Case Study Analysis: Issues Around Abortion

1879 Words4 Pages

In America, one million teenagers get pregnant every year (National Abortion Federation, 2003). Of these pregnancies, 78% are unplanned because these teenagers start having sex at a very young age and are unaware of ways to prevent pregnancies. Thirty five percent of the pregnant teenagers chose to abort, as they fear that the consequences of the pregnancy might cause significant effects to their lives. The problems that come with teenage pregnancies include dropping out of school, receiving inadequate prenatal care, developing health problems, relying on public assistance to raise a child, and probably divorcing their partners. In most states, the law allows pregnant teenagers to take their babies for adoption without consulting their parents. The same laws allow the teenagers to have an abortion but require parental notification or consent before carrying out the procedure. These laws prove biased as they favor one resolution over the other, as they force some to bear babies they do not want by restricting their options.
Ethical Issues
Abortion may appear ethical or unethical depending on various viewpoints and circumstances. The fetus is considered a person and bringing it to term may be unethical as the act is considered as murder. In some situations, the mother may require to terminate a pregnancy for her bodily autonomy (Johnston, 2003). In such positions, the resolution to terminate a pregnancy may be argued as the most ethical choice. The mother is also considered to having a reasonable level of ethical responsibility to the fetus, because she did not take enough precaution to ensure avoiding conception (Cline, 2014). The mother’s ethical responsibility to the fetus may not be enough to deprive her choice of abortion; it...

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... the Religious and Moral Perspective: An Annotated Bibliography. Greenwood Publishing Group.
Drane, F. James. (2014). Competency to Give Informed Consent: A Model for Making Clinical Assessments. 925-927.
Teenage Pregnancy. (2012). March Dimes Foundation: Pregnancy and Newborn Health Education Center. Retrieved from http://www.marchofdimes.com/materials/teenage- pregnancy.pdf
Health Care Relationships. (2014). Philosophy 335: Biomedical Ethics (Rev. C2).
National Abortion Federation. (2003). Abortion Facts: Teenage Women, Abortion, and the Law. Retrieved from https://www.prochoice.org/about_abortion/facts/teenage_women.html
Sherwin, S. (2014). Abortion Through a Feminist Ethics Lens. 238-248.
Cline, A. (2014). Ethics of abortion: Is it Moral or Immoral to Have an Abortion? Retrieved from http://atheism.about.com/od/abortioncontraception/p/AbortionEthics.htm

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