Morality Of Abortion Essay

ccording to Webster’s New World Medical Dictionary, “In medicine, an abortion is the premature exit of the products of conception (the fetus, fetal membranes, and placenta) from the uterus. It is the loss of a pregnancy and does not refer to why that pregnancy was lost.” The act of abortion is spontaneously through a miscarriage or through therapeutic or non-therapeutic procedures. This creates the moral complexities and controversies of the mother’s decision to abort at a specific stage of embryonic development. More specifically, the three grounds for justifying the morality of abortion are “self-defense” where the mother’s health and life are at high risk, “mercy killing” where through a prenatal screening the fetus is found to have debilitating diseases or disabilities, or the “general good” which aims to control population growth and reduce the number of disabled children. For the purpose of this paper I would like to evaluate the morality of these points by utilizing the traditional Roman Catholic beliefs.

The issue of self-defense addresses the life of the mother being at very high risk and those victims of rape and incest. While the Roman Catholic Church acknowledges that the decision of the mother to have an abortion is not always done for “purely selfish reasons or out of convenience” but out of the desire to protect her own life and health, She still believes that these can never morally justify “the deliberate killing of an innocent being” (Pope John Paul II). Interestingly, the Catholic Church’s position on the rape/incest victims is that there is no need for the compounding of wrongs, specifically: since the perpetrator had also committed a wrong, the mother does not correct that “wrong” by committing another wrongf...

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...that abortion is morally permissible regardless of the embryonic development stage. This is justified in the grounds where the mother’s health or life is at a very critical state and that existing life takes precedence over the potential life since the mother is defending herself from the possibility of losing her own life. My two other views that are in alignment with the Catholic tradition are that abortion is morally impermissible on the grounds of prenatal screening used for selective abortion and on the grounds of serving the “general good” by utilizing abortion for controlling population growth and the increase in disabled children. Finally, In my point of view, every life should be given the chance see the light outside of a mother’s womb and life should still be given a chance to grow regardless of whether an unborn child is in perfect condition or disabled.