Abortion Essay: Example and Tips

Possible topics for abortion essay

When you get a task of writing abortion essay, it doesn’t mean that essay’s name is “abortion”. It is a very broad and controversial topic, think of the side of this problem, which you want to highlight. As examples, we can give you the following:

1. Do you have a right to choose?
2. Debate surrounding abortion. What’s your position?
3. Historical overview of attitude to abortion in different countries.
4. Abortion and its consequences (health, moral, legal and psychological).
5. Understanding opposing points of view on abortion – below, you can find an example of abortion essay with such a name, as how we see it.

 

Template of essay Understanding opposing points of view on abortion

Outline

1. Introduction
2. Main body
3. History of abortions in the world
4. Opposing points of view on the abortion
5. Arguments against abortions (pro-life)
6. Arguments in defense of abortion (pro-choice)
7. Conclusion

Introduction

Of course, the problem of abortion is multifaceted. It has a demographic meaning, it has both political and social significance, and it has a very important ethical aspect. The severity in discussing abortion remains, despite the fact that this problem is “as old as the world”. Historically, the attitude of a doctor to abortion is one of the first and basic ethical-medical problems that remain relevant today. This is due to the fact that the problem of abortion concentrates in itself the relationship between people at the level of moral, legal, socio-political, religious, scientific consciousness.

Abortion is the artificial termination of pregnancy by removing the fetus from the uterus within a period of up to 22 weeks from conception (until the time when a viable child is possible) or at a later date. It can be performed both by instrumental and medicamentous way (provoking miscarriage). Medical abortion is the deliberate termination of pregnancy due to medical and social indications.

The first historical references to abortion take us back to the period of 4,600 years ago (China). The attitude to abortion could be different – from severe punishments in Assyria to the approval of the ancient Greeks, but throughout almost the entire written history they were usually judged because of the woman’s health risk. The issue of abortion did not become an important ethical issue until modern medicine provided their relative safety; and only now, in recent decades, there has been a sharp public debate on this issue.

During these years, many opinion polls were conducted, and their results were remarkably similar: less than a quarter of adult Americans are against abortion under any circumstances; approximately the same number believe that a woman always has the right to have an abortion, if she so desires; most of them occupy an intermediate position, which allows abortion only in certain cases. In the years 1988-1989, the Gallup Institute, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, conducted four surveys on samples representative of the whole country; of the respondents were asked under what circumstances, in their opinion, abortion should be permitted or, conversely, prohibited. The overwhelming majority of Americans favored the legalization of abortion in those cases when pregnancy poses a threat to the life of a woman (86-94%) or a serious threat to her health (84-86%), as well as a high probability of severe malformation in a child (60 -74%).

History of abortions in the world

Abortion, as a method of termination unwanted pregnancy, was known in ancient times. Under the laws of Ancient Greece and Rome, the life of the fetus was not protected and the termination of pregnancy was not punished. But this practice could not be spread widely, since abortion almost always represented a serious danger to the mother and child, very often was fatal to the mother. Fetus expulsion was regarded as an immoral act and punished when it was conducted for selfish purposes or for other baser motives. Hippocrates considered proliferation as an immoral act, unworthy of a doctor. The oath of Hippocrates and to the present is the moral principle of physicians. These lofty words are placed in a frame and hung on the walls of numerous clinics and. How did it become possible that doctors and nurses agreed to the principle of preserving life with the methodology of its destruction?

In the era of the decline of the empire, wealthy citizens preferred not to have a family or children. Initially, in Roman law, the fetus was treated as part of the mother’s body (pars viscerum), so the woman was not punished for killing the fetus or expelling it from the womb. And only later the embryo (nasciturus – “having to be born”) was endowed with some civil rights. Artificial abortion was treated as a crime.

The final realization of the value of the embryo itself is connected with the emergence of Christianity. Already in the era of early Christianity, abortion is identified with the murder of a person. The Christian concept claimed that the extermination of the fetus deprives it of the grace of the future baptism and, therefore, is a grave sin. Therefore, in the Middle Ages, abortion was qualified as a serious crime, similar to the killing of a relative. Under the influence of the church in the 16th century, in almost all European countries (England, Germany, France), the act of an abortion was punished by the death penalty, which was later replaced by hard labor and imprisonment. It concerned not only the doctor, but also the patient.

