Abortion is a highly controversial topics, everyone has an opinion on it, whether you are pro life, pro-choice, or even Judis

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Sana Gul

Examine and comment on a philosophical approach to the moral and religious issues raised by the practice of abortion.

Abortion is a highly controversial topic, everyone has an opinion on it, whether you are pro life, pro-choice, or even Judis Jarvis Thompson. Abortion is very controversial because opinions have changed some women value their career more than having a child, or they feel sex is more about enjoyment rather than passing on the family genes, but there are still people that feel that a foetus is a potential life and killing it is just the same as murder. Therefore having an abortion is the same as murder.         

If we look at the moral perspectives on abortion you have two very different ends of the scale. One being pro life where the baby’s life is valued and pro choice, where the women’s decision is valued for whatever reason she chooses to have an abortion.

If we look at pro life views we know that they are opposed to the deliberate ending of any innocent’s life from the first moment of its existence, conception. It is scientifically established that from the moment of conception, when a single-cell embryo is created, a new human being and or organism exists, a potential life has been created. To terminate the life of this individual is fundamentally unjust and discriminatory.

To deprive an entity of his/her life, on the basis of qualities such as size or level of development is to contend that it is these qualities which give the entity the right to life.

Pro life believers take the position that every human being has an inherent right to life, by virtue of being human: no-one has the right to deliberately bring about the death of an innocent human being. If you were to kill a child it would be considered murder, they believe that killing a foetus is the exact same thing, as a foetus is just the beginning of a child. If you say that it is only a potential life then you can say that a child is only a potential adult you don’t know if it’s going to survive so there is no point of bringing it up, because a child would rely on you just as much as foetus relies on the mother.

Eugenics is also another part of abortion; eugenics is the practice of aborting babies with a disability. Statistically in 2003 out of a total of 190,660 abortions performed in England and Wales, 1,941 were for suspected handicap. Pro life believe that every life is valuable whether or not the child has a disability, they also believe that we are sending a terrible message out to our children if people go around exterminating pre born babies as ‘sub standard’. They also argue that if this practice is also ethical and just then why do we see any right in giving disabled adults and children any rights at all why don’t we just do what Hitler did and kill the disabled; why even stop there let’s just kill everyone that we don’t want.

Rape, now there are not any selfish reasons that a woman can hide behind she didn’t want this pregnancy or to be violated as she had. Abortion is often recommended in cases of rape, but abortion doesn’t undo the problem your just fighting fire with fire and making more of a mess as abortion doesn’t undo the rape it just further complicates the situation as the foetus isn’t the victim it is just an ‘accident’ an act of sloppiness by the attacker. Putting aside the trauma of an innocent child being killed for its father crime, there is also evidence that abortion only deepens the trauma of the rape victim.

Also if we look at the rape scientifically we can see that biologically it doesn’t matter if the child was created lovingly or through hurt it was still created and still is a child, are we saying that innocent children that have been conceived by rape have no right to life? The victim of the rape will still need help even if she aborts the child and to say that having an abortion “lessens the impact” is a misguided and hurtful quote because the victim will always know what has happened. Two wrongs do not make a right.

If we look at when a women’s life is put in danger due to the pregnancy, very rarely the baby’s death is brought about indirectly, for example, as a side effect of medical treatment to save the life of the mother, such as removal of a cancerous womb, or a damaged fallopian tube in the case of ectopic pregnancy. This is very sad, but it is not an abortion. It is not the deliberate ending of a life. It has never been illegal. In other, still rare, cases, doctors may be able to save mother and baby by letting the pregnancy continue until the baby can survive outside the womb.

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Abortion is also harmful to the woman whether it because of a backstreet abortion or because of the psychological trauma that the woman goes through after having had an abortion.

Abortions are very damaging to the psyche, as the lack of information and rush of an abortion can have an effect on a woman. They can also be very damaging to the woman’s health, if done not properly there is a chance that a woman may not be able to conceive again and if done properly the results can be devastating emotionally.

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