Abortion —An Ethical Discussion

Abortion is often a topic of both philosophical and legal debate. The two positions in the public sphere are pro-life and pro-choice. People who are pro-life believe that life is inviolable and that one should preserve life no matter what, while people who are pro-choice believe the woman carrying the baby should have a choice of whether to continue the pregnancy or not.

The pro-life side is based on a simple principle; life is inviolable. You do not terminate life no matter what, a fetus is alive, therefore we cannot terminate a fetus’s life. There are different variations of this belief, some people (often for religious reasons) claim that life is sacred, but this is not the only type of argument. Don Marquis for instance, in “Why Abortion is Immoral,” argues that killing someone is robbing them of their future, therefore killing a fetus is also robbing the fetus of its future and for that reason, it is as wrong as killing a full-fledged person — we will return to this argument later. People who are pro-life are not committed to saying that it is always wrong to take a life, they can say that we can take a life in self-defense, or in war, or in capital punishment, but still argue that abortion is not like any of these situations (when an abortion is necessary to save the mother’s life some pro-life advocates may think that abortion is acceptable).