Introduction
Ending the pregnancy is known as abortion if the result is not birth. Abortion is usually taken as the intentional act rather than an accident. Abortion is also known as ‘termination of pregnancy’. In the case of abortion, the pregnancy is forcefully removed from the mother’s womb. There are several ways of carrying out abortion. This include medical abortion through taking pills. In this way the miscarriage is caused through usage of special medicines that affect the pregnancy and removes it from the body of the mother through aborting the process. Surgical abortion is another type of abortion in which the pregnancy is removed from the body of the female through surgery. In this way, the pregnancy is removed directly from the womb through carrying out a surgical operation. In most of the cases, the abortion procedure takes less than one day and can be taken care of within the daylight. This means that the female, who has to undergo abortion, does not require to stay overnight under medical care. The surgical operation can be carried out in both ways i.e. keeping the female awake or asleep under anesthesia .
Abortion procedures have long history and there have been many groups of people supporting abortion based on some reasons and opposing it based on other reasons. The primary categories of arguments presented in favor of or against abortion are the legal arguments and the ethical arguments.
Legal Issues/Arguments
There are variable legal aspects of abortion in every region of the world. Considering United States, partial abortion is considered a controversial issue whereas a simple abortion is considered legal. The partial abortion controversy begin during the 90s in which the Republicans in the United States’ House of Representatives as well as the United States’ Senate presented the legislation to impose a ban on the partial birth abortions. The Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act was signed by George W. Bush which was passed by the U.S. congress in the year 2003. This Act was the result of the overruling of the Nebraska’s partial birth law by Supreme Court which refrained the doctors from exercising partial birth abortion even if the health of the mother was critical for her life. The legislation was drafted with the purpose of attempting to circumvent the ruling of Supreme Court through declaring the procedure of partial birth abortion as unnecessary. Several challenges against this legislation were filed in the states of Nebraska, New York and California. During the year 2004, the United States District Court Judge struck this legislation on few major grounds. These grounds included the placement of an undue pressure and burden on the female who is seeking to have a second trimester stage abortion. These grounds also included the unconstitutional and vague language used in the legislation. Another major ground included the absence of exception for medical procedure to preserve and protect the women’s health as the results of its implementation. Around a total of had been enacted during first half of 2005 that was higher than the total bills passed during the whole year of 2004 .
In some of the societies, abortion is completely banned in the legal point of view whereas in some other societies the same is permitted in some cases. The societies that permit abortion in some cases have set a level of age for the fetus after which abortion is considered as illegal irrespective of the conditions and circumstances. The societies that have allowed abortion legally, have allowed it in any of the following cases: -
- Abortion carried out for safeguarding the life of the mother or preventing her from going into a critical medical condition. It also includes the mental health of the female who is pregnant.
- Abortion is allowed in the case where the pregnancy is the result of a crime like rape, child abuse, or incest etc.
- Abortion in the case where the expected child is not expected to live an acceptable quality of life. This may be the case in case of any of the following conditions: -
- Child having serious genetic disease or issue
- Child expecting to be handicapped seriously for life
- Child expected to have serious mental problems
- Abortion may be allowed for several social reasons including incapacity of the mother to cope with the expected child due to another child, poverty of the family, or mother’s incapacity to cope with the child due to her age being very young or being very old.
- Abortion is considered legal where the government policy allows. It may be any of the following cases: -
- Regulation of population size by the government due to overpopulation in the country or region
- Regulation of groups within a population
- Improvement of life standards of the population through reducing the numbers in the population size
Most of the opponents of abortion still allow abortion in the only case where the health of the mother is critical and she can be saved only through aborting the expected child. Abortion as the result of social issues is totally unacceptable by the opponents of abortion. In most of the cases, the opposition faced by abortion is from the religious groups who consider it a serious crime .
