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Essay on Is Abortion Immoral?
Is abortion immoral? To explore this we must rephrase Taylor's language: "[D]o you still allow the thinking being to decide, or is this decision to be placed 'off limits' by a third party (say, a church) purporting that the purposeful termination of human life is never licit - and hence, the possibility of anyone's making such a decision must be foreclosed?" Here is the heart of not only the abortion debate but also the right-to-suicide, beneficent euthanasia, and physician-assisted suicide controversies.
Conservatives argue (often, though not always, on religious grounds) that the purposeful taking of human life is never licit. If we accept this contention, the debate is over. Licitness trumps choice every time. We don't defend someone's right to choose to burn down buildings or rob banks, because we have previous grounds to categorize such actions as evil. We brand them ineligible to be chosen. Likewise, if abortion opponents succeed in convincing most Americans that abortion is murder, "pro-choice" advocates will be unable to prevent abortion's exclusion from the range of options among which American women may legitimately choose.
If licitness is the key issue, it follows that the alternatives Taylor proposes - defending choice or defending abortion as socially useful - are not exhaustive. In fact, licitness is more fundamental than either of them. The issues of personal freedom Taylor raises, especially the freedom to carry a pregnancy to term, are provocative. But they more properly belong to political science than to, he question on which the abortion debate hinges: Is abortion murder?
Some may find it paradoxical that after twenty-three years of legal abortion, this question has not been resolved. Why? Teaching people that fetuses are not persons, that they may morally be terminated, and that values suggesting otherwise are false and outmoded is hard work......
