Is abortion wrong?

[Emilybaker]

I am not sure whether this book was published in English but a few years ago, the French theorist and sociologist Luc Bolktanski wrote a fascinating book proposing to reflect on the (relatively) modern possiblity of interrupting pregnancies. This was the starting point of a broader reflection on the meaning of giving birth in contemporary western societies. The french title is "La condition foetale" which translates as The Foetal Condition. I think this kind of approach might contribute to the debate. Boltanski tries to give a descriptive account of the normative system that frames the engendering of life. The debate is obsviously a tough one and can get very passionate. So I thought a more fruitful approach might be to use descriptive accounts to fed into prescriptive arguments. What do you think?

[Invictus_88]

I am not sure whether this book was published in English but a few years ago, the French theorist and sociologist Luc Bolktanski wrote a fascinating book proposing to reflect on the (relatively) modern possiblity of interrupting pregnancies. This was the starting point of a broader reflection on the meaning of giving birth in contemporary western societies. The french title is "La condition foetale" which translates as The Foetal Condition. I think this kind of approach might contribute to the debate. Boltanski tries to give a descriptive account of the normative system that frames the engendering of life. The debate is obsviously a tough one and can get very passionate. So I thought a more fruitful approach might be to use descriptive accounts to fed into prescriptive arguments. What do you think?

Uhh, "interrupting" pregnancies? Perhaps explain that one, before getting into "descriptive accounts fed into prescriptive arguments".

[Gulnara]

In ancient times women had as many children as nature allowed, but half of children died before having their own offspring. So nature preserved women who were very or even too fertile. Then people came up with penicillin, many children's lives were saved, now families had a burden of feeding all those mouths. The desire to have less children came about. So now they could massively abort children instead of letting infections take their lives. So much for the progress.

[dparrott]

If you can ever forsee regret in an action don't do it.

[Gulnara]

In modern world one man says " I'll go to war and get all I need ( from other people and children) so I can have all the children my wife can give me", and another says " I oppose the war. I will send my wife to have abortions, so we do not need more than what's needed to raise one child". They are both wrong, because they both destroy children. Did men ever did not do this? I doubt. Today people are frightened by 7 billions population, while in reality those 7 billions are just pitiful crumbs that luckily survived in this world, which keeps being busy destroying children.

[Wooden shoe]

dparrot wrote:
If you can ever forsee regret in an action don't do it.

I would strongly advise against using this policy for your life
Going by this a person would never attempt anything, life is all about taking chances with possible failure and regret, but without taking these chances we are not alive or mights as well not be.


This far this discussion on abortion has been centred on the fetus but this a very limited picture, what about the damage done to the woman either in having the abortion or carrying it to term and placing it for adoption?
What affect is there on the fetus when the woman is totally distraught all the time of her pregnancy and has nothing but negative emotions?
Most here are dealing with this in a clinical way but I have adopted children, and have a spouse who was raped while a teen, and had an abortion, but she only ever told only me, not even her first husband, I was the only one she trusted enough to be able to finally deal with it and help her to come to terms with it.
The first child we adopted [my first wife and I] was from a young woman in her early twenties, and this child grew up normally and is a well adjusted adult.
The second was from a 16 year old with extremely judgmental parents, and the scars on this child were obvious, and he committed suicide at age 28.
The third suffers from fetal alcohol sindrome and gets by, but has a number of addictions today.
Perhaps what I have revealed may make you realize that there are layers of complexity on this issue.
Having helped my daughter find her birthmother I have also been in meeting where adults who were adopted and women who had given a child up for adoption, tried to help each other.

Regards, John.

[Gulnara]

Wooden shoe,( I wish you had different name, or I come across as person who talks to a shoe) I agree with you, that an abortion has an effect on a woman. Even in those cases when woman decides or agrees to have an abortion, she will suffer depression, low self esteem, grief, and also have health effects. Each time an abortion is performed, women's uterus gets scraped, I mean a good layer of the tissue is taken out. The walls become thinner. If woman has several abortions, the walls thin out even more, which can lead to uterus bleeding, inflammations, or rupturing during next pregnancy or delivery, or next abortion, or it will not be able to hold an ovulated egg any more, making woman childless for life.
Just imagine if abortion would take effect on man's penis, making it thinner and thinner, an flabbier each time, until it is vulnerable to negative effects mentioned above. I think the visibility of the penis and its condition would tag such man not desirable for mating. The uterus, however, is hidden inside the body, no partner knows what is its reproductive condition or how many abortion did woman have.

[Wooden shoe]

Hi Gulnara.