According to the code of German laws “Carolina” (XIV century), abortion in case of destruction of an animated fetus was punishable by death penalty. The death penalty for abortion was introduced in 1649 in Russia; it was canceled a century later.

In the second half of the XIX century in the United States, there was a nationwide movement for the prohibition of abortion. Leading role in it was played by the leadership of the reputable American Medical Association. Based on embryological discoveries, doctors argued that the fetus is a living being from the moment of conception, and not from the moment the mother senses the movements of its body. Therefore, doctors insisted that abortion, even at the very beginning of pregnancy, is the killing of the fetus. As a result, by the 1880’s, abortion in the United States, if it was not about cases of saving a woman’s life, was banned. Those laws were largely preserved until the 1960s.

In 1869, the British Parliament adopted the “Crimes against the Personality Act”, according to which abortion, starting from the moment of conception, was considered a serious crime. Abortion, produced by the woman herself, was punished much more severely, if it took place after the appearance of wiggling of the fetus. In Germany in those same years, the production of abortion for money was considered an aggravating circumstance. In France, the punishment was reinforced against doctors, at the same time there was a period (from 1791 to 1810), when the woman herself was released from punishment altogether.

In the twentieth century, the feminist movements were particularly active in discussions about the admissibility of abortions. The protest of the feminists’ supporters against the traditional status of women in society (against “the abdication of women from the rights to their identity, name and property”) concerned her sexual role, necessarily affected the issues of field morality.

In the 50 years of the XIX century, one of the first American feminists, S. Grimke, in the essay “Marriage” wrote about “the right of a woman to decide when she will be a mother, how often and under what circumstances.” At the beginning of the XX century, American feminist M. Sanger first used the notion of “birth control”, which at first made sense of promoting the use of contraceptives, and later was also considered in the context of eugenic ideas.

The Christian concept, which states that the extermination of the fetus is a grave sin, was the basis for the qualification of artificial abortion in the Middle Ages, as a serious crime. Under the influence of the church in the 16th century, almost all countries of Europe (Germany, England, France and others) had a serious punishment for abortion.

This situation persisted in many countries until the first half of the 20th century. In 1920, for the first time in the world, Lenin signed a decree authorizing abortion – infanticide. So, for the first time in the world, infanticide became legally permitted in Russia. Later, abortion was legalized in most Western countries. Then people hoped for a better future, they thought that the revolution would change their life for the better.

Opposing points of view on the abortion

It is not a surprise that around such a complex and delicate topic, two main opposing points of view have developed. According to the first one, abortion is a purely personal, intimate problem that does not concern anyone except the woman herself, to which no one should interfere. This is just one of the medical operations, and as in the case of every surgical operation, all problems are solved by a doctor and a patient. If we briefly express this point of view, we can say this: “Abortion is a medical problem”.

The second point of view is the opposite one: abortion offends the moral sense, so it is a moral, ethical problem, and at the same time – the most complex. After all, before coming to the doctor, a woman solves a moral problem: the life or death of a future child. Even after she turns to the doctor, the ethical meaning of the problem not only does not disappear, but becomes even more complicated: it involves a third person – a doctor. If he does his job, he becomes an accomplice in the murder. It is murders, because unlike any surgical operation, this has a special purpose – to destroy life, to kill the future human being, and completely defenseless, without rights.

Between these two extremes, there lies the problem field, on which the confrontation and clash of different positions, points of view, approaches, assessments, views is unfolding. In our country in a legal field, we are closer to the first position both in practical and in the theoretical sense. But when it comes to real life and not paper laws, the reality might seem a little different.

