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Abortion And Religious Ethics
Abortion And Religious Ethics
Abortion in Christianity
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Recommended: Abortion And Religious Ethics
Chapter 7 - Abortion
- The basics:
- Views of abortions have changed drastically throughout time and culture
- Abortifacients are substances or devices for inducing abortions
- The hippocratic oath used to prohibit them, although this was ignored by some
- Hebrew and christian scriptures do not denounce abortion or suggest a fetus is a person
- Christians generally condemn abortion and believe the fetus is a person from conception - In English common law, abortion was only a crime is perform after the quickening ( when a mother first detects fetal movement)
- A more meaningful benchmark than the quickening is viability, at 23-24 weeks a fetus may survive outside the uterus
- By the 1970s the American Medical Association and the American College
During the nineteenth century laws and public opinion started to change. In 1803, there was the first English Act outlawing abortions. In cases where there was an abortion performed after the quickening, the penalty was death. If the procedure was done before the quickening then the punishment was fourteen years of imprisonment. By 1860 abortions were prohibited in almost all of the states.
...t it is immoral. I also see that it may not be immoral for a woman to abort if she has made the most effort to avoid pregnancy using contraceptives. However, as Thompson states, I think in this situation a mother “ought” not to have an abortion. A fetus should have the right to life, however the mother should also have the right to determine how to use her own body. So I too find it difficult to determine a solid stance on this issue. I’ve always believe that a fetus is a person, but I’ve also always struggled to discern when it is that the fetus becomes a person. Regardless of whatever science can prove or not regarding when a fetus is a person or however much argumentation is done regarding the permissibility of abortion, this topic will forever be surrounded by debate. I don’t believe there will ever a unanimous opinion on whether or not abortion is moral.
But, there are many differences between an actual person and a fetus. First of all, a fetus is completely dependent on the mother. Fetus’s need their mothers in order to be fed correctly, to live in a stable environment, and to grow and expand among many other things. Because the fetus cannot survive on its own, then it does not qualify as a human being. In addition, a fetus that is still inside the womb is only a potential person. The fetus resides inside of the mother, and thus is part of the mother herself until it is born. Another difference between a fetus and a person is that a person can feel pain. Anti abortionist commonly argue that abortion is wrong because it would cause pain to the fetus. But, according to Mark Rosen, an obstetrical anesthesiologist at the University of California at San Francisco, “the wiring at the point where you feel pain, such as the skin, doesn’t reach the emotional part where you feel pain, in the brain.” Furthermore, the thalamus does not form until week 28 of the pregnancy. So, no information, including pain, can reach the cortex in the brain for processing. These facts prove that a fetus would not be affected by the mother’s choice of having an abortion, thus proving Marquis and all other anti-abortionists wrong.
A Defense of Abortion In her argument on abortion, Judith Thomson discusses some major points about abortion. She deals with extreme cases and those extreme cases help us to realize a single perspective of abortion. For example, she talks about the violinist attached to you. In that example, you keep everything constant and focus on a single point, violinist being dead if you unattached him.
The overall thesis that Thomson presents in “A Defence of Abortion”, is that abortion is permissible no matter the personhood status of the fetus. Their argument addresses various aspects of the issue; the rights of the fetus, the person pregant with the fetus, how those rights interact with each other, third parties and moral obligation. They claim that the rights of a fetus are not any more important than the rights of the person pregnant. However, they also address cases where there would be a sense of moral obligation not to have an abortion. Their discussion about third party participation can be used for other types of necessary third party participation.
Sauer (1978) found that some pregnancies in the 19th century were desperately unwanted by woman. Because of this, desperate measures such as baby farming, infanticide and abortion were carried out to discard of the pregnancy. Abortion, which is the termination of a human pregnancy, was made illegal in 1803, but was still carried out in the backstreets of Britain (Knight 1977). However, only a few cases were brought to attention as according to Latham (2002), there was difficulty in detecting abortion, yet Bulwer- Lytton (1833 as cited in Sauer 1978) still believed abortion took place frequently in towns for reasons such as illegitimacy.
There are variables that could affect her choice. She could be poor, the child could have a birth defect, and so on. Giving her a right to decide whether she should abort the baby, it’s entirely her choice. What if the mother was raped or she got pregnant from incest? Would you traumatise this mother with the child of the rapist for 9 months, and would you allow an inbred child that will most likely have a disability and be put through literal hell?
