Abortion

Legal Background

Roe v. Wade (1973): In this landmark case, Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe)claimed she had been raped and that Texas law was forcing her to continue her pregnancy, even though she had been impregnated against her will. The Court ruled that Texas law prohibiting abortion except to save the mothers life were unconstitutional. Such laws were claimed to violate the due process clause of the FourteenthAmendment of the Constitution, which protects a person's rights to privacy.

Doev. Bolton(1973): In a companion case decided on the same day as Roe v. Wade, the Court struck down a Georgia law that limited abortions to accredited hospitals, required the approval of the hospital abortion committee and confirmation by two other physicians, and limited access to abortion in Georgia to state residents. Again citing the woman's right to privacy, the Court declared the statue unconstitutional.

Planned Parenthood v. Danforth (1977): This case struck down limits on the freedom to obtain an abortion according to the standard set down in Roe v. Wade. At issue was a Missouri law that required that a woman's husband also consent to the abortion, and that the parents of a minor child consent to abortion. The Court ruled that the woman's right to abortion cannot be limited by the requirement that a spouse or parent of a minor child must grant prior consent.

Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989): This case marked the first significant limits to the right to abortion. The Court reversed decisions by the District Court and the Court of Appeals and upheld a Missouri law that prohibited the use of public funds or medical facilities for “nontherapeutic” abortions.

Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992): At issue in this case were the provisions of the law that required a 24-hour waiting period before the abortion, parental consent for a minor seeking an abortion, and notification of the woman's husband of her decision to obtain an abortion. The Court reasoned that abortion rights are consistent with the notion of the right to privacy that emerges out of the idea of liberty in the Constitution.

Biblical Background

The Bible clearly prohibits the taking of innocent life in the Fifth Commandment: “You shall not murder” (Ex. 20:13).In the account of the first birth, when Eve gave birth to her son Cain, person language is used to describe Cain (Gen. 4:1). Eve speaks of Cain with no sense of discontinuity between his conception, birth, and postnatal life.(Job3:3) This type of parallelism suggest that the child who was “born”and the child who was “conceived” are considered the same person. What was present at birth was considered equivalent to what was present at conception.(Jer.1:5) Describes God knowing the unborn in the same way he knows a child or an adult.The Greek term for “baby,” bre'phos, is applied to a child still in the womb in Luke 1:41-44 as well as to the newborn baby Jesus in Luke 2:16.

Arguments For/Against Abortion

A woman has the right to do with her own body whatever she chooses.

SupportingArguments

It is the fundamental principle of the pro-choice movement-the woman's right to choose.This is foundational to the woman's constitutional right to privacy and was appealed to by the Court in the Casey decision when they referred to the preservation of a woman's bodily integrity and to her personal autonomy to choose abortion.

CounterArguments

A person's right over his/her own body is not absolute. In most states prostitution is illegal, and nowhere is it legal to pour illegal drugs into one's body.The fetus is technically not part of the woman's body. It is agenetically distinct entity with its own genetic code, and early on in the pregnancy it has its own heart and circulatory system. If abortion becomes illegal, we will return to the dangerous days of the “back alley” abortion providers.

Supporting Arguments

Unlicensed physicians performed these abortions in “back-alley” clinics with varying degrees of safety. Desperate to be relieved of an unwanted pregnancy, woman would thus endanger themselves in the process of obtaining an abortion.

CounterArguments

The person advancing this argument would be arguing that society has the responsibility to make it safe to kill people who have the right to life. The only way that the safety of the mother can be a legitimate concernis if the fetus is not a person and if abortion is comparable to any other type of surgery in which a part of the woman's body is removed.

Forcing women, especially poor ones, to continue their pregnancies will create overwhelming financial hardship.

Supporting Arguments

This argument is based on the economic hardship that will likely result from women being without the option of abortion to control the size of their families. Without safe and legal abortion, these women will be condemned to a life of poverty and financial burden, which is also unfair to the children that they bring into this world.

Counter Arguments

This argument also begs the question by assuming that unborn poor are not persons. Otherwise, this argument could be used as a basis for exterminating all those who are financially burdensome to society. The reason society does not do this is that the financially burdensome are persons with the right to life, and their burden to society is irrelevant.

Society should not force women to bring unwanted children into the world.

Supporting Arguments

Abortion helps society prevent bringing unwanted pregnancies into the world. Thus prevents child abuse and child neglect.

Counter Arguments

This argument begs the question by assuming that the fetus is not a person, because if it is, then surely abortion is the worse imaginable form of child abuse. One cannot determine the value of a child based on the degree to which they are desired.

Society should not force women to bring severely handicapped children into the world.

Supporting Arguments

Pro-choice advocates consider it unfair and insensitive to force a woman to carry a pregnancy that she knows will result in a severely deformed child. A handicapped life is not worth living.

Counter Arguments

Abortions in the case of deformity are a relatively small percentage of the overall number of abortions annually. In general, difficult cases do not make the general rule, that is, they do not support the right of a woman to choose abortion on demand. There is no moral difference between the abortion of a handicapped fetus and executing handicapped children.

Society should not force women who are pregnant from rape or incest to continue their pregnancies.

Supporting Arguments

Since the woman had sex force on her against her will, it is argued that she should not be forced to continue a potential pregnancy.This not a case of carelessness, but rather a lack of consent to sex that made her pregnant. Thus society would be punishing the victim of a crime by making her a victim again.

Counter Arguments

The number of pregnancies that result from rape or incest is very small-roughly 1 in 100,000 cases. Yet how the pregnancy was conceived is irrelevant to the central question of personhood of the fetus. You cannot justify the homicide of another person just to relieve the mental distress of a trauma such as rape.

Restrict abortion laws discriminate against poor women.

Supporting Arguments

This argument is based on what happened prior to abortion being legalized in 1973. When women of means wanted an abortion, they simply traveled to countries where abortion was legal and paid for them. Obviously, poor women did not have this option. Thus, restrictive abortion laws have the practical effect of discrimination against poor women, who are often the ones who need abortion services the most due to their difficult economic circumstances.

Counter Arguments

This argument begs the question by assuming that an abortion is somehow a moral good that would be denied to poor women if restrictive laws were enacted. If the fetus is a person, then denying someone an abortion is irrelevant. Society has no obligation to provide equally to all the freedom to kill innocent persons.

The Personhood of the Fetus

The debate centers on the point in gestation at which the fetus possesses personhood. These are called “decisive moments.”

Viability

Is the point at which the fetus is able to live on its own outside the womb. One problem with viability as a determinant of person-hood is that it cannot be measured precisely. It varies from fetus to fetus and medical technology is continually pushing viability back to earlier stages of pregnancy.

Brain development

The appeal to this decisive moment is the parallel with the definition of death, which is the cessation of all brain activity. Since brain activity is what measures death, or the loss of personhood. The problem with the analogy to brain death is that the dead brain is in irreversible condition, unable to be revived. The brain of the developing fetus is only temporarily nonfunctional.

Sentience

The appeal to this point for the determination of personhood is that if the fetus cannot feel pain, then there is less of a problem with abortion, and it disarms many of the pro-life arguments that abortion is cruel to the fetus. This decisive moment confuses the experience of harm with the reality of harm. It does not follow that the fetus cannot be harmed simply because the fetus cannot feel pain or otherwise experience harm.

Quickening

Before the advent of sophisticated medical technology such as ultra sound, which can see the fetus from the early stages of pregnancy, quickening was considered the first indication of the presence of life within the mother's womb. Philosophically speaking, this decisive moment confuses epistemology (knowledge or awareness of the fetus) with ontology (the nature or essence of the fetus).

Appearance of humanness

The appeal of this is that the fetus begins to resemble a baby, it makes it at least emotionally more difficult to consider abortion. The appearance of the fetus has no inherent relationship to its essence.

Birth

A few hold that birth is the decisive moment at which the fetus acquires personhood. No essential difference exist between the fetus on the day before its birth and the day after its birth.

Implantation

At this point the embryo establishes its presence in the womb by the“signals” or the hormones it produces. It does not follow that personhood is established at implantation just because the embryo establishes its presence by the hormonal signals it produces. The essence of the fetus cannot be dependent by another's awareness of its existence, whether it is physical awareness, as in quickening, or chemical awareness in the production of specific hormones.

Conception

An adult human being is the end result of the continuous growth of the organism from conception (this premise has hardly any debate).From the moment of conception, it possesses all the capacities necessary to develop into a full adult.

This is a chapter outline done from "Moral Choices" (Rae, S. 2000)