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Ethical dilemmas with abortion cases
Ethical dilemmas with abortion cases
Causes of abortion and its effects
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The number of American babies killed by abortion each year is approximately equal to the number of U.S. military deaths in all of the wars that the United States have ever been part of combined, and every day over 3,000 unborn babies die due to abortion. According to biblebelievers.com, 93 percent of abortions are for convenience, only 3 percent of the time the mother and baby at risk, and rape and incest occur less than 1 percent of the time. As a Christian I believe that even unborn, babies are living and it is murder to abort that unborn child. Today it has become a common practice to abort an unwanted child because it is the mother’s choice but I will prove that abortion is killing a living person and it should be illegal. Everyone has the right to life, it is harmful to the health of the mother and child, it is medically proven that the early embryo is a living person, and the methods of abortions are cruel. Today civilized societies have widely accepted the common idea of the sanctity of human life. Civilized societies do not let humans intentionally harm or kill another human without consequence’s and punishment. The living unborn child should be given the same natural right. The natural rights are the right to life, liberty, and personhood. These rights are the rights of personhood, not citizenship. However, many pro-abortionists argue that it is a matter of the mother’s personal liberty, but according to constitution.org, personal liberties cannot violate another person’s natural rights. The mother’s personal right to privacy violates the living unborn child’s natural right to life. Many people argue personhood. This is the idea humans are not a person unless they are neurologically functioning. However, this idea ... ... middle of paper ... ...child they can always put the child up for adoption. Aborting a child shows a lack of faith in god. Abortion also shows a lack of natural affection. Paul tells us in 2 Timothy 3:3 that the last days will be characterized by people who lack "natural affection." It is natural to raise and nurture your child, but killing your child is unnatural and not gods plan. Abortion sends the message that life is not valuable, but if that were true Christ would not have died for our sins. Even if it was not your choice to have a child, you have a choice to adopt the child or keep it. Abortion may seem like a good solution and an easy way to avoid shame, but in the end it leaves the mother with regret that she has to live with forever. The controversy about Abortion is not hard to answer if people looked at the facts because all of the facts prove abortion is not the answer.
“I argue that it is personhood, and not genetic humanity, which is the fundamental basis for membership in the moral community” (Warren 166). Warren’s primary argument for abortion’s permissibility is structured around her stance that fetuses are not persons. This argument relies heavily upon her six criteria for personhood: A being’s sentience, emotionality, reason, capacity for communication, self-awareness, and having moral agencies (Warren 171-172). While this list seems sound in considering an average, healthy adult’s personhood, it neither accounts for nor addresses the personhood of infants, mentally ill individuals, or the developmentally challenged. Sentience is one’s ability to consciously feel and perceive things around them. While it is true that all animals and humans born can feel and perceive things within their environment, consider a coma patient, an individual suspended in unconsciousness and unable to move their own body for indeterminate amounts of time. While controversial, this person, whom could be in the middle of an average life, does not suddenly become less of a person
One of the biggest issue of abortion goes back to the controversial question of when human life actually begins. Many people will often argue that a fetus is a living being from the moment of conception and feel that it deserves the same legal protections as an adult, therefore making it immoral to kill it. Just like in our court system, we would not put an innocent person on death penalty. The fetus has done nothing wrong and has the right to live. As the editor of Christianity Today wrote, "abortion is one of those monumental issues of justice that comes along once in a lifetime. It is violence against children, a hideous act of poisoning or dismembering tiny bodies, then dumping them in a landfill or garbage disposal." On the other hand, those who are for abortion say that a fetus is only a "potential human being." The advocates for legal abortions want the mother to choose whether she keeps the baby or kills it, and the rights of a mother supersede the rights of a baby. John M. Sw...
Mary Anne Warren’s “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion” describes her justification that abortion is not a fundamentally wrong action for a mother to undertake. By forming a distinction between being genetically human and being a fully developed “person” and member of the “moral community” that encompasses humanity, Warren argues that it must be proven that fetuses are human beings in the morally relevant sense in order for their termination to be considered morally wrong. Warren’s rationale of defining moral personhood as showcasing a combination of five qualities such as “consciousness, reasoning, self-motivated activity, capacity of communication, and self-awareness” forms the basis of her argument that a fetus displays none of these elements that would justify its classification as a person and member of the morally relevant community (Timmons 386).
Abortion may be one of the most controversial topics in America today. Abortion is defined as “the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus” (cite dictionary). There are really only two sides on people’s opinion on abortion; pro-life which means abortion should be outlawed and pro-choice which means a woman should be able to decide whether she wants to keep her baby. Thousands of protests and riots have begun due to the fact pro-life activists believe abortion should become illegal. Both sides bring valid points to support their decision that could sway any person’s thoughts. The Roe v. Wade law has allowed abortion to be legal in the U.S since 1973 (Chittom & Newton, 2015). The law “gives women total control over first trimester abortions and grants state legislative control over second and third trimester abortions” (Chittom & Newton, 2015). Ever since the law was put in place, millions of people have tried to overturn it and still
In order for the pro-life argument to be valid, it must have both a true premise and true conclusion. It falls short of validity by assuming that a fetus up to 22 weeks old is a person, and has its own rights independent of its host, or what we often refer to as its mother. First we must recognize the subtle, yet extremely important distinction between a human being and a person. It is obvious that a fetus is a member of the human ...
