Finally, how, according to my proposal, do things stand with abortions? Since I have allowed that we should take into account the desires to do things in and with one's life which a human being (and, given my discussion above, some non-human animals) may reasonably be expected to come to have, abortion on demand seems very unlikely to be justified. This is simply because it is antecedently improbable that the weight of other moral considerations will always be against that of protecting the relevantly expectable life-purposes of the foetus once it becomes a child or an adult. There will be many cases where clearly the weight is against the foetus (e.g. where the woman's life or health will be forfeited if an abortion is not performed, where the pregnancy will probably, or surely, produce a severely deformed child and so on). These cases are ones which have much in common with that of the innocent fat man. But as in that imaginary circumstance a preponderance of moral considerations is needed to justify this irrevocable intervention. Where there is no such preponderance because the expressed wish of the pregnant woman has only morally trivial or no moral support abortion will be unjustified. It is worth remarking that even where an abortion is morally justified it is so serious a prevention of the realization of future possibilities that it would surely be morally preferable not to have to perform it. This suggests that much more thought should be put into pre-emptive action to overcome the need for abortions. Abortions ought not, therefore, to be construed as morally indistinguishable from appendectomies but nor should we restrict our options by doing nothing about the preventive and leaving all to the curative stage.
(Robert Young, "What Is So Wrong with Killing People?" Philosophy 54 [October 1979]: 515-28, at 527-8 [italics in original; footnote omitted])
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 