You can use my real name anytime you wish, I usually supply it at the bottom of my posts.
After all the handle we give ourselves only allows us to be honest without identification, I would not have been this open about my life otherwise in fear of hurting my loved ones.

Regards, John.

[Smvoser92]

Is abortion right or wrong? Why?

A difficult question to answer for a numerous reasons. We have established by reading other posts on this thread that these reasons vary for different people. It seems that the reason for the pregnancy as well as the abortion seem to influence the answer, and that the circumstances of the parents do to.

However, I believe this is only the recipe for a never ending, circular debate. After all, many would agree that no, or very few people, share the exact same circumstances and hence all may have different reasons to consider an abortion.

To come to somewhat of a conclusion I believe it could be beneficial to analyse how a foetus actually belongs to the human race. However, before I continue this argument, I would just like to state that the result may not necessarily reflect my own thoughts on the topic, but that it is simply a train of thought.

Lets begin by looking at the argument opposing abortion. Many of those labeling abortion as ‘murder’ would probably accept this statement, proposed by Peter Singer:

“It is wrong to kill an innocent human being. A foetus is an innocent human being, and therefore it is wrong to kill a human foetus.”

While this statement seems quite sound and acceptable, there seems to be a way of disputing it, and hence fueling the discussion.

If we accept the second premise, that a foetus is a innocent ‘human being’, then we must be stating one of two things;

Firstly, that the foetus is member of the species of homo-sapiens, and, seeing as we have labeled the foetus as human, we would also be stating that it displays characteristics of being a person.

To rebut this claim, we should look at exactly what it means to be a person. Peter Singer and Immanuel Kant, among others, would argue that this means to be two things; rational, and self conscious. For example, Sheba the chimpanzee from the Chimpanzee Cognition Center, has proven to use and understand the use of english words such as “happy”, “sad”, “scared” and “angry” to depict her feelings and hence present herself to be self conscious. Furthermore, studies at the University of Cambridge used a “trap-tube task” to assess the problem solving skills of rooks:

“To solve the puzzle, the birds had to use a tool to push a piece of food out of the tube and away from the trap. Two rules allowed the birds to obtain the food: learning how the position of the food related to the trap, and understanding how the overall task worked.”
(I tried to post a link, but I'm considered a new user. Search animals problem solving in Google, and use the Discovery Channel link.)

This is where the above argument seems to fail. There is no solid evidence that a foetus displays either of these characteristics. As a matter of fact, one can find more studies proving these qualities in animals, as proved above.

Therefore, as we are no longer able to prove the second premise of this argument, it has to be re-stated:

“It is wrong to kill an innocent being. A foetus is a member of the species homo-sapiens, and therefore it is wrong to kill a human foetus.”

Not only does this new argument sound completely ridiculous, but it also seems to be speciest. How can any person agree that is wrong to kill a being, simply because it is a member of our same species? Because in that case, every other being on this planet deserves to live, and it is hereby wrong to kill them. And I doubt we have 6,994,142,735 vegans living on this planet who adhere to this principle.

[dparrott]

Wooden shoe having an abortion isn't taking a chance. Your statement would be true if you were talking about something thats result wasn't certain.

[Wooden shoe]

Hi dparrot.

Your statement was not addressed to anyone so I understood it to be a general statement.
If a post is meant to be specific it should really be stated.
Even having an abortion or carrying to term and placing the result up for adoption requires taking a chance with the possibility of regret, however still going ahead because of a value judgement.

Regards, John.

[Wowbagger]

I think it's important to separate the issue of "regretting" the decision from the ethical issue of abortion. If abortions are ethically unproblematic, the issue of regret might still be a reason against it from the woman's point of view, but then that would be a reason on a very different level. Also, if one knows one did the ethically right thing, then regret is less likely to arise. Therefore, I think the issue of "guilt" is mainly brought up by people who are against abortion to begin with.

As for the ethical issue:

I think Smvoser92 made some good points. In order to resolve the ethical dilemma, the issue has to be analyzed. Not every being with human DNA has the same ethically relevant abilities. There are huge differences between say an embryo on the one end of the spectrum, and an adult human on the other end. Additionally, we must look at non human animals as well and find criteria that are consistent and not speciesist.

I think Singer's case that killing isn't wrong when a being doesn't have future-related preferences makes sense. But it's not uncontroversial, because that would also mean that infantice wouldn't be intrinsically wrong -- though, for pragmatic reasons, it still makes sense to award a legal right to life to born babies. (Simply because something isn't intrinsically wrong doesn't mean that it can't be wrong almost all the time for indirect reasons.) On the other hand, claiming that all sentient animals have the right to life, also has quite far reaching consequences. Interestingly though, for the matter of veganism, it's quite irrelevant which position one takes, because the suffering caused by the animal industry is itself enough to demand veganism. (The only difference would be that vegans who agree with Singer would allow the use of animals for food in some very hypothetical circumstances where the animals are always perfectly happy -- something that hardly ever is the case in the real world, and that would certainly not be profitable.)

