Ethics Paper

Ethics Paper Ethics Paper Running Head: Women Having Abortions Viewed to be Morally Unethical 1 Tiffany Harris Ethics- Professor Christina Post University Thesis Statement: Considering American ethics and values, death is morally wrong. Therefore, the killing of unborn fetuses is morally wrong as well. Abortions, this unethical practice of terminated unborn fetuses should be outlawed because it can harm women, violates civil rights, and takes innocent lives. Women Having Abortions Viewed to be Morally Unethical 2 Real life stories demonstrate again and again that abortion harms women. Harm comes in a variety of forms; mental, emotional, relational, and physical. In some cases women lose their lives through abortion. Women can also experience the loss of their fertility or an increase in miscarriages after an abortion. The violation of civil rights is another unethical issue when involving abortion. Women who have had abortions suffer an increased risk on anxiety, depression, and suicide. A study published in an edition of the Journal of Anxiety Disorders found women who aborted their unintended pregnancies were 30 percent more likely to subsequently report all the symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder than those women who had carried their baby to term. The rate of mental health claims for women who aborted was 17 percent higher than those who had carried their children to term. The risk of death by suicide is two to six times higher for women who had had abortions when compared again, wi th women who had given birth. (American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 1994) The link between abortion and breast cancer has attracted much media attention. It is important to understand that there are two different mechanisms by which abortion can increase breast cancer- one is beyond dispute and the other hotly contested. Through abortion, a women artificially terminates her pregnancy at a time when her breast cells have been exposed to high levels of cancer-initiating estrogen but before those cells have matured into cancer-resistant cells( as they ultimately do in a full-m term pregnancy. Women Having Abortions Viewed to be Morally Unethical 3 Furthermore, an article wrote in 1994 in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology revealed that abortions performed at more than 16 weeks gestation have 15 times the risk of maternal mortality as those performed during the first trimester. More than forty years ago, the United States Supreme Court decided Roe Vs Wade, the landmark case that secured a women’s right to abortion. Since then, radical politicians have been trying to take that decision out of a women’s hand. In some stares politicians are pushing through laws that ban most abortions. In others, they are doing everything they can to shut down the health centers that many women rely on for basic reproductive health services, including abortion care. Some politicians are even trying to end programs that provide birth control, putting women at a high risk for pregnancy. The Roe majority ruling of 1973 holds that the government has a legitimate interest in protecting potential human life, but that this does not become a compelling state interest overriding women’s Fourteenth Amendment right to privacy and her subsequent right to terminate her pregnancy until the point of viability, then assessed at 24 weeks. The court did not state the viability is or is not when a fetus becomes a person; this is the earliest point at which it can be proven that the fetus has the capacity to have a meaningful life as a person. Most philosophies of natural rights would hold that fetuses have rights when they become sentient or self-aware, which presumes a neurophysiological definition personhood. Self- awareness as we generally understand it would require substantial neocortical