Abortion Issue, Ethics and Philosophy

Abortion defined into two words “termination of pregnancy”. There are two ways for abortion to be occurred, spontaneously or purposely. The second type may occur therapeutic under medical advices, social because the pregnant lady was raped, or other purposes such as unwanted pregnanacy. Approximately, more than 40 millions abortions are performed worldwide every year. In this Paper, I will present two different perspectives from two different philosophers on the ethics of abortion.

The viewpoint that premature birth is truly immoral has gotten little help in the ongoing philosophical writing. Certainly, most scholars partnered with mainstream foundations of advanced education trust that the counter fetus removal position is either a side effect of unreasonable religious authoritative opinion or an end created by genuinely befuddled philosophical contention. This general conviction needs to be undermined. Marquis article sets out a contention that implies to appear, and any contention in morals can appear, that fetus removal is genuinely corrupt, that it is equal to murdering an honest grown-up person (Marquis, 1989).

The contention depends upon a noteworthy presumption. A large number of the most shrewd and watchful authors on the morals of premature birth, such as, Joel Feinberg, Michael Tooley, Mary Anne Warren, H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., L. W. Sumner, John T. Noonan, Jr., and Philip Devine’- trust that regardless of whether premature birth is ethically allowable stands or falls on regardless of whether a baby is the kind of being whose life, it is truly wrong to end. The assertion of this exposition is right as a big question mark is raised on the values of the ones who abort a child (Marquis, 1989). Marquis has argued abortion is pro- choicer on several points.

First, the abortion debate is a more hypothetical account of the wrongness of killing. He said, “if we merely believe, but do not understand, why killing an adult human beings such as ourselves is wrong, how could we conceivably show that abortion is either immoral or permissible?”

Second, the loss of one’s life is one of the greatest losses one can suffer. The reason of that is this person is going to be prohibited from all activities, experiences, and enjoyment in his/her future. Therefore, killing someone is wrong, primarily because the killing inflicts (one of) the greatest possible losses on the victim.

Third, there are two rival accounts possess at least some degree of plausibility, the discontinuation account and the desire account. The very sick people who are disabled and breathing via ventilator device has desire to continue. Marquis thought that if you have no right to kill someone who is very sick because of the wrongness of killing, then you have no right to kill someone who may have better future and better life. Forth, the abortion pro-choicer argued that even if the fetus has value in his future, he cannot value it.

Thus, based on the hypotheses “value implies valuer”, this valuable future has not value because this fetus cannot value this future. Marquis has answered this argument by the following example. A frustrated and disgruntled person has many problems and worries in his life. This person has reached to a phase that he sees no value in his life, even though many people love him and see such a great value in his life. This person tried to commit suicide but was rescued by someone. Years later, this person has reached significant achievement. Marquis thought, it is the same thing of the fetus status. Now, he cannot value his valuable future, but maybe years later he will reach to significant achievements.

Finally, this analysis can be viewed as resolving a standard problem—indeed, the standard problem—concerning the ethics of abortion. Clearly, it is wrong to kill adult human beings. Clearly, it is not wrong to end the life of some arbitrarily chosen single human cell. Fetuses seem to be like arbitrarily chosen human cells in some respects and like adult humans in other respects. The problem of the ethics of abortion is the problem of determining the fetal property that settles this moral controversy. The thesis of this essay is that the problem of the ethics of abortion, so understood, is solvable.

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