Autor: Ross Colby

Ross Colby, nacido en Arizona (EE.UU.) en 1971, prepara en la actualidad su tesis doctoral en la Universidad de Temple, en Filadelfia, acerca de la problemática valoración de la vida prenatal, dirigida por Dr. Shelley Wilcox, experto en Derechos Humanos e Inmigración, y también por el Dr. Joseph Margolis, reconocido como uno de los grandes filósofos contemporáneos, y Dr. Arthur Caplan, director del Centro de Bioética de la Universidad de Pennsylvania. Ross obtuvo la licenciatura de Filosofía en la Universidad de Carolina del Norte en Charlotte y un máster en Filosofía en la Universidad de Louisville con el trabajo titulado "Una versión realista del tiempo". El profesor Ross Colby trabaja actualmente en cuatro universidades de Filadelfia; entre ellas: Temple, Drexel y Rutgers en Candem. Además, es un excelente jugador de ajedrez, disciplina de la que también en profesor.

Ross Colby is a Ph.D. Candidate in philosophy at Temple University where he is writing his dissertation on valuing prenatal life. His primary dissertation advisor is Dr. Shelley Wilcox who is a specialist in Rights Theory and Immigration Policy. His other well-respected advisors are Dr. Joseph Margolis and Dr. Arthur Caplan who is the director of the Bioethics Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Ross received his BA in philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and his MA in philosophy at the University of Louisville; his MA thesis was entitled "A Realist Version of Time." In addition to studying and teaching philosophy at four colleges and universities in the Philadelphia area including Temple, Drexel, and Rutgers at Camden, Ross is an expert-rated chess player and he teaches chess to children.

Critique of and Distillation of Truth in Marquis

The most formidable conservative argument against abortion is Don Marquis’ "Future Like Ours" argument. Perhaps part of why it has the appeal that it does is because it does not, as do most conservative arguments, rely on unverifiable metaphysical assumptions such as the existence of God, souls, or potentiality nor does it appeal to complex and contentious moral concepts like “persons” or “rights.”1
The argument is impressively concise in that it seems to get at the crux of what is essentially wrong, when it is wrong, with killing someone (something?) like you or me, and from this it allegedly (and tacitly) infers what is wrong, when it is wrong, with killing in general. The remainder of the extended argument comes to the valid deduction that abortion is (usually) wrong. That is, if it is wrong to kill something because it deprives that something of a valuable future like ours, then, if embryos and fetuses have a valuable future like ours, and if abortion, in killing the embryo or fetus, takes away their valuable future, then it follows that most cases of abortion are as wrong as killing someone like you or me.2
It is my aim in this chapter to illuminate the logical, linguistic, and metaphysical problems with Marquis’ argument while at the same time keep and clarify what is morally wrong, when it is wrong, with killing. This needs to be accomplished before I can in later chapters (1) distinguish between different kinds of wrongs, particularly “for-its-sake” wrongness, (2) garner support for a kind of consciousness criterion as a necessary condition for for-its-sake wrongness, and (3) suggest what additional requirements would be needed to arrive at a sufficient condition for for-its-sake wrongness.

Marquis’ Extended Argument

P1: A sufficient wrong-making feature of killing someone like you or me obtains if the killing deprives us of a valuable future like ours.
P2/C1 (implied): A sufficient wrong making feature of killing anything obtains if the killing deprives the thing of a valuable future like ours.
P3/C2: A sufficient wrong making feature of killing a typical embryo or fetus obtains if the killing deprives it of a valuable future like ours.
P4: Abortion, in killing a typical embryo or fetus, deprives it of a valuable future.
C3: Abortion, entails a sufficient wrongness as serious as killing someone like you or me.

The Improper Move from P1 to P3/C2

Marquis’ argument begins by trying to ascertain the essential wrong-making feature of killing someone like you or me. After eliminating candidate reasons for the essential wrong-making feature of killing (such as its brutalization, its effects on loved ones, and its effects on the murderer), Marquis arrives at the notion that killing one of us is essentially wrong because "the loss of one’s life deprives one of all the experiences, activities, projects, and enjoyments that would otherwise have constituted one’s future." (271)
It is quite plausible that Marquis has locked onto (at least part of) what is wrong with killing someone like you or me. But, it is my claim here that there are good reasons why Marquis should NOT be permitted to move from P1 to P2/C1 and then from P2/C1 to P3/C2 (or directly from P1 to P3).
It should first be noticed that the form of argument which causes Marquis to move from P1 to P3 is not valid. I agree with Marquis that P1 is true, but the wrongness of depriving someone like you or me of a valuable future is true in virtue of the fact that we (you and I) are beings with special properties. That is, there are other properties (left unmentioned in Marquis’ discussion) that you and I have that, in conjunction with our valuable futures, make it wrong to deprive us of our valuable future. This feature that is possessed by you and me is missing from many beings in P2 and most beings in P3.

