The Problem of Abortion

Richard Bloodworth

Philosophy 241

Logic

Dr. Keith Parsons

Georgia State University

The willful termination of human life is murder, whether legal or not, in my opinion and abortion is another euphemistic variation. The problem of abortion is not a biological issue: it is an ethical or a philosophical one. Biologically, everyone would agree that the individual's life begins, or rather that life continues, at fertilization. The moral or ethical question is when does "humanness" begin?

The fertilization of the ovum and the development of the embryo and fetus are the initial stages of all animal life including human. In the continuous, cyclical process of life it is difficult at times to determine where some living entity begins or ends its life since some may say life begins before birth when the future parents decide to have a child and some say that the soul continues after death. But based on biological data, individual physical life begins when the male and female gametes unite to form the zygote. At this stage, the future individual has, at the moment of conceptualization or fertilization, all of the genetic information contained within the chromosomes of the zygote so that the person's physical, and, some say, emotional, intellectual, personality, and aptitude characteristics are predetermined at that point. Therefore the"humanness" of that person may already be encoded in the genes (nature) in addition to the parent's taught environmental values (nurture) at the time of their either conscious or unconscious decision to create another human life.

In order to perpetuate regular sexual pleasure and to avoid the chores and responsibility of being a parent, the advocates of abortion skillfully, and at times, selfishly and superficially argue that human life does not begin until the natural expulsion of the fetus from the womb at birth. The real question is: do human beings require sexual intercourse to survive or even to be happy? As everyone inherently knows, human beings do not require sexual expression as, for instance, they require food to survive. The fetus or new child, of course, depends upon the union of the male and female gametes in order to be created and thus exist but the reproductive process could be done mechanically, biologically, and only for the purpose of reproduction. Nature, to encourage population growth and replenishment made the process a pleasurable, sensual procedure to most people. Sexual intercourse or communication, which can be the high expression of love between two people can also be reduced to cheap entertainment for the masses – an activity that any one can do that "feels good" and requires no training. Any sexual expression other than for the purpose of procreation is recreational.

Every person from the educated to the uneducated and from the intellectually gifted to the mentally retarded knows the consequences of sexual union, or more specifically, the introduction of sperm into the ovary; even the lower life forms and other mammals instinctively or unconsciously "know". To prevent the possibility of the need for an abortion a moral purist would say one should participate in sexual activity only for the purpose of reproduction otherwise, abstain. A libertarian would say to use contraceptive devices. Someone in the middle of the spectrum would suggest other forms of entertainment or sexual sublimation since there are an infinite number of life's pleasures between people other than sexual or non-intercourse sexual expression such as foreplay, masturbation, and massage since human beings enjoy physical contact.

To defend abortion on the basis of its contribution toward population control is to forget the issue of self discipline. The decision to want or not want a child should be made prior to sexual intercourse. Impregnation, except in the rare case of rape, is voluntary, each party being aware of the consequences of their actions. To defend abortion by saying that in nature a spontaneous abortion naturally expels a dead fetus is like saying it is all right to kill a person when they become no longer useful to society since nature ends life through natural death. If a child is born deformed or crippled, do we kill it at birth? The majority of people are against infanticide and all of them would be opposed to abortion if it were demonstrated to them that the fetus is human whether the fetus, like the infant, is healthy or not.

The feminist argument that a woman has a right to do with her body as she wishes is valid within the bounds of societal decency up to and including self destruction if she so desires. But if the self she destroys is not her self then the argument vanishes. Once another person is introduced, then the concern ceases to be only with the woman's body. The woman can do as she pleases with her body and does not, except in the case of rape, have to get pregnant. If a decision is made either consciously or unconsciously to create human life (in higher, intelligent life forms the decision is usually conscious) the process should be completed to its natural and logical conclusion. If a couple were truly bound in love the subject of abortion (of a healthy fetus) would never enter their minds. The fact is that some humans do not want to sacrifice the joys of sensual pleasure to the life of another human being. Sensual, animal pleasures have their place in the human experience but they do not receive priority over the life of another human being. Copulation for hedonistic purposes is not justification for abortion or the killing of another human being. Apart from sexual abstinence or contraception, one solution is sexual sublimation or the substitution of sexual pleasure by other forms of communication or entertainment such as pleasure derived by the five senses and the development of the mind through cultural enrichment and experience since life offers an infinite number of interpersonal pleasures other than sexual and non-intercourse forms of sexual expression.

Why do people intercourse sexually besides for physical pleasure? (To have children, to combat loneliness, to build a family, to leave behind a genetic legacy to insure a form of immortality, to fulfill societal expectations, instinct, power, to satisfy a psychological need, the male's temporary retreat into the security of the womb?) Of course, we must keep reproducing otherwise we will become as extinct as the dinosaurs but we must regulate through self disciple our sexual expression.

For those who need more visceral persuasion or graphic, realistically sensational descriptions, let them observe or, we hope from now on, imagine a living organism "untimely ripped from its mother's womb" and covered in birth fluids. After being forcibly ejected from the birth canal and severed from its umbilical connection, its skull is struck and smashed with a hammer to quiet its beating heart; then the bloody mass is wrapped in a plastic garbage bag and thrown with a loud thud into a metallic trash can. It was never a human, unable to defend itself – only a bloody mass of pulsating membranes just as the dead soldiers of battle were never bloodied mounds of flesh – just clean statistics sacrificed for the politician's ego.

To counter the, perhaps at times, superficially convincing eloquence of those who advocate abortion or the termination of life before birth, we will never hear the voice of the unborn human speak in defense against its destruction, unless, of course, we learn to completely decipher the language contained within the genetic code.

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Note: The task of the above assignment was to present one side of a debate of a controversial issue using deductive or syllogistic logic.

Since the writing of this paper I have considered abortion to be a problem to be addressed on a case by case basis with the use of abortion as sometimes being the "lesser of evils".

The limiting and deciding factors (all abnormal situations) to consider would include: saving the life of the mother; rape; incest; a child mother; severe genetic defects, conditions, or diseases; and severe birth defects (such as conjoined twins some of whom share the same body trunk that splits off from the spinal cord sometimes referred to as a Y monster which can sometimes result in one body with two functioning heads) which can be determined by prenatal scans.