Why Inconsistency Arguments Matter.

Abstract

Abortion opponents are sometimes accused of having inconsistent beliefs, actions, and/or priorities. If they were consistent, they would regard spontaneous abortions to be a greater moral tragedy, or they would adopt more frozen in vitro fertilization embryos, or they would support more robust social welfare programmes for children and single parents, or so on and so forth. Nicholas Colgrove, Bruce Blackshaw, and Daniel Rodger have recently argued that such inconsistency arguments 'fail en masse.' They propose three main objections: The Diversity Objection, The Other Beliefs Objection, and The Other Actions Objection. This paper argues that they are incorrect. First, Colgrove et al.'s objections rely on misrepresentations of inconsistency arguments, their structure and the extent to which their proponents have addressed counterarguments to them. Second, none of their objections show that these arguments fail as a whole.