Permitting Abortion and Prohibiting Prenatal Harm Essay

There are many factors that are taken into consideration when determining if abortion is morally permissible, or wrong including; sentience of the fetus, the fetuses right to life, the difference between adult human beings and fetuses, the autonomy of the pregnant woman, and the legality of abortion. Don Marquis argues that abortion is always morally wrong, excluding cases in which the woman is threatened by pregnancy, or abortion after rape, because fetuses have a valuable future. Mary Anne Warren contends that late term abortions are morally permissible because birth is the most significant event for a fetus, and a woman’s autonomy should never be suspended.

The debate about abortion focuses on two issues; 1.) Whether the human fetus has the right to life, and, if so, 2.) Whether the rights of the mother override the rights of the fetus. The two ethicists who present strong arguments for their position, and who I am further going to discuss are that of Don Marquis and Judith Thomson. Marquis' "Future Like Ours" (FLO) theory represents his main argument, whereas, Thomson uses analogies to influence the reader of her point of view. Each argument contains strengths and weaknesses, and the point of this paper is to show you that Marquis presents a more sound argument against abortion than Thomson presents for it. An in depth overview of both arguments will be

In her essay “Abortion, Intimacy, and the Duty to Gestate,” Margaret Olivia Little examines whether it should be permissible for the state to force the intimacy of gestation on a woman against her consent. Little concludes that “mandating gestation against a woman’s consent is itself a harm - a liberty harm” (p. 303). She reaches this conclusion after examining the deficiencies in the current methods used to examine and evaluate the issues of abortion. Their focus on the definition of a “person” and the point in time when the fetus becomes a distinct person entitled to the benefits and protections of the law fails to capture “the subtleties and ambivalences that suffuse the issue” (p. 295). Public debate on the right to life and the right

To believe that murdering an unborn child on circumstantial grounds and to believe in the modern court process is an obvious form of doublethink. However, the pro-choice position has a quick rebuttal to this question by claiming that the aborted fetus is not a person or a child so “they cannot be benefited or harmed” in the first place (157). In other words, the unborn fetus is not included in definition for child in the slogan: “Pro-Child / Pro-Choice”. Seeing that this rebuttal would quickly lead to an argument concerning what constitutes personhood, Boss moves on to examine the benefits abortion-on-demand gives to the second category, the born child.

Mary Anne Warren (p.195-196) points out the exceptional circumstances of pregnancy; where one human is entirely biologically reliant on another and where it is impossible for complete personhood rights to not be in conflict between the foetus and the mother. Consider the following case. A mother and an expecting mother both express an intent to kill their child or unborn child respectively. Services are available to take the postnatal children from their mother without affecting her body. Yet to protect the foetus, one would have to imprison the mother until birth, or worse, force a caesarean on her. Warren (193) points out that forced caesareans are not merely a hypothetical

Mary Anne Warren argues in the position that abortion is morally permissible because the fetus is not a person therefore has no rights and not considered immoral to be killed. I shall argue that Warren’s argument in invalid since the claims of argument cannot be proven.

Thou shalt not kill; one-tenth of what may arguably be the most famous guidelines of morality in the western culture, and also the main driving force for pro-life advocates. The argument supporting their beliefs typically starts with the premises that a fetus is a person, and to destroy or to kill a person is unethical. Therefore abortion, the premeditated destruction of a human being, is murder, and consequently unethical. I deny the fact that the fetus, what I will refer to as an embryo up to 22 weeks old, has the right to live. The opposing argument is invalid because a fetus, although perhaps a part of human species, is not formally a person. This leaves it simply to be a part of the woman?s body, whose fate lies solely in the

Proponents of punishing pregnant women, who put their fetuses at risk, have highlighted some pertinent legal and ethical issues. One is that a viable fetus (fetus after 27 weeks gestation) has certain rights and privileges. They are of the opinion that as soon as the fetus is viable and can survive independently from it mother, it becomes a

In our society, there are many ethical dilemmas that we are faced with that are virtually impossible to solve. One of the most difficult and controversial issues that we are faced with is abortion. There are many strong arguments both for and against the right to have an abortion which are so complicated that it becomes impossible to resolve. The complexity of this issue lies in the different aspects of the argument. The essence of a person, rights, and who is entitled to these rights, are a few of the many aspects which are very difficult to define. There are also issues of what circumstances would justify abortion. Because the issue of abortion is virtually impossible to solve, all one can hope

It is a woman’s right to make decisions about her body. If she is the one that undergoes the stress that comes with childbirth, then it should be her right to ,and her right alone to decide whether or not she wants to go through it or not. Not doing so would violate her right to freedom of choice, as well as lead to unsafe abortions that could harm the mother (Nair, 2010). Another question is how could you kill a fetus or embryo when it is the same as a human being? Which begs the question, if the fetus is alive, then so are the eggs and sperm? How do you make the distinction?

Based on the view that the fetus is already a small baby, some extreme anti-abortionists would maintain that abortion is impermissible even to save the mothers life. The rationale behind this view would be that the child is innocent, and killing the child would be active, on the other hand, letting the mother die would be passive. This introduces two new concepts, the first being the mother’s rights in competition to those of the fetus and the second being the question of innocence and how we would define this (Langley).

3. One argument is that the baby is not a human at conception. The Church says that studies have proved otherwise. Another argument is that a woman has the right to her body. The Church says that the baby's body is not the mother's, thus the mother does not have the right to hurt the embryo/fetus.

One of the first moral issues addressed by both sides of the abortion debate concerns a pregnant woman’s so-called natural “right” to make “reproductive choices.” (“The Rights of Pregnant Women”) Anti-abortion advocacy groups claim that “the only way to actually protect the mother’s rights will be by enforcing laws that secure her child’s right to life,” (“Argument 2”) whereas pro-abortion groups contend that these laws “create a dangerous precedent for wide-ranging government intrusion into the lives of all women.” (“The Rights”) With two fundamentally contrasting viewpoints at odds with each other, it is apparent that one of the core issues concurrent with abortion is a woman’s rights versus the rights of her unborn fetus.

The Feminists for Life of America also defends women’s rights and believe they do not come at the expense of others, especially those of the women’s preborn children (FFL 1998). The FFL also believes that a woman deserves the right to control her body no matter where she lives; even if she’s still living inside her mother’s womb (FFL 1998). Others make look at the view of “there are no rights of arms or of tumors or of any piece of tissue growing within a woman, even if it has the capacity to become in time a human being”(Rand qtd. in Stubblefield 1997). These two opposing sides illustrate why this issue will never be settled.

Convenience is a priority in a fast movie world like today. Convenience is found in ending a life instead of facing the consequences for being irresponsible, murder for the sake of convenience. A baby’s life and therefore that of all children is considered disposable in the US. The baby, whether he/she is born or not, has the right to live. Who can say that the baby has no hope? It 's possible that the baby can have a better life than ours. Some defenders of abortion will concede that the entity in the womb is still not, or not yet, a "person.” "Not a person" has nothing to do with science and everything to do with someone 's own moral philosophy. With that thought we 're either persons or property; most people are reluctant to call a human child a piece of property. Many controversial thoughts are brought up in this subject abortion is about profit, Outlawing abortion will mean back-alley butchers and countless women dying, trauma and misery of infertility, abortion was not an act of empowerment but the result of abandonment, betrayal, and desperation, and how it has negatively affected their lives. We live in a world where it is simple to throw away anything or anyone that is an inconvenience. There is one difference of shooting someone point blank and abortion, abortion is legal. Abortion is murder of the innocent.