The problematic form of such an argument can be illustrated by the following analogy:

L1: There is a professional sculptor named Lissett who does her best work in a park called, “Rittenhouse Square.” The medium she uses to create her sculptures is a fairly rare and expensive clay; she brings just as much of the material from home as she thinks she will need. She creates approximately one finished sculpture every day and usually displays her latest finished piece while she begins work on a new piece. One morning after setting up (getting the clay sufficiently moistened, and placed into position, and displaying her latest finished piece), Lissett goes over to a coffeehouse to pick up a croissant and Cafe Americano. When she returns she finds that her finished sculpture has been vandalized and destroyed.
L2: Now, consider on a morning some months later, after Lissett sets up in the same way, she makes it a point to ask a man sitting at a nearby bench to watch her sculpture and clay so that she may pick up her usual breakfast. This time when she returns, she finds that the man has left his bench, and, although the completed sculpture had not been tampered with, her set-up clay has been vandalized and ruined.
We might at this point ask, “what is essentially wrong with destroying Lissett’s sculpture in L1? Perhaps there are many inessential things wrong with it. For example, it might be said that part of the wrong of the sculpture’s destruction is that Lissett won’t get to sell it, and, the cost of the material is a loss to her. But, what if Lissett is independently wealthy, and not interested in profit? It seems that these possible wrong-making features are inessential. What about the hard work that Lissett put into the creation of the statue? Or, couldn’t it be said that it is wrong to destroy the statue simply because it is Lissett’s property? Both of these could also be considered inessential (or irrelevant) wrong-making features of the statue’s destruction if Lissett makes statues for the fun of it, and, as everyone might know, is not attached to her work; she makes it clear to everyone, and even posts a sign, that she has given up all “property rights.” The essential wrong-making feature could, therefore, rightly be said to be that many others would have received valuable experiences from the sculpture, or that something’s present or future intrinsic value would have endured in the world for years to come.
But, assuming all that was just said is true, can it now accurately be said that destroying the clay in L2 would commit the same essential wrong that was committed in L1? If the lump of clay is rightly considered the thing that will cause many people to experience joys and other valuable feelings or if it is the thing that has an intrinsically valuable present or future, then why are we do we rightly hold back from saying that the same wrong obtains?
First, even if we grant that Marquis has discovered the correct wrong-making property of killing for a certain class of beings (that is, if this wrong-making property obtains, it is a sufficient condition for serious wrongness), it does not follow that this wrong-making property, if it obtains in the killing of a member of a different class of beings, is sufficient for serious wrongness for the different class. It is simply not the case that just because we know what the sufficient wrong-making property is in killing someone like you or me, that we know a sufficient wrong-making property (or, even if anything is wrong at all) with killing something very different from you or me; this is the case even if this different class can rightly be said to have a valuable future like ours. Here’s why:
If, for example, there exists a special property possessed by someone like you or me that causes us to rightly say that killing us is essentially wrong because it deprives us of a valuable future, then we can only rightly say that taking a valuable future away (via killing) a member of another class of beings commits the same wrong if that same special property is present. In the case of the Lissett example L1, that special property might rightly be said to be its, “being an art object.” The essential wrong in destroying art is a combination of factors that include what the object is (an art object) and the deontological wrongs and consequential effects of destroying it. This combination clearly does not obtain in L2 where we are not dealing with the destruction of an art object. In the case of killing someone like you or me, I will be arguing that the special property, that acts in combination with the wrong-making effect of depriving something of a valuable future, is that the thing is a conscious subject with the immediate capacity for a felt qualitative change (I will later call such a thing, a “valuer”).
One may insist that the logical form of Marquis’ argument is coherent. Further, one may accuse such a criticism of being discriminatory. That is, one might say I am being “consciousist” when I say that only conscious beings with valuable futures are wronged when killed. The Marquis-supporting counterpoint may proceed as follows: If we have agreed that a moral protection, say a right to equal opportunity, has been granted to a certain class of people (white males), then it would be discriminatory to say that women or people of color should not be entitled to the same right. Anyone who will have future choices is wronged if they are not granted the right to equal opportunity.
This turns out to be quite true, but it is true in light of the fact that, in a case such as this, the different classes of prospective right-possessors also possess the same special property which causes us to correctly grant the right. Clearly, it does not follow logically that all classes of beings are entitled to this right. For example, the class of violent criminals may not be so entitled. The moral wrong of depriving some class of beings of a certain right or protection partly hinges upon whether or not the members of such a class possess a certain property, perhaps the property of “being an innocent with a relevant interest in attaining as many goods as possible without harming anyone else.” The violent criminal does not have the relevant special property that causes us to grant him this right.
Still, it could be countered that this defense of the counterpoint makes use of a false analogy. It might be insisted that the reason that the right to equal opportunity is withheld from violent criminals is because this class has done something to deserve the right-deprivation. In the case of extending the wrong-making feature of killing to other beings, we are talking about innocent beings all the way around (people like you or me, and, embryos and fetuses). But here, the Marquis supporter misses the point.

