During Judith Jarvis Thomson’s argument about the ethics of abortions and “A Defense of Abortion”, Thomas states that UDH’s are recognized as a full person and a full persons should enjoy a “right to life.” Her standards in cases come out to remain within the range of moral permissibility. “Every person has a right to life. So the fetus has a right to life. No doubt the mother has a right to decide what shall happen in and to her body; everyone would grant that. But surely a person’s right to life is stronger and more stringent than the mother’s right to decide what happens in and to her body, and so outweighs it” (48). With her saying arguing this, she is just making the line of argument easier to understand. Thomas states six different moral arguments to show extreme view is inconsistent with the morals of one person. The Violinist, the growing baby, Smith’s Coat, Henry Fonda, The burglar, and people-seeds. These each give a meaning to abortion and explain to one how and what is wrong with abortion.
But Margaret Olivia Little argument disagrees with Thomas. Little declares that UDH’s lack many features of a full persons. “I believe that early abortion is fully permissible, widely decent, and, indeed, can be honorable” (148). Since UDH’s would not exist without their mother, that is where Little’s question becomes different. Little emphasizes the often neglected impacts and risks associated with pregnancy. Medical, social, personal are some of the things Little argues about. Little lastly argues that abortions can be honorable when the potential mother thinking about the UDH, not just because the child would be better off never existing, but to have better ideals of parenthood. She gives examples like not bring someone into the world unwelcome or not bring someone into abject poverty or war. “Of course, if one could end the assistance without effecting death, then, absent extraordinary circumstances, one should” (151).
Sidney Callahan argues that accessibility to abortion is inconsistent with “maternal thinking” and undermines interests of the fairer sex. She presents what ethicists as “maternal thinking.” “Maternal thinking is loosely defined as a responsible commitment to the loving nurture of specific human beings as they actually exist in socially embedded interpersonal contexts. It is a moral perspective very different from the abstract, competitive, isolated, and principled rigidity so characteristic of patriarchy” (118). Everybody has the right to control one’s body. Callahan’s comes back to say that when being pregnant, two patients intertwined cannot capture. She states that “having a baby is not like rescuing a drowning person, being hooked up to a famous violinist’s artificial life-support system, donating organs for transplant—or anything else” (118).
She also brings up the importance of autonomy, such as the ability to make mature commitments like “family, work or education” requires full control over our reproductive state, which implies abortion must be readily accessible (117). She replies that responsibilities are determined by circumstance, not choice. “A woman, involuntarily pregnant, has a moral obligation to the now-existing dependent fetus whether she explicitly consented to its existence or not… the fetus possesses rights arising from its extreme need and the interdependency and unity of human kind” (120).
John T. Noonan argues that abortion is only morally permissible when necessary to save the life of the mother because UDH’s have a high probability of developing their capacity for autonomy. Noonan describes abortion issue with a primary question: “How do you determine the humanity of a being?” This question concludes that genetic code possessed at any post-conception. Noonan also points out that UDH’s do not always survive during pregnancy. If women seek abortions for reasons other than to save their own life, Noonan argues that it is cruel and selfish.
Rosalind Hursthouse’s arguments about ethics of abortion, she attempts to defend virtue ethics against the critics to illustrate how the approach provides clear and definite on moral issue. Hursthouse brings to a point that abortions may warranted, but should be taken seriously because they are ending of a human life. Hursthouse says “I am not, in this article, trying to solve the problem of abortion; I am illustrating how virtue theory directs one to think about it” (233). She then clarifies how deontological, consequential, and virtue-based theories approach ethics. Deontological theories association to “right action, moral rule, and rationality” (224). This could be an example of kantianism. Consequential theories loop the right action to the best consequences.
This could be an example of utilitarianism, such as “the best consequences are those in which happiness is maximized” (225). She also very briefly defends the virtue ethics against many different criticisms, which are in three different ways. An obscure concept, only concerned with “being and not doing” (227), and contrary actions are sometimes recommended, but the theory can not clearly inform ethical behavior.
Edward A. Langerak gives a more reasonable view on the abortion debate. He begins to point out two primary ideas: “important shifts in probabilities and dangerous social consequences” he argues that abortions become more difficult to justify over the course of a UDH’s development (27). He then goes puts the abortion debate into two different sections, ones who argue that UDH do not have moral status until birth and UDH possess strong moral status on conception. He states the potentiality principle to support the view that UDH will always have some type of moral worth, he says “If, in the normal course of its development, a being will acquire a person’s claim to life, then by virtue of that fact it already has some claim to life” (25). Langerak give four morally relevant stages of UDH development implantation, quickening, viability, and birth.
