Perhaps what you meant to say was that the prevailing morality of his age was nonsense. That would be closer to his intent, but really his core message goes back to the revaluation of all values, where it is for each individual to examine everything of value, especially moral values, and decide for themselves what is good or bad.

Btw, I hope when writing your thesis you spell check and use capitalization where applicable.

Imagine that a baby needed a bone marrow transplant, and its mother was the only donor whose marrow type matched. Strictly speaking, the mother would not have to provide it with one. This is because bone marrow transplants are artificial and extraordinary.

But suppose a baby was born into an environment in which there was no replacement available for its mothers breastmilk. It either breastfed, or starved to death. It would have a right to breastfeed, and the mother could not refuse to allow it to. This is because breastfeeding is a normal and natural means of sustinence.

If the mother refused to allow the baby to breastfeed, and it died as a result of this, she would be committing infanticide. No one who supports JJT’s argument can consistently argue that abortion is any different from maternal infanticide.

I wonder what Nietzsche would make of the following Mill quotes:

“The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental or spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.”

“A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”

Max

I have not read Tooley’s paper, but I am familiar with the argument he puts forward. I think it’s a fairly common one that comes up when trying to define who has rights, especially within the context of the born and unborn. I do not like Tooley’s definition because an unconscious person does not have the capability to have “a conception of oneself as a continuing existing subject,” nor do I believe young babies have this capability. The typical response is that this unconscious person may sometime in the future regain consciousness and therefore should not have his rights revoked. Of course, as it’s been pointed out, fetuses will also sometime in the future obtain the ability to have a conception of himself as a continuing existing subject. So what differentiates the fetus from the unconscious person? Perhaps it’s the fact the unconscious person had a conception of himself as a continuing existing subject prior to becoming unconscious. Again, however, I question the idea that a young infant posses these abilities. Does the young infant therefore lack basic human rights, like the right to exist? That would be a seriously strenuous argument.

I think a more reasonable argument is to first of all say the fetus lacks individual rights because it is not yet an individual. It is wholly physiologically and physically dependent on its host, the mother. It is neither autonomous or biologically discreet. This is how we define an individual. A zygote, embryo, or fetus is not a human being. The distinction must be made because human beings can have human rights. So long as the fetus (etc.) is physiologically and physically dependent on the mother, it is not an actual human being.

Further, even if we are to say the fetus is a human being, it does not have the right to exist inside the mother. It is there by her permission. There exists no right to live inside another. There exists no right to live by the efforts of others–i.e. the right to enslave. A mother who aborts her pregnancy is violating no one’s right, but is in fact exercising her own.

We must give precedent to the living (the born) rather than to the unborn. A potential human being is not the same thing as a human being. An acorn is a potential oak tree, but no one argues that an acorn is an oak tree. As such, only the actual being posses rights, not the potential. For so-called “pro lifers” to deny a woman her right to abortion is to ignore the actual life involved: the mother’s.