When Marquis attributes the wrong-making property (deprivation of valuable future) to the act of killing an initial class of beings (you or me), he must offer an answer to the question, ‘why is it wrong to take our valuable future away?’ He must do so before (1) we should be convinced that he actually has identified, at least, a necessary component of the wrongness of killing you and me, and (2) before we should agree that adequate justification can support the extension of the wrong-making property to other classes of beings. If we are going to extend this property to other classes of beings, we have to decide whether or not there are morally relevant factual differences between the two classes.
The critical unposed question (‘why is it wrong to deprive adult human persons like you or me of a valuable future’), when answered, serves to cast serious doubt on any movement from P1 to P3, especially if a plausible answer to it is, ‘because a deontological injustice or a best-interest utilitarian good is undermined when some currently existing psychological being or self anticipates, wants, or would have enjoyed it. Clearly, if this is the correct reason why we should embrace his wrong-making feature of killing someone like you or me, the same answer should not automatically nor even plausibly be given to a psychologically-non-existent being. Although other answers to the question are worth considering, e.g., ‘because it is a consequentialist wrong to deplete the future world of net value,’3 the question needs to be answered, and answered carefully, before Marquis’ argument can move along as he would like.4
The Lissett analogy parallels and is helpful in undermining the faulty logic of Marquis’ form of argument in another very important sense. Just as it is the case that the “non-art” clay that is destroyed in L2 is the same matter as the statue that it would have become, the non-conscious prenate that may be destroyed in an abortion is the same matter (or just about) as the conscious being that it would have become. The difference in both cases is a special functioning or formal property of the same matter, and thus in an Aristotelian sense, is not necessarily the same hylomorph (essential thing). This should leave open the question: Just because something S may turn into something else P with moral protectability, does that necessarily grant something S moral protectability? To say that S is P (to automatically grant identity to material similarity) is to ignore an Aristotelian analysis.
A second, and related, way of approaching the difficulties of Marquis’ quick movement from P1 to P3, is to more carefully analyze the phrasing and concepts embedded in the premisses. When someone destroys something of mine that I value or would have valued, a superficial way of understanding why an essential wrong obtains can be arrived at by merely focusing on the net value (i.e., more value = good, less value = bad). But certainly, a more thorough and subtle way of analyzing why the wrong obtains should be understood by focusing in on what it means to be deprived and what sort of beings can rightly be said to be deprived in a morally relevant sense (obviously, the only important sense for our discussion).
We should notice that in deciding upon the wrong-making feature of killing us, that “deprivation” is occurring to something with the realized capacity to undergo a felt qualitative change. That is, something’s already existing experiences will be made better or worse, longer or shorter. Surely, we need to notice a distinction between something that has the actualized capacity to undergo such a change versus something that does not and cannot. The reason that a non-conscious thing cannot be made to have more or less valuable experiences in the same way, is because it is not the sort of thing with an experience that can be improved or deteriorated.
My preliminary claim here is that part of the reason we should say that it is wrong for someone like you or me to lose a future good is because we can rightly be said to have the immediate felt capacity to possess, gain, or lose present goods. When something with such an immediate felt capacity for qualitative change (a “valuer“) is dealt a loss of good experience, this is what I mean by a “for-its-sake wrong.” Part of the reason we may relate so strongly to Marquis’ initial claim (that the essential wrong-making feature of killing someone like you or me is the deprivation of our valuable future) is because we have an actualized sake! We can empathize in that we can (and will) undergo such a loss. But, we must also realize that the non-conscious, as non-conscious, will never undergo such a loss. When we realize that this kind of loss cannot (logically and metaphysically) be undergone by the typical fetus/embryo, we understand that extending our sympathy to it is not necessary.
My claim requires more elaborate explanation (which it will receive in later chapters) if it hopes to avoid the charge of begging the question, but preliminarily, I am suggesting that Marquis, while perhaps elucidating a sufficient condition of the wrongness of killing someone like you or me, has not arrived at a sufficient condition for all beings unless we understand the wording of his condition in a certain way. In other words, his wrong-making condition is only sufficient for any being if we understand the wrong-making condition "the deprivation of a valuable future" as a combination of two claims: (1) something has less of a valuable future than it would have had, and that (2) something is the sort of thing that has the immediate felt capacity to possess, lose, and gain valuable experiences.
I have agreed that there is a certain truth about P1, but that its wording is deceptive in that it causes us to focus in on only one of the two separate wrong-making conditions that are (or, at least, should be) embedded in it. If the term “deprived” is understood in the careful and appropriate way described above, we see how one of the conditions becomes ineffectual (in terms of sufficiently granting serious wrongness to killing beings other than you or me) if the other condition is not met. This is to say that if something is not the sort of thing that has the immediate felt capacity to possess (lose or gain) valuable experiences, then something’s merely “losing” (in the sense of not being granted) a valuable future may not in itself be wrong. At this point, both the exposure of the logical problem of moving from P1 to P3, and the illumination of the metaphysical and linguistic difficulties present in Marquis’ wording of the wrong-making feature of killing can be shown via a few thought experiments.
For example, imagine that it is several hundred years in the future. An android has been built that will certainly have enjoyable experiences like you or me, but that it won’t be conscious until an internal radioactive device kicks in.5 Five minutes before consciousness emerges, its maker decides to destroy it. Our intuitions are surly that even though this being might rightly be said to have a valuable future (although, as explained below, this is not my view), nothing wrong is occurring to the android because there has never yet been an existing conscious entity that can undergo “deprivation” in the morally relevant sense. The main point here is that if there are, or in principle can be, entities that are morally acceptable to destroy that have the property of a valuable future, then it does not necessarily follow that it is wrong (at least “for its sake” wrong) to abort the typical fetus or embryo.
It has been noted that analogies offered about non-human entities are very difficult for people to accept as admissible into such a discussion. Still, people’s unease regarding the acceptance of such an argument needs to be justified, and as far as I can tell, there is no morally relevant reason to dismiss non-human entities, since, as many theorists have suggested (including Warren 1974, Singer, Tooley), human-ness, in itself, is not, in the strictly biological sense, a moral concept.6 Still, to satisfy some of these critics, it may be possible to concoct (admittedly awkward) thought experiments that appeal to human things that might be said to have valuable futures, but that are not, at least for many theorists, seriously wrong to destroy; I have in mind stories pertaining to frozen embryos or to parthenogenesis.

