MORALITY OF

ABORTION
• Abortion is the expulsion of the fetus from the
womb before it is viable, that is, before it can
live outside the mother.
• about induced abortion, which is voluntarily
• the death of the fetus is intended as end or as
means, it is direct killing
 Applying the Principle of Double Effect
• principle of double effect is of no value in cases of direct
abortion.
• different situation if death of an unborn child is only indirect
• of indirect abortion arises when the mother has serious
illness (pregnancy itself is not an illness but a natural
condition)
• The fetus is not directly attacked, and its death, even if
certain to follow, is incidental and unavoidable by-product of
a legitimate act.
 The More Recent Discussion

• When a woman and a physician are confronted with a

fetus that is developing either without all or a major
part of the brain (anencephaly)
 Some Distinctions and Arguments, Pro and
Con
A. Arguments in favor of abortion:
• To speak of abortion as murder is nonsense because the human fetus is
not a person
• not yet arrived at the moral status of full personhood.
• it belongs to the mother and may be removed from the mother’s body as
undesirable excrescence
• We have no solid evidence as to the moment when the fetus receives a
human soul (zygotes) We can therefore act on the probability that the
fetus is not a person and for good reason terminate the pregnancy.
• Only an actual person has rights, including the right to life. (potential
person)
• As a consequence, its life may be terminated for a good reason without
any breach of good morals.
• Even if the fetus be granted a right to life, in any collision of rights the
fetus’ right yields to that of the mother.
• To argue that the fetus ought to be protected at the expense of the
mother is for now at least, absurd. (dependent to the mother)
• fetus can be considered an unjust aggressor against the physical or
mental health of the mother. (therapeutic abortion), and the only
defense is the elimination of the cause.
• mother and child will certainly die unless the fetus is aborted. (to let both
die rather than save one, while a life is at stake, necessity knows no law).
• No unwanted child should be brought into this world (mother and father
who conceived it and especially the mother who is bearing it, have first
claim on evaluating the fetus),
• They produced it; it is theirs; they do not love it. The fetus, therefore,
having no value, may be terminated.
• No pregnant woman who wants an abortion should be denied one.
(dependent on the discretion of the pregnant woman, for a woman has
the right to determine her own life.) the matter should be left to the
pregnant woman
• because of the callousness of many men, the freedom choose an
abortion as the final means of preventing unwanted children.
• The population must be controlled. This is for the greater good, the very
survival of the human race. (Rather than forbid abortions we should
promote them, we may have to make them compulsory)
 Anti-Abortionists
• The antiabortionists holds that from the moment of
conception all the way to adulthood the person is
intrinsically unique in its own right, an end is him or
herself, and has the same right to life as any other person.
• Personhood does not depend either on society or on
developmental biology for its moral status. The very
existence of the person entails its moral status and its
right to life.