Mike is there, somewhere.

There is no perfect moral, you attribute full rights and autonomy to one you strip from another. I do not believe the child has rights equal to the mother until birth, it's her life used to raise the child, therefore her decision. Howeve having said that, questions exist when convenience rather than need is the driving force.

No-one like abortion, but then no-one likes war, the 1,000,000,000 that are starving, the homeless crisis, the rape of young children. I think you'll find most abortions are conducted in a moral manner and that the minority exist outside the boundary such as previously pointed out in the earlier article.

I look at the issue from the wider picture, the risk of abuse, rape, free license to impregnation etc, backyard abortions. What is the driving force behind abortion and women prepared to risk their lives to attain one? It makes me question the conduct of the male and the naturalness of it from the woman's point of view. I would say that she feels that an unnatural event has taken place and is trying to save her own life. Some women report the feeling of a evil creature growing inside them..

Again we are coming from a time where male conduct is much more under question, freeing women the right to choose their destinies.

Would it be fair to say that if male conduct was moral, abortion would not be sought in the first place? There is a line between ethical conduct and unethical conduct, the law exists on that line.

Some men cannot exist in this day and age, refuse to see the suffering of women, believe in rape, forced impregnation etc, and are usually the one's to dump and run to be crude, in my belief a woman has a right to protect herself from such a miserable life.

If legal ruling was required, what would be the affect?

1. forced abortions stopped
2. irresponsible and convenient abortions stopped
3. awareness of alternate options
4. education of the risks and greater reason to re-consider, counselling about the positive aspects to try and resolve unrealistic negative feelings, identification of areas where lack of support is the issue
5. resolution of the sexual conduct involved.

However points of contest:

1. risk of miscarriage
2. threats against mother from anti-abortion extremists
3. involvement of other parties causing complications and risk to health/threats post abortion
4. suicide

Any other suggestions?

I believe more structured counselling is required to ensure the decision is moral and not abusive towards life, which I believe to be the issue underlying abortion.

You can't place all the responsibility upon the mother, nor place the child ahead or equal to that of the mother without causing the view of her life to be that of a child bearer which would in turn give men a 2to1 ratio over a woman's life, i.e: his rights to reproduce and the rights of the child to exist, versus her right to not be impregnated. Placing this level of responsibility upon women alternatively grants men the right to conduct resulting in a child which was not wanted/intended by the woman, who's life it is to be if forced to raise the child 24x7. If conduct is not consentual is should be considered immoral such as that taken without consent, the woman with the result to undo what was created without her consent.

OK. Please don’t take this wrongly, but . . .

It looks to me that what you are doing here is acknowledging your own emotional reaction to abortion – you have no problem with it up to about four months, you are increasingly uncomfortable with it in the following two or three months and, after that, you are very uncomfortable with it, though still perhaps open to it in quite limited circumstances. Fair enough.

You then seek to account for that in ethical terms.

I think feelings do cast light on ethical considerations. Further up in this thread, Christine O points us to a very distressing account of late term abortions and suggests ethical conclusions that we can draw from it. And Phil73 has an emotional reaction to the apparent discounting of women’s perspective and experience which, he suggests, undermines the validity of the discourse we are having. They both make good points. I do think, if we have a strong emotional reaction to something, it calls us to consider whether there is a moral or ethical basis for our feelings, and to explore what it might be.

But we shouldn’t assume that our emotions necessarily do reflect some moral/ethical truth. Consider: I eat lamb without too much angst, but the thought of eating puppy sickens me. Is there really a fundamental moral difference between lamb chops and puppy chops, or are my reaction mostly the result of what I am familiar with?

I suggest that attaching too much weight to feelings makes for a very conservative ethics – as in, what is currently considered ethical will continue to be considered ethical, because we’re accustomed to it, because it is widespread, because it is currently considered ethical.