P4 is false!

Another premiss that Marquis utilizes in his extended argument is P4 which states: ‘abortion, in killing a typical embryo or fetus, deprives it of a valuable future.’ To say that the destruction of something deprives that something of a valuable future implies that the thing is “in possession” of a valuable future. But what could it mean for something, something that has never had nor does not currently have the capacity to value, to possess the property of “valuable future?” The least mystifying interpretations, in my view, are that the thing (P4A) has the property of valuing in the future, or (P4B) has the property of becoming something that will value. The former answer, on first glance, seems right but is not. It is not, strictly speaking, any non-conscious prenate that will be able to value; to say this is the same thing as saying that it is a non-conscious thing that maintains an identity with a conscious thing. I insist that it is not the non-conscious thing that values in the future; it is a special configuration of neural activity (not present until the 25th week of development) that is able to value. When the word trickery is bypassed,7 P4A, for the non-conscious, reduces into P4B. And, if P4B is correct, this alleged property, ‘having a valuable future,’ amounts to, ‘not yet being the thing that can value.’ P4A is true for you and me whereas P4B is true for the non-conscious prenate.
My view is that (though it is not necessary to defeat Marquis extended argument) it is ambiguous, if not implausible, to say that the non-conscious embryo or fetus (1) has a valuable future to be deprived of, or (2) is the thing with a valuable future. The first interpretation focuses on the possession, and the second focuses on the identity claim. If the premiss is interpreted in the first way, my claim is that it is false (or at best unhelpful for Marquis) to say that such an entity is currently in possession of such a future. And, if the premiss is interpreted the second way, my claim is that the thing with a valuable future is a different thing from it (what it currently is)! If these claims are true, it obviously follows that non-conscious embryos or fetuses cannot be deprived of what they do not have (valuable futures), or that, if an identity claim cannot be made, then we are still without a reason to protect non-conscious embryos and fetuses for their sake. But how can these denials be shown?
My denial, as far as I know, is not endorsed or even mentioned in the literature. It is prima facie obvious to most conservative and liberal theorists alike that because a non-conscious embryo or fetus will develop into a conscious entity that will have valuable experiences that it necessarily follows that the non-conscious entity currently has a valuable future or is the same thing that will go on to value the future. I believe that good reasons are available to seriously doubt these assumptions.
First, regarding metaphysical identity, consider the following question: Given perfect meteorological and nutritive conditions, is a cherry pit buried in fertile soil the thing that will have future fruit fall from it? To answer "yes," one has to maintain that the buried cherry pit, something without any current capacity to bear fruit, much less bear fruit that can fall from anything, is metaphysically identical to or coextensive (temporal parts of the same “thing”) with a future tree that bears fruit that can fall. But even if our tentative and consensual answer is “no,” (and I suggest it is) what objective criteria (over and beyond a nominal one) do we have to come to the “correct” answer to this question?
Certainly it does not follow that when anything (A) turns into, or becomes, something (B), that A is metaphysically identical to or coextensive with B. In such cases, if A were always B, then the most absurd consequences would follow, e.g., star dusts would be (in the sense of strong identity) living persons, and living human persons would be rotting corpses, etc. While it is true that something can progress and change with time while maintaining identity, it does not follow that this is always so. Often, if something undergoes a sufficient change in properties, we say that it is a different thing, e.g., vapor to ice, or compounds before combustion and resultant compounds after combustion. Again, to put it in Aristotelian terms, changes in the form of the same matter can result in a different hylomorph.
Granted, it is also true that something may undergo radical property changes but we sometimes still say that it has remained the same thing, e.g., a mountain range that has undergone millions of years of erosion may still, despite radically different appearances, be called the same mountain range.
