Essay On Is Abortion An Ethical Choice Or An Act Of Wilful Murder Carried Out On An Institutional

“God has never told me to kill, and I don’t believe God would tell anybody to kill, however if God told me to kill I would kill” Bob Lokey – Anti abortion activist
This is a quote from a soldier of the army of God a pro-life Christian fundamentalist group, regarding his stance on the killing of abortionists. Bob Lokey has received many messages from God one including instruction while he was in prison for murder to circumcise himself with a razor blade, to which he claims god aided him in this act of mutilation. When you hear something like this you have to ask yourself; “where do you draw the line between faith and madness?” if you think of it logically the two concepts intertwine relentlessly. (Voll 2000)
In this essay I intend to talk about moral dilemmas posed by religion on the nature of abortion in an effort to see if religious superstition can topple scientific reason and freedom of choice.
The army of God is in conjunction with a website known as the Nuremburg files. A website that not only argues that abortionists are Nazis and will be killed like Nuremburg but gives out their names and addresses for the purposes of assassination. They justify themselves through the idea that one day they will be proved right and God will eventually come down and judge them. I chose this group because their stance against abortion is one that opposes modernity and our growing system of human rights.
Abortion is a right created by science for women to have the decision of whether to have a baby or not. (Voll 2000) What is confusing about their principles is that the Army of god believes that killing abortionists is a way of preserving the life of innocent babies, yet they see little contradiction in that claim. Surely it’s a moral contradiction to kill a person with a family and friends who love him and will miss him/her , why is his life any less important to them than a baby that is yet to exist? (Thompson 1971)
This idea of saving an innocent life is a utilitarian attempt to increase the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people. When the lives of what is perceived to be an innocent child but in actual fact is yet to be a person is measured alongside an abortionist with a family and friends it doesn’t make sense. The baby is yet to be so cannot be missed but the abortionist will leave people behind thus decreasing happiness. (Thompson 1971)
"it is by no means enough to show that the fetus is a person and to remind us that all persons have a right to life—we need to be shown also that killing the fetus violates its right to life, i.e., that abortion is unjust killing. And is it?"
Judith Thompson (1971)
Killing an abortionist to save something that is not definitively a person is undoubtedly unjust according to Thomson but religious fundamentalists would claim that is because the abortionist is evil, the way they see things is that every abortionist has a dagger over a women’s stomach and is about to plunge it into this innocent foetus at any moment and they have to prevent this by killing them first and this just isn’t the case. (Ruthven 2005)
Modernity to a fundamentalist mindset is evil and by saying it is evil they claim they are good, this Manichaeism is violent and ignorant and can be used to justify the killing of just about anyone. So this brings me to the conclusion that the army of god has no interest in saving human life, why would they? They think the world is going to end anyway, I think their real enemy is the modern power of women. Abortion scares religion because it allows women control over their bodies that only men and god should have, so really they are trying to instil this fear in people to control women, which is one of the main aims of religion in general. (Ruthven 2005)
“How come when it’s us, it’s an abortion, and when it’s a chicken, it’s an omelette?” ― George Carlin
Emmanuel Kant the famous German philosopher would first want to establish whether an unborn foetus was a rational being to justify the continuation of his/her/it’s life. "every rational being, exists as an end in himself and not merely as a means to be arbitrarily used by this or that willBeings whose existence depends not on our will but on nature have, nevertheless, if they are not rational beings, only a relative value as means and are therefore called things. On the other hand, rational beings are called persons inasmuch as their nature already marks them out as ends in themselves." (Kant, Foundations, 428)
This basically means that because a foetus is not aware of herself/himself/itself, it essentially is an animal. The foetus cannot refer to itself as “I”. When a being is able to refer to itself as “I” this raises them above animals according to Kant, its self awareness that is the key factor regarding personhood. (Thompson 1971)
"The fact that the human being can have the representation "I" raises him infinitely above all the other beings on earth. By this he is a personthat is, a being altogether different in rank and dignity from things, such as irrational animals, with which one may deal and dispose at one's discretion" (Kant, LA, 7, 127).
In conclusion drawing on Kant’s theory of rationality determining personhood and Thomson’s concept that personhood does not start at conception there seems to be no ethical problem with killing someone that is yet to be a someone. Margaret Sanger the contraception activist that legalized contraception, she is quoted as saying; “No woman can call herself free who does not control her own body.” It seems insane to deny someone the right to control their own body.
Kant, Emmanuel. (1804) the metaphysics of ethics. Translated with an introd. and appendix
Ruthven, Malise (2005) Fundamentalism: the Search for Meaning, (Oxford: OUP)
Thomson, J. J (2003) A Defence of Abortion
Voll,Daniel. (2000) Soldiers in the army of god