Abortion and Women’s Rights

According to Rosalind Hursthouse, an action is right from a virtue ethical perspective if and only if it is what the virtuous agent would do in the same circumstances. Now, if we take into consideration the case of pregnancy, is abortion the right act or wrong one? When considering if one should abort or keep their child while using the virtue ethic point of view, when can or would one person decide if abortion is the “right choice” when comparing it to other actions? If one thinks that the fetus is not deserving of moral consideration and does not have any moral worth and decides to terminate it then that is their choice.

Another argument can be made that the fetus is a person, and should morally consider before terminating it. If this becomes the case, when can we decide while looking from the virtue perspective, say that aborting the fetus is the right action compared to other possible options like adoption or self-parenting?

I believe that women should have the right to choose legally to have an abortion for many reasons. A fetus is not legally or scientifically a person or human being so abortion cannot be equal to murder or taking a life since the fetus is not a person nor alive. Raising a child is not an easy task and requires social and emotional commitment along with financial resources. Not everyone has the financial means to take care of a baby. Also abortion helps prevent unwanted and unplanned pregnancies which can save children from neglect, abuse, and all types of other problems. Of course there are going to be opposing arguments to the reasons that I stated on why abortion should be legal. Arguments such as abortion is murder and the killing of an innocent human being is wrong, even if that human being has yet to be born. This can be considered a moral argument but actual science based evidence.

According to the Mayo Clinic “a fetus is like a brain dead person with no self-awareness or consciousness so it is actually dead”. Now even you considered that abortion is murder, Aristotle’s approach on virtue ethics is that the ancient Greeks did not have any problem with killing people and virtue so abortion shouldn’t even be considered on the same scale. The utilitarianism/hedonism viewpoint, states that we are only concerned with pleasure and pain. Therefore, we shall only be concerned with the amounts of pleasure and pain in situations where abortion is permitted as compared to the amounts of pleasure and pain where abortion is illegal. When utilitarianism talks about abortion, it says is that there is no absolute value placed on human life, meaning it avoids moral questions about when human life begins.

However, it does prefer to judge each individual based on its own actions, and they deal with the consequences. This means that abortion is up to the mother’s decision and if she can receive pleasure by getting an abortion then it her right to do so. According to a peer-reviewed study published in the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health found that ‘Young adult women who undergo an abortion may be at increased risk for subsequent depression. They claim that abortions cause long after lasting psychological damage. Just as I stated before, with the act of utilitarianism your goal is to achieve maximum pleasure and pain somehow. “Based on its own actions and they deal with the consequences.” So depending on your action, it’s possible to suffer, and you will have to just deal with your consequences.

I’d like to point out that Philosopher Peter Singer, MA, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, also agrees and believes that abortion should be legal. He goes on to defend and say that abortion is a way to curb overpopulation. The United Nations estimated that the world’s population will increase to 9.3 billion by 2050. According to the Los Angeles Times ‘this would be the equivalent of adding another India and China to the world.

With overpopulation in the world, we are bound to fall into severe malnutrition, starvation, poverty, lack of medical and educational services, pollution, underdevelopment, and conflict over resources. These are the consequences faced without abortion. It is estimated that with 55.9 million abortions performed worldwide each year, the population could balance out. Just think about it, with limited resources, and abundance of people, crime rates would skyrocket.

If women become pregnant, they should accept the responsibility that comes with producing a child. People need to take responsibility for their actions and accept the consequences. Having sexual intercourse, even when contraceptive methods are used, carries with it the risk of a pregnancy. The unborn baby should not be punished for a mistake made by adults. If women are unprepared to care for their children, they should at least put them up for adoption. While this argument is plausible, you can’t consider a fetus a “unborn baby” because at a certain stage they have no awareness or consciousness.

On one hand, some are against mothers having abortions with free choice but what if abortion gives women the option to terminate fetuses with abnormalities to full term. Some fetuses have such severe disorders that death is guaranteed before or shortly after birth. It would be cruel to force women to carry fetuses with fatal congenital defects to term.

Even in such cases of nonfatal conditions like down syndrome, all parents may be unable to care for a severely disabled child. Deborah Anne Driscoll, MD, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Pennsylvania, says “many couples don’t have the resources, don’t have the emotional stamina, don’t have the family support to raise a child with Down syndrome”.

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