Recently, a number of philosophers have argued that, despite appearances, the success of Don Marquis's well-known future-like-ours argument against abortion does not turn, in an important way, on the metaphysics of identity. I argue that this is false. The success of Marquis's argument turns on precisely two issues: first, whether it is prima facie seriously wrong to deprive something of a future like ours; second, whether, in a counterfactual circumstance in which an abortion does not occur, the foetus is numerically identical with something that, later on, experiences a life like ours. Since the former claim is plausible (albeit disputable), the success of Marquis's argument does turn on the metaphysics of identity in an important way. Before defending a positive argument for this position, I consider what I take to be the most promising way of challenging it. This involves a recent objection to Marquis by Tim Burkhardt (2021). Burkhardt claims that his objection floats free of the metaphysics of identity. I argue that it fails to do so, and that in fact it fails outright. I end by considering the relationship between my arguments and the question of what matters in survival.

中文翻译：

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身份很重要：胎儿、配子和像我们一样的未来

最近，一些哲学家认为，尽管表面上看，唐·马奎斯著名的“我们的未来”反对堕胎的论点的成功，并没有在很大程度上转向身份的形而上学。我认为这是错误的。马奎斯论证的成功恰恰取决于两个问题：第一，它是否初步证据剥夺像我们这样的未来是严重错误的；其次，在没有发生堕胎的反事实情况下，胎儿在数量上是否与后来经历像我们这样的生活的东西相同。由于前一种说法是合理的（尽管有争议），马奎斯论证的成功确实以重要的方式开启了身份的形而上学。在为这一立场辩护之前，我会考虑一下我认为最有希望的挑战它的方式。这涉及 Tim Burkhardt 最近对 Marquis 的反对（2021）。伯克哈特声称他的反对意见不受身份形而上学的影响。我认为它没有做到这一点，而且事实上它彻底失败了。最后，我考虑了我的论点与生存中什么最重要的问题之间的关系。