Utilitarianism And Abortion Analysis

Morality of Abortion in Extreme Cases A young woman in Ireland had to resort to giving birth at 25 weeks because her petition for abortion was denied. After the woman threatened to go on hunger strike to protest, local health authorities obtained a court order to deliver the baby prematurely to ensure its safety. This woman had been raped and discovered she was pregnant 8 weeks after. According to a source, she was not ready to have a baby and was too young to take care of a child. I believe it is not morally permissible to deny this woman an abortion because she did not give consent to have sex and get pregnant. I believe this is important because as a society we have to determine on what occasion and why abortion should be morally permissible,

Utilitarianism is concerned with the outcome of decisions and to act to produce the best consequences possible. And in extreme cases choosing to have an abortion would be bringing the greatest good. Having an abortion due to rape, the future of the child, and medical conditions can be judged through and justified by means of hedonic calculus and figuring out the amount of pain and pleasure the action would bring. There is a traditional argument that life begins at conception, meaning as soon as the man’s sperm comes in contact with the woman’s egg. This argument states that as soon as conception happens, there is now human DNA inside the woman’s body therefore making it morally wrong to have an abortion. The criticism to this traditional argument is that as humans we don’t always protect all DNA. For example; we get haircuts, we trim our nails, and we attack cancer cells with chemotherapy. How can one determine when and why abortion should be morally permissible if mankind doesn’t always protect all

Marquis’ ethical perspective asks the question of “What is wrong with killing someone?” which he answers that it is wrong because taking that life will deprive that person of a future good life. While Marquis has a good argument saying that every life is important because of the possibilities of the future, there is no actual way we have the ability to know if the baby will have a good life. However there are medical tests and ultrasounds we can do today to find out about the health of the fetus to figure out how the fetus will be health wise. Abortion under special circumstances can be done to help the mother to avoid the suffering and agony of infants with certain genetic or metabolic birth defects the can affect them for the worse in the future. The “good life” of the mother must also be considered. Sometimes women are not able to care for themselves financially, medically and even emotionally; that carrying and giving birth to a child would not be in the good interest of the mother. There is an approach to Ethics named Deontology that focuses on the rightness or wrongness of actions themselves, as opposed to the rightness or wrongness of the consequences of those actions. In order to decide if abortion in this case would be morally right, we would have to look at the action itself which would be what would be best