The Mental and Capacity Act of 2005 in England and Wales, presents a four phases based test to determine mental capacity of a subject. These four phases are as following : -
1. Developing an understanding of the information pertaining to the decision
2. Retaining all of the relevant information pertaining to the decision
3. Using or weighing the relevant information
4. Communicating the decision through any possible mean
Ethical Issues/Arguments
There are two basic categories of arguments while considering the ethical issues or points related to abortion. These two categories include the arguments that are in support of the abortion or those which are against the abortion. However, there are three categories of people while considering the view point of people regarding abortion. There are people who think that abortion is completely an unethical thing to do and there are people who think that it is a completely ethical thing to do. However, the third category of people include those who believe that abortion is ethically correct thing to practice in some critical circumstances and the same is not the case in various other circumstances .
First, the arguments in support of abortion are presented. People who support abortion are of the view point that the abortion is itself not wrong at all and the undesirable results of abortion are not required to be considered while considering the ethical or moral grounds or issues pertaining to abortion. Such arguments are mostly based on the point that a fetus does not possess any human right hence cannot be declared as a person. In the view point of such people, abortion can be exercised by the females to maintain their body fit medically. This type of people who believe that abortion is not different from contraception based on the fact that abortion is a deliberate failure state of conceiving a child. They argue that since the contraception is widely used and accepted by people hence abortion should also be widely used and accepted by people as the moral equivalent of contraception. Some people argue that if the fetus is considered to be a full person even then it would have low level of rights and priorities over the people who have already born especially in the case of the mother whose health may get affected .
In contrary to the people who support abortion, there are people who are opponents to carrying out abortions. According to their point of view, abortion is considered wrong in any circumstance regardless of its criticality. The reason behind this is that they consider abortion as the failure to recognize the rights of the fetus and as the challenge to the sanctity of human life. These people often consider an embryo to be having full rights equivalent to a normal human being. They see abortion as the killing of that human being is was yet to be born. Such people think that the women who carry out abortion should be brought to justice for her wrongful act and she should be considered as the murdered of a person. This view point totally ignores the conditions of the female and compels her to carry on with the pregnancy regardless of the consequences to her or her child’s health. This type of views are mostly based on religious values and the moral convictions of these people. It is also argued that abortion is an act to practice the free will in an evil way where the women is allowed to kill her own unborn child based on the reasons of maintaining her health conditions. Such arguments always base on the premise about the embryo as having no rights at the start of conception and gradually gaining rights along the path of its development. Another strong argument presented by this category of people is that if the reason of handicap unborn child leads to killing her then what about killing the born people who are handicapped .
Conclusion
In my view point, I would take the position of allowing abortion. The reason behind taking this position is the sound logical arguments of the supporters of abortion. I think that abortion is not exercised by a female until she is very much sure that there is strong reason for her to end the pregnancy. Since a fetus does not have any legal value, identity etc. hence it cannot be considered as a full human being with all the rights. People are to be allowed to make decisions regarding carrying out with the pregnancy if they feel that it is the most suitable choice or aborting it for any reason that they feel justified. Off course there is nobody who is willing to undergo any procedure to abort pregnancy until they have strong reason to do so.
Works Cited
"Arguments For and Against Abortion." 10 June 2014. http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/sexinfo/article/arguments-and-against-abortion. 02 November 2014.
"Arguments on Abortion." n.d. http://www.biblequery.org/Practice/Abortion/Abortion.htm. 02 November 2014.
BBC. "When is abortion legal?" n.d. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/abortion/legal/when_1.shtml. 03 November 2014.
BMA. The law and ethics of abortion . London: BMA Ethics Department, 2007. Print.
BPAS. "What is an abortion?" 2010. http://www.bpas.org/bpasyoungpeople/what-is-abortion. 03 November 2014.
Gill, Kathy. "Issue Summary: Abortion." n.d. http://uspolitics.about.com/od/electionissues/i/abortion.htm. 03 Novermber 2014.
Legislation.Gov.UK. "Mental Capacity Act 2005." n.d. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2005/9/contents. 03 November 2014.
