Essay Analysis: Abortion, Intimacy, and the Duty to Gestate by Margaret Olivia Little

If a woman concedes to voluntary sexual intercourse, she has incurred a responsibility to care for the fetus, since she is responsible for its existence and subsequent dependence on her body for sustenance. Consequently, she has a moral obligation to sustain it until birth, an obligation that ought to be legally enforced by proscribing abortions. (Manninen 41)

Abortion’s legalization through Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade, has allowed for one in three pregnancies to end in abortion. This means that 1.5 million abortions are performed in the United States each year (Flanders 3). It ranks among the most complex and controversial issues, arousing heated legal, political, and ethical debates. The modern debate over abortion is a conflict of competing moral ideas and of fundamental human rights: to life, to privacy, to control over one's own body. Trying to come to a compromise has proven that it one cannot please all of the people on each side of the debate.

She says that she understands. In due course she does wind up pregnant. If we believe, as I hope we do, that the man would ordinarily have a moral responsibility toward both the child he will have helped bring into the world and the child's mother, then his honest statement of what he intends does not spare him that responsibility.”

There are many factors that are taken into consideration when determining if abortion is morally permissible, or wrong including; sentience of the fetus, the fetuses right to life, the difference between adult human beings and fetuses, the autonomy of the pregnant woman, and the legality of abortion. Don Marquis argues that abortion is always morally wrong, excluding cases in which the woman is threatened by pregnancy, or abortion after rape, because fetuses have a valuable future. Mary Anne Warren contends that late term abortions are morally permissible because birth is the most significant event for a fetus, and a woman’s autonomy should never be suspended.

Some anti-abortion activists argue that a woman has “waived control over her own body” when she makes the decision to engage in sexual activity, an activity which could lead to pregnancy. (Roy 339) “Thus where sex is voluntary, the pregnant woman has at least tacitly consented to the possibility of pregnancy.” (339) If this is the case, these anti-abortionists argue, then a pregnant woman has given up the right to “make a choice,” as the choice-making phase of the

Abortion raises subtle problems for private conscience, public policy, and constitutional law. Most of these problems are essentially philosophical, requiring a degree of clarity about basic concepts that is seldom achieved in legislative debates and letters to newspapers (Feinberg 1984: 1).

In contemporary America it can be argued that nothing is more contentious and controversial of an issue than abortion. From the vehement pro-life movement to the impassioned pro-choice coalition, this policy issue is one that has become increasingly important in our society. This debate has raised important questions regarding the value of human life, at what stage of development does a fetus have it’s constitutionally ensured rights take hold over that of the mother and at what stage can a state start regulating abortions.

Mary Anne Warren (p.195-196) points out the exceptional circumstances of pregnancy; where one human is entirely biologically reliant on another and where it is impossible for complete personhood rights to not be in conflict between the foetus and the mother. Consider the following case. A mother and an expecting mother both express an intent to kill their child or unborn child respectively. Services are available to take the postnatal children from their mother without affecting her body. Yet to protect the foetus, one would have to imprison the mother until birth, or worse, force a caesarean on her. Warren (193) points out that forced caesareans are not merely a hypothetical

To put it simply, an abortion is defined as, the intentional termination of a pregnancy most often preformed before the third trimester (within weeks 1-28). The controversy over abortions usually stems from the difficulty between individuals to agree on a set of conditions that would constitute ones’ decision, to abort as just. This issue is examined by many philosophers, particularly, Judith Thomson and Don Marquis. Both philosopher’s views loosely encompass the complex underlying beliefs of those who stand behind the “pro-life” and “pro-choice” arguments. Tomson and Marquis demonstrate the very distinctively different perspectives one could take on the issue. Don Marquis suggests that fetuses, being persons, possess the right to a “future like ours” and that it would be wrong to intentionally impede on “the life that I would have lived if I had lived out my natural lifespan” except for in “rare circumstances”. While, Tomson asserts that not all abortions are morally wrong, nor do they “violate the victim’s right to life”, and by having one that is in no way indicative that a fetus’s rights have been violated. Despite the fact that both philosophers present valid positions, and outline their key differences, Tomson goes far beyond Marquis’ efforts by illustrating that the way in which we view abortions ought to be redefined in order for one to maintain a clear perspective.

In this essay, the morality of the abortion of a fetus will be discussed in a drama involving a married couple named Deb and Derek (Smolkin, Bourgeois & Findler, 2010). For clarification purposes, we must first define the topic of this discussion; abortion is defined as the act in which a female voluntarily terminates her pregnancy where this act is legally permitted (Warren, 1973). Deb who is 16 weeks pregnant discovers that the fetus she is carrying will most likely be born mentally challenged (Smolkin et al., 2010). As the drama unfolds, the couple ponders the negative impact this child will have on their business, marriage as well as the quality of life that their child will experience if it is carried to term (Smolkin

In his piece titled “Why Abortion is Immoral”, author Don Marquis argues against abortion primarily using a “future like ours” approach, which is essentially the idea that killing fetuses is wrong because it deprives them of their future. In this paper, I will evaluate Marquis’s views on abortion, and then I will provide my own argument on why abortion is acceptable in most cases. I will do this by highlighting how Marquis fails to consider the mother’s role in abortion. Finally, I will address concerns regarding the mother’s responsibilities in pregnancy by going over situations in which the mother has no obligation in keeping the child.

In the notorious pro-choice court case, Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court stated that the definition of privacy is, “broad enough to include a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy”, and this “right”, the court believed, was founded upon the “concept of personal liberty.” However, the aborting of children is not a liberty nor is it a duty that God has given to any of the four jurisdictions of authority. On the contrary, God has given each jurisdiction the duty to defend the life of the unborn. Life has always been properly considered, in the United States, as a God-given unalienable liberty that no man can take from the innocent. Tragically, in one hundred and ninety-seven years, the definition of liberty from time time of

The United States has been divided now over the issue of abortion for thirty-three years since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade in 1973. As of today, over 45 million legal abortions have been performed in the United States. Pro-choice advocates hold these 45 million abortions as being 45 million times women have exercised their right to choose to get pregnant and to choose to control their own bodies. To pro-life, or anti-abortion, advocates these 45 million abortions constitute 45 million murders, a genocide of human life in the United States propagated by the court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade. The debate over abortion in the United States is thus a debate of two extremes. One side argues from the personal liberty of the mother. The

Based on the view that the fetus is already a small baby, some extreme anti-abortionists would maintain that abortion is impermissible even to save the mothers life. The rationale behind this view would be that the child is innocent, and killing the child would be active, on the other hand, letting the mother die would be passive. This introduces two new concepts, the first being the mother’s rights in competition to those of the fetus and the second being the question of innocence and how we would define this (Langley).

The following essay will examine the morality of abortion with specific reference to the writings of Don Marquis, Judith Jarvis Thompson, Peter Singer and Mary Anne Warren. I will begin by assessing the strength of the argument provided by Marquis which claims that abortion is impermissible because it deprives a being of a potential “future like ours,” and then go on to consider the writings of Singer, Thomson and Warren to both refute Marquis claims and support my assertion that abortion is morally permissible primarily because of the threat to the freedom and bodily autonomy of women extending the right to life to a foetus in utero would pose.