ethics on abortion essay

Ethics and Morality

Ethics and abortion, two opposing arguments on the morality of abortion..

Posted June 7, 2019 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

Abortion is, once again, center stage in our political debates. According to the Guttmacher Institute, over 350 pieces of legislation restricting abortion have been introduced. Ten states have signed bans of some sort, but these are all being challenged. None of these, including "heartbeat" laws, are currently in effect. 1

Much has been written about abortion from a philosophical perspective. Here, I'd like to summarize what I believe to be the best argument on each side of the abortion debate. To be clear, I'm not advocating either position here; I'm simply trying to bring some clarity to the issues. The focus of these arguments is on the morality of abortion, not its constitutional or legal status. This is important. One might believe, as many do, that at least some abortions are immoral but that the law should not restrict choice in this realm of life. Others, of course, argue that abortion is immoral and should be illegal in most or all cases.

"Personhood"

Personhood refers to the moral status of an entity. If an entity is a person , in this particular sense, it has full moral status . A person, then, has rights , and we have obligations to that person. This includes the right to life. Both of the arguments I summarize here focus on the question of whether or not the fetus is a person, or whether or not it is the type of entity that has the right to life. This is an important aspect to focus on, because what a thing is determines how we should treat it, morally speaking. For example, if I break a leg off of a table, I haven't done anything wrong. But if I break a puppy's leg, I surely have done something wrong. I have obligations to the puppy, given what kind of creature it is, that I don't have to a table, or any other inanimate object. The issue, then, is what kind of thing a fetus is, and what that entails for how we ought to treat it.

A Pro-Choice Argument

I believe that the best type of pro-choice argument focuses on the personhood of the fetus. Mary Ann Warren has argued that fetuses are not persons; they do not have the right to life. 2 Therefore, abortion is morally permissible throughout the entire pregnancy . To see why, Warren argues that persons have the following traits:

• Consciousness: awareness of oneself, the external world, the ability to feel pain.
• Reasoning: a developed ability to solve fairly complex problems.
• Ability to communicate: on a variety of topics, with some depth.
• Self-motivated activity: ability to choose what to do (or not to do) in a way that is not determined by genetics or the environment .
• Self-concept : see themselves as _____; e.g. Kenyan, female, athlete , Muslim, Christian, atheist, etc.

The key point for Warren is that fetuses do not have any of these traits. Therefore, they are not persons. They do not have a right to life, and abortion is morally permissible. You and I do have these traits, therefore we are persons. We do have rights, including the right to life.

One problem with this argument is that we now know that fetuses are conscious at roughly the midpoint of a pregnancy, given the development timeline of fetal brain activity. Given this, some have modified Warren's argument so that it only applies to the first half of a pregnancy. This still covers the vast majority of abortions that occur in the United States, however.

A Pro-Life Argument

The following pro-life argument shares the same approach, focusing on the personhood of the fetus. However, this argument contends that fetuses are persons because in an important sense they possess all of the traits Warren lists. 3

At first glance, this sounds ridiculous. At 12 weeks, for example, fetuses are not able to engage in reasoning, they don't have a self-concept, nor are they conscious. In fact, they don't possess any of these traits.

Or do they?

In one sense, they do. To see how, consider an important distinction, the distinction between latent capacities vs. actualized capacities. Right now, I have the actualized capacity to communicate in English about the ethics of abortion. I'm demonstrating that capacity right now. I do not, however, have the actualized capacity to communicate in Spanish on this issue. I do, however, have the latent capacity to do so. If I studied Spanish, practiced it with others, or even lived in a Spanish-speaking nation for a while, I would likely be able to do so. The latent capacity I have now to communicate in Spanish would become actualized.

Here is the key point for this argument: Given the type of entities that human fetuses are, they have all of the traits of persons laid out by Mary Anne Warren. They do not possess these traits in their actualized form. But they have them in their latent form, because of their human nature. Proponents of this argument claim that possessing the traits of personhood, in their latent form, is sufficient for being a person, for having full moral status, including the right to life. They say that fetuses are not potential persons, but persons with potential. In contrast to this, Warren and others maintain that the capacities must be actualized before one is person.

The Abortion Debate

There is much confusion in the abortion debate. The existence of a heartbeat is not enough, on its own, to confer a right to life. On this, I believe many pro-lifers are mistaken. But on the pro-choice side, is it ethical to abort fetuses as a way to select the gender of one's child, for instance?

We should not focus solely on the fetus, of course, but also on the interests of the mother, father, and society as a whole. Many believe that in order to achieve this goal, we need to provide much greater support to women who may want to give birth and raise their children, but choose not to for financial, psychological, health, or relationship reasons; that adoption should be much less expensive, so that it is a live option for more qualified parents; and that quality health care should be accessible to all.

I fear , however, that one thing that gets lost in all of the dialogue, debate, and rhetoric surrounding the abortion issue is the nature of the human fetus. This is certainly not the only issue. But it is crucial to determining the morality of abortion, one way or the other. People on both sides of the debate would do well to build their views with this in mind.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/state-abortion-bans-2019-signed-effect/story?id=63172532

Mary Ann Warren, "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion," originally in Monist 57:1 (1973), pp. 43-61. Widely anthologized.