The point is that we may or may not decide to identify two things, one that will become the other, no matter how different their properties are. More often than not, however, it is a thing’s functionality that causes us to identify (or not identify) it with what it becomes. I subscribe that, although strict biological function maintains similarity in a certain aspect of functionality (observable behavior), the change that occurs between the non-conscious something and the conscious something is among as great a change in function (particularly with regard to internal processing) that can occur, and that if any property change qualifies as a change which should cause us to announce the emergence or existence of a new thing, particularly a moral thing, this should be it. The difference between the conscious and the non-conscious, is, far greater than that between the cherry pit and the tree because we are hardly able to find any properties that consciousness has, that non-conscious things have.8
Second, if we say that the non-conscious entity has a valuable future, that is, even if it is not metaphysically identifiable with the conscious but that it still possesses the property of “valuable future,” how far back in time are we permitted to say that this is so? What relevant, non arbitrary feature, other than the property "will develop into something that values or something that values will emerge from it" allows us to say that something has a valuable future, but that before such and such a time it does not?
According to Marquis, "morally permissible abortions will be rare indeed unless, perhaps, they occur so early in pregnancy that a fetus is not yet definitely an individual." (Marquis 274) Since Marquis does not elaborate further, we are left to assume that abortion (or perhaps destruction of the early embryo) may be acceptable before the development of the primitive streak at the end of the second week of development. This might be said because there is no single individual that can obviously possess the property “valuable future” or be identifiable with the being that will value. At this early stage of development, a "pre-embryo" may divide and thus develop into twins or higher order multiples either by natural or artificial splitting. This is why it might be said that the pre-embryo, before becoming the definitive entity or entities that it will become, is not obviously the (one) thing with a valuable future. But this kind of argument cannot serve to cut off moral protectabilty. Surely if a pre-embryo contains multiple entities with valuable futures, this should not give us license to destroy it. On the contrary, it should give us less! Besides, it is at least logically possible that certain implanted pre-primitive streak, early embryos are not physically capable of undergoing twining in which case aren’t we forced to say that if it will definitely be the thing with a valuable future after fourteen gestational days, that it (since it won’t divide) is the thing with a valuable future now (say at eight gestational days)?
Interpreting P4 as meaning metaphysical identity or possession of “valuable future” both fall victim to ad absurdum arguments. For example, it is not at all clear why a not-yet-joined egg and sperm is not a candidate for moral protection when it can be shown that it (viewed as a metaphysical singularity), will, barring an interruption of a natural process (an interruption of process can obviously also occur in gestating embryos as well), value its future. Marquis claims that it is incorrect to think that the destruction of the combination of the sperm and ovum is wrong because "at the time of contraception, there are hundreds of millions of sperm, one (released) ovum and millions of possible combinations of all these. There is no actual combination at all." (Marquis 277) Marquis may be right in that we are unable to determine which sperm will join with the egg, but it does not follow from this that there is no actual combination? Another way to put the point is this: There is a single combination of sperm and egg in a fertile couple who are engaging in intercourse, even before this combination fuses; this couple will become pregnant if their love-making progresses uninterrupted. A crazy friend who knowingly disrupts them, and who believes that he is destroying something’s valuable future with a phone call, should be labeled a jerk, but not a murderer.
