Abortion

This article gives an overview of the moral and legal aspects of abortion and evaluates the most important arguments. The central moral aspect concerns whether there is any morally relevant point during the biological process of the development of the fetus from its beginning as a unicellular zygote to birth itself that may justify not having an abortion after that point. Leading candidates for the morally relevant point are: the onset of movement, consciousness, the ability to feel pain, and viability. The central legal aspect of the abortion conflict is whether fetuses have a basic legal right to live, or, at least, a claim to live. The most important argument with regard to this conflict is the potentiality argument, which turns on whether the fetus is potentially a human person and thus should be protected. The question of personhood depends on both empirical findings and moral claims. The article ends with an evaluation of a pragmatic account. According to this account, one has to examine the different kinds of reasons for abortion in a particular case to decide about the reasonableness of the justification given. Take the example of a young, raped woman. The account suggests that it would seem cruel and callous to force her to give birth to "her" child. So, if this pragmatic account is correct, some abortions may be morally justifiable whereas other abortions may be morally reprehensibl