Argumentative Essay

“Philosopia et Theologia vs. Abortion”

(An Argumentative Essay on the topic “Legalization of Abortion”)

          The issue on abortion is one of the most debatable issues among different groups. It has not only plagued man's thinking for some time now, but has allowed him to give into illogical thinking based on selfish pleasures of lust and leading to the killing of millions of human beings. It is not something new to mankind's existence down through the ages because it is mostly the point of debates for morals and ethics. Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo, resulting in or caused by its death. The term abortion most commonly refers to the induced abortion of a human pregnancy, while spontaneous abortions are usually termed miscarriages (www.wikepedia.com). 

In the history of abortion, such act has been the source of considerable debate, controversy, and activism. An individual's position on the complex ethical, moral, philosophical, biological, and legal issues is often related to his or her value system. The main positions are one that argues in favor of access to abortion and one argues against access to abortion. Opinions of abortion may be described as being a combination of beliefs on its morality, and beliefs on the responsibility, ethical scope, and proper extent of governmental authorities in public policy. Religious ethics also has an influence upon both personal opinion and the greater debate over abortion. Abortion debates, especially pertaining to abortion laws, are often spearheaded by groups advocating one of these two positions. Generally, the former position argues that a human fetus is a human being with a right to live making abortion tantamount to murder. The latter position argues that a woman has certain reproductive rights, especially the choice whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term (Fernandez, 1997). In both public and private debate, arguments presented in favor of or against abortion access focus on either the moral permissibility of an induced abortion, or justification of laws permitting or restricting abortion. Abortion remains a controversial topic regardless of its current legal status -- and young people are by no means immune to the controversy. With a full third of this young generation holding the belief that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances and almost another half wanting to place parameters around when it should be legal, abortion seems to be poised to remain an extremely contentious issue in the years to come.

People hold diverse beliefs concerning the ethics of abortion in general and whether individual women -- faced with specific problems -- should be able to choose to end their pregnancy by having an abortion.

The pro-life movement:

Its members are motivated by a desire to reduce the number of abortions, or to totally eliminate them altogether. At the same time, they reject violence against persons and property as means of reaching their goals. Being pro-life they very strongly oppose assassinations and attempted murder of abortion providers and abortion clinic staff. Roman Catholics form a major section within the pro-life movement. Most individuals in the pro-life movement share a single concept: that human life in the form of an ovum and spermatozoon becomes a human person at the instant of conception. From this principle, it naturally follows that a newly fertilized ovum, a pre-embryo, an embryo, a fetus, and a newborn are all human persons who should be granted the same rights, privileges and protections as a child or adult -- including the right to life.

Common Views on Abortion

While browsing the internet for me to find any supplementary reading regarding the issue of abortion, I was lucky to find an article written by Tom Head citing his views on such topic. According to him, nearly everyone who has a well-defined position on abortion holds views that fall into one of these three categories:

The Right to Life

People who support a federal ban on abortion believe that the federal government has a moral responsibility to protect fetuses and embryos, and that there is no constitutional right to abortion. Most supporters of a federal abortion ban would allow exceptions in cases of rape, incest, or to protect the life of the woman.

The State Decision

Not everyone who opposes abortion rights believes that the federal government should ban all abortions. The most common view among 2008 Republican presidential candidates is that the federal government should have no involvement in the abortion rights debate either way--that state legislatures should be allowed to ban or not ban abortion as they so choose.

The Pro-Choice

Most Americans, and most members of the U.S. Supreme Court, believe that there is a constitutional right to abortion. Under this view, most definitively articulated in the Supreme Court's majority ruling in Roe v. Wade (1973), abortion must remain legal in every state. State laws that ban abortion, or pose an undue burden on women seeking abortions, are unconstitutional under this standard (www.askabout.com).

Views of philosophers on abortion

As a former seminarian who was been inculturated to the study of Philosophy, I got to remember some of the ideas regarding the issue of abortion in some of my Philosophical subjects. As Philosophers I believe that the fundamental problem with respect to justifying abortion is the moral status of the fetus (Feztin, n.d.). There are basically three types of positions: liberal, conservative, and moderate.

The Liberal’s Position

The liberal position is represented by Judith Jarvis Thomson, who assuming a conservative position for the sake of argument shows that such a view does not lead to consequences its supporters assume. Taking the conservative position on the moral status of the fetus, she argues that even granting the assumption, abortion is still justified in a wide range of cases. According to her, which definitely think as an absurd idea, abortion can be justified in practically all cases: a woman has a right to abortion in cases involving rape, in cases where the woman's life is endangered and in cases in which the woman had taken reasonable precautions to avoid becoming pregnant. Obviously the analogy is exaggerated and patently false. Thomson refuses to recognize the special character of the growing fetus and that the fetus is a result of a previous conscious act with predictable outcome. Even in the case of rape, the killing of the fetus is not morally acceptable, though rape itself was morally condemnable. Another liberal position is argued by Mary Ann Warren, who arrives at her conclusions by analysis of the concept of personhood. She claims, for the sake of argument, that if the fetus is a person, then indeed there is a wide range of cases in which abortion is not permitted. But all depends on what a person is.

The Conservative’s Position

The conservative position contends that from conception the fetus has full moral status; hence a serious right to life. The fetus has an absolute right to life from conception (Nooman, 1997).

The Moderate’s Position

The moderate position is represented by Jane English, who argues that the concept of personhood is not sharp enough and decisive to have an impact on a solution to the controversy. She argues that if we assume the conservative view that the fetus is a full-fledged person, then there are still cases where abortion would be justified to prevent serious harm or death to the woman. Similarly, she argues that even if we accept the liberal view that the fetus is not a person, there are still cases, at least in the late months of pregnancy, where abortion would not be justified, because of the fetus resemblance to a "person"(English, 1998).

