Unaborted Socrates Essay

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What would happen if the Socrates of old came back to life to debate the issue of abortion in the modern world? Peter Kreeft tries to give us an idea in his book The Unaborted Socrates. In this book Socrates debates three different aspects of the abortion issue with three different people, an abortion doctor, a philosopher and a psychologist. With the Doctor, Socrates debates when human life begins. With the Philosopher it is debated whether we should legislate morality. With the psychologist he debates whether abortion is a woman's right. Unfortunately, they do not come up with reasonable answers to any of these questions. Without the answer to the question, "is the fetus a human being?" it is impossible to find the answer to the other two questions. In the end, all questions lead back to the first. In answer to whether or not the fetus is a human being, it is concluded as the doctor said, "We simply do not know when the fetus becomes a human person. Anyone who claims to know is a fool because he claims to know what he does not." Nevertheless, even if the debate provides no final answers, it does serve to show the logical reasons for why abortion is horrible. It does present thought provoking questions in the minds of both those who are for and those who are against abortion.
Socrates first debate was with an abortion doctor by the name of Herrod. Herrod and Socrates discussed the issue of whether abortion can be called murder. This question led up to another question, "When does human life begin?" or, more particularly, "is the fetus a human being?" In order to properly conclude whether abortion is murder or not they had to properly define what murder was. They concluded that murder was killing an innocent human being. With t...

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... answer, they resulted in no firm conclusions to this question either. It was impossible to say whether there should be laws against abortion unless you knew whether the fetus is a human being. if it was, then abortion was murder, if it wasn't, then abortion doesn't really matter. Finally, in Socrates' debate with Syke, they discussed whether abortion was a woman's right. Again, this debate led quickly to the bigger question of whether a fetus was a human being. If the fetus was a human, then abortion is not a woman's right. If the fetus was not a human being then perhaps abortion can be a woman's right. Each and every discussion that Socrates disputed ended the same way with the same result. Nonetheless, even if no firm answers are given, Unaborted Socrates presents many interesting ideas from a different viewpoint and introduces some thought provoking discussion.

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