system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Are there secular philosophers who advance arguments which are against abortion?

In oral arguments of Dobbs v. Jackson, US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito asked each party’s counsel the question in this post’s question.

Neither attorney answered descriptively.

So, are there secular philosophers who advance arguments which are against abortion? If so, who are they and what are the arguments?
gpt
The classic article is Don Marquis's "Why Abortion Is Immoral".

He starts by arguing that *murder* is wrong because it deprives the victim of a valuable future as a person.  If it were wrong for some other reason, like causing pain, we could come up with a scenario where it didn't do that.  But the only scenarios where it doesn't deprive the victim of a valuable future are euthanasia-type scenarios in which secular philosophers are mostly going to see killing as okay.

But abortion also deprives the victim of a valuable future as a person.  Therefore it has the same wrong-making property as murder, and so is also wrong.  This short-circuits the whole "when does personhood begin?" (or, in religious terms, "when does the soul enter the body?") debate, since it's not important whether the fetus is currently a person--only whether it will someday be one.

To put it another way: killing someone painlessly in their sleep is wrong, regardless of how long they were going to be asleep *for* (as long as they would have woken up eventually), and regardless of whether they were awake *previously* or not.