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liat some things about ethical dilemmas associated with fetal research
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When a pregnant woman is declared brain dead and she is keeping alive to have the child, it seems like the right thing to do. The other way to think about it, is the dignity of the mother's diseased body. When a person is declared dead, in our culture, the body is treated with respect and dignity. When you look at these cases, the mother is kept alive to sustain life for a child that might not even make it, the body loses all respect for the life it once had, and it challenges the notion of the idea of brain death.
There is a low susses rate for a child of a maternal brain dead mother for the baby to live. When a woman is declared brain dead they are sent for burial or other final respects. In this case, however, the woman is pregnant and there is a fetus to think about. The problem lies with the susses rate of the child be born or being born without any complications. There are only 5 reported successful cases of brain death births (Lsaacson et al. 1996). The body at this point is just used for an incubator for the unborn child. The rate for the child to come out with no complications or in the body of the mother to produce complications is less than 10% (Lsaacson et al. 1996). Knowing all of this, why would one want to put their body through all of this for such a low success rate with current medical technologies.
“In most human society's death is an extremely important cultural and social phenomenon, sometimes more important than birth” (Ohnuki-Tierney, Angrosino, & Daar et al. 1994). In the United States of America, when a body dies it is cherished, mourned over, and given respect by the ones that knew the person. It is sent to the morgue and from there the family decides how the body should be buried or cremated based on...
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...edical technology advancing the way it is and the ability to keep someone’s body alive after death has been declared than the definition of death needs to be changed accordingly. While there are upside o keeping the body alive, in the case of giving the fetus a chance to live, there are still too many downsides.
Works Cited
Daniel Sperling, “MATERNAL BRAIN DEATH”, American Journal of Law and Medicine 30 (2004): 453-500.
Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Michael V. Angrosino, Carl Becker, A. S. Daar, Takeo Funabiki and Marc I. Lorber,” Brain Death and Organ Transplantation: Cultural Bases of Medical Technology”, Current Anthropology 35 (1994).
Esser A. Respekt vor dem toten Körper, “Deutsche Zeitschrift für” Philosophie 56 (2008): 119-134.
Nicole Isaacson, “The "Fetus-Infant": Changing Classifications of "In Utero" Development in Medical Texts”, Sociological Forum 11 (1996).
In A Defense of Abortion (Cahn and Markie), Judith Thomson presents an argument that abortion can be morally permissible even if the fetus is considered to be a person. Her primary reason for presenting an argument of this nature is that the abortion argument at the time had effectively come to a standstill. The typical anti-abortion argument was based on the idea that a fetus is a person and since killing a person is wrong, abortion is wrong. The pro-abortion adopts the opposite view: namely, that a fetus is not a person and is thus not entitled to the rights of people and so killing it couldn’t possibly be wrong.
Kemp, Joe. “Fetus of pregnant, brain-dead Texas woman ‘distinctly abnormal’: lawyers.” NYDailyNews. New York Daily News. 23 Jan. 2014. Web. 08 Feb. 2014.
In Sandy Hingston’s “The death of the funeral business”, the story motivates people into moving into different sets of values or beliefs that weren’t acquainted in their previous ideas. I feel the understanding of change in culture is motivating the author. The time that she is living a time and era in which we as the people search for many ways to have freedom. This includes freedom of choice from the restraints of our own minds such as culture and beliefs we are so accustomed to. Hingston is seeing as a change on how we perceive our body because of the time and era it occurs in. One of the the biggest change in history is the since 1884 which introduced the use cremation. This later rose in popularity overtime in which it finally reached
"Taboos and Social Stigma - Rituals, Body, Life, History, Time, Person, Human, Traditional Views of Death Give Way to New Perceptions." Encyclopedia of Death and Dying. Web. 31 Jan. 2011. .
