Abortion are unethical and should be iilegal - Essay Example

Since the law enforces what is good for the members of society, would it be proper to declare it illegal. However, different societies have different ethical and moral values. States also have different laws on abortion. Furthermore, different theoretical frameworks have their own arguments that support or attack abortion. Jones et al. (6-16) mentioned in “Abortion in the United States: Incidence and Access to Services” that in the US, 1.21 million abortions occurred in 2005, 100,000 less than in 2000 (Incidence par. 3). The same paper stated that 45 million legal abortions occurred from 1973 to 2005 (par. 3). Jones, Darroch and Henshaw (226-235 qtd. in par. 4) reported that around 2 percent of women from 15 to 44 years old underwent abortion every year and that 47 percent had a minimum of one abortion previously.

Using the data from countries where abortion is legal (2003 national data) and WHO estimates from countries where it is illegal, the study revealed that around 20 million unsafe abortions occurred every year with 67,000 deaths resulting from it (Rosenthal pars. 10-11). It was said that when abortion was a criminal act from the later part of 1800 to 1973, millions of women underwent the procedure with around 15,000 deaths annually based on a 1932 study (When Abortion pars. 7-8). Ethics can be understood in two viewpoints: a) it refers to the established “standards of right and wrong” that set out the “rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness,” etc., and b) as a field of study on the standards of ethics (Velasquez pars. 8-9). Viewing abortion from utilitarianism perspective, abortion is ethical as it provides medical and social health benefits that gives happiness to the greatest number of people (Rice pars. 1-2). This approach does not consider the fetus as an individual that loses happiness (have no cognition) but rather considers the happiness of the whole society (par. 11). Abortion of fetus more than 24