doubtingt
Senior Member
This question is directed at those who (like myself) are in full support of the mother's legal right to abort for any reason, at least until the third tri-mester.
That legal right is an entirely separate question from whether there are any ethical implications of such abortions, since what is unethical is often (if not usually) legal and what is illegal can be ethical.
That said, it appears that most pro-choicers treat legality and ethics of abortion as the same question and largely presume without much analysis that since is should be legal, it is not unethical.
But are there any motives or methods of abortions that cross an ethical line, even if for pragmatic reasons you don't want such considerations in any way limiting maternal power over the decision to abort?
We just had the thread about Down's kids, but what about aborting a fetus due to its sex or race? If the fetus is a non-person, can such acts still be racist or sexist? Obviously, they might reveal racist or sexist attitudes, but such attitudes are not needed to motivate such abortions. It could be a pragmatic choice that one just doesn't want to deal with the factors that for whatever reasons come with raising one gender over another or a mixed race child over one of your own race.
If the motivation is not connected to general positive or negative attitudes toward a gender or race, then is it sexist or racist or some other unethical act to abort based partly on sex or race?
Feel free to postulate other motives that you think raise ethical concerns. It seems to me that the arguments that some put forth in the Downs' syndrome thread that killing a fetus has no ethical considerations, means that no form of selective-abortion eugenics could be considered unethical either.
Then there is the question of methods. IF a fetus has no moral status as many pro-choicers assert, then it should not matter if you slowly abort the fetus via the most painful method imaginable. In contrast, if you find some methods unethical, then you are granting the fetus some level of moral status, so doesn't this make abortions for frivolous motives somewhat unethical?
I'm not trying to lay a trap here. I am exploring these ideas myself. I think there ought to be principled coherence in our ethical stances and I wonder whether most of us pro-choicers just blindly dismiss the question of ethics for abortion because we don't want more complex ethical concerns muddying the political stance of granting the mother full rights to decide.
That legal right is an entirely separate question from whether there are any ethical implications of such abortions, since what is unethical is often (if not usually) legal and what is illegal can be ethical.
That said, it appears that most pro-choicers treat legality and ethics of abortion as the same question and largely presume without much analysis that since is should be legal, it is not unethical.
But are there any motives or methods of abortions that cross an ethical line, even if for pragmatic reasons you don't want such considerations in any way limiting maternal power over the decision to abort?
We just had the thread about Down's kids, but what about aborting a fetus due to its sex or race? If the fetus is a non-person, can such acts still be racist or sexist? Obviously, they might reveal racist or sexist attitudes, but such attitudes are not needed to motivate such abortions. It could be a pragmatic choice that one just doesn't want to deal with the factors that for whatever reasons come with raising one gender over another or a mixed race child over one of your own race.
If the motivation is not connected to general positive or negative attitudes toward a gender or race, then is it sexist or racist or some other unethical act to abort based partly on sex or race?
Feel free to postulate other motives that you think raise ethical concerns. It seems to me that the arguments that some put forth in the Downs' syndrome thread that killing a fetus has no ethical considerations, means that no form of selective-abortion eugenics could be considered unethical either.
Then there is the question of methods. IF a fetus has no moral status as many pro-choicers assert, then it should not matter if you slowly abort the fetus via the most painful method imaginable. In contrast, if you find some methods unethical, then you are granting the fetus some level of moral status, so doesn't this make abortions for frivolous motives somewhat unethical?
I'm not trying to lay a trap here. I am exploring these ideas myself. I think there ought to be principled coherence in our ethical stances and I wonder whether most of us pro-choicers just blindly dismiss the question of ethics for abortion because we don't want more complex ethical concerns muddying the political stance of granting the mother full rights to decide.