Limits on Abortion

Argumentative Essay # 116659

Ethics
Hot Topics > Abortion
Medical and Health

Limits on Abortion

This paper discusses what limits there ought to be on a legal right of abortion.

1,533 words () | 8 sources | APA | 2009 New Zealand

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer notes that abortion today has become a highly contentious ethical issue and the limits to which it is enforced within a legal system is primarily centered on the rationale of an unborn baby being (un)able to claim personhood. The writer points out that arguments are numerous both for and against this and are ultimately aimed at legally justifying access, or restriction, to abortion services. This essay argues that grounds for legalizing abortion are not conclusive and that they are in-fact arbitrary and fallacious in some cases. The writer puts forth a case for illegality in abortion law except under exceptional circumstances, through the objection of the pro-abortion arguments of fertilization being process, and a fetus is only a potential human being.

From the Paper:

"To insinuate that there is no difference between an ovum before and after fertilization is contrary to current scientific inquiry. The proposition of using the 'process' argument as a justification on relaxing the legal limit to abortion is at very least vague and the consequences of being wrong is worrisome. Being able to distinguish an exact point of personhood, based on subjective criteria, on a continuum, comes across as impossible and plagued by arbitrary judgments.
"Garrett Hardin, formally professor of biology at the University of California in Santa Barbara, writing before the 1967 legalizing of abortion in the United States reasons that the killing of very young embryos is not the same as killing at another stage in life, claiming we are not the same person at different stages of life."

Sample of Sources Used:

Department of Social Security. Report of the committee of inquiry into human fertilisation and embryology [chair, Lady Mary Warnock]. London: HMSO, 1984: 58-66.
Fletcher, J. (1966). Situation Ethics, the New Morality. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1966.
Fowler, P. B. (1987). Abortion: Toward an Evangelical Consensus. Portland, Oregon: Multinomah.
Hardin, G. (1968). Semantic Aspects of Abortion. ETC 24: 278.
Robert E. Joyce, "When Does a Person Begin?" New Perspectives on Human Abortion, ed. T. W. Hilgers, D. J. Horan, and D Mall (Frederick Maryland: Aletheia Books, 1981), 353.