The Personal Website of Mark W. Dawson

The Moral Dilemmas and Ethical Considerations of Abortion

For those who believe in abortion, I would ask, “Can you explain to me why an unborn offspring is not human and therefore undeserving of the human right protection of its life?” If you respond with the reasoning that the unborn offspring is dependent upon the mother for its life and therefore undeserving of the protection of its life, it raises the question of whether when a born person becomes dependent on another for its life, either through medical problems, serious injuries, dementia, or even the infirmities of old age, do they deserve the human right protection of their life. As such, dependency is not a reason to take the life of a human being. Thus, the Moral Dilemma of Abortion is the reasoning of why abortion is moral or immoral. Until you answer the moral dilemma of abortion, you cannot make a moral decision about abortion.

In my Articles on "The Abortion Question", "The Analogy of Abortion and Slavery", and "The Constitution and Abortion", I have written extensively on the topic of Abortion. With the Presidential election cycle of 2024, this topic will once again be at the forefront of campaign issues. The Democrat Party is in favor of Abortion Rights with little or no restrictions, while the Republican Party has adopted the platform of allowing this issue to be resolved by the individual States as the recent Supreme Court ruling has instituted. In these positions, both parties are morally wrong.

As Senatorial candidate Abraham Lincoln said in a Springfield, Illinois speech on June 16, 1858, in which he warned about a divided nation on the issue of slavery:

"A house divided against itself cannot stand.
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided.”

So, it is with the issue of abortion that our nation must become all one thing or all the other for this issue to be resolved. But to resolve this issue, it is necessary for all Americans to resolve the core issue of the humanity of an unborn offspring in the stages of gestation of a fertilized egg, a blastocyst, an embryo, then a fetus. This is a national moral issue with many ethical questions, as much as it was a national moral issue along with the ethics of slavery.

Euphemisms such as Pro-Life, Pro-Family, Anti-Choice, Pro-Choice, A Woman’s Right to Choose, Reproductive Rights, Reproductive Health Care, and other euphemisms for or against abortion are utilized to obscure the moral dilemmas and ethical considerations of abortion. These euphemisms are not acceptable, as they only camouflage the moral and ethical issues and obstruct the resolution of the moral and ethical questions. In this examination of the moral dilemmas and ethical considerations of Abortion, I have attempted to avoid the usual euphemisms used in the abortion debate. I do this by using the right names of which I talk about, for as a very wise man in history has said:

“The beginning of wisdom is the ability to call things by their right names.”
 - Confucius

The core question is at what point in the gestation is the unborn offspring to be considered a human being deserving of the Natural Right to Life and the legal protections of its life? There are only three possible answers to this question: at conception, sometime during gestation, or at the moment of birth. Each answer poses moral dilemmas, scientific/medical questions, and legal repercussions.

The answer of at the moment of birth is based on a foundational argument of the viability of the unborn offspring. However, the viability point of an unborn offspring has changed with the advances of medical science. It is now possible for a premature unborn offspring to survive for months prior to its due date using an incubator. Is the moment of its natural “birth” outside of the womb the beginning of viability, or is it at the point of the start of “incubation” when the viability begins? It should also be considered that all “birth” offspring are not viable after birth, as they require care and attention for some years after their birth to be viable. This viability argument can also be utilized when discussing when a person, through illness or injury, is no longer viable without medical assistance. Do such people relinquish their Natural Right to Life and the legal protections of their life if they become unviable, as the viability argument would suggest?

The answer of some time during gestation relies on a determination of at what point an unborn offspring transitions into being human. This may be exceedingly difficult to define, and once defined, it would be necessary to develop a medical test to determine if the unborn offspring has reached that point in its gestation and is declared a human being whose life cannot be aborted. This answer also requires that you consider whether the physiology and/or brain function of the unborn offspring is the determinative factor in adjudging the unborn offspring's humanity. You must also keep in mind that the development of an unborn offspring in the womb does not occur at a uniform rate; some develop faster or slower than others, and this difference must be accounted for before an abortion is performed. Without this definition and medical test, there is the real possibility of violating the rights of the unborn offspring or the mother’s right to decide to continue with the pregnancy or have an abortion.

The answer of at conception relies on the uniqueness of the human DNA of the unborn child. If you give an unborn offspring's cell to a geneticist and ask them to identify the species of the cell, they will determine that it is a human cell. If you gave the geneticist a cell from the mother and father of the unborn offspring and asked them to compare the cells to determine the relationships between the cells, they would respond that one cell was the mother, another cell was the father, and the third cell was the offspring of the other two cells. If you asked the geneticist if they were the same person, they would respond that each had a unique DNA structure and, thus, is not the same person. Thus, this argument against abortions has some scientific viability based on the physiology of the unborn offspring, but it does not factor in the brain functioning of the unborn offspring in making a determination on the humanity of the unborn offspring.

There are also the adjunct issues of abortion in the case of rape and incest, the right of the mother to choose what to do with their bodies, and abortions to protect the life and health of the mother.

In the case of rape and incest, the first question that must be answered is how is an unborn offspring conceived in rape or incest any less human than an unborn offspring conceived in love or lust? Natural Rights are independent of external factors or discriminations. Ergo, how an unborn offspring was conceived has no bearing on their human status, and rape or incest is not a moral justification for abortion.

The case of the right of the mother to choose what to do with their body is fallacious, as the unborn offspring is not their body but is only gestating in their body (as I pointed out in discussing the answer to at conception). We can and do tell all people what is permissible or impermissible for them to do regarding another human body and sometimes their own body. To claim that this is unfair to women is to rail against life. In this world, a male is the inseminator, and the female is the incubator for new life. We must all accept that our role in reproduction is determined by chance at our own conception.

In the case of abortions to protect the life and health of the mother is also fallacious. Health is such a nebulous term that it can be defined in numerous ways, and health also encompasses both the physical and mental health of a person. Health is like an eight-lane highway on which any and all vehicles can be driven in either direction. Using a health reason to allow for abortions is an escape clause that would allow for all abortions by utilizing Torturous and Convoluted Reasoning to justify the risk to the health of the woman. And a health decision cannot take precedence over a life decision—life is much more morally important than health. The life of the mother is another matter. With modern medicine, the risk of the life of the mother due to pregnancy is very low. In such cases, however, the moral dilemma is between who has the Natural Right to Life—the mother or the unborn offspring. There is no easy answer to this question, and in such cases, it may be best that we look aside and allow the mother to resolve this moral dilemma as she, and not the unborn offspring, has the free will to make this decision.

Life is full of moral choices and ethical considerations. To ignore morals and ethics in your life is to invite chaos and confusion into your life. Such chaos and confusion will not bode well for your life. The same is true for the life of a society. The chaos and confusion on the abortion question must be cleared up by objectively examining the moral dilemmas and ethical considerations of abortion and reaching a moral and ethical decision about abortion. It is for this reason that I have written this article.

Thus, the contentious issue of abortion in the presidential campaign is not about the euphemisms that are utilized but about the human status of the unborn offspring. Until we settle this moral and ethical question, it will not be possible to resolve this issue. Indeed, the only thing that is possible without resolving these moral and ethical questions is further disputations that will continue to make America “A house divided against itself”.