It also makes for lazy ethics – if we rely on feelings as our guide, we don’t need to think so much, and if we do think we tend to limit the exercise to simply rationalising our feelings.

In the case of abortion, a person – I don’t say you – might reason like this: “I don’t find early abortion distressing. Why is that? Well, maybe it’s because at that stage of development a foetus cannot feel pain. Therefore it must be (at least partly) the ability to feel pain which gives the developing human being a moral status inconsistent with abortion.” But this interior dialogue simply assumes that the emotional reaction of the observer is a reliable guide to the moral status of the developing human being though, when you come to think of it, there is no necessary reason why this should be so.

Exactly similar reasoning could lead me to conclude, if I lived in Britain around, say, 1800, that if I was unbothered by slavery then there was nothing terribly morally wrong with slavery. But of course the real reason that I would be unbothered by slavery would probably be that I didn’t empathise with slaves, because I did not share there experiences, or have any close encounters with them. Living in Britain, I woul probably never have met one. If I really understood and observed closely what slaves experienced, I couldn’t feel so relaxed about the institution of slavery. Thus I would turn my relative isolation and inexperience of the world into a foundation for ethical standards.

I seems to me that you treat your feelings about abortion as the starting point for an exploration of the ethical question without considering the possibility that your feelings may have little to do with the ethics of the situation. You seek to develop ethical rules to account for your feelings without considering the possibility that they are accounted for by something quite different. And, of course, this approach will never require you to consider ethical rules which might challenge your own feelings. If ethics, as you suggest, focuses on process, isn’t this a poor process and, therefore, poor ethics?

Deleted by Hunter

Peregrinus I cannot take your point more seriously.

Possibly a more fruitful discussion would be surrounding ways in which the law can be better enabled to resolve criminal practice, or ways in which people can be made more socially aware of the issues women face in carrying through a pregnancy, or means by which a woman without family can be enabled security that she will not be raising a child on the street or in dangerous neighbourhoods, or change to social attitudes about the socially allowable conduct of men, or education of the options available to women in abusive, neglectful relationships, or recognition of self abusive cycles, or from backgrounds of abuse fearing replication, or from too low an income to feel able to raise a child, or the thousands of other REAL issues women face.

Without the ability to safely explain reasons, how will society ever be able to better provide for women in such a position to consider abortion a necessity? At a guess I think you'll find the majority of women who seek abortion do so as a result of abuse from one kind to another, and as possibly a means of escape from such circumstances.

However all this aside, maybe a more ethical discussion would be one on resolution of starvation and disease which is killing thousands of newborn babies every day, given discussion on the sacredness of life, ethical and moral conduct, the right to life, and the fact that we can work out how to send a man to the moon?

What is ethical about time spent discussing the loss of life if priority is not given to that which already exists?

Hi Phil73

Couple of points:

“Possibly a more fruitful discussion would be surrounding ways in which the law can be better enabled to resolve criminal practice . . .”

I’m focussing on the question of whether abortion is justifiable. You, I think, are focussing to some extent on whether abortion should be legal, or restricted.

These are two separate questions, and I think more heat than light is generated by not noting the distinction. It’s possible to believe that abortion is mostly or always morally wrong, and yet also to believe that it should be mostly or always legal. (A lot of people believe exactly this about adultery, by way of illustration.)

If we assume that a particular abortion would be legal, a woman faced with the choice of having that abortion is still facing a moral/ethical question which is not answered just by pointing to the law. And, in so far as that woman looks to you, or me, for guidance or support in the making decision she faces, we wouldn’t really help her by pointing to the law. It’s the moral question that I’m considering, not the legal one.

If you and I sometimes seem to be talking past one another in this thread, I think it may be because we are exploring different questions.

“or ways in which people can be made more socially aware of the issues women face in carrying through a pregnancy, or means by which a woman without family can be enabled security that she will not be raising a child on the street or in dangerous neighbourhoods, or change to social attitudes . . . etc”

For what it’s worth, I completely agree. In so far as we might conclude that reducing abortion is a desirable goal of social policy, I think the criminal law is a blunt and ineffective instrument to achieve that, and I think the focus of the political pro-life movement on the status of abortion in criminal law is misconceived and counterproductive.

