Abortion

Paper Summary:

This paper takes a look at the issue of abortion from a supportive perspective. According to the paper, there is no middle ground when protecting a woman's fundamental right to have agency over her own body. The paper also reviews the article by Marian Hillar "Philosophers and the Issue of Abortion".

From the Paper:

"However, the lack of persuasiveness of this point of view for anti-abortion advocates is evident, as Marian Hillar counters English quite caustically that the only reason first-trimester abortion seems less horrific is because the embryo is smaller and looks less like a baby. "The fact that pro-abortionists do not see any moral harm in abortion during the first two and a half months of gestation is based only on our psychological conditioning--the embryo does not look yet like a human, therefore intuitively and psychically we feel less objection to destroying it. The same psychological mechanism prevents us from destroying the new born--since, as I indicated previously, there is no difference in 'personhood' between these stages of human life." (Hillar, 1997) Hillar makes this assertion because the cells of the fetus are distinct from that of the mother's, genetically speaking, without taking into consideration such factors as the woman's right to choose to not become pregnant (which differs abortion from infanticide, even if one accepts that a fetus is a person), the fetus' ability to live without life support outside of the womb, or simply the legal enforcement problems of creating a right for the government so it may physically compel a woman to continue a pregnancy for a cluster of differentiated cells that have the potential to become a baby."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Hillar, Miriam. "Philosophers and the Issue of Abortion." [10 May 2006] http://www.socinian.org/abortion.html

More papers on Abortion:

• Research Paper # 45321 : "Parental Involvement and Abortion Rates"
• Research Paper # 75032 : "Abortion Worldwide"
• Analytical Essay # 70587 : "The Abortion Debate"
• Persuasive Essay # 67133 : "Abortion Is Not a Legal Issue"

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