The Moral Issue of Abortion - Essay Example

Abortion (or Pro Life) Introduction: Abortion is traditionally considered as an inhuman and immoral process that is essentially related to failure of a woman to provide social recognition to the new life that she has conceived, most of the time, as it is regarded that such action is resulted due to illegitimate relationship of a woman or reckless use of her capacity to enjoy sexual pleasures. Despite the fact that on several occasions, due to different forms of physical ailments a woman is compelled to take the extremely tough decision to provide permission to a physician of being aborted, both from sociological and general psychological perspectives, however, an act of abortion is considered immoral and such consideration often tend to condemn women for their consent to abortion as a criminal act. According to the general humanist approach, killing or destruction of life is considered as the most heinous form of crime, which should strictly be condemned by communal and legal efforts. Keeping in accordance with the same approach, killing of an unborn life through abortion has received a great deal of criticism from people in different times at various parts of the world. It is interesting to observe that most of such criticisms are based on the basic principles of morality and ethics. At the same time, the social stature of women in a patriarchal society, which is derogatory and also is held responsible for resulting in different forms of immorality, also has received a dimension of interpretation. The modern feminist and humanist approaches, compared to the earlier times have adopted quite a liberal attitude towards abortion by emphasizing on the fact that women often consent to the execution of the inhuman process in order to retain their position and conventional social dignity, as they are mere subjects of oppression in the hands of patriarchal society. However, despite the fact that there is certain truth behind such observation, but, keeping a close watch over recent times and analyzing the actuality behind acts of abortion, it will not be an exaggeration if it is argued that using those feminist and humanist approaches as shields of sympathy, women often consent to abortion and try to cover the act of moral wrong under pretention that due to social and cultural oppression they actually have been bound to confine themselves under such situation of performing immortal acts. Thesis Statement: The issue of abortion, within its scope encompasses a twofold problem, namely, the plight of women, confined within the hands of patriarchal social structure only to be regarded as essentially immoral and condemnation of abortion from universal humanist approach as a criminal or inhuman act. Even after keeping in mind the possible forms of interpretation regarding obligation of women, consenting to abortion on certain occasions, it cannot be justified that killing of an unborn life needs to be supported; rather it is more important to come up with possible solutions that would discourage women to indulge in this act of immortality and consequently provide them with sufficient strength to fight for the noble reason to protect life. Abortion: Definition and Basic Information While the society defines abortion from moral and legal perspectives, technically “Abortion may be defined as the loss of a pregnancy before the fetus or fetuses are potentially capable of life independent of the mother” (Potts, Diggory, and Peel 1). Defining the process of abortion, from legal perspective, both in US and Britain, has received a very specific and precise scope as it has been defined as act to initiate loss of pregnancy prior to the “twenty-eighth week of menstrual age” (Potts, Diggory, and Peel 1). Scholars are of opinion that an act of abortion is not an isolated or an entirely individual decision making process; rather it encompasses within its scope medical, social and demographical traits. In the modern social context, while abortion is considered as a method of birth control, historical evidences have shown that it takes time for an individual to learn the methods of birth control and fuse it accordingly with cultural traits of the society. The basic argument of supporters of abortion as a moral wrong lies in this context that it cannot said to be justified that modern, civilized observation would approve an immoral process like abortion, which actually is killing, as a legitimate method of birth control. Supporters of the observation have not only identified the immorality behind abortion as pervasive moral crisis but at the same time they also have emphasized on the fact that under all situations, abortion should be restricted. While a girl child, as an individual, heads towards her both physical and psychological maturity, she encounters different types of situations, such as the basic human temptation to enjoy sexual proximity with opposite gender, the challenge to restrain temptations so that her status of social chastity is not violated and search for womanhood by experiencing different traits of her life. However, on frequent occasions, due to her inadequate experience of life, it becomes hard for a woman to find a harmony between all these aspects and she ends up in encountering the one of the most crucial challenges of her life. Unfortunately, while the problem of unwanted pregnancy occurs, on most of the occasions, a woman is deprived of all forms of support and identified as solely responsible for the “guilt” she has committed. Under such situation the moral wrong of society becomes more evident as we see rather than supporting the woman, society actually compels her to commit further acts of crime. Reluctance of society to improve situation of women becomes more evident as we see that in several nations no such effective measures have been taken to educate women or provide them with a scope for liberalization so that they can avoid the incidents of unwanted pregnancy (Potts, Diggory, and Peel 1-4). Thus, from the pro-life perspective, it is more important to teach common people of alternatives that could stop them from killing of unborn lives. Abortion: A Historical Evaluation A major