This is a synthesis of several pro-life arguments. For more, see the work of Robert George and Francis Beckwith on these issues.

Michael W. Austin, Ph.D. , is a professor of philosophy at Eastern Kentucky University.

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The papers included in this supplement were first given at a meeting, The New Ethics of Abortion, organised by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) in Senate House at the University of London on 21 February 2000.

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service is primarily a provider of abortion services. Each year, the organisation provides almost 50,000 abortions, more than half of which are performed on behalf of the National Health Service (NHS), which means they are free of charge to women. We are also a major source of comment to the media on issues relating to unwanted pregnancy and so we frequently face the challenge of debating those who insist that abortion is morally wrong and medically unjustifiable.

The New Ethics of Abortion was organised to provide a forum in which pro-choice and anti-choice perspectives could be discussed in an atmosphere of mutual respect. We are aware that advances in technology and changed perspectives on rights—of men, of children, of the fetus, of the disabled—can have an impact on the abortion debate. We are aware that these issues are hotly contested by both those who support and those who oppose the liberal provision of abortion, and we feel that as providers of abortion care to so many women we have an important part to play. The staff at BPAS consultation centres and clinics understand abortion from the perspective of women—not women campaigners (who have their own political agenda)—but women with problem pregnancies in need of abortion care. This is a perspective that is often pushed aside when abortion is regarded as an abstract political or ethical issue.

Abortion has become accepted as a part of British life. Since the 1967 Abortion Act became law in April 1968 more than five million women have benefited from safe, legal abortion in Britain. …

Joan Greenwood, OBE, is Chairman of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, London. BPAS would like to extend grateful thanks to Professor David B Morton, Head of the Centre for Biomedical Ethics, Division of Primary Care, Public and Occupational Health, at the University of Birmingham for his invaluable help in editing the papers included in this supplement.

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Ross Douthat

What is pro-life realism.

By Ross Douthat

Opinion Columnist

“We are all incrementalists now.” So writes Ryan Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, speaking on behalf of the anti-abortion movement in a new essay for First Things on pro-life politics after Dobbs.

That “all” might be an exaggeration, but Anderson is correct that a series of setbacks for abortion opponents — losing big in red-state referendums, losing ground in the public polling, losing some crucial pro-life language in the Republican platform — are forcing the anti-abortion movement toward gradualism and compromise, and creating a substantial market for what National Review’s Michael Brendan Dougherty calls pro-life “realism.”

The difficulty is that nobody can yet fully agree on what incrementalism means. Perhaps, as many Donald Trump supporters argue, it requires uncomplainingly accepting Trump’s pro-choice pivot as the price of protecting pro-life interests against an increasingly pro-abortion Democratic Party. Perhaps, as my colleague David French suggests , it means the opposite: Doing whatever it takes to scrub the Trumpian taint off the cause of defending unborn human life, even to the point of voting for Kamala Harris in November.

You can hear me and French debate in last week’s installment of our Matter of Opinion podcast, in which I expressed some strong skepticism that the pro-life cause will gain more than it loses in a Harris-Walz administration.

But disagreeing with my colleague about the implications of a Harris victory doesn’t yield any certainty about alternative modes of incrementalism. Should pro-lifers fight hard to make sure that Trump’s compromising spirit doesn’t take hold among other candidates and officeholders, as Ryan Anderson argues in First Things? Or should they recognize, as Matthew Lee Anderson suggests in The Dispatch, that Trump has sound political instincts and that his leave-it-to-the-states stance is a “politically palatable” position that the pro-life movement should have “proactively embraced”?

Should pro-lifers make a big effort, as Marvin Olasky argues , to be compromising and understanding in hard cases and more focused on social and economic policies that make it easier to choose life? Or, as Bethel McGrew argues , should they depoliticize in certain respects, placing less faith in the princes of the Republican Party, but maintain their own uncompromising integrity, their commitment to a thou-shalt-not-kill moral absolute?

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• Correspondence to Mr John Reynolds-Wright, The Medical School, University of Sheffield, Beech Hill Road, Sheffield S10 2RX, UK; jjrw1989{at}gmail.com

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Introduction

Access to safe abortion has been labelled as a fundamental human right by the International Women's Health Coalition, who stated that:

A woman should have the choice to carry a pregnancy to term or not;

Abortion services should be part of a comprehensive sexual health programme;

Lack of funding and illegality do not reduce the number of abortions, they only serve to put the woman's health in danger. 1

In the USA, certain states have introduced laws requiring women to listen to fetal heart beat monitors or to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound scan before being permitted to proceed with an abortion, with the thinly-veiled intent to discourage them.

