Abortion In Abortion

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Recommended: Ethics and morality of abortion

The right to choose: Abortion in the Case of disability/abnormality
Just two generations ago, having a baby was simpler. In the words of Forest Gump, “Life’s like a box of chocolate, you never know what you’re going to get”. If your baby was born disabled or abnormal that’s just the way life was. In today’s society evolving technologies have made the abortion of a foetus with an abnormality or disability a real life issue for some families. The abortion of such a foetus has ethical, psychological, legal, economic and social implications, and there are widely differing religious and secular views on the ethics involved. Opinions vary from those saying all abortions are wrong, to those saying some of these abortions are in the best interests of everybody, including the foetus. Who has the right to choose?
Firstly, to put this issue in perspective: this isn’t a very common problem. There are around one hundred thousand abortions in Australia every year, which means 1 in 4 pregnancies are aborted. Of these one hundred thousand, about 2% are aborted for reasons of foetal abnormality.
To help you have a better understanding of the ethical issues surrounding the decision to have an abortion, I am going pretend to be a mother who is faced with this decision. I will step through a hypothetical set of events that are typical in these cases. So, I am a forty year old mother; I have two other children still in school and I am sixteen weeks pregnant. Because I am an older mother, my obstetrician recommends I have an ultrasound scan to check out the baby. I know abnormalities are more common for older mothers.
¬¬ would you like to be my obstetrician?
Obstetrician: I’m sorry but we seem to have a problem. It appears your baby...

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...This is typical of most people when speaking about disability or abnormality, but is it really the right thing to say? I believe speaking about in these terms predisposes us towards abortion. Personally I believe it is up to me to decide what to do. This is because caring for a Down’s syndrome child will be my responsibility for the rest of my life. If I don’t think I can discharge that responsibility, then ethically I should not choose to take on the responsibility in the first place. My decision then depends on my personal circumstances and the extent of the babies disabilities. After considering all the ethics involved in this issue I have decided to have an abortion. I have chosen to follow Singer’s philosophy because when I try to consider the issues without

If I knew the baby would die shortly after birth then I would not hesitate to have an abortion now.

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