Abortion : The Mothers Rights For The Mother's Rights

Abortion’s legalization through Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade, has allowed for one in three pregnancies to end in abortion. This means that 1.5 million abortions are performed in the United States each year (Flanders 3). It ranks among the most complex and controversial issues, arousing heated legal, political, and ethical debates. The modern debate over abortion is a conflict of competing moral ideas and of fundamental human rights: to life, to privacy, to control over one's own body. Trying to come to a compromise has proven that it one cannot please all of the people on each side of the debate.

The abortion question raises a number of issues that form the core of the abortion debate. Opponents and supporters of abortions have been battling over this particular problem for decades and still cannot come to an agreement. Being one of the most common and most controversial medical procedures, abortion tends to affect people on psychological and sociological levels. But while the discussion of the morality of abortion is an ongoing debate, the social issues surrounding abortion in most cases stay unnoticed. The social aspect of the issue is centered on the abortion policy. The main question of the abortion policy is whether the law should permit abortions and, if so under what circumstances. The other is whether the law should put the life of an unborn child first and legally protect it. The peculiarity of the abortion policy is that its measures are highly dependent on different public opinions.

One of the most frequently debated topics in bioethics is the morality of abortion, or the ending of a pregnancy without physically giving birth to an infant. Often times abortions are categorized into either spontaneous, a natural miscarriage; induced or intentional, which is premeditated and for any reason; or therapeutic, which albeit intentional, its sole purpose is to save the mother’s life. It seems however that moral conflicts on issue mainly arise when discussing induced abortions. In general, people universally agree it is morally wrong to kill an innocent person and in some people’s eyes induced abortions are the intentional killings of innocent persons, thus making them immoral. However not all individuals view fetuses as persons and consequentially argue it is not morally wrong to kill them.

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.

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.

To put it simply, an abortion is defined as, the intentional termination of a pregnancy most often preformed before the third trimester (within weeks 1-28). The controversy over abortions usually stems from the difficulty between individuals to agree on a set of conditions that would constitute ones’ decision, to abort as just. This issue is examined by many philosophers, particularly, Judith Thomson and Don Marquis. Both philosopher’s views loosely encompass the complex underlying beliefs of those who stand behind the “pro-life” and “pro-choice” arguments. Tomson and Marquis demonstrate the very distinctively different perspectives one could take on the issue. Don Marquis suggests that fetuses, being persons, possess the right to a “future like ours” and that it would be wrong to intentionally impede on “the life that I would have lived if I had lived out my natural lifespan” except for in “rare circumstances”. While, Tomson asserts that not all abortions are morally wrong, nor do they “violate the victim’s right to life”, and by having one that is in no way indicative that a fetus’s rights have been violated. Despite the fact that both philosophers present valid positions, and outline their key differences, Tomson goes far beyond Marquis’ efforts by illustrating that the way in which we view abortions ought to be redefined in order for one to maintain a clear perspective.

While parts of both may be true, both cannot stand side by side as completely true when discussing abortion. As they stand today, fetus rights and female rights are incompatible in arena of abortion. Even the “other side” agrees that the two cannot stand shoulder to shoulder. In a chapter entitled “Abortion Does Not Violate Human Rights”, Christian Beenfeldt quotes Brian McKinely when claiming that female rights have a higher precedence than fetus rights: “It’s actually quite simple. You cannot have two entities with equal rights occupying one body. One will automatically have veto power over the other.” So one question remains, which more important, fetus rights or female rights? The winner of this question can be decided by one simple factor: is the fetus to be considered a true, living human being at the point of conception, or does true human life not begin until after birth? A clarification should be made here, however. In this paper it will be assumed that everyone involved in this debate considers a newborn child to be a human being. That is, at the moment of birth, a child either becomes a human being or continues to be a human being; regardless of the fetus’s life state before birth, it will be assumed that all agree that birth “confirms”, so to speak, the life and human existence of the newborn.

The restrictions and the debate that surrounds the issue of abortion has changed dramatically throughout the course of history and it continues to change until this very moment. All around the world and in every known society, women have used abortion to control their reproduction, regardless of it’s legality. Abortion used to be exercised freely in the United Sates, up Until all the states started to ban It and place a lot of restrictions on it. They stated that a woman can not abort except in extreme cases in which the mother’s life might be in danger. After the restrictions caused a lot of health issues and raised concerns on women’s health, The Government abolished all the restrictions. In this paper I will analyze and discuss three main positions on the issue of abortion. First, there are those who associate themselves with the title “pro-life”. These individuals are anti abortion, birth control, embryo research or anything that can control or cause any harm to the fetus. Second, there are those who at the other end of the spectrum who firmly believe that if a woman decides to abort, then it is her constitutional right to do so without any interference from the government. Third, are those who believe that if a woman is raped or her life is in danger, then abortion should be completely and solely up to the woman, but other than that, abortion should be illegal. This group of individuals are also for birth control and do not oppose educating

