Justification for artificial abortion: When the right to life and the mother’s rights collide, where do we compromise?

Discusses the legitimacy of artificial abortion, focusing on the rights of the mother and fetus. The complexities and gray areas of artificial abortion are highlighted through the case of a patient with Down syndrome and EB. Legal permissibility and personal ethical concerns are also addressed.

 

To carry a life, to give birth to a child who looks like you, seems to be one of the most precious and happy things in the world. However, the question of when a baby in the womb can be considered a person has long been a never-ending debate. As a result, there are many different opinions on when it’s right to terminate a pregnancy. There is also a steady stream of arguments that it should be justified in certain cases. I was raised with the idea that no life is worthless and that abortion is the wrong choice. However, after reading Jonathan Glover’s “Eugenics and Human Rights” in Hilary Putnam et al’s book, The Genetic Revolution and Bioethics, I began to think about artificial abortion in a different light. I realized that there are situations in which artificial abortion is not to be condemned. So, based on the aforementioned book, I would like to use the case of Down syndrome and EB as an example to show that it is not black and white when discussing the topic of artificial abortion. The fetus in the womb is a human being and should not be opposed to artificial abortion because it has the right to come into the world, nor should it be in favor of artificial abortion because of the rights of the mother.
Unlike a natural abortion, an artificial abortion involves artificially opening the cervix to terminate a pregnancy. There are three main methods of artificial abortion: curettage, manual vacuum aspiration, and suction curettage to remove the conceptus from the uterus. Curettage involves scraping the surface of the uterus with a curette, manual vacuum aspiration involves using a syringe to suck out the conceptus with a mild suction, and suction curettage involves connecting a tube to a suction machine, which is more intense and requires more machinery than vacuum aspiration. Just the name and process of these surgeries sound cruel and horrifying, so what are the reasons for their current acceptance in our society?
According to the Health Act, artificial abortion is permitted in the following cases 1. when there is a 10% or greater chance that the child will be born with a hereditary physical disorder or a mental disorder with criminal tendencies, 2. in the presence of an infectious disease, 3. as a result of rape, 4. in a relationship where the couple is legally unable to marry, or 5. when the child will endanger the mother’s health. Opponents of artificial abortion may be outraged that these laws exist at all. After all, aborting a child for any reason is tantamount to killing a human life. Glover explains that while pro-lifers initially argue that a mother has the right to keep her child, the flip side is that the child in the womb has the right to come into the world. As such, my views on artificial abortion began to change as I realized that when dealing with the topic of artificial abortion, one must look at it from both sides, the mother and the fetus.
I had always been anti-abortion, so I just assumed that the child in the womb should be brought into the world. For example, even if I found out through prenatal tests that a child would be born with a physical disability, I felt that it would be too selfish to abort a child who had done nothing wrong because it was the parents who created the child. Eugenics and Human Rights illustrates this with the stories of two couples whose children were born with disabilities, one with Down syndrome, the other with EB, a terminal disease, and the younger brother of a child who died at 19 weeks of age. In the former case, the couple gave birth to their child, but in the latter case, prenatal testing showed the slightest possibility of EB, