Daniel Propson

Scholars have long disputed whether human rights should be justified by consequentialist or non-consequentialist considerations. Once we understand the role of rights and freedoms as instrumental goods, I argue, it becomes clear that some sort of consequentialist justification is needed. Rights are trumps, but these are trumps that may be overridden; and they will be overridden precisely when enough human thriving—not only happiness, but the virtues that lead to happiness and other goods—is at stake. Nevertheless, the diversity of opinions about the nature of these goods restrains us from making aggressive choices to curtail human rights.

Don Berkich has argued that the so-called Trajectory Argument for the moral impermissibility of abortion falls short because it fails to establish that an embryo that never becomes a person has the same rights as an embryo that becomes a person. I argue that Berkich’s argument fails to be convincing, since aborting a particular embryo itself causes the embryo not to become a person, and the premise that abortion would be wrong if it were done with the intention of preventing a particular person’s existence assumes that arbitrary killings are somehow better than targeted ones, which is implausible. Don Berkich a défendu l’idée que «l’argument de la trajectoire», invoqué pour justifier l’inconvenance de l’interruption volontaire de grossesse, est invalide parce qu’il n’établit pas qu’un embryon qui n’est jamais devenu une personne a les mêmes droits qu’un embryon qui devient une personne. Je soutiens que les arguments de Berkich ne sont pas convaincants puisque l’action même d’avorter empêche l’embryon détruit par cet avortement de devenir une personne, et la démonstration de Berkich suppose implicitement que le meurtre arbitraire est meilleur que le meurtre ciblé, ce qui est invraisemblable.