reason that the issue of abortion has incited such a great deal of debate as it encapsulates a humanitarian dilemma that which life needs to be provided with higher importance: whether the life or an unborn or life of the mother. While abortion essentially means destruction of a life that has not received a physical manifestation, however, apart from being just a method of fertility control, abortion has several humanist sides that can be interpreted under light of humanist ethics. If such a strong possibility can be identified that a woman, suffering from such a disease that after giving birth to a child, her life could have been in danger or giving birth to the child may lead to his permanent physical or psychological abnormality, then abortion can be ethically supported. Additionally, malicious intent of males often take brutal shapes, such as, physical molestation or rape that result in unwanted pregnancy among women and under such circumstances, abortion is one of the most effective means to save life of the victim. If a mother realizes that giving birth to a child can result in his lack of grooming resulting from economic constraints, then such decision to abort the child needs also to be respected as such decision making has been generated from utter humanistic approach (Naden 10). It is not that these reasons were unidentified since early times of human civilization. Historical evidences show that in Greek and Roman civilizations, under necessary situations, termination of pregnancy was socially permitted. Theological documents from Jewish and Christian religious disciplines have also argued in favor of such abortion process. However, since the medieval times, in England, situation started to derogate for women in terms of making decision to terminate pregnancy and both religious-social orthodoxy is mainly responsible for such decline. The traits of English Law were also transferred among legal system of Colonial America and it resulted in public condemnation of abortion “both by the legal authorities and by the church” (Naden 12). With the progress of time, though a lot of changes occurred in the field of medical science but conventional approach towards abortion was highly retained. During 1800s, several of the American States condemned abortion as a criminal act and except for the purpose of saving life of a woman abortion was entirely banned in the United States (Naden 12). However, though it was widely argued that abortion needs to be banned keeping in mind heath of women, but according to scholarly references, in reality, protecting lives of women was considered a matter of secondary importance, whereas people were more concerned about protecting “foetal life” with legal empowerment (Naden 12). It is interesting to see that despite abortion has been condemned both under legal and medical observation, however, the issue of quintessential moral wrong has never been emphasized accordingly. Prior to the issues of universal ethics and principles of humanism, social orthodoxy and religious supremacy have been provided with more attention. Today, people are of opinion that women should be provided with adequate opportunity to enjoy their decision making in the context of abortion (Narayan 155) but adequate initiatives are still lacking to represent a strong argument in support of the fact that they actually are committing an act of tremendous moral wrong from the pro-life perspective. The issue of abortion has received constitutional support and in order to ensure liberty of women, the 14th constitutional Amendment has also been executed (Naden 26). While there are certain directions of protesting against performance of the inhuman process, it is unfortunate to see that none of those approaches actually protest from the pro-life philosophical perspective that abortion is a moral wrong; rather they focus on the issue of discouraging abortion as it has received the status of a social taboo, which needs to be rejected (Zoja 11). Under shadow of representing abortion as an essentially evil act, people also have ignored to identify the ethical or humanist aspects in an act of abortion. However, at the same time, it is also necessary to ensure that abortion should not be practiced with such randomness so that it violates the provisions of rights to life. It also needs to be considered whether a person is using her freedom only with the purpose of harming rights of an unborn child. In this context application of legal provisions such as Offences Against the Person Act (1861) become important. Under this law, if abortion is encouraged without any benevolent purpose, such as, to save life of the mother or to avoid complication for the unborn child, then such act will be considered criminal and the practitioner should be punished. The 1979 Abortion Law of France also protects rights of an unborn almost in the same line (Nations Unies. Division de la population 2-5). Conclusion: While concluding it can be said that abortion is essentially a moral wrong, which needs to be realized by common people and it also has been taken by the pro-life activists as the main focus of presenting their argument. Killing of a life, despite the fact that it is unborn, cannot be supported under any circumstance and such an act always amounts to the crime of equal magnitude as that of homicide. Providing more importance on the pro-life perspective also can be highly effective in preventing such killing of lives that are caused entirely with malevolent purpose and does not contain any sympathy or regret towards the life, which has been assassinated. Works Cited Diggory, Peter. Peel, John. and Potts, Malcolm. Abortion. Cambridge: CUP Archive. 1977. Naden, Corinne J. Abortion. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish. 2007. Narayan. Uma. ““Male-Order” Brides: Immigrant Women, Domestic Violence, and Immigration Law”. Feminist ethics and social policy. Pennsylvania: Indiana University Press. 1997. Nations Unies. Division de la population. Abortion policies: a global review, Volume 3. Pennsylvania: United Nations Publications. 2002. Zoja, Eva Pattis. Abortion: loss and renewal in the search for identity. London: Routledge. 1997. Read More