The complexity of the abortion controversy involves varied cultural, moral, religious, historical and ethical meanings that are specific to legislative localities. The abortion debate is a reflection of the transition of abortion as a sole option for fertility regulation into the fore of women rights and the fundamental rights of life coupled to the accompanying struggles of law, gender roles, policy making systems and a host of social factors.
The interplay and the interrelationships of these facets of influences create a situation where the abortion debate has fuel the struggle between the variances that facilitated the comprehension of cross-national similarities as well as the differences in the reconstruction of abortion and the conflicts that surround it. With the increasing awareness of foetal development; antenatal screening; neonatal intensive care and the growth of disability rights advocacy, the increasing number of abortions in cases where the foetus has been diagnosed with Down’s syndrome elicits a critical ethical analysis.
From the age old debates about the fundamental rights of women to choose abortion and the right of life of the foetus, a new ethics of abortion has sprouted and so are the variety of factors that challenge the ethicality of abortion of foetuses with genetic mental retardation and developmental disabilities(Wyatt 2000). As concerns medical research and technologies, it is widely accepted that these technologies can only meet the ethical standards set if they provide some level of therapeutic or preventive benefits to patients with specific needs.
Amniocentesis a technology has been through many controversies with regard to its purpose in the medical practice. One such controversy is in the use of amniocentesis in preventing harm to the mother through selective abortions of diseased foetuses. Recent concerns have been on the use of amniocentesis as a primary practice whose end result is abortion(Monagle & Thomasma 2004).
Selective abortion which directly emanates from amniocentesis have been lauded on one hand as being in congruent to medical ethics as it prevents human suffering while on the other, critics posit that it is an ethically inappropriate practice that violates the personhood status of the foetus, denies him/her the moral rights to life as well as the equal protection that the foetus may possess as a vulnerable person.
Issues in question include the pain and suffering of these individuals, the social burden, family burden, quality of life, joy and happiness as well as the ethical congruence of the medical practice of selective abortion to the overall debate of the ethics of abortion.