The controversy surrounding the ethicality of abortions has been a hotly debated topic during the past several decades. In the Supreme Court case of Roe v. Wade, the Court ruled that women had the constitutional right to seek abortions; however, in 1989, the Court later decided that each state had the right to set its own abortion policy. Heated disagreements and different perspectives have led to the creation of two different movements: the prochoice movement and the prolife movement. The former supports abortion, the intentional ending of a pregnancy, while the latter claims that abortion is immoral. The issue has been escalated from a matter of choice to the questioning of morality – Is having an abortion the killing of a human?

“Abortion is the spontaneous or artificially induced expulsion of an embryo or fetus” (Abortion, 2002). An artificially induced abortion is the type referred to in the legal context. Abortions happen in different situations. The question comes when is it the right or wrong choice. The root question becomes the moment a fetus becomes a person and entitled to rights. The fetus could be a person at conception, during the pregnancy, or at birth. The deciding moment differs from the Pro-life group and Pro-choice group. After critically analyzing four different arguments about the pros and cons of abortion, one will be able to understand the ethical, moral, and

Abortion is one of the most controversial topics of all times. The definition most people associate with abortion is the termination of unwanted pregnancy. In their essay, “The Wrong of Abortion”, Patrick Lee and Robert P. George argue that intentional abortion is unjust and therefore objectively immoral no matter the circumstances. Also, they argue that “the burden of carrying the baby is significantly less than the harm the baby would suffer by being killed; the mother and father have a special responsibility to the child; it follows that intentional abortion (even in few cases where the baby’s death is an unintended but foreseen side effect) is unjust ” (24).

Judith Jarvis Thomson is an American moral philosopher that is well known for her defense of moral justice and description of moral rights. She has published in prestigious papers in ethics, metaphysics, and the philosophy of law. Including the most widely written essay “A Defense of Abortion” , that was published in 1971 in the journal of philosophy and public affairs. This essay constructs abortion rights with pregnant woman’s rights to control her own body and it’s life support purpose, as opposed to denying the quality or condition of the unborn child.

When faced with the choice of life or death, most people would choose to live. In fact, most would not want someone else making that decision for them. They would claim that as a living and independent entity it is solely their choice as to whether they continue to live or not. While this concept may seem fairly straightforward, there seems to be some great debate when it is applied to abortion. For many, they will maintain that the fetus has the right to life no matter the situation. There are some who will argue that abortion is morally permissible in specific circumstances and there are even those that will claim that abortion is always permissible. Why is there such a great divide? A major factor that plays a part in this is whether abortion involves more than one life. Because determining the beginning point of life is such a complex and emotional debate, there will be the same allowance in this paper as there was in Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “A Defense of Abortion”. As she eloquently put it “I propose then, that we grant that the fetus is a person from the moment of conception” (p. 721). This will allow for a look into the moral debate of abortion from a more grounded stage. As discussed early in Thomson’s paper, most of the debate on abortion rests on whether the fetus is alive or not. Whereas the focus should be on the many other aspects of pregnancies that may lead to a mother wanting an abortion.

The first ethical issue will be right to life and abortion. Abortion remains controversial and a highly debated subject. The ethical debate concerning abortion is the considerations of a woman’s autonomy and the rights of the woman and the unborn child. The parent/ child relationship and assessing the best interests of potential children also provide considerable scope for ethical discussion. (Jones K, Chaloner C 2007). A factor in the ethical future of abortion is the perception of morality, or of actively ending the life of an unborn human being. This process of deductive reasoning explains the most common anti-abortion argument: First, the fetus is an innocent human being. Second, it is morally wrong to kill an innocent human being and lastly, it is morally wrong to kill a fetus. This reasoning can also be applied to support a viewpoint to those who support abortion. First the fetus has no moral status. Secondly, it is not morally wrong to destroy that which has no moral status. Lastly, it is not morally wrong to destroy a fetus.

The following essay will examine the morality of abortion with specific reference to the writings of Don Marquis, Judith Jarvis Thompson, Peter Singer and Mary Anne Warren. I will begin by assessing the strength of the argument provided by Marquis which claims that abortion is impermissible because it deprives a being of a potential “future like ours,” and then go on to consider the writings of Singer, Thomson and Warren to both refute Marquis claims and support my assertion that abortion is morally permissible primarily because of the threat to the freedom and bodily autonomy of women extending the right to life to a foetus in utero would pose.