In a dispute about abortion, “logic” and other kinds is often used. An example is a discussion of Beethoven’s mother. She was sick with tuberculosis and married a man who had syphilis; he already had four children, one of whom was blind, the other was deaf, and the third infected with tuberculosis. The family lived in conditions of extreme poverty, two children died, and if the mother had made an abortion then the world would not have received one of the greatest musical geniuses, Ludwig van Beethoven. Terkel points out the inadequacy of this argument in favor of the prohibition of abortion:

“If Beethoven’s mother had had the opportunity to legally have a safe way to have an abortion, she could still refuse to do so, but the advocates of abortion legalization are also wrong when they object that freedom of abortion might have prevented the birth of Adolf Hitler. Both sides completely ignore the fact that every woman has a small chance to give birth to both a genius and a maniac… Both sides instead of so arbitrary conjectures could find many convincing arguments in their favor. ”

For the sake of historical accuracy, it should be noted that one of the first actions of the Nazis, who came to power in Germany in 1933, was the prohibition of abortion. Comparison of abortion with Nazi atrocities sounds especially unconvincing because the latter can not be called “defenders of human life”, although they forbade abortion.

Arguments against abortion (pro-life)

The main argument against abortion is that the embryo is a human being. And since the right to life is the inalienable right of every human being, the fetus also has this right. Hence, abortion is unacceptable from the moral point of view, abortion should be banned (in those countries where they are allowed) and in no case be allowed (if they are currently prohibited in this country).

As you can see, the most important element of this argument is the statement: the embryo is a human being. This argument is perceived at the level of simple everyday observation as self-evident, not requiring any special evidence. In his favor, says the well-known Eastern tradition, according to which the age of a person is counted from the moment of conception, and not from the moment of birth. But even if the evidence is required, then there are such scientifically established facts as that the human embryo of a rather early age, already at nine weeks old, has a face, fingers, intracerebral activity, etc., or, what is more, already in the gene the main features of a person’s personality are programmed. Therefore, under no circumstances can an abortion be morally justified.

There is one more item that is subject to analysis and proof: this is the point that categorically states – “under no circumstances”. But there are cases when there are medical contraindications, when pregnancy and childbirth are fraught with a real threat to the life of the mother. Or in other, no less dramatic circumstances, which, unfortunately, also happen: when the pregnancy occurred as a result of rape, absolutely contrary to the will and desire of the woman.

So, in the general anti-abortive point of view, internal differences in views are emerging. The extreme anti-abortion stance – which recognizes no exceptions, no mitigating circumstances. Supporters of this position argue: abortion is unacceptable, even if pregnancy and childbirth are dangerous for the life of the mother, for example, with heart disease, kidneys, etc.; еhe abortion is unacceptable, even if the pregnancy was caused by rape. The argument is simple: the baby is not guilty in either case, and it must not suffer. How can you kill an innocent creature that has no conscious intention to kill mother and is not involved in the circumstances of conception, and therefore, does not bear any responsibility for them, and especially does not deserve such punishment as deprivation of life.

A relaxed anti-abortion stance – which in principle regards abortion as unacceptable, but as an exception, in cases where medical contraindications arise or when it comes to rape, admits it. The very permissibility of exceptions is argued by the need to take into account the desire and interests of the mother. In the first case – with medical contra-indications – the mother’s right to life (and health) is violated. In the second – with rape – there is no voluntary consent of the woman. After all, the mother is a person, she also has the right to life, health, freedom. Thus, the two anti-abortion positions – extreme and relaxed – are quite different from each other. However, they both leave the main initial thesis unchanged: the embryo is a human being. It has the right to life. It’s innocent. And the conscious killing of an innocent human being is murder. Hence, abortion is a murder, and it should be prohibited as morally unacceptable.

In support of this main argument, there are a number of additional ones. Among them, an indication that the mother is biologically and socially responsible for the baby, because it is a helpless creature in need of a mother (in both parents), non-autonomous, i.e. can not survive otherwise. In front of this being, the mother (both parents) has a special responsibility as well. It is not someone else’s being, but the flesh of their flesh, blood from their blood, so there is not only a biological but also a moral duty – a duty of the strong to protect and care for the weak.

This is the convincing and humanly understandable logic of opponents of abortion.

