Abortion is it right or wrong? Section of the report:

Introduction

The moral permissibility of abortion is an issue of utmost controversy and debate in both the philosophical community and in the general public. There are people that believe that abortion is never permissible in any circumstance. Others believe that abortion is always and only permissible if the mother chooses to abort. And there are those who stand in the middle with beliefs that abortions can be ethically sound in certain situations.

Methodology

I will first examine Don Marquis's article entitled "Why Abortion is Immoral." Then I will counter Marquis's arguments with feminist arguments in Suzan Sherwin's article, "Abortion Through a Feminist Lens." It is my thesis that abortions are morally acceptable if and only if the decision to abort is the autonomous choice of the mother.

Don Marquis argument is based on the assumption that "whether or not abortion is morally permissible stands or falls on whether or not a fetus is the sort of being whose life is seriously wrong to end." (Readings in Health Care Ethics, 241) This assumption allows Marquis to set up his thesis which states "that abortion is, except possibly in rare cases, seriously immoral, that it is in the same moral category as killing innocent adult human beings." (Brannon, L., 2007 Pp. 27)

This creates the first of many stand-offs in Marquis writings. Marquis suggests that by analysing both arguments in depth, one may loose its plausibility and this can break the standoff. The analysis exposes faults with both the pro-life and pro-choice arguments. The anti-abortion argument, which states that basically killing living things is wrong, is too broad. Marquis uses the example of killing a cancel-cell culture, which is living but obviously not immoral to kill. To assume that killing any living thing is immoral will encompass too much and damages the anti-abortion argument because it is too broad. On the other hand, Marquis states that the pro-choice argument is too narrow in its scope. People who support the pro-choice arguments still believe that killing is wrong, they just think that the fetus does not fall into the category of something which is wrong to kill. Marquis uses the example of the argument "it is prima facie wrong to kill only rational agents." (Schwarzbein Pp.55) This argument will assume that killing infants or the mentally retarded is morally permissible, which it is not. Therefore another standoff occurs.

Result ...