It should also be noted that for many abortions, the foetus isn't even sentient yet, so there really doesn't seem to be any problem. Some people say that "potentiality" is important, but there are deep problems with that. What about potentiality in sperms? And why would it even be important, we don't treat "potential x" the same way as "x".

But how about potentiality in a different sense: "If we prevent the foetus from become a person, there's less happiness in the world." The problem with that is that we would have to apply this to ALL decisions we make. And suddenly, it would be unethical not to have a maximum amount of children, or not to have a happy rat farm in the cellar that generates the maximum happiness per food unit. This seems clearly absurd, one doesn't have an obligation to bring more beings into the world, what matters is that those who are here have it as good as possible. (There are more reasons to rejection this "total" view, but going into details would result in a very long text.)

One might even ask whether there is something wrong with bringing beings into the world. Could it be that abortions are ethically not just neutral, but actually demanded? I think the question should at least be asked. Some philosophers think it is: [I wanted to include a link here, but it doesn't let me. Google "Better never to have been" by David Benatar]

As a related side-observation, I find it very interesting that many people have objections to "donor siblings". Through PID, embryos can be selected that will result in a child whose bone marrow is compatible with the already alive sibling that's suffering from a disease that severely limits her quality of life. The couple would then want a second child in order to save the first child. (But they will obviously want to care for and love the second child too.)
Many people say in this case that there's something wrong and appalling about using the second child "as a means". They think this is a bad reason for bringing a child into existence. But hold on, are there good reasons? Is "we were too lazy to use contraceptives" a good reason? Is "contraceptives didn't work" a good reason? Is "I got raped" a good reason? Abortions are obviously most often performed when pregnancies are unwanted. But what about the other, more "normal" reasons for wanting a child? I don't think the reason "I have a deep longing for a child" is more noble than using a child as a donor sibling. It even seems a bit selfish if one thinks about it. And I think having children for the sake of these very children is a confused way of thinking about the issue, because there are no "not-yet-existing-children" whom we could directly benefit by bringing them into existence.

Even if there's nothing intrinsically wrong with bringing beings into existence, it's also the case that one could do much more good by using one's resources in a utilitarian way than to spend them on one's children.

[Belinda]

Of course abortion is wrong, and horrible under all circumstances. It is unfortunate that we have to choose the lesser of two evils which sometimes is to deliberately abort a foetus. The more developed the foetus is, generally speaking, the more horrible abortion is. What is also pretty bad is that condoms have to be paid for. They should be free to all.

[Shubh]

if you have sex, probably you know that there is the possibility of having a baby even first time. If you are not capable for raising it duly and go for abortion, it is definitely a crime. Prevention at the time of sex is the duty of both the partners.

[Gulnara]

Abortion is the same violation of women's body, as female circumcision. Only because pain killers are used, does not make it less drastic physical intrusion upon healthy person. I mean abortion is performed not because fetus is cancer, same as circumcising young girls is performed quite for the opposite reason than being unhealthy, it is done because girls have healthy sexual organs, capable of giving them sexual pleasures.
Considering abortion to be an innocent invasion of female reproductive organs is misconception. Another misconception that people use to support abortion is difference between fetus and born person, one being considered hardly human, and another being considered human even though it is physically, behaviorally is totally different from what adult persons ( who makes rules and laws about abortions) is. Some argue that while fetus is small enough to not feel pain, abortion is OK. Wrong. If baby is born without sense of pain, should murdering it be legal then? I doubt that. Such children live and have all the human rights.
To some people it somehow makes difference, if baby is born and visible, or if it is still hidden by female body. There are many organs inside female body, hidden inside it, we do not go cutting them for no reason, just because they are invisible on the outside. Fetus, while inside the uterus, is connected to it, fetus is part of female body, then why doctors go cutting it out?
Then others say, OK, at conception baby becomes human, so it should not be aborted. I am all for that. Conception is an important part in an ongoing process of human life. Only I think that even before conception, while future baby's potential for life is located in a semen and an egg of different persons, it is important not to purposefully intrude, or prevent the conceiving of a baby. This is where contraception becomes the same weapon, as abortion is. Other ways and methods to purposefully live people or self childless belong to the same category of genocide weapons: celibacy, preventing sexual encounters, preventing marriage, using contraceptives, tying up tubes or doing vasectomy, killing people who did not get chance to have a child , or sending childless youth to war, etc.etc.