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General Studies Abortion

Benjamin Charmers

BORTION is one of the most controversial areas of the

medical profession. The surgical or drug-induced ending
of a pregnancy has sparked more debate than perhaps any
other issue in this area. The whole debate on the morality
of abortion boils down to three major areas that need to be
examined: When does life begin; What circumstance could
warrant it and; Is a disabled childs life going to be worth
living?
First I will address the easiest one. Is a disabled life worth
living? To answer, I will expand this to the larger question
of is life worth living, which most people can answer easily.
Suffering is bad, life inevitably will involve suffering, life,
therefore, is bad. This is an argument cited by many antinatalist who see giving birth at all as immoral. I, however,
can dispute this outlook by suggesting that happiness is good,
life will inevitably involve happiness, life is good. From both
of these we can see that life appears to be a balance of
happiness - or good - and suffering - or bad - and so we
can evaluate the goodness of life by balancing out these too
extreme viewpoints. I would also argue that life will always
have the potential for good and that this potential, which we
cannot determine, makes life worth living. This is much the
same for a disabled child and as such I would suggest that
although the amount of suffering increases from the norm,
the potential for happiness remains and so lifes worth also
remains. So aborting on the basis of the child being disabled,
by my argument, is immoral.
Next is to take into account circumstance. To have a child
requires a mother. This mother will have to bear the child for 9
months and care for it for at least 18 years. The amount a baby
affects a mothers life is enormous. Such circumstance as the
mother being in school could affect the mothers life more still.
Circumstance such as rape could further affect the mothers
emotional state enormously raising a child that reminds her of
the incident. So what this surely comes down to is the life of a
potential human vs the well-being of the mother. I think that,
by the same argument in the first paragraph, life will always be
the winner. There are, however, circumstances - like where the
mother is going to die as a result of the pregnancy - where
abortion becomes, in my view, acceptable. Abortion, in this
context, is the ending of a potential life to save a certain one.
The other argument is that abortion would involve less human
suffering than the dying of the mother.
The last, and possibly hardest, area to examine is the
overruling question. When does human life begin? Taking
a human life is immoral under all but the most extreme
circumstance, but if we do not define a fertilised egg as a
human life then it would follow that it is not immoral to take
it. To just argue the potential for life exists is nieve as the
potential for life exists in every fertile human and we dont
see not having sex as immoral because it kills the potential

for life. So now that we see a newly fertilised egg to be as

living as an un-fertilised egg we need to find a point at which
life does begin. I would suggest that life begins when the life
process begin. We do not call a car a car when it is in small
parts. We call it a car as soon as it begins to resemble a car.
The identity is ascribed as soon as some of the characteristics
are there. So, heart, brain, shape, and independent complex
function are surely the way in which we should define as
human life. In much the same way as a car becomes a car
when we see the body forming and the doors and the engine
being built. This definition of the start of life is inevitably
going to be ambiguous and I think it best to (a) leave it up
to biologists and (b) avoid changing natural life processes as
much as morally possible.
In conclusion, I would argue abortion to be wrong in all
but a select few cases. The immorality of the act of ending
a human life greatly outweighs the benefits, in my opinion.
However, it is clear that this is not a black and white issue.
We cannot have a complete agreement because the arguments
are so vague. We cannot define the start of life and we cannot
weigh up the goodness and badness of life.
771 words, 40 mins timed