Recently in the UK, MP Nadine Dorries proposed an amendment to abortion legislation that would have prevented abortion providers, such as Marie Stopes International and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, from offering pre-abortion counselling to women on the basis that their advice was ‘not independent’. They would instead be directed to ‘Crisis Pregnancy Centres’ for supposedly independent counselling. However, many of these centres are run and funded by religious groups with prominent anti-abortion agendas. 2

The amendment was withdrawn due both to lack of support and to a national campaign against it. But the motives behind the amendment, and the more extreme pieces of legislation being passed in the USA, call for the arguments of legality, morality and access to be re-evaluated.

Traditional arguments

Against abortion.

A common argument against abortion is that it is equivalent to murder – specifically infanticide – and in this way it is immoral and unjustifiable.

One of the best known philosophical arguments to this effect is that of Don Marquis, who claimed that murder is illegal because …

Funding None.

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• Highlights from this issue In this issue British Medical Journal Publishing Group BMJ Sexual & Reproductive Health 2013; 39 1-1 Published Online First: 07 Jan 2013. doi: 10.1136/jfprhc-2012-100558

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Ryan Anderson: The pro-life movement needs to shift to promoting chastity and marriage

By Tyler Arnold

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 13, 2024 / 08:51 am

For the pro-life movement to achieve its goal of eliminating abortion, it must first help bring about a dramatic change in societal sexual ethics, according to a new essay by Ryan T. Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

“So long as nonmarital sex is expected, large numbers of Americans will view abortion as necessary emergency contraception,” Anderson concludes in his essay, titled “The Way Forward After Dobbs,” published in the Catholic-led ecumenical journal First Things .  

“So long as marriage rates are declining and marriage age is delayed — but the human sex drive persists — abortion rates will remain high,” Anderson writes.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, he argues, while a major victory for the pro-life movement, came at a time when support for abortion had already become firmly entrenched in the culture.  

“Generations of Americans were catechized in the beliefs that abortion is a right and that unborn babies have no rights — and that we have no duties to the unborn,” Anderson, who is Catholic, writes.

“Though [the] Dobbs [Supreme Court decision] did important work to repair part of the damage to our constitutional order, it doesn’t — couldn’t — erase half a century of political and social corruption,” Anderson said. 

Anderson argues that the shift in public opinion in favor of abortion that has taken place in recent years has resulted in the pro-life movement’s recent defeats at the ballot box. Although some states have passed legislation effectively restricting abortion, every ballot initiative that received a direct vote from the people has liberalized abortion policies, and in some cases, overruled state-level pro-life laws.

“The change in public opinion over the past decade is hard to come to grips with, but the pro-life movement needs to do just that,” Anderson said.

When Roe v. Wade was still in effect, Anderson said, “it was easier to affirm the dignity of the child in the womb” because such an affirmation “was abstract and did not imply a threat to anyone’s ‘choice.’”

Post-debate explainer: The truth about late-term abortions in the United States

“It seems that most Americans, even some who consider themselves pro-life, support four exceptions: rape, incest, life of the mother, and … ‘my case,’” Anderson continued. “Or ‘my daughter’s case,’ or ‘my girlfriend’s case.’”

Although some people who facilitate abortions “know that abortion stops a beating heart,” Anderson writes, “they don’t always care, or … they aren’t always willing to make the personal sacrifices that follow.” He noted that most abortions are procured when a pregnancy occurs outside of marriage and that one of the roots of the problem is “multiple generations of a sexual culture that incentivizes abortion.”

According to Anderson, the root cause is “the sexual revolution, a revolution that conservatives have never attempted to combat in a sustained way, despite many one-off campaigns and skirmishes.”

The sexual revolution began in the 1960s with a movement to increase social acceptance of sex outside of marriage. It was accompanied by the women’s liberation movement and the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the first birth control pill. 

“Our primary task isn’t to persuade people of the humanity of the unborn — anyone who has ever seen an ultrasound knows all about that — but to change how people lead their sexual lives,” Anderson says. “We have a pro-life movement, but could anyone seriously suggest that we have a pro-marriage or pro-chastity movement?”

Anderson notes that statistics show that among secular Americans, premarital sex is very common. It’s even common among Christians who regularly attend church services, he writes.

“Before we try to persuade the secular world of a Christian sexual ethic, we might try persuading Christians,” he says. 

(Story continues below)

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Anderson encourages priests and pastors to preach about life and chastity from the pulpit, which he argues they do too rarely. He also says the movement needs “culture-forming, opinion-shaping organizations,” which he called “a daunting task.”

“Our cultural incrementalism can be broad-spectrum: new TV shows and movies that aren’t hokey after-school specials, policies to protect kids from the harms of social media and online pornography, effective church ministries,” Anderson adds. “The task is enormous. But we haven’t devoted enough time, treasure, or sophistication to it.”

Anderson also argues that the pro-life movement should “organize politically and help politicians find paths to success — not ask them to engage in political suicide missions.” He notes that even though pro-life efforts through ballot referendums have failed, many pro-life politicians have still found success in states in which the population voted to expand abortion.

“Policy wonks must devise effective pro-marriage policies,” Anderson concludes. “Cultural entrepreneurs must apply the professionalism of the conservative legal movement across our culture-shaping institutions. Most importantly, the Church must devise ministries that will transform lives, because short of religious revival, none of the changes we need will be possible.”

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