Peter Singer: Abortion

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Out of all modern-day disagreements about ethical issues none are as hotly debated as the abortion. Abortion, the termination of a pregnancy by removing or expelling the foetus or embryo from the uterus resulting in its death, is sought out by women in societies all over the world for a variety of different reasons. The most common of these reasons are accidental pregnancy caused by failure of a contraceptive and simply carelessness. An extreme case that is often thought to make abortion acceptable would be an unwanted pregnancy resulting from rape. However, the world remains divided on their opinions on whether abortion is a morally acceptable procedure or not. The debate often goes on between conservatives (“Pro-life”) and liberals (“Pro-choice”) and either side can do little do persuade the other. In chapter 6 of his 1979 book Practical Ethics, philosopher Peter Singer challenges and deconstructs the popular arguments made by liberals and conservatives and seeks out an answer to the problem with a broader viewpoint. Singer seeks his answer by exposing fallacies in the common arguments and shows that most arguments, especially by conservatives, are based on the often contradictory legacies of religious doctrines and not any actual morally significant reasoning. Specifically, he criticizes the conservative view of a foetus’ right to life by saying that the foetus is not quite yet a human being and shows that the liberal replies to the conservatives are hardly ever sound arguments. He presents the fact that animals with far greater consciousness than a foetus are routinely killed for humans to feast on their flesh. From this, Singer eventually arrives at his main point: the species of a creature should not matter in the wrongness of killing it. In this essay I will explain Singer’s deconstruction of the regular abortion arguments and his own opinion that he builds
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