NML APPLICATION: ABORTION

• Abortion - a medical procedure to terminate a pregnancy
• A mother may want an abortion as it poses a risk to her physical / mental health.
• A mother may want an abortion if it is not financially possible
• Nearly 6 in 10 abortions are by mothers already.
• 49% of abortions are unplanned pregnancy
• Key Quote: Mason and Laurie

  ’it is possible to argue that, while a zygote might not be a person, there is no logical alternative to regarding it as the first state in human life’
• Key Quote: Campos

  ‘Whether or not an abortion should be legal turns on the question of whether and at what point a foetus is a person.‘
• Key Quote: Campos

  ’the concept of personhood is a religious idea, based on one’s assumptions about the nature of the world’
• Key Quote: Mackie

  ’the unborn child is a human being, a person, a bearer of rights, and that abortion is therefore murder’
• Conception - the fertilisation of the egg by the sperm
• Zygote - pre embryo 0-5 days
• Blastocyst - a group of multiplying Cells, pre embryo, 5-14 days
• Embryo - 14 days to 8 weeks
• Foetus - 8 weeks onwards
• Newborn - between 38 and 42 weeks
• Abortion was made legal in 1967 in the UK
• A ‘backstreet’ abortion as an illegal abortion performed by untrained people in unsafe, unsanitary environments.
• backstreet abortions were dangerous as they could cause infertility, infection or death.
• In the UK you can get an abortion until 24 weeks
• Conditions for an abortion to take place:

  1. Pre 24 weeks
  2. mothers life in danger
  3. mothers health at risk
  4. Health of existing children at risk
  5. baby would be seriously ill / disabled
  6. 2 doctors agree
• Abortions are allowed until birth if it could result in death, permanent injury or if the child would be born disabled
• Iraq and Madagascar don’t allow abortions.
• John Paul II says abortions could be justified If it threatens the mothers health or the families wellbeing however it’s a hard decision.
• ‘Human’ is a biological term

  ’person’ is a moral term
• Persons - beings who are part of our moral community
• 1. Personhood: genetic criterion

  • you are a person if you have human DNA
• 2. Personhood: cognitive criteria

  • Mary Ann Warren
  • Criteria: consciousness, reasoning, self-motivated activity, capacity to communicate, self awareness
• 3. Personhood: Social Criterion

  • you‘re a person when society recognises you as such, or whenever someone cares about you
• 4. Personhood: Peter singer

  • the key to personhood is sentience, the ability to feel pleasure and pain (any species)
  • sufferers of PVS and foetus‘ before 23 weeks are not people
• 5. Personhood: Gradient theory of personhood

  • personhood comes in degrees
  • adults have more than newborns and the elderly
• Abortion for reasons of abnormality raises a key issue in that it absolves a gynaecologist of destruction of the foetus but not of unlawful killing of a 'creature in being'
• If an abortion entitles the foetus to a birth and death certificate, then surely such a 'person' is protected by the full extent of the law.
• Key Quote: Peter Singer

  'there is no obvious sharp line which marks the zygote from the adult'
• Sanctity of life is the belief that life is sacred and a gift from God.
• Singer, along with other philosophers, have long called for a shift from talking about the sanctity of life towards a more universal discussion about the value of life. (non religious)
• Singer said that we can take sanctity of life to be a way of saying 'human life has special value' and that the view that 'human life has unique value is rooted in our society and enshrined in our law.'
• Catholics believe that humans were made 'imago dei' - all humans are holy and should be protected and respected
• Key Quote: Corinthians

  'Honour God with your body'
• Key Quote: Corinthians

  'Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple, and that God's spirit lives in you'
• Key Quote: Genesis

  'So God created them in his own image'