Examine the Ethical Issues Involved in Abortion

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Q A) Examine the ethical issues involved in abortion [30 marks] Abortion is defined as the deliberate termination of pregnancy, usually before the foetus is 24 weeks old. Although abortion is legal in may countries, there are some opponents who argue that abortion is wrong. There are three main issues involved with abotrion. These are: · The value of potential and actual life · The life of the mother vs the life of the child · Ethical issue in legislation about abortion The key discussion point with the issue of the value of potential and actual life is whethere abortion is murder or not. This depants on personal view of personhood. If one believes that a foetus has a personhood, it gives him a moral status. So,if a foetus is a person, to terminate it, means to murder it. There are also different view on at which stage of feutus development, it becomes a person. Some people believe that when the ovum is fertilised by sperm it becomes an embryo and because it contains a unique selction of genetic information, the embryo is a person. Other people believe that the embryo must become a primitive streak (after 14 days of the fertilisation) to call it a person. These both views were criticised by Glover who said that the fertilised egg is too different from anything that we normally call a 'person' so he does not agree with the above views. While Glover is focusing on the use of language there is another point againt the above views made up by Thomson who is focusing on the ontological status of the fertilised egg and a human person. She gives an example to show a difference in the nature of embryo and a person. She compares an embryo to an acorn and a person to an oak tree, saying that although acorn grew from the oak tree and it can become one in the future, it does not mean that it is already an oak tree. This clearly shows that she does not believe that the

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