Abortion is not as harmful as its opponents claim it to be. Instead of viewing abortion as "murder," society as a whole must consider abortion as a necessary alternative. Abortion can save a woman's life, physically, mentally, and emotionally. In today's society, the following reasons clearly impact the abortion dilemma. First, the definition of "life" the anti-abortionists provide us with is self-contradictory. Second, abortions are safer than ever in the past. Third, abortions help society avoid the challenges caused by unwanted children. Fourth, abortions benefit the mother's emotional life. Finally, abortion has its consent from the Bible. Therefore, abortion in the United States of America should remain legal.
Abortion is arguably the most controversial topic in all the issues revolving around reproduction. Women of all different races, classes, and religions have been practicing abortion since before the colonial era in America. The laws pertaining to abortion have changed many times, adding and removing discrepancies and stipulations throughout many years, and still to this day. The views of abortion in society during different time periods have also changed and adapted. At the time of Sarah Grosvenor’s decision to abort, the laws pertaining to abortion did not make the act fully illegal. However in years after Grosvenor’s case abortion was outlawed. The law played a minor part in women’s decisions to have an abortion, however society, and gender played the most prominent role in the decision of abortion.
The criterion for personhood is widely accepted to consist of consciousness (ability to feel pain), reasoning, self-motivation, communication and self-awareness. When Mary Anne Warren states her ideas on this topic she says that it is not imperative that a person meet all of these requirements, the first two would be sufficient. We can be led to believe then that not all human beings will be considered persons. When we apply this criterion to the human beings around us, it’s obvious that most of us are part of the moral community. Although when this criterion is applied to fetuses, they are merely genetic human beings. Fetuses, because they are genetically human, are not included in the moral community and therefore it is not necessary to treat them as if they have moral rights. (Disputed Moral Issues, p.187). This idea is true because being in the moral community goes hand in hand w...
In Thomson’s article, “A Defense of Abortion,” Thomson argues that abortion is not impermis-sible because she agrees with the fact that fetus has already become a human person well before birth, from the moment of conception (Thomson, 268 & 269). Besides that, she also claims that every person has a right to live, does so a fetus, because a fetus is a person who has a right to live.
Abortion is a widely arguable issue that begs the question whether a mother has the right to abort her child or if the child has the right to life. Abortion is the deliberate removal of a fetus from the womb of the mother, resulting in the death of the child. Abortions are said to be morally permissible after a certain number of months after the mother is pregnant because of the development of the embryo to have a brain. The other side of the argument is that right when the mother is pregnant, it is wrong for the mother to abort because the embryo has a right to life as soon as the mother is pregnant. This is a primary concern for anti-abortion supporters. Mary Warren takes this pro-life stance to defend the life of the fetus by not allowing abortions under any circumstance in her case, “On the Moral and legal status of Abortion”, 1973. Warren argues whether abortion is morally permissible at any stage of pregnancy and under any circumstances. Warren’s argument for her stance on abortion is stated as 1) It is wrong to kill human beings. 2) Fetuses are innocent human beings. 3) Therefore it is wrong to kill fetuses. She claims that the credit for her argument lies in the definition of the term ‘human being’. The definition of human is a member of the biological species Homo Sapien. This includes adults, children, and also fetuses that are unborn in the mother’s womb. This is the argument for why abortion is not morally permissible in any case because fetuses are innocent human beings with an inherent right to life as a biological organism. Along with a moral sense of community, human is being a member of the moral community o...
For many years, the morality of abortion has been questioned by two perspectives: pro-choice and pro-life. While modern culture explains that abortion is a woman’s free choice if she does not want the unborn baby, the Catholic Church teaches the world that from the moment of conception there is a child with a soul within the womb, and to abort it would be to murder an innocent being.
Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by destruction of a fertilized egg, embryo or fetus before birth, prior to the time when the fetus attains viability, or capacity for life outside the uterus (Encyclopedia, 1995, p.43). Currently almost twenty-five percent of pregnancies in the United States are aborted. About one forth of people who abort are teenagers, fifty-seven percent are younger than 25, and almost eighty percent are unmarried. During the first trimester is when most of the abortions take place. Only about ten percent are performed later in the pregnancy (Slife, 1998, p.329). Abortions go back as far as Ancient Greece where it was used as a type of population control. Then in the Roman Times men had total control over the procedure. “Man could give law-enforced command that his wife have an abortion, or he could punish or divorce his wife for having one without his consent” (Encyclopedia, 1995, p.43).
The argument can be made that the fetus deserves the same level of personhood that children and adults do. This can be countered with the fact that children and adults are able to live without occupying the body of another person. The point at which personhood occurs may never be established because of the contrasting views for and against personhood and it would be very difficult to establish any kind of middle ground on personhood.
Article 3, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, states “everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of a person” (Goodhart, 379). This article creates cultural discrepancies that are rooted in interpreting undefined and ambiguous language. For example, there are cultural disputes concerning the definition of a “person”. In many monotheistic cultures, abortion is considered a crime. Advocates of this opinion support that a fetus is a human being from conception.
Abortion has been used to controlled fertility in every society on the world. Over the centuries, there is a rich history about women help each other to abort. Abortion was not considered illegal in US until 1880, by which time most states had banned to protect the life of the woman. However, even it has been banned, abortion is still widely practice. Rich women who could afford to pay skilled doctors or go to another country to have the safest and easiest abortion. But for those women, who are poor and lack of knowledge about health had to run the greatest risk with illegal abortion or “black market” abortion. In 1950s, about a million abortions were practiced per year in the US, and over a thousand women died each year as a result. Considering American ethics and values, death is morally wrong. Therefore, the killing of unborn fetuses is morally wrong as well. For that reason, abortion should be outlawed and considered as a cruel, unnatural and absolutely immoral human act.