And, conversely, I don’t think that decriminalising abortion means that women are truly “free to choose”; they’re subject to all the pressures you mention, and more besides.

“However all this aside, maybe a more ethical discussion would be one on resolution of starvation and disease which is killing thousands of newborn babies every day, given discussion on the sacredness of life, ethical and moral conduct, the right to life, and the fact that we can work out how to send a man to the moon?

What is ethical about time spent discussing the loss of life if priority is not given to that which already exists?”

Well, again, I think you’re assuming a conclusion here, by excluding the developing human embryo from the category of “life that already exists”.

But, on your wider point, I suggest you present a false dichotomy. We don’t have to choose between addressing the moral challenge of starvation and disease on the one hand, and the moral challenge of abortion on the other. And there are those who would argue that the temptation to divide the issues up in this way is part of the problem; already we are tempted to distinguish between life that we care about or respect, and life that we don’t.

Deleted by Hunter

Hunter.

I doubt the people of Qld consider themselves or their children the property of the state, and question how they obtained what appears to be an illegal substance.

For further clarity on Qld law, see paragraph 6 with regard to mental health.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensl ... -eezg.html

"It looks to me that what you are doing here is acknowledging your own emotional reaction to abortion"


Peregrinus, that is an assumption with no basis in fact. My analysis is based on the developmental stages of the unborn. .

"What really pisses me off is males debating the moral and ethical pros and cons of what is essencially the domain of the female. Until men can fall pregnant they should butt out of the debate."

Well Hunter, then you will butt out of debates on gay marriage and gay adoption?

Sorry if I've misunderstood you, Sam.

But in fairness that’s not the way you present your position. You tell us that before 4 months you have no ethical concerns about abortion, but also say that you haven’t worked out the limit for this, you “suspect” you would regard certain capacities as relevant factors and that you are “open to discussion” about this. This does suggest to me that you know you are relaxed about abortion below four months, but you don’t quite know what’s behind that or how far it takes you; you are still working that out. It looks very much as if your comfort with abortion below four months is the starting point for your ethical exploration.

Hi Phil73

I don’t want this to degenerate into a welter of disconnected comments, so I won’t go line-by-line through your reply to me. Let me focus on a few points.

1. Adultery: I don’t want to suggest a parallel between abortion and adultery. I mentioned adultery only to illustrate that whether something is immoral is a completely different question to whether it is, or should be, illegal. There are countless other examples I could have given; hypocrisy, for example, is not illegal. There are plenty of immoral things which are not illegal, and conversely plenty of illegal things which are not immoral.

2. For that reason I reject your suggestion that the law is “the agreed social standard depicted by experts in moral adjudication”.

3. You ask “which is more or less moral forced parenthood . . . or abortion?” It’s a fair question if the debate is about criminalisation of abortion. But it’s not the question I am exploring. Suppose a woman is free to have an abortion if she chooses. There is no question of “forced parenthood” (or, at least, not forced by law). But she still faces the moral question of whether it would be right to have the abortion. And that’s the question raised in the opening post of this thread, and the question that I am exploring.

4. Finally, you say of the developing human embryo that “mother and child cannot be separated as entities until birth and as child depends on mother, mother naturally exists in higher status”. No offence, but it’s important to be clear about this, and I have to point out that what you say is wrong. Mother and child can certainly be separated “as entities”; as already pointed out, from conception the child is a distinct human individual; it is a separate entity. Furthermore they can be separated physically; that is what an abortion is. It will result in the death of the child, of course, which is why the moral issue arises. And I think you attempt to dispose of the moral issue by the rather throwaway comment that “as child depends on mother, mother naturally exists in higher status”, but you will be aware that this is a very contentious claim and certainly not one which is obviously true; in making it without offering any kind of support or even explanation you are rather assuming your conclusion, aren’t you?

