Abortion ethics

Abortion ethics

1. Personhood

   • Personhood is the age at which a foetos becomes a person. At this point the fetos is protected by sanctity of life and to kill it would be the same as killing someone else.
     • John Locoke argued that personhood comes with sentience. Sentience involves:
       • Free Will
       • Able to have relationships with other things
     • Many Christians would argue the age of personhood is synonomous with the age of ensoulment.
       • Augustine had the age of ensoulment at eight days
       • Aquinas said it was 40 days for males and 80 days for females
       • Modern Catholic doctrine has the age of ensoulment at conception.
     • Singer and Tooley believe that a foetos becomes a person at self consciousness
       • Singer would argue self consciousness does not occur till a month after pregnancy.

2. Status of the body

   • Loaned to the woman
     • God has loaned everyone their body and they ought to treat it with respect.
   • Owned by the woman
     • Locke: God has given us rights like the right to body. People and inclined to self-improvement and body ownership is part of this.
       • Self-improvement=right to property. Right to property=body ownership

3. Quality of life

   • Quality of life deals with the pleasure a person feels in life measured against the pain
     • If the pain vastly outweighs the pleasure then the case fro abortion is improved
   • Quality of mother's life takes precedence over quality of foetos' life

4. Sanctity of life

   • Sanctity of life deals with the innate sacredness of the human due to his likeness with God
     • Human life ought never to be taken away except with due reason.
     • God has the right to decide when death occurs, not us
   • It is possible to be an atheistic believer in sanctity of life.
     • The subjective nature of the individual may make him an important part of the objective world.

5. Casuistry

   • Christian ethics
     • All of natural law
     • The divine command theory
       • The bible hints that abortion is wrong. If this is truew who are we to question God?
     • Christian liberalism
       • Agape: sometimes abortion is the most loving thing that you can do.
   • Kantian Ethics
     • Maxim: abortion is okay
       • contradiction of will as the human race would be wiped out.
       • Treats beby as means, but mother as end.
     • Extreme duty
       • Even if it means suffering or death, you have a duty to human preservation
     • Abortion is okay in some situations: hypothetical imperitive, wrong.
   • Utilitarianism
     • Self consciousness=personhood because men can then experiance pain
     • Pleasure and pain are more important than sanctity of life.
     • For Rule: Higer and lower pleasures as reasons for abortion. Higer= want to stop baby suffering from severe disability Lower= don't want to miss a skying trip.
   • Natural Law
     • Eudomonia is achieved when society and the family enjoy the birth of a new baby
       • This joy is broken with abortion.
     • One of the primary precepts is the raising of children
       • One of the secondary precepts, therefore, is that abortion is immoral.
       • A higher, precept, however, is self-preservation, surely when the mother's life is threatened this means that abortion is justifiable?