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Abortion and Infanticide   Term Paper ID:44417 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: This paper examines the arguments of key abortionist thinkers such as Tooley Wertheimer and ...... More...

8 Pages / 1800 Words 9 sources, 11 Citations, MLA Format $32.00 Return to List of Papers

Paper Abstract: This paper examines the arguments of 8 key abortionist thinkers such as Tooley, Wertheimer, and Wasserstrom and concludes that despite their reasoning, abortion is attempted infanticide. Paper Introduction: Abortion and Infanticide The ongoing debate over abortion has sparked a variety of pro and conopinions through the many years since Roe v Wade legalized the practice During that time arguments on both sides have ranged from jump-on-the-bandwagon bywords that were meant to arouse public indignation tosophisticated theoretical analyses intended to substantiate the particularview of the issue being propounded This paper will examine a number ofarguments for and against the view that abortion is not infanticide andwill respond to these by substantiating Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Althoughthe sound is not audible to those outside the womb, the child screamswithin the womb, as the video shows, and this is clearly a capacity tocommunicate. With moral status completely removed,his argument skirts all arguments that oppose abortion on a moral basis. In her case, morality is anon-issue; it is the rights of women that are important. However, his analysis is largelypredicated upon what each side is arguing rather than on what the realityis. Many arguments over thejustifiability of abortion center on the fact that the baby is livinginside the mother and her right to do what she pleases with her body.However, these arguments are nonsensical, as the baby-even when it isliving inside her-is not equivalent to her body. EBSCO Host. Since the Court'sperspective is also a legal one rather than a strictly moral one, the Courtincludes a long history of the legality of abortion and the circumstancesthat made it permissible, but its effort is largely to relate the issue tothe laws. Wade legalized the practice.During that time, arguments on both sides have ranged from jump-on-the-bandwagon bywords that were meant to arouse public indignation tosophisticated theoretical analyses intended to substantiate the particularview of the issue being propounded. Abortion as attempted infanticide andinfanticide itself are both morally indefensible, and the arguments raisedin their favor are specious and misappropriated. Lebanon, NH: Northeastern University Press, 199 .Thomson, Judith Jarvis. Although these criteria are ostensibly meant toexclude fetuses, it cannot be certified that a fetus is not conscious, doesnot reason, has no self-motivated activity, or the capacity to communicate,and even the presence of self concepts and self awareness can bedemonstrated to some degree. In some cases, aborted babies are aborted from the mother but stillsurvive, although they are then left to die by abortion clinic personnel.Thus, technically, abortion is an attempt at infanticide, and it is notalways successful as such. Roger Wertheimer's article "Understanding the Abortion Argument,"reviews the liberal and conservative points of view on the abortion issueand concludes that these opposing arguments are largely based on moralopinions about whether it is right or wrong to kill a fetus. Wertheimer's analysis is a pessimistic one,basically assuming that there is no way to resolve the differences betweenconservative and liberal arguments. Wade" 147-164).Finally, for the stage subsequent to viability, "the State, in promotingits interest in the potentiality of human life, may, if it chooses,regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where necessary, inappropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health ofthe mother" ("Roe v. Theseopinions are so entrenched, he asserts, that they are simply not going tochange in most cases. Judith Jarvis Thomson, in her "A Defense of Abortion" acknowledgesthat a fetus must be considered a person from the moment of conception, anadmission that defeats one of the major arguments of much of the pro-abortion group. Tooley's criteria indicate that a fetus or an infanthas no right to life up to the point where it is able to understandabstract concepts. Wertheimer, Roger. She has removedabortion from the tense crucible of moral decision-making to the popularfeminist platform where it can be used to garner support for feministissues. Abortion And Woman's Choice: The State, Sexuality, and Reproductive Freedom. DeGrazia, eds. The U.S. This viewpoint suggests that "a nonself-conscious being with no desire for its own continued existence has no rightto life" (Beckwith). Whether a mother engages in attempted infanticide or infanticide, themoral issue remains the same. Warren, Mary Ann. "Is There a Difference Between Being Human and Being a Person? Nevertheless, she too skirts themoral issue in abortion, giving the mother the right to do as she chooseswith respect becoming physically separated from the child, which results inthe child's death. Thus, although Warren'scriteria are probably intended to effectively eliminate fetuses assatisfying the criteria for personhood, the fetus demonstrates in the videothat it meets all of these criteria. Wade"). With all of these arguments in mind, it is clear that none of themexcept Tooley specifically addresses the issue of infanticide as to how itdiffers from abortion, and Tooley does not examine this difference from acredible scientific viewpoint, only from his own self-devised criteria forwhat constitutes a human being. Is an Unborn Child a Person?" Overall, Christine. He shifts from examining the arguments to pointingout that "the present abortion laws are illegitimate" by virtue of theirrestrictions on freedom and the fact that they "diminish the welfare of thecitizenry," and he states that "the social costs of the present abortionlaws are so drastic that only the preservation of human lives could justifythem" (Wertheimer 94). However, she then departs from that group by contendingthat only in some cases is abortion right-when it is the choice of themother because of undue circumstances such as rape, for example. She states in a 2 3 article, "I argued that abortion achieves itspower in American politics because it's not really about the procedureitself or even the fetus but rather about the contentious relations-especially those of gender, race, sexuality, and maternity-abortion hascome to signify" (Petchesky). 434-44 . Petchesky, Rosalind. The only question is whether she wassuccessful in achieving infanticide or not. Rosalind Petchesky (241), in her book Abortion And Woman's Choice: TheState, Sexuality, and Reproductive Freedom, goes beyond the issue ofwhether abortion is right or wrong to the issues of class and culture suchas "sexual politics" that predispose women to abortion and the underlyingmotivations that young girls may have for becoming pregnant in the firstplace. Mary Anne Warren's views on abortion are similar to Tooley's in thatshe lays out specific criteria that a human being must meet in order to beconsidered a person: consciousness, reasoning, self-motivated activity, thecapacity to communicate, and the presence of self concepts and self-awareness (Warren). 