Three Works Cited Many people believe abortion is only a moral issue, but it is also a constitutional issue. It is a woman's right to choose what she does with her body, and it should not be altered or influenced by anyone else. This right is guaranteed by the ninth amendment, which contains the right to privacy. The ninth amendment states: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." This right guarantees the right to women, if they so choose, to have an abortion, up to the end of the first trimester.
Abortion is a controversial issue in the United States and internationally even when it is legalized. Though women in the United States are able to receive abortions nurses still have many concerns about the ethical issues surrounding abortion. One of the biggest ethical dilemmas is whether the nurse’s role as a caregiver extends to the fetus. This paper will explore the issues faced by nurses who believe they should care for the fetus. If the definition of a patient includes the fetus then providing abortions is contrary to the nurse’s role as caregiver; however, the mother is definitely a patient and must be cared for as well. It is the nurse’s responsibility to support the woman’s decision so that she may obtain an abortion safely. Nurses who put the life of the fetus first are allowed to refuse to participate in an abortion, but this may affect the way women receive nursing care.
In England, Wales and Scotland abortion is legal under 24 weeks of pregnancy if two doctors agree that it is majorly necessary for one of the following reasons:
According to Don Marquis, the fetus is a person and has the right to live because it is a biological human being and a human being in a moral sense (Lewis,2013, pp. 320). A fetus is a person some may say because it possesses some of the personhood characteristics. In the woman’s womb, a fertilized sperm turns into a blastocyst after 5 days and later turns into an embryo (human fetus), which eight weeks later the fetus develops a brain, heart, and all the other body cells and tissue (Lewis, 2013, pp. 293). At that moment, the fetus is conscious and alive, because the brain is slowly functioning and is pumping blood throughout the whole body. Soon, the fetus would form into a human figure and kick the mother’s tummy, and when the mother places her hand on her tummy, the fetus stops kicking shows a communication or connection. So, it is a wrongful act to abort the fetus because it has the potential to develop into a person.
The permissibility of abortion has been a crucial topic for debates for many years. People have yet to agree upon a stance on whether abortion is morally just. This country is divided into two groups, believers in a woman’s choice to have an abortion and those who stand for the fetus’s right to live. More commonly these stances are labeled as pro-choice and pro-life. The traditional argument for each side is based upon whether a fetus has a right to life. Complications occur because the qualifications of what gives something a right to life is not agreed upon. The pro-choice argument asserts that only people, not fetuses, have a right to life. The pro-life argument claims that fetuses are human beings and therefore they have a right to life. Philosopher, Judith Jarvis Thomson, rejects this traditional reasoning because the right of the mother is not brought into consideration. Thomson prepares two theses to explain her reasoning for being pro-choice; “A right to life does not entail the right to use your body to stay alive” and “In the majority of cases it is not morally required that you carry a fetus to term.”
Abortion is a major debate in society today and has been an impassioned topic for decades. At issue is whether or not abortion should be permissible. Generally I support the idea of abortion given specific circumstances. If a woman becomes pregnant due to rape, she has no moral obligation to carry the baby to full term. It is a gross expectation for society to think a woman should give birth to a baby conceived from rape and to take care of the child as her own. In this discussion I will argue that abortion is permissible if the mother was a victim of rape.
Abortion is defined as a procedure that is done to remove an embryo or fetus from the uterus of its mother in order to prevent its birth (Roth, 2005). Abortion is categorized as a bioethical issue because it relates to the morals of biomedical advances, policies and research. Abortion is a difficult subject that can involve personal morals and beliefs, legality and religious values. The issue is often viewed from either the side of pro-life, which places emphasis on the fetus and its right to life or pro-choice, which emphasizes the rights of the mother to decide the appropriate action (Roth, 2005). This brings the ethical question of should the government have the right to outlaw abortion into debate. The two viewpoints of pro-life and pro-choice explore the two main moral issues concerning abortion (Roth, 2005).
It is almost unanimously agreed upon that the right to life is the most important and sacred right possessed by human beings. With this being said, it comes as no surprise that there are few issues that are more contentious than abortion. Some consider the process of abortion as immoral and consisting of the deprivation of one’s right to life. Others, on the opposite end of the spectrum, see abortion as a liberty and a simple exercise of the right to the freedom of choice.