A Pro-Choice Response to New York’s Reproductive Health Act

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a very important paper.

1. My main suggestions are simply that things be added so its important points more obvious and overt. E.g., the abstract:

" (2) must go beyond the conventional debate about the ethics of abortion and incorporate, more appropriately, a discussion on euthanasia and the ethics of end-of-life care for nascent human life. When it comes to (3), I will argue that assessing its moral permissibility actually raises some legitimate moral concerns, even from a reproductive rights perspective."

Tell us more even now about what these legitimate moral concerns are going to be! Tell us how euthanasia issues are relevant! Let us know asap what the main points are going to be!

2. More headings would help. Sometimes the paper seems a bit rambly and it's hard to see where it's going and why it's going somewhere. Again, make it easier for readers to find the important points. 

3. The actual tragic cases discussed are very moving.

4. Sometimes a set of contrary positions are mentioned, but not at all evaluated. It seems like they should either be evaluated or you explain why you are not evaluating them. E.g., Noonan says a fetus has a right to life it has an 80% chance of becoming a person? That's an absurd view (why 80%?? If a fetus beats the odds, did that mean it didn't have the right to life). And Stone is quoted but not evaluated. So something needs to be said to explain why you are mentioning these folks: are they right? Are they onto something? Why talk about them? A number of contrary positions were also mentioned about euthanasia (lines 210 or so) and what the right to abortion is (lines 283). All and all, these uncritical mentionings of various views might give the impression of "there are many views here, and who knows which are better or worse!"

5. Line 400: "arguments in favor of reproductive rights must be secured on premises that are not contingent on fetal personhood. Thomson’s argument does this." Thompson argues that there are no rights here that would be violated with abortion. But aren't there other sources of potential sources of obligations here that could making abortion wrong and, I suppose, even ground criticisms of (legal?) reproductive rights? I guess the point here is that "reproductive rights" needs to be clarified as legal, moral or both.

The conclusion: "arguing in favor of reproductive rights while acknowledging those gray areas, rather than ignoring them or insisting they don’t exist, can only serve to make pro-choice arguments stronger." My bet is that many typical enthusiastic pro-choice advocates wouldn't like this: they want to insist that every possible abortion is OK and should be legal: they don't want to consider that any abortions could be wrong or that there ever should be any restrictions. In other words, they deny these grey areas (as would enthusiastic critics of abortion). Some commentary on the lack of wisdom with this crowd would be nice.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper concentrates on two cases of (late) abortion: when the fetus is non-viable; when the abortion is necessary to protect the patient's life or health. The first case is discussed thoroughly and raises an interesting point about euthanasia and the ethics of end-of-life care for nascent human life. The second case raises an interesting point that "the right to an abortion needs to be understood as a right to fetal evacuation, not to fetal termination."

Both parts would benefit by referring to the procreative asymmetry (McMahan 2009), according to which the badness of a future life counts against creating that life, whereas the goodness of a future life does not count in favor of creating that life. This allows conceptualizing the continuation of pregnancy as a part of the creation process. It means that the likely harms suffered later by the neonate should count in favor of abortion, while any likely benefits should not count in favor of the continuation of pregnancy. See, e.g., https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15265161.2017.1340998?journalCode=uajb20

In a fragment that discusses the compatibility of loving someone and causing its death (e.g.," discovered at her 21-week ultrasound that her fetus"), the author could refer to an interesting problem about the impact of fetal ultrasound images on some viewers' normative judgments, e.g., https://diametros.uj.edu.pl/diametros/article/view/1472

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf