ABORTION - Queensborough Community College



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ABORTION

A very complicated issue for which much rational inquiry and discourse and reflection is needed before decision-making.

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There are different types of issues involved: Factual, Conceptual, Ethical

Factual: such issues include "viability" for those who use Natural Law Theory and the measurement of acceptability or approval by society for those that use the Utilitarian Theory

Conceptual: issues such as what is a "person" and what is "abortion"

Ethical: Main issues include should abortion be permitted? Required? Forbidden?

Abortion:  What is it? There are several possible meanings:

1. The termination of a pregnancy

2. The accidental termination of a pregnancy: miscarriage

3. The natural termination of a pregnancy prematurely: spontaneous abortion or miscarriage

4. The deliberate termination of a pregnancy

5. The deliberate termination of a pregnancy for the purpose of saving a life: therapeutic abortion

6. The deliberate termination of a pregnancy for the purpose of terminating fetal development

7.

SOCIAL CONTEXT:

General Ambivalence in the US

Middle position: Abortion should be safe, legal and rare

Late Term/ Partial Birth Abortion Controversy

 

 

CASES:

A. Parents' rights vis a vis their pregnant daughter(12 years old) threat to life of daughter, refusal on religious grounds  COURT rules for daughter

B. RU-486 PILL: the "morning after pill"

C. Thalidomide: abnormal fetus

 

Pregnancy Tests: 7 to 10 days after fertilization

Status of the Fetus:

•   person 

•  non-person

•   potential person

Rights of Women

Therapeutic abortion

 

 

Ethical Traditions:

A. IF a fetus is a non-person

• Utilitarian: persons are rational and autonomous and have a right to control their bodies

• Kant: persons are rational and autonomous and have a right to control their bodies

• Ross: persons are rational and autonomous and have a right to control their bodies

• Rawls: persons are rational and autonomous and have a right to control their bodies

• Natural law- No deliberate termination of a pregnancy for the purpose of termination of a viable healthy life (person) is permissible.

B. IF a fetus is a person

Utilitarian: persons are rational and autonomous and have a right to control their bodies and an abortion is morally acceptable if it produces more utility than not doing so

Kant: permits therapeutic abortions and termination of abnormal fetuses

Ross: permits therapeutic abortions and termination of abnormal fetuses

Rawls: permits therapeutic abortions and termination of abnormal fetuses

Natural law- No deliberate termination of a pregnancy for the purpose of termination of a viable healthy life (person) is permissible. 

 

ARTICLES:

John T. Noonan: An Almost Absolute Value in History

Judith Jarvis Thompson: A Defense of Abortion

        self defense: rape, incest, failed birth control

Mary  Anne Warren: On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion

    fetus is similar to a "guppy" for a person to be a member of a moral community there must be 5 traits:

    consciousness, reasoning, self motivating, communicative and possessed of self concept

Don Marquis: Why Abortion is Immoral-it deprives value of the future

US Supreme Court: Row vs Wade

Susan Sherwin: Abortion through a Feminist Lens

       fetal existence is relational-  feminist politics of liberation

Sidney Callahan: Pro life Feminism

Joan Carpenter: partial birth abortions: " Let's be reasonable!"

 

CASES:

1. Late term abortion

2. Rape of 16 year old girl

3. Poverty and Birth Control

4. Mental Defect and a 22 year old female

5. Uterine Cancer

6. Selective Abortion-One of twins Fetus with Trisomy 21(Downe's Syndrome)

7. Trisomy 21

8. Life Style choice and decision for late term abortion

 

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