Marina Basson – Ethical issues in abortion…
- INTRODUCTION
Abortion is a very complex and morally pregnant topic. The constructs of morals and ethics render a clear cut answer virtually impossible.
Understanding that morals and ethics are complex philosophical topics is an integral part of understanding the complexity of the moral debate exploding over abortion.
Ethics, described as an exertion to formulate cyphers and doctrines of moral behaviour (The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, 1995:586), lends to the reader the actual complexity of the very scope of the word in its application to abortion.
The following essay, grounded in medical sociology, will be the writers opinion on the debate supported with relevant literature citations.
- DEFINITION OF ABORTION
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary (2007) abortion is the (deliberate) termination of a pregnancy which is followed by the death of the embryo or foetus.
The essence here is that the pregnancy is terminated before natural birth of the foetus can occur.
- ETHICS AND MORALS WITH RESPECT TO ABORTION
According to Harold & van Niekerk (2011:13-32), ethics and morals pertain to the unique way we conduct our lives and how we live life. This mantel is extended to our consideration of what is right or wrong in the way we conduct ourselves. Ethically, society may deem abortion wrong, yet morally an unmarried pregnant teenager may feel that an abortion is a justified behaviour. In essence, ethics is the value placed on our morals which in turn governs how we behave.
Morality is the obedience of rules which is necessary for the harmonious interaction between the inhabitants of a society. The foundation of morality is motivation called a sense of duty (Wiredu, 1998:306). Even though abortion is opposed in the Hindu religion, the practice of abortion in India is rife (BBC, 2014). This reinforces the complexity of enforcing morality to all persons living in a society. It also underlines the reality that morals are universal to almost all of human societies but that does not make them universal to all of the inhabitants of such human societies (Wiredu, 1998:306).
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