Ethics and Virtue Ethics on Abortion

Even though the religious feel that life begins at conception, many others see it as not beginning until birth. With this belief in mind, deontology dictates that the morally correct decision is to give birth, while the morally wrong decision being to abort.

Our founding fathers made these rights and laws in order to defend the helpless and protect those who could not protect themselves. What better candidate to these rights than an unborn child, a fetus, a living organism that will eventually become a human, but at this time, has no voice? Because the most controversial aspect of abortion is the question of when does life truly begin, and at what point does the fetus become human?

This topic has sparked so many debates and has literally spilt the country in two. There is quite a remarkable amount of information available about women who have had abortions, perhaps as no other moral action is as well documented as abortion is. It is also well documented that some women come to regret their abortions and suffer massive trauma afterwards. Abortion not only affects a woman's moral character, but studies also show that the potential fathers also suffer harm to their moral characters with their significant others choice to have an abortion.

My stand and belief on abortion is a strong choice, I am against the decision of abortion. Having suffered an miscarriage at 14 weeks along, my child was too developed to be passed naturally through my body, and I had to have a D&C. "A D&C is a medical procedure in which the uterine cervix is dilated and a curette is inserted into the uterus to scrape away the endometruim (lining of the uterus) as for the diagnosis or treatment of abnormal bleeding or for surgical abortion during the early part of the second trimester of pregnancy." (Medical Merriam-Webster)

When I found out that a D&C was used in abortions, I was so devastated. I was already very heartbroken because I had lost my first child. When I found out this procedure was used in abortions, I felt like I had murdered my child, although my child had already passed. I was very traumatized because of the miscarriage and the type of surgery I had was a procedure used in abortions.

From a virtue ethic standpoint, their only concern would be whether or not the

abortion is for the greater good. Both these theories are concerned with providing a

decision-making procedure for determining what is right and wrong.

If a woman is raped, and she becomes pregnant, does she not have the right to make the choice to have an abortion? When every day that passes, she is carrying a child that came of a horrific attack on her body, should she have to give this fetus the choice of life?

The deontology theory states that she should, that the fetus should be brought into this world because that child had no hand in what occurred to the mother.

What if a woman is pregnant, and the pregnancy threatens her very life if she chooses to carry the child to full term? Deontologist would be hard pressed to answer that question, since in this situation, there are two lives hanging in the balance. The woman would have to make to choice to have her child and die, or to have an abortion and try again once the danger had passed for her to conceive and carry full term.

Virtue ethics receives far more bitter and hostile criticism than other forms of ethical theory, and this seems to be because it challenges assumptions which supposedly have grounded ethics, and is rightly perceived to be a radical and unsettling force.

Having an abortion is taking away a life, the most sacred thing in thing in life.

According to Laurie Shrage, moral and legal defenses of abortion appeal to a liberty right.

1- the right to be free from social intimidation, such as procreation

2- the freedom to follow one's conscience on disputable moral matters

3- freedom from involuntary servitude

4- freedom from bodily invasion and injury

(Laurie Sharage, 2001)

Using the liberty rights that Laurie Sharage has mentioned. abortion is a very debatable using those four defenses. I believe that a fetus is a person, for there is a heart beat before the child has began to develop, to me, that is undoubtedly a life. When you go to the Doctor after eight weeks, you hear a heartbeat. Some people will argue that this is proof that the fetus is not alive at this point, because you can't hear a heartbeat before 2 months of pregnancy. I disagree, because human life begins before conception. Sperm and eggs are living cells within a human, which, during fertilization, the baby's sex, hair and eye color are being created. An interesting fact that I read in an article by , if you remove a human skin cell and secure it in a libratory, it will continue to live and divide to produce a large mass of cells. True, that mass of cells will not create itself into a whole organism from where is it was taken from, but the fact is that it will grow. (Maureen L. Condic, 2008) The cells will instinctively create, and while it won't create a human, it creates more cells, it's a living thing. If this can happen outside of the body, why isn't a fetus that is created within a living body, not considered a alive?

Going back to the liberty rights that Laurie Shrage has suggested, number one (the right to be free from social intimidation, such as procreation) is saying that by social pressure and debate, a fetus is not a living person; and their choice to let the fetus develop into a human being is justified because at conception, the fetus is not human.

Yet science has documented many articles that give step by step insight the exact development of those cells. Going back again to the fact that an egg and sperm is living cells, it then creates a living being. The liberty right is suggesting that having the choice to remove those living cells from their being, is securing their fourth liberty right- the freedom from bodily invasion and injury.

I am very torn between the choice of rape with abortions. I am not sure how I feel having to carry a child that came of a sexual attack. I can say that I would want to, because the child that I am carrying had no choice in how he or she was convieved, but I think that the choice would be hard to make if it happened to me. As it stands, now, I would say that I would carry the fetus to full term and put the child up for adoption.

But, actually being in those shoes, I am