Thursday 10 December 2015

Philosophical questions to the pro-choicers

According to Wikipedia, the pro-choice movement is a movement supporting the view that a woman should have the legal right to an elective abortion, meaning the right to terminate her pregnancy.

This obviously brings about some interesting philosophical items to consider.

  1. Is it okay to abort an embryo which is 9 months old? 
  2. How about 9 weeks old? 
  3. How about 9 days old? 
  4. How about 9 hours? 
  5. How about the second after delivery? 
  6. How about a month after delivery? 
  7. Does a woman have an absolute right to choose what happens in and to her body?
  8. Does government have the authority to condemn abortion if only the woman knows about the pregnancy?
  9. Is abortion acceptable in cases where if the pregnancy were not terminated, it would pose a direct threat to the life of the mother?
  10. Are embryos, zygotes and/or fetuses in fact "persons" entitled to ethical, legal and moral protections? 
  11. If they are not "persons" at conception, at what point in the development process is personhood bestowed?
  12. If they are not "persons", should the potential to be a person give embryos, zygotes and fetuses a right to life?
  13. If they are not "persons", does the embryo, zygote, or fetus become a living person once delivered or extracted from the womb?
  14. If they are "persons", is abortion acceptable in cases of rape, incest, or contraception failure?
  15. If they are "persons", is abortion acceptable in cases where the fetus is deformed, and would this invoke issues of eugenics?
  16. If they are "persons", is abortion acceptable before viability, when they couldn't survive outside the womb?
  17.  If the embryo were to experience pain and suffering during or before the abortion, would it still make it right irrespective of the answers given above?
  18. If an embryo isn't defined as a person, then what could it be defined as?
  19. Is an embryo conscious? 
  20. Are the brain signals of an embryo identical to that of a young child e.g. 1 year old?
  21. If embryos are not persons, are comatose patients persons? 
  22. Could an abortion be said to be morally wrong because it deprives the fetus of a valuable future? 
  23. If there is uncertainty as to whether a fetus has a right to life, then would an abortion be equivalent to consciously taking the risk of killing another? 
  24. If one is religious and commanded by their religion to not abort, would it be wrong to still do it?
  25. Is masturbation genocide?
Some philosophical things to think about.