Arguments in defense of abortion (pro-choice)

In support of abortion, there is a fairly strong weapon in their hands. The main argument of the opponents of abortion is that the embryo is a human being. More precisely, not on this very statement, but on the understanding of the meaning that is put into the notion of “human being”. Supporters of abortion, as well as their opponents, also agree that the embryo is a human being. But at the same time they suggest to think about the question: does this mean that the human embryo and man are one and the same.

Supporters of pro-choice point of view give several arguments:

1. Even if the embryo is a human being, it is impossible not to see the difference between the embryo and the person. This difference is recognized even for a plant: the difference between a seed, a germinated germ and an adult plant. Even in the case of the plant, it is recognized that the acorn and the oak are not the same.
2. Even the opponents of abortion recognize that this being needs a mother biologically and socially, that it is not autonomously existing creature, it can not develop outside the mother’s body, but it must exist within nine months. This means that before birth, it is not yet independent and the act of birth determines precisely the moment when it becomes autonomous. That is why birth is the beginning of a person’s life.

These two arguments are particularly important to consider in two cases. In case of pregnancy as a result of rape. And then, when the pregnancy was not consciously desired. People quite differently assess the use of contraceptives and the killing of a newborn. If the former is permissible and legal, then the second is a crime. Recognition of the fact that the fetus acquires a full moral status in the second third of pregnancy allows for a completely different evaluation (from a moral point of view) of abortion in the early and late stages of pregnancy. Earlier abortion from a moral point of view is closer to assessing the use of contraceptives, later it can be regarded almost as a deprivation of life for a newborn being. It is impossible not to see the huge difference between infanticide and the loss of life of an unborn fetus. The latter can sometimes be caused by such reasons as a danger to the life and health of the mother or a high probability that the child may be born to an incurably sick person, doomed to suffering and death. Therefore, the legal permission to terminate a pregnancy at a later date can only be based on the same principles as, for example, the recognition of a just kill in the case of self-defense or euthanasia. A woman has the right to be completely autonomous in deciding both the use of contraceptives and the early termination of pregnancy. And from the point of view of social and legal policy it should be concluded that there is no need for legal regulation of the issue of termination of pregnancy in the early period, therefore, they are morally and legally permissible.

Conclusion

Among the range of points of view, around the problem of abortion, there are three main points of view: liberal, conservative, moderate. Supporters of the first, liberal point of view, emphasize and prove first of all the right of a woman to control her own body. Therefore, the thesis that abortion is not unacceptable from the moral point of view is upheld. It is also proved that the fetus can be considered a human being and have the right to life only when it is able to live outside the mother’s body.

The second, directly opposite, point of view argues that abortion is always morally unacceptable in all cases without exception – a conservative point of view. According to this view, abortion, even at the earliest stage of embryo development, is the deprivation of the life of an innocent human being, and therefore in all cases must be prohibited by law and unacceptable from a moral point of view.

The third point of view is moderate, trying to combine elements of both extreme points of view in a relaxed version, and to avoid undesirable conclusions that can be drawn from them. All these points of view are criticized. The debate about abortion continues. The problem of abortion has become one of the central problems of modern ethics, a discussion of this issue is held in the pages of many books and magazines. The problem of abortion made it possible to highlight a whole complex of the most complex theoretical problems of ethics. And, if there were not discussions about abortion, many of their theoretical problems would never have arisen, would not have been on the agenda of science, would not have been the subject of its analysis, and therefore would not have stimulated its development. The special significance of this problem lies in the fact that it is both practically applied and, at the same time, deeply theoretical. There is a kind of double leap in the development of the theory: from practice to theory, then from theory to practice, and then again and again. But only in such a difficult way it is possible to obtain new knowledge about the most mysterious phenomenon in the universe – man, about his life and death.

In the course of modern biomedical ethics, the ethical problems of abortion are central. I think it is necessary to give unconditional priority to the individual choice of “parents” of their reproductive rights, condemning any measures of organizational control under the sign of any “good” idea, whether it is “improving the nation” or “the welfare of mankind.”