Thesis Statement: The paper will delve into the issue of whether abortion is ethically and morally right or wrong, keeping in mind different perspectives and different stands taken by experts. It is a fact that ethics plays a very important role in the issue and the controversies that surround abortion. According to Judith Davis, most of the opposition to abortion is based on the assumption that a fetus is a human being, and that it is already a person the second it has been conceived within the womb.
However, she asks, would it be correct to call an acorn an oak, even though it may be true that an acorn does eventually develop into a massive oak tree? One may have to agree that a fetus is a person before it is born, but how does this mean that aborting the fetus is ethically wrong; even if one were to agree that a mother cannot take it upon herself what happens to her body when a fetus grows within her.
Judith quotes an interesting example to explain her point: if one were to be kidnapped, and plugged in to a violinist, the violinist being a ‘person’, so that he could live off the other for a specified period, would that justify the kidnapping and the subsequent plugging in of an alien being into one’s own system? Even so, the violinist could have no claim on the other’s body in the future, unless this individual was to offer to lend him his body out of mere kindness. Even if the mother had a condition that would endanger her life were she to carry the fetus to full term, would abortion be impermissible?
(Johnson, Davis, Judith 1971) In Don Marquis’s opinion, most debates on abortion tend to focus on the nature, and on the moral status of the unborn fetus, and this kind of debate is more often than not left unresolved. Therefore, he feels, the debate must focus on a pro life stand, without assuming that the fetus is a ‘person’, and without brining religion into it. This cannot, however, be taken to mean that abortion in itself is completely ‘wrong’; in cases of rape, or to save the mother’s life, it must be permitted.
Marquis points out that both pro-lifers and pro-choicers must consider several other important facts before they can engage in the debate, and therefore, they must examine what makes it wrong in the first place, and go on from there. (Marquis, Don 2003) James Rachels states that ‘active euthanasia is not any worse than passive euthanasia’, by which he means that in situations where passive euthanasia must be allowed, it may not be wise to ban it, the difference lying in the distinction between ‘killing’ and ‘letting something die’.
Letting die in most cases may be worse for the patient, than if her were to be killed directly, especially if he would die anyway, regardless of the treatment he was undergoing. Perhaps, he says, this is because conventional doctrine requires that an individual suffer before he dies, and denying a ‘defective’ newborn treatment that would make him live and the dehydration that would result immediately may be worse than killing him.
(Rachels, James 2007) The American Medical Association made two statements in 1973, saying that the intentional killing of another, also known as mercy killing is not permissible in any form by the AMA, and also that the decision to not prolong the life of a loved one would depend on the parent, or a loved one. The AMA position can be false, because of the fact that it states that killing is morally and ethically worse than allowing to die. Rachels presents two cases to prove his point: Smith stands to inherit if his six year old cousin was to die, and he sneaks in one day and drowns the child.
Jones also stands to inherit if his cousin was to die, and he plans to kill him. However, when he sneaks in to do the job, the child drowns by himself. What then, is the moral distinction between Smith and Jones? Rachels argues that there is none. This can mean that killing and letting die are the same, but in some cases, there is a difference between the two. For example, if one were to be a doctor, with five patients in need of transplants, and one healthy man was to walk in, then would it justify killing the man to avail himself of this man’s organs, so that they could be used to save five people?
While some people feel that it may not be wrong to interfere with nature and the course of events, it is not wrong too, to refrain from interfering. This can mean that it is not wrong to allow those patients needing transplants to die, but that it can be wrong to kill a person who was not about to die at all. Therefore, this can mean that when Jones simply allowed his baby cousin to die, by doing nothing at all, he was RIGHT. Most people think that he was wrong, because he SHOULD have done something to save his cousin.
Philippa Foot argues that one must learn to distinguish between justice and charity, and that when Jones failed to save his cousin, he was acting against charity. While smith committed an injustice by murdering his cousin, Jones did not fulfill his obligation to save his cousin, and both acted badly. In the other example, a doctor would commit injustice if he murdered a healthy man for his organs, even if it were to save five people, but would be commit a greater injustice if he were to let five people die?
Therefore, as Foot states, “Where everyone may have a duty to leave someone alone, it may be that no one has a duty to maintain his life. ” Take for example the Catholic doctrine of ‘double effect,’ which differentiates between the intended and the unintended outcomes of an action, it is important, states Tom Beauchamp, that it is morally permissible to perform the action if the intention is to bring about good, even if the evil is foreseen, and if the good action would bring in good to the world. (Foot, Philippa n. d)
To conclude, it may be said that as far as abortion is concerned, there can be no one single answer to the question of whether it is right or wrong, morally and ethically, to support or to oppose abortion. Abortion can be taken as being wrong as well as right, under different circumstances, and therefore, it is extremely difficult to state the rightness or the wrongness of the issue confidently. The debate continues.
Works Cited
1. Johnson, Davis, Judith “A Defense of Abortion” Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 1, no. 1 (1971) Retrieved July 24, 2008 from http://spot.colorado. edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson. htm 2. Marquis, Don “A non-religious anti-abortion argument” Allen Stairs (1997 to 2003) Retrieved July 24, 2008 from http://stairs. umd. edu/140/marquis. html 3. Rachels, James “On Active and Passive Euthanasia” The Conventional Doctrine (2007) Retrieved July 24, 2008 from http://www. mnstate. edu/gracyk/courses/phil%20115/Rachels_on_Euthanasia. htm 4. Foot, Philippa “Killing and Letting die” Matters of life and death (n. d) Retrieved July 24, 2008 http://www. shef. ac. uk/content/1/c6/04/11/45/KillingAndLettingDie. pdf