"You tell us that before 4 months you have no ethical concerns about abortion, but also say that you haven’t worked out the limit for this, you “suspect” you would regard certain capacities as relevant factors and that you are “open to discussion” about this."

Having an incomplete assessment of a situation does not imply an emotional response, just a shortage of facts and an incomplete analysis. I am not going to rant some black and white ideological position when I havent finished working out what I think, and in any case, the circumstances in individual cases always need to be considered to make an ethical decision. There is no hard and fast moral law here as far as I am concerned. What I outlined is a point before which I had no ethical concern.

However, a discussion of my personal ethical decision in hypothetical cases does not define my position on legality.

In any case I support the right of a woman to have control over her body. I believe that abortion should be legalised, the choice of a woman, and that society should put in place support systems and resources to help pregnant women make decisions on this issue sooner rather than later.

While it may be that in some circumstances I consider abortion to be unethical, It is not my choice to decide whether a woman can have one or not.

"This does suggest to me that you know you are relaxed about abortion below four months, but you don’t quite know what’s behind that or how far it takes you; you are still working that out. It looks very much as if your comfort with abortion below four months is the starting point for your ethical exploration."

I know exactly what is behind this. It is clear to me that below 4 months the POC is not a human person. I never used emotive words like comfort. I said "What I do know is that before 4 months I currently have no ethical concerns about elective abortion for whatever reason a woman chooses."

no offense intended in the reverse.

Two views, the system changes according to the view held within society, society revolves around what is or is not law.


It was not intended as a throwaway comment more as a point of view, and in terms of life, mother and child cannot be separated until birth. Who therefore do you attribute rights and if both, does the unborn child have the right to exist if only 49% destructive to the mother's health, at what level do you attribute the % quality of life a woman needs to raise a child given the demands placed on her.

The child cannot survive until 25 weeks or so, without the female's body as host, therefore her welfare must come first, which also applies due to care giving responsibilities in normal circumstances post birth. Then again we get back to the 1-1-1 spread of rights, 1 point for each mother, unborn child, father. If mother and father share 50/50 responsibility then the father has equal right to counteract a woman's decision (which I would not be so crude as to suggest was not well considered) which then spreads reproductive rights evenly. However given the cost to the female's life, damage to her body, potential risk to her life, I don't see how a man can be granted equal rights.

The decision therefore remains that of the female, which provided she has not broken any law, cannot be said to have broken any moral code. But then the question is not whether abortion is moral or immoral, it is whether it is justifiable. There are conditions where society considers abortion immoral/unjustified, and they are contained within the law.

A question, do you consider the Qld State government moral in their prosecution of the young couple included in the article provided by Hunter?

Not Guilty
http://www.cairns.com.au/article/2010/1 ... -news.html

Hi Phil73


I agree that what the law provides is often influenced by what we regard as moral or ethical. For example, whether, and to what extent, and in what ways, prostitution is criminalised obviously depends on how society feels about the moral issues raised by prostitution (and also depends on whether there is a consensus within socieity about this).

But I’m very wary of the reverse proposition that our moral views are influenced by the law. I acknowledge that it is to some extent true, but I don’t think it ought to be. (Obviously there is a moral view that one ought to obey the law as such, but that’s a separate point.) If, say, slavery is morally wrong, it shouldn’t become more acceptable morally merely because in a particular time and place it is lawful. To echo a similar point that I made to Sam, this is “lazy ethics”; the assumption that something is ethical because it is familiar, or customary, or generally accepted. There is no good reason for this assumption.


There are lots of entities which cannot survive without other entities. The koala, for example, lives entirely on eucalypt leaves and cannot survive without them, whereas the eucalypt can get on pretty well without the koala. Does this mean, in your terms, that the eucalypt “naturally exists in higher status” than the koala?

