Abortion and the Ways We Value Human Life

In Abortion and the Ways We Value Life, Jeffrey Reiman argues that an overlooked clue to the solution of the moral problem lies in the unusual way in which we value the lives of individual human beings -- namely, that we value them irreplaceably. We think it is not only wrong to kill an innocent human child or adult, but that it would not be made right by replacing the dead one with another living one, or even several.

Jeffrey Reiman is William Fraser McDowell Professor of Philosophy at American University in Washington, D.C. Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1942, Reiman received his B.A. in Philosophy from Queens College in 1963 and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Pennsylvania State University in 1968. He was a Fulbright Scholar in India during 1966-67. Reiman joined the American University faculty in 1970, in the Center for the Administration of Justice (now called the Department of Justice, Law and Society of the School of Public Affairs). After several years of holding a joint appointment in the Justice program and the Department of Philosophy and Religion, he joined the Department of Philosophy and Religion full-time in 1988, becoming director of the Master's Program in Philosophy and Social Policy. He was named William Fraser McDowell Professor of Philosophy in 1990.