On the question of abortion being moral, the answer is clearly that terminatinga fetus’ life under certain circumstances is not only moral, but it is also ourresponsibility to terminate it if the quality of life is in question for thefetus.
A second major reason is that to declare abortion immoral would mean thatwe would have to consider the factor of how the conception came about. Thiscannot and should not be done. Quality is a major factor in the question of themorality of abortion. When parents decide to keep or not keep a baby the issueof adoption does not play into this.
The reason for this is that once the babyis born that the parents may change their mind if they want to keep it. Parentsmust decide at the onset of the pregnancy to decide if they can in goodconscience bring a child into the world, if the answer is yes, then peopleshould proceed with the pregnancy and then determine whether they want to givethe child up for adoption. It is a parent’s moral responsibility to make surethat the environments which the child will be brought into will be healthy andsupportive. It is a far greater crime to treat a child poorly for eighteen yearsthen it is to terminate a fetus that cannot think, feel or is aware of itsexistence. On the second point of making the way that conception occurred anon-factor I am not saying that having the babies of rapists or in cases ofincest is okay. Still, for the argument that abortion is immoral, you must arguethat the action is immoral, not the child.
The child cannot be either at thispoint. If we are then talking about the act of abortion then who is to determineright and wrong. A court of law should have no place in this decision. Theprimary interests in this pregnancy should make the decision themselves. Thiswould normally be the parents of the fetus.
The action in the case of rape isdefiantly immoral, but the fetus is not. To say that the abortion is moralbecause the pregnancy arose from a crime is to place a value judgement on achild before it is born. A fetus is just the product of sperm and an egg, anaccidental meeting that resulted in a pregnancy. If the fetus is not at faultbut can be terminated, why should a different set of standards be in effectbecause two young people experimenting with sex made a mistake and the endresult was the same as in the case of rape.
I offer you the explanation that thecircumstances surrounding the pregnancy can be deemed moral or immoral, but thefetus and therefore the abortion cannot. The outcome was an accidental meetingof a sperm and an egg in both instances. The moment of conception does notassemble a human the instant that the egg hits the sperm, it takes a full ninemonths. During this gestation period parts develop slowly, not all at once. Science has determined when the cut off is that a fetus can think and feeletc.
. . If it were impossible for us to know when a fetus could feel and thinkthan the obvious answer would be that it is immoral, but we can tell andtherefore it is not. I think that it is important to remember that morals can beestablished for a society in particular, such as abortion in immoral, but cannotbe changed by the context of how the pregnancy occurred.
Either the terminationof life is moral or it isn’t. By this line of reasoning you can follow me to thelogical conclusion of this paragraph. If it is logical and ethical to terminatethe life of a fetus because of a particular circumstance, then it is moral to doso under any circumstance. A credible objection to my main position is thatabortion is wrong except in the case of rape or incest. One good reason for thisis that young parents of a fetus that made a mistake and got pregnant made thatinitial decision to have sex, while the rape or incest victims did not. A secondreason is that we as a society should not force a mother to relive her crimeevery day for nine months and possibly longer if she kept the baby.
These twostatements do not even come close to undermining my position. My primary problemwith the above argument is that the person on that side is putting a value onhuman life. The fact that the pregnancy occurred illegally makes that humanbeing worth less than the one that was conceived by accident. The argument abovehits a brick wall if you pursue it further. A person cannot come up with ajustifiable reason why the fetus is worth less as a human because of the natureof the conception. At which point the person on the side of the argument mustadmit that values are the same and that total value is zero as a human beingbecause it isn’t one yet.
As to the second reason, why should we remind aseventeen year old girl every day for nine months and possibly longer because ina moment of haste they forgot to use a condom. An objection to my firststatement about the quality of life could be argued that after the pregnancy isover the baby could be given up for adoption. Along this line of reasoning thequality of life does not play into the factor. This argument is filled withholes. When a person is 18 years old and loses a leg in a car accident the legis gone, never to be seen again. The case is much the same for a young girl, shehas carried this thing around for the better part of a year.
A new mothersnatural response to giving the fetus up would be the same if after the accidentthe doctors asked the victim if they wanted to keep their leg. Of course theanswer would be yes. Therefore having an abortion take this problem out of theequation and lets a mother make an informed decision whether or not to have achild and whether or not to give it for adoption. A second problem is the costof a birth.
What if there is no insurance, and there is no one to pay theimmense cost of a hospital stay. Why should the same young girl go intofinancial debt for something that she is not going to keep, and she has no wayof knowing if that babies life will be any better than what she could haveprovided for. To conclude this paper is a difficult task. I have tried tooutline why abortion is moral by guiding the reader through a series of stepsoutlining thinking toward the fetus and we should regard it. The way that weshould regard it is as a lifeless thing until it can feel or think, whichevercomes first. This is not to that abortions should be common, cheap, or as easyto get as a physical is.
Circumstances involved around the conception includingthe how and why should not be regarded. One abortion cannot be moral whileanither is not. I would guess that I am taking an absolutists point of view onthis subject. I also tried to state that social context must be taken intoaccount, and that abortion is either one way or the other, indepedent ofcircumstances surrounding how the pregnancy occured. I have also tried to showhow quality of life must be added into the decision of whether or not to have achild. I will lastly close with the statement that while the men of the worldtry to hash this controversy out, it is important to remember who physically hasthe child.
And that it is ultimatly the womens decision whether or not to have achild. If abortion is declared immoral than it will eentually lead to lawsmaking it illegal as well. When this happens we will see the practice gounderground and have a lot of deaths among women attempting to have this done inan unclean environment.