I accept that the survival of the foetus is completely intertwined with its continuing connection to the mother. For me, though, that simply points to the inappropriateness of attempting to accord one of them a “higher status” than the other, and so the unhelpfulness of an ethical discourse which attempt to analyse the question in terms of rights. And I am only reinforced in this by your discussion of the issue in terms of a “1-1-1 spread of rights” and “50/50 responsibility”. These mathematical apportionments seem completely useless to me; they just underline the point that what is under discussion here cannot meaningfully be apportioned.

I suppose it comes down to this: in the sense that the law may allow a mother to abort, she has a “right” to abort. And, in the sense that you and I might agree that the law rightly allows her to abort, that this is what the law should provide, she has a “right” to abort. But that observation doesn’t help her at all in facing the very real moral question of whether or not she should have an abortion. The fact that she has the "right" merely shows that she has the moral dilemma; it does nothing to help her solve it.

One of the reasons, I think, that pro-life and pro-choice advocates so rarely engage in any productive discourse is that they are mired in a discourse of “rights” which is simply not apt to address the moral issues here.


I’m not sure I follow you here. Where the OP asks whether abortion is justifiable, I understand that as meaning morally justifiable, or ethically justifiable.


In so far as the law reflects society’s moral views, yes. But the question raised is not whether society considers abortion moral, but whether abortion is moral. Substitute “slavery” for “abortion” and you’ll see the distinction between the two questions. (And, no, I’m not comparing abortion to slavery.)

Or, if you consider the position of a young woman facing a difficult moral question, we don’t help her by telling her that society considers it ethical of her to abort (or, for that matter, not to abort). She needs to find some basis on which she can make that decision; she cannot, ethically, simply abdicate her responsibility and follow the median social opinion.


An excellent question but, again, different from the questions we have been considering up to now.

A few thoughts:

1. I don’t like the prosecution.

2. I am wary, though, of saying that she should not have been prosecuted. If the law says that X is a crime, that is (ideally) a law democratically adopted, and there is (ideally) a democratic procedure for changing the law if it is unjust or otherwise unacceptable – a procedure which involves open and public identification and discussion of the issues at stake, and accountable decision making. Those procedures are subverted if unelected public officials simply decide that they don’t like the law and are not going to enforce it.

3. I’d prefer, therefore, if this law were changed by Parliament rather than simply neglected by officials.

4. A more interesting question is, should the law prohibit private self-administered abortions like this?

5. There is obviously a class of potentially harmful drugs which are regulated in that you can only take them on medical advice, and subject to medical controls. That’s what the prescription system is for. There are obvious good reasons of public policy for this system, and I don’t think that a drug should get a pass on this simply because it is abortifacient.

6. I gather, though, that this couple could have been charged under the laws which regulate prescription drugs generally, but weren’t. They were charged under laws which specifically prohibit self-administered abortions.

7. Again, you can think of public safety concerns which support such laws – abortion is quite a significant intervention into a healthy, functioning body - but, again, for the purposes of this discussion, leave those aside.

8. It seems to me that if you allow uncontrolled self-administered abortions, that is realistically only consistent with a legal regime which does not restrict abortion at all, in any way, at any stage (since a legal right to administer you own abortion can be used to circumvent any other legal controls on abortion).

9. For all that I think the law has a limited role to play here, advocating no legal restrictions at all on abortion is further than I am prepared to go. I think society does have an interest here which is entitled to some weight in the eventual decision. Consequently I don’t favour a regime in which anyone can import and take an abortifacient drug with no legal controls.

10. I don’t think the issue would arise, though, if the woman in this case could have taken medical advice and had the drug prescribed in a controlled way, and that might be a better legal regime than either one in which she couldn’t legally get it at all, or one in which it was wholly uncontrolled.

Deleted by Hunter

Just responding in kind Hunter, gave it as much effort as it deserved