Wrongness of Killing

            In “Why Abortion is Immoral”, Don Marquis claims that killing a person is wrong because everyone has a right to a future, and killing a person deprives them of this right. As a result, abortion is immoral because it deprives the fetus its right to a future. He mentions several arguments that an opponent may utilize to explain the wrongness of killing, including one he refers to as the desire account. This view claims that killing is wrong because people have a desire to live, and being killed prevents them from fulfilling that desire, which is also a particularly valuable desire because it is required to fulfill any other desires. Marquis disagrees with this because even though some people do not desire to live, it is still wrong to kill them.

It seems to me that this same idea presents a problem for Marquis’ argument as well, since people are able to refuse rights just as they are able to not possess a certain desire. For instance, while anyone being arrested has the right to remain silent, many people choose to waive this right. If it is indeed wrong to kill someone who chooses to relinquish their right to a future, then it is wrong even in the absence of that right and it would seem that it would not be what determines the wrongness of killing. In both the value-of-a-future account and the desire account, the wrongness of killing is based on the its denying a person something, however this is not compatible with his claim that it is wrong to kill people that have chosen to deny themselves either a future or a desire.