The conservative argument asserts that every person has a right to life. The foetus has a right to life. No doubt the mother has a right to decide what happens in and to her body. But surely a person’s right to life is stronger than the mother’s right to decide what shall happen to her body, and so outweigh it. So the foetus may not be killed and an abortion may not be performed (Thomson, 1971)
They believe that the experience of being alive or conscious is fundamentally better than having never experienced life or consciousness at all. If a fetus is projected to die within hours of their birth, it should not be aborted because the experience of taking even just a few short breaths is greater than never getting that chance. I agree that the experience of being alive is valuable. I will add, however, that the value is limited. For example, while the awareness of unconsciousness persons is hotly debated, it is perhaps safe to say that people who are in a permanent state of unconsciousness have limited awareness and may not know whether they are alive or dead. A large number of people with an extremely low quality of life are conscious, but are not aware that they are conscious. They might experience emotions, but may not be aware that they are having said emotions. A person with an extremely low quality of life might slightly gain something from being alive, but if they are not aware they are gaining something, the value significantly diminishes. If a person with an extremely low quality of life is aware and mentally sound, but perhaps bed-bound and living in severe pain, the value of their life significantly diminishes to similar levels. If a fetus’s future is as bleak as that, without room for improvement, then they often are better off not being born. There
But, arguing against this point, since a fetus does not have a desire to live, or any desires at all for that matter, then it is not wrong to kill the fetus. To backup this argument, David Boonin states in his book, A Defense of Abortion, “Since the pre conscious fetus is not conscious, it does not have ideal desires in this sense. And so, on this account, the best account of why you and I and temporarily comatose adults and suicidal teenagers have a right to life does not imply that the pre conscious fetus
In “Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain,” Jessica Mitford presents an intriguing, if unnerving, argument for the generality of death and the funeral business specifically in the United States. She explains that the role of the funeral director has evolved to the point that he (or she) “has put on a well-oiled performance in which the concept of death played no part whatsoever”. Embalming plays a principal role in this exhibit because it is the method through which the funeral industry can present the deceased in a manner that will make them appear as presentable or “not as dead as they should look” as is possible, given their limitations. Embalming and presenting the dead has spawned a vast supporting market into which, Mitford notes, Americans
...ice. While I value my experience, as I feel should be commonly held by others and the way in which we interact (killing adults is wrong), I don’t see a strong enough basis for that view to be held for a fetus. As Marquis summarized, the killing of a fetus is essentially arbitrarily choosing a human cell. Although fetuses in first trimester aren’t single celled organisms, they serve no cognitive function or purposes to themselves, so there are no features in which it is being deprived of if it is terminated. The potential life of a fetus is the same as saying there is a potential for any such biological thing, it is simply a scenario, which could happen if given the opportunity. But if an adult human possesses the ability to have goals and desires, they then should be allowed to make the discretion for their best interest to whether an abortion is permissible or not.
For centuries, other cultures have tried to preserve their dead. The Egyptians were the first know society to preserve their dead through embalming techniques (“Brief,” par 2). After the collapse of the Egyptian society there were few reports of embalming (2). European Catholic dignitaries, monarchs, and aristocrats first used funeral embalming techniques in the 13th century to transport mortal bodies across long distances (Pascale and Lemonnier, 9). . The mortal bodies were filled with expensive scented herbs that had antiseptic qualities (10). It was not until the Civil War during 1860 that embalming the dead was practiced in the United States (“Brief,” par 7). Today, in the 21st century, this popular and traditional choice is made by most United States citizens. In our egotistical society, the cost of $500 to $1,200 is paid without hesitation to ensure we still look presentable for our last gathering with friends and family.
say that the beginning of life should be at least measured by the beginning of brain life. By six weeks, an unborn baby's brain waves can be recorded by an electroencephalogram (EEG).10 Between six and seven weeks, the unborn baby will respond to external stimuli, such as touching his or her face.11 While many people believe that a fetus is merely a mass of flesh, and is not nearly as complex as a human, this is completely untrue. By eight weeks, all of the body systems are present, and by eleven weeks, still i! n the first trimester, all of those body systems are
According to Don Marquis, the fetus is a person and has the right to live because it is a biological human being and a human being in a moral sense (Lewis,2013, pp. 320). A fetus is a person some may say because it possesses some of the personhood characteristics. In the woman’s womb, a fertilized sperm turns into a blastocyst after 5 days and later turns into an embryo (human fetus), which eight weeks later the fetus develops a brain, heart, and all the other body cells and tissue (Lewis, 2013, pp. 293). At that moment, the fetus is conscious and alive, because the brain is slowly functioning and is pumping blood throughout the whole body. Soon, the fetus would form into a human figure and kick the mother’s tummy, and when the mother places her hand on her tummy, the fetus stops kicking shows a communication or connection. So, it is a wrongful act to abort the fetus because it has the potential to develop into a person.
In conclusion, for those of you, who support abortion and think it is okay, put yourself in the babies’ shoes. I know that everybody has to die, and we do not live on earth forever. With that being said, I cannot imagine dying. I do not want to imagine the world without me in it. As a result, I will love to know how all you abortion supporter will feel if someone seized your ability to live. For one second, just picture yourself not being capable of having the opportunity to say whether or not you want to live or die but also not being able to have an actual voice in this case. Unfortunately, babies are not entitled to have a choice in their mother’s womb. This is very hurtful and tragic. Please refrain from abortion and be responsible. It is cruel and unfair.
The ethics of abortion is a topic that establishes arguments that attempt to argue if abortion is morally justified or not. Philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson wrote a pro- choice piece called “A Defense of Abortion.” In this paper, she presents various arguments that attempt to defend abortion by relating it to the woman carrying the fetus and her right in controlling her body. On the other side of the spectrum, philosopher Don Marquis wrote a pro- life paper called “Why Abortion Is Immoral.” Ultimately, Marquis argues that abortion is immoral with rare exceptions because it is resulting in the deprivation of the fetus’s valuable future. He supports his paper by creating the future-like-ours argument that compares the future of a fetus to the