Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice The Capability Approach Re-Examined, 2017a

3. Clarifications
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not very suitable for ethical issues that only concern questions about the right.
For example, the capability approach is not a very helpful theory when
analysing the morality of abortion since so much of that ethical debate
is about issues of the right rather than about issues of the good. That is,
most of the philosophical debates on the ethics of abortion concern the
moral status of the foetus, notions of personhood, or questions about
the autonomy and self-ownership of the pregnant woman — issues
on which the capability approach remains mute. 18 It is therefore not
surprising that the capability approach is more useful and more widely
used as a theory analysing socio-economic policies where there is a
consensus on those aspects that are questions about the right or where
the questions about the right are much less weighty than those about the
good. Examples include debates about poverty alleviation, distributive
justice, environmental ethics and disability ethics. In sum, the capability
approach is not a very helpful (or the most illuminating) framework for
normative analyses in which elements regarding deontological duties
and rights, which are not conceptually closely related to notions of
wellbeing, play the most important role — that is, where aspects of the
right are crucial in addressing the normative questions.
in the capability approach
In section 2.6.4 we discussed property A4, which stresses the importance
of the difference between means and ends in the capabilities approach.
In section 2.6.5, we discussed property A5, which claims that in the
capability approach functionings and capabilities form the evaluative
space. From these two core properties from module A, some may draw
the conclusion that resources are no longer important in the capability
approach. This is a mistake. Resources are important, although in an
instrumental manner.
Firstly, a focus on functionings and capabilities does not necessarily
imply that a capability analysis would not pay any attention to resources,
18 Philosophical arguments on the moral permissibility of abortion come to widely
divergent conclusions (e.g. Thomson 1971; Tooley 1972; English 1975; Marquis
1989).