The deprivation argument

A seminal essay by Don Marquis argues that abortion is wrong because it deprives the embryo of a valuable future. Marquis begins by arguing that what makes it wrong to kill a normal adult human being is the fact that the killing inflicts a terrible harm on the victim. The harm consists in the fact that ‘when I die, I am deprived of all of the value of my future’:^[25] I am deprived of all the valuable ‘experiences, activities, projects, and enjoyments’ that I would otherwise have had.^[26] Thus, if a being has a highly valuable future ahead of it—a ‘future like ours’—then killing that being would be seriously harmful and hence seriously wrong. But then, as a standard embryo does have a highly valuable future, killing it is seriously wrong. And so ‘the overwhelming majority of deliberate abortions are seriously immoral’—‘in the same moral category as killing an innocent adult human being’. A consequence of this argument is that abortion is wrong in all the cases where killing a child or adult with the same sort of future as the embryo would be wrong (Marquis, 1996). So for example, if involuntary euthanasia of patients with a future filled with intense physical pain is morally acceptable, aborting embryos whose future is filled with intense physical pain will also be morally acceptable. But it would not do, for example, to invoke the fact that some embryo's future would involve such things as being raised by an unloving family, since we do not take it to be acceptable to kill a five-year-old just because her future involves being raised by an unloving family. Similarly, killing a child or adult may be permissible in exceptional circumstances such as self-defense or (perhaps) capital punishment; but these are irrelevant to standard abortions. Marquis’s argument has prompted several objections. The contraception objection claims that if Marquis’s argument is correct, then, since sperm and ova (or perhaps a sperm and ovum jointly) have a future like ours, contraception would be as wrong as murder; but as this conclusion is (it is said) absurd—even those who believe contraception is wrong do not believe it is as wrong as murder—the argument must be unsound. One response^[30] is that neither the sperm, nor the egg, nor any particular sperm-egg combination, will ever itself live out a valuable future: what will later have valuable experiences, activities, projects, and enjoyments is a new entity, a new organism, that will come into existence at or near conception; and it is this entity, not the sperm or egg or any sperm-egg combination, that has a future like ours.

My Personal Stand regarding the issue of Abortion

“The dignity of the human person is rooted in his or her creation in the image and likeness of God. Endowed with a spiritual and immortal soul, intelligence and free will, the human person is ordered to God and called in soul and in body to eternal beatitude” (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church). Every human person, born or yet to be born, has its own dignity. It means that, every individual is formed according to the image and likeness of God (Imago Dei). Every human being has his right to live and experience the world as his nature as human created by God. Therefore, in my own view, any means of killing or hindering a person to be born is a total absurd, illogical and immoral act. Hence, I am not and will never be in favor in the legalization of abortion.  To stand with my principles, allow me to cite my ideas with my Philosophical and Theological insights.

First and foremost, metaphysically speaking, when conception occurs a possible being is yet to arrive or to be born. “A possible being is a kind of being that has the possibility of existing predetermined by such Necessary being.” (Feztin, n.d.) Therefore, from the time of conception, “a life is being formed.” Whether that being will come into reality or not, it is still a life that is yet to be perfected, and for this it has its own dignity.  Hence, the act of abortion is immoral in such a way that it will fall into an act of murder by killing such a “possible human being” that is about to be born. Secondly, the act of abortion is morally illegal. We cannot and we can never determine that abortion is morally good because to consider an act as a moral action it must abide with the fact that it must assume simultaneously the goodness of the object, of the end, and of the circumstances. “A chosen object can by itself vitiate an act in its entirety, even if the intention is good” (CCC, #368). Therefore, the assertion of Liberal Philosophers in their justification of abortion is totally absurd and null and void. It is not licit to do evil so that good mat result from it. An evil end corrupts the action, even if the object is good in itself. Circumstances can increase or diminish the responsibility of the one who is acting but they cannot change the moral quality of the acts themselves. “They never make good an act which is in itself evil” (Wotyla, 1993). Lastly, the legalization of abortion will question our rationality as human beings. “Right insight leads to right action (Plato, 1912).” It means a man who knows good will do good. In the case of abortion, I say that “we always have the capability to decide.” We cannot say that we were caught up in a situation in which we cannot go away. No! This is totally absurd. As human beings, we always have this “the will to decide.” We can always choose to do good. We all know that abortion is wrong, then, why should we legalize it if it will question our moral conscience and judgment? Why are we going to put ourselves to something which is wrong knowing the fact that we can decide for something which is good?

In the end I believe that we can always do something. The sexual act is a conscious human activity with several purposes that developed during the evolution of the human psyche. It serves as a bonding between committed individuals (as in a family) which developed as a mechanism to secure the care of the helpless infant. Not every act leads, is intended to or must be intended to lead to pregnancy. Therefore it is morally justified to prevent any unwanted pregnancy by techniques preventing the fertilization of the egg. The sexual act satisfies our psychological needs when it is associated with long-lasting commitment and responsibility. Otherwise it is a dehumanizing exploitation and, though it may provide temporary sensual gratification it can lead to a sense of frustration, dissatisfaction, cynicism and even psychological aberrations and neurotic disturbances (Wotyla, 1993). The traditional form of long-lasting commitment is the institution of marriage, in which involved partners build psychological relationship of mutual support and responsibility. Commitment is necessary also for responsible sexual activity. Since sex, even with utilization of preventive measures, may predictably lead to unwanted pregnancy and development of a new life, responsible sex must take such a possibility into consideration. Therefore every sexual act outside the institution of marriage or similar arrangement, guaranteeing lasting commitment, is morally unacceptable (Fernandez, 1997).