Singer and Wells describe the good and bad of ectogenesis, or artificial wombs. They have many different possible resolution to abortion, a potential liberator of women, and as a potential source of transplant organs. They argue that these artificial wombs would do more good than harm to the women. With these ectogenesis there could be a solution to abortion, they state that “Ectogenesis could at some future time make right-to-life organizations drop their objections to abortion; for it is only our inability to keep early fetuses alive that makes abortion synonymous with the violation of any right to life that the fetus may have… Abortions would in effect become early births, and the destruction of the unborn would cease…. Pro-choice feminists and pro-fetus right-to-lifers can then embrace in happy harmony” (12).
Along with Signer and Wells, Maureen Sander-Staudt considers the artificial wombs from the different feminist approaches. Including both the good reasons to reject and the good reasons to grasp onto this new technology. There are many different feminism groups such as the liberal feminism, radical feminism, and cultural feminism. Liberal Feminism seek to advertise “liberty, equality, and autonomy for women,” and “believe that female subordination is rooted in customs and legal restraints, which impede women from equally participating in public spheres” (111). Which come with benefits and downsides, a benefit to women is freedom from unwanted pregnancy or freedom to procreate, meaning being infertile.
Some downsides are leading to “forced ectogenesis for drug addicts or women in prison” (113) and “a change in meaning of “viability” could increase the rights claims of UDHs, which could comparatively diminish the rights claims of mothers.” (113) During the end of the arguments, Sander-Staudt states that “therapeutic” ectogenesis, but otherwise rejects it because “it is inherently demeaning and disempowering to woman as biological mothers” (127).
With reading all these different articles and learning more about abortions and looking at them in different prospectives, I believe that that the United States should embrace and work towards the development of the artificial wombs as a solution to the traditional abortion debate. Being pro-choice or pro-life, they only look at what they think is wrong doing and really don’t care to listen to what others have to say about the way they look at these different choices of abortion. People who are pro-choice believe a women should have basic human rights and decide when and whether to have children. People who are pro-life oppose abortions. They do not believe that a women should choose abortion ever, even if a women was a rape victim or the baby was putting her life and health on the line. These artificial wombs could be the next big technology that frees women from pregnancy who do not want to get pregnant or women who can not have children would be able to have children.
Even though there are slight problems that come along these artificial wombs, such as the physical and mental harm of the UDH’s health. But going back on the different fonts of these ectogenesis, considering the resolution to abortion, liberator of women, and the transplant of organs. These could resolve the abortion debate between potential mother’s autonomy and a UDH’s value to facilitate in the non-terminal abortions. The only thing that could go wrong is the rejection of the idea that it could morally be used to gestate unconscious organ donors on grounds that it undermines infant life. This could be a potentially safe and less expensive alternative to surrogate mothering. Ectogenesis could actually create a healthier mother and child relationship. These artificial wombs can be used as a source of organs and tissues, such as growing and harvesting cloned body parts, which could come in handy, if a child has born with a deformities, such as missing limbs, etc. But some authors rejected this possibility because it would desensitize us of human life. There are different outlooks on the idea of growing and harvesting different body parts. Even with these artificial wombs, there could be a solution to abortion. Singer and Wells states that “Ectogenesis could at some future time make right-to-life organizations drop their objections to abortion; for it is only our inability to keep early fetuses alive that makes abortion synonymous with the violation of any right to life that the fetus may have.
Abortions would in effect become early births, and the destruction of the unborn would cease…. Pro-choice feminists and pro-fetus right-to-lifers can then embrace in happy harmony” (12). There are many different ways and ideas to look at embracing and development of the artificial wombs, people have to be open minded to listen and see what this new technology has to offer. Women in different situations could have more decisions than just one or two very hard choices. Even though there are downsides to these artificial wombs, there are many helpful ideas going along into them.
With that being said, how would someone with a higher knowledge about these things approach me with these ideas I have? When being put in this type of situation, I feel like one would either give me more information about the category of abortions, the good and the bad and how they look at it or it could be one shoving their ideas in my face and telling me I am in the wrong for thinking in a different way they do, which happens a lot these days. Everybody has the right to think and view things in different ways, no matter if it’s how you were raised or if that is what one wants to believe. Instead of someone getting upset, that one has a different point of view then them and not explaining why they believe what they believe and the other way around, they should sit down and explain and listen to the different perspectives of the arguments. People do not care about others people beliefs, if one does not have the same point of view, they are immediately in the wrong and are a horrible human being for having different aspects of life.
