Can Consensual Sexual Morality be used to defend abortion? If conception is regarded as a part of an erotic episode, a plausible case for abortion can be made. For background, I repeat the last paragraph of Consensual Sexual Morality – II .

A summary of the relations of right, good and erotic actions in erotic episodes is helpful. Here I use “coerced” rather than “non-consensual” although some non-onsensual acts are not strictly speaking coerced. I use “coerced” to emphasize the negativity of the types of non-consensual actions to which I allude. An erotic action is right (morally permissible by sexual morality ) if and only if no participant is coerced to perform or allow it. An erotic episode is right (morally permissible by sexual morality) if and only if the none of the erotic actions are coerced.

Erotic actions are the many and various things people do in an erotic episode to arouse and give pleasure. But not all of the actions in an erotic episode are intentional. Much is done naturally. They are just what people do while having sex. So, we might extend the notion of erotic action to erotic occurrence or better sexual occurrence. Then conception can be regarded as a sexual occurrence – a phase in an erotic episode. Indeed, the conception as a process of a spermatazoa contacting an ovum does most frequently occur as a phase of an erotic episode. But “conception” denotes a product as well as a process. As soon as there is the process, there is the product. So, the product -the conceptus- is also part of the erotic episode. This product is a growing entity in the body of the woman for typically nine months. By staying within the body, it extends the erotic episode for nine months. “Pregnancy” is the term for such extended erotic episodes. With a slight modification of the above conditions for a morally permissible erotic episode, we have: An erotic episode is morally permissible if and only if each phase of it is consensual. This gives: A pregnancy is morally permissible if and only if each phase of it is consensual. So, if a woman refuses consent to the conception at any phase of the pregnancy, the pregnancy is not morally permissible. What is not morally permissible may be stopped. So, if a woman refuses consent to the pregnancy, the pregnancy may be terminated.

I critique this line of argument inConception is not Sexual.