113 (1973)." U.S. It is still infanticide, andthe baby-whether it meets anyone's personal criteria for personhood or not-is a living human being with a heartbeat and a brainwave and the capacityto reason, respond, and communicate. Wade, 41 U.S. As the Silent Scream video showing anultrasound image of a fetus being aborted clearly delineates, the fetus isconscious of the presence of the suction device and attempts to get as faraway from it within the womb as it can. If he took the time to deconstruct pro-abortion arguments rather thanmerely explaining what a liberal pro-abortionist would say, he would comecloser to the truth. Tooley sees a fetus as anonperson having no moral status. Again, however, Wasserstromleaves the basic question unanswered-is a fetus a human being that it ismorally right or wrong to kill? This paper will examine a number ofarguments for and against the view that abortion is not infanticide andwill respond to these by substantiating the view that abortion is morallyequivalent to infanticide. Infanticide is theintentional killing of an infant. "Reproductive Ethics: Feminist and Non-Feminist Approaches." Canadian Journal of Women & the Law, 1.2, (1986, 271-278. "Understanding the Abortion Argument." Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1.1, (Autumn 1971), 67-95. Prior to that time, its life can be terminated withoutcompunction or penalty. Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Thompsonsees abortion as the mother's decision to separate herself from the babybecause she is not morally bound to stay connected to it, although shemakes a distinction between that aspect of abortion and the killing of thechild, stating, "while I am arguing for the permissibility of abortion insome cases, I am not arguing for the right to secure the death of theunborn child." Her pro-abortion view is therefore somewhat tempered incomparison to Tooley's and Warren's. The fetus's attempt to save itself from the suction deviceindicates self awareness ("Silent Scream Video"). The Court here essentially makes nodefinitive assertion that abortion is right or wrong, but simply passes thebuck to the doctor and the states to make the decision. Works Cited"Roe v. Whether she kills thisseparate being before it is born, during the birth, or after it has beenborn is irrelevant from a moral standpoint. For thestage at the first trimester's end, the decision accords the decision-making power to "the medical judgment of the pregnant woman's attendingphysician," and for the stage subsequent to the end of the first trimester,it says that "the State, in promoting its interest in the health of themother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion procedure in ways thatare reasonably related to maternal health" ("Roe v. One of the most vocal pro-abortion advocates is Michael Tooley, who inhis book Abortion and Infanticide states that a being "cannot have a rightto continued existence unless he possesses the concept of a subject ofexperiences, the concept of a temporal order, and the concept of identityof things over time" (Beckwith). Beckwith, Francis J. "Silent Scream Video." Several Sources Shelters. As a feminist, Christine Overall provides the feminist perspective inher writings, also examining but decrying the non-feminist perspective thatshe contends dominates public thinking. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1996, pp. Thus, Petchesky is in favor of abortion butfor somewhat different reasons than the others. It divides the pregnancy into threestages and makes a different individual the responsible party fordetermining if an abortion should be performed in each stage. It is not even a part ofher body but a separate organism being hosted inside her body. Abortion is the attempt to kill aninfant, usually via suction, which kills the infant by dismembering it, andsometimes by partial-birth abortion, in which the baby is delivered aliveexcept for the head, which is then pierced so that the brain can besuctioned out and the skull squashed before the now-dead baby is delivered. Thomson essentially asserts that this is the mother'schoice because it is her body and that we would be out of line to suggestthat it is morally wrong, but this line of thinking illogically makes eachmother on the planet and independent arbiter of right and wrong that shecan tailor to her own preferences, again with no overarching moral dictumto follow. An abortionis in no way, then, about the right of a woman over her body; it is aboutthe right of the woman to commit infanticide. She looks at the issues ofreproductive ethics as well as the roles of doctors and midwives in thebirth process, and in her article "Reproductive Ethics: Feminist and Non-Feminist Approaches," she concludes by saying, "a feminist approach tosocial policy governing reproduction would return reproductiveresponsibility and power to women, and enable us to recognize and act uponthe real choices which must be made about the provision of reproductiveservices, support for research, and the regulation of new reproductivetechnology" (Overall 278). Abortion and Infanticide The ongoing debate over abortion has sparked a variety of pro and conopinions through the many years since Roe v. Since it is difficult to prove whether a fetus ornewborn infant has these concepts and the likelihood is that it does not,Tooley's argument is difficult to contest, even though it is specious inthe sense that his criteria are not based on any definitive moral ormedical standard but are seemingly arbitrary. In fact, though, it is important todistinguish abortion from infanticide even though in most cases, abortionis an attempt at, and results in, infanticide. Biomedical Ethics, 4th ed. This demonstrates bothconsciousness and reasoning, as well as self-motivated activity. "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion." In T.A. Supreme Court. Petchesky, Rosalind. Richard Wasserstrom (18) begins his article, "The Status of theFetus," by asking, "What kind of an entity is a human fetus?," pointing outthat the answers to questions about the morality of experimenting onfetuses need to be preceded by a determination of whether a fetus is"fundamentally like a piece of human tissue or organ...[or] fundamentallylike a fully developed, adult human being with normal capacities andabilities." Wasserstrom then goes on to outline a typology of fourdifferent options for how the fetus can be viewed, and these couldcorrespond to stages of fetal development. "A Defense of Abortion." Philosophy & Public Affairs, 1.1, (Fall 1971). "Response." Dissent, (Fall 2 3). Mappes and D. Wade, the case thatlegalized abortion in 1973, makes an argument of its own for why itsupports the legalization of abortion. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.