If it is still insisted that there are too many possible combinations for us to arrive at an actual metaphysical singularity, consider the following example: At an in vitro clinic, an infertile couple, during their first attempt, was only able to produce one viable sperm and one viable egg. They are fully planning to fertilize the egg using intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (which for the sake of argument will result in a viable pregnancy). Unfortunately, a tired (or crazy) lab assistant spills the unjoined sperm and egg down the sink. Here, certainly something very wrong has occurred, and although a legal suit is probably in order, it is quite a stretch to say that the lab assistant is guilty of a wrong as serious as killing someone like you or me even though we have no special reason, on Marquis’ account, to say that the egg and sperm (considered jointly) have any less of a valuable future than the would-have-been embryo were it created.
Someone of Marquis’ bent (since he does not say so explicitly) might insist that an unjoined sperm and egg are two, distinct entities, separated in space, and that this is the reason that they cannot be considered a metaphysical singularity. There are three straight- forward difficulties for how such a view pertains to this issue.
First, there are things that are rightly considered, or should be considered, singularities whose component parts are not spatially contiguous, such as nations, families, and the endocrine system. How are we justified in saying that sperm and egg that are about to join are not like this?
Second, it is not the case that most singularities’ or things’ components are spatially contiguous. This is to say that most (and perhaps all) things’ components are, at the microphysical level at least, divided by vast regions of space.
Third, and most importantly, having spatially contiguous components is not only often metaphysically irrelevant, it can be viewed as, in itself, a morally irrelevant feature of something. By this, I mean that we can easily imagine a creature that, for what ever reason, is not constructed as one centrally located contiguous mass but who is still morally protectable. Something’s (if it is rightly considered a thing) spatial continuity or discontinuity simply should have no bearing on whether or not it is protectable.
Again, the plausible view here is that neither the unjoined egg and sperm, nor the viable pre-embryo, actually have a valuable future. The important point is, it does not make sense to say that non-conscious beings of any sort are things with valuable futures. Insisting that that such entities have valuable futures or can claim identity with beings that value lead us down a road to absurdity. However, if what having a valuable future means is, P4B "having the property of becoming something that will value its existence," then yes, non-conscious entities may have valuable futures. It is just that this property is not sufficient in protecting something against destruction. Incidentally, if we master parthenogenesis or nuclear somatic transfer, eggs alone or somatic cells’ nuclei and egg cytoplasm may be sufficient in becoming something that will value. So, if it is insisted that non-conscious embryos and fetuses have valuable futures, then Marquis has not adequately dealt with a powerful ad absurdum argument; that is, if embryos and fetuses have valuable futures, then there is no non-arbitrary reason not to say that entities prior to the embryo also have valuable futures.
To close this section, a non-conscious thing does not have a valuable future like ours that contains experiences that it will later come to value. This is so because a non-conscious being cannot undergo a felt qualitative experiential change while still remaining a non-conscious being, even with an infinitely long future ahead of it. Such a being, as such a being, can not, nor ever be, in possession of future experiences, much less valuable future experiences, since such experiences can only ever be attributable to psychological beings and not to non-conscious beings.
Consider the reverse: do I have an “ashen” future because a short time after my death I will be cremated? No! After, I die, we should not expect (although I may hope) that I will have any future; if anything has such a future, it is the unconscious, non-psychological part of “me.” Further, if it is insisted that the non-conscious has a valuable future, doesn’t Marquis have to also agree that it is meaningful and correct to say that a corpse has a valuable past? That is, is it correct, or even meaningful, to say that a human corpse is the thing with valuable past experiences and projects?
Another way of explaining why a non-conscious entity does not have a valuable future is the following: a non-conscious being is not rightly metaphysically identifiable or coextensive with a psychological being. This is because similarity of functionality, particularly regarding the internal processing of the brain, is paramount for metaphysical identification. It would be more correct to say that the non-conscious being will (likely) become something that will value its future.

