but that it is not an independent fact to be considered on its own. Hursthouse’s contention on the topic of the relevance of the fetus’ status is, I think, that philosophers have been striving to simplify the issue of abortion by making fetal moral status the central issue, while (at least from a perspective of a virtue theorist) the appropriate approach to the issue is to maintain the complexity, and to consider the status of the fetus as a part of the issue. Hursthouse’s contention, made clear (I think) on page 236, is that this consistent focus on the status of the fetus draws our moral attention away from all the other important considerations. To attach the relevance to the fetus in the way that virtue theory claims it is not, Hursthouse says, is to “believe that [a conclusion about the status of the fetus drawn from biological fact] exhausts the relevance of the familiar biological fact” in a way that dismisses the other important considerations. I think that Moira’s arguments against Hursthouse in her first paragraph are interesting, and could form the basis for a criticism of Hursthouse’s claims, but Moira overemphasizes some of Hursthouse’s words and, in so doing, misunderstands what Hursthouse is claiming.
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