End Notes

1 However, since Marquis asks as a starting point, ‘what is wrong with killing adult human beings like you and me?’ and, in doing so he employs terms such as "someone" and "victim," the concept of "person" may not be too far from the forefront of the reader's mind. Also, the notion of "potentiality" is arguably hidden in premisses that contain the concept of "possession of valuable future." Still, Marquis does about as well as one can to attempt an answer to the abortion question without use of such terms.
2 I use terms like “usually” and “most” because, from Marquis’ perspective, abortion may occur so early during pregnancy that what is being aborted may not properly be considered an “individual,” thus may not properly be considered a subject of a wrong. Also, it should be noted that from the perspective of a theorist who espouses the “Good Samaritan” argument (like Judith Thomson), the moral acceptability of abortion in certain cases may be granted (e.g. rape cases) even if Marquis is right in saying that the prenate is as protectable as you or me.
3 Although this could be given as a reason why it is wrong to deprive someone like you or me of a valuable future, and a reason that, if correct, would carry over into the wrongness of killing embryos and fetuses, it would also suggest that it is wrong for a couple to choose against conceiving a baby when they suspect that the net value in the world would have increased had they done so. If this reason is flat out absurd, it certainly does not capture the wrong that might occur TO a particular being.
4 I am assuming that Marquis and sympathetic theorists believe that something wrong is happening TO the typical embryo or fetus when they are aborted. He would probably insist that when the question “why is it wrong to deprive you or me of a valuable future” is properly answered, that the same answer applies to typical embryos and fetuses. Two things two note here are (1) No, it is not the case that the same answer applies, and (2) the reasons why it is wrong to deprive you or me of a valuable future suggest that a special kind of wrong obtains for us.
5 A similar example regarding a cat is offered in Tooley.
6 As far as I and, I believe, many other theorists are concerned, although humanness may entail a certain moral status, it does not entail “for its sake” protectability.
7 “Being” something (that does not value) with a valuable future is better worded as, “becomes (but is not currently) something that will value.”
8 It has been argued that no cognitive property in and of itself, necessitates moral significance. To this, I can only say that if anything does have moral relevance, consciousness is at least foundational to anything that does. It is the one “thing” that seems to be a necessary condition of those theoretical features that have historically been said to grant something entrance into a moral community, e.g., Hobbes’ “rational self interest,” Kant’s “autonomous rational self,” the utilitarian’s “sentience,” and the feminist’s, “care.”

Works Cited

Marquis, Don. "Why Abortion is Immoral." Contemporary Issues in Bioethics. Ed. Beuchamp, Walters. Thomson/ Wadsworth Learning, Inc.: CA, 2003
Tooley, Michael. Abortion and Infanticide. Clarendon Press 1983: Oxford, 1983.
Warren, Mary Anne. "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion." Contemporary Issues in Bioethics. Ed. Beuchamp, Walters. Thomson/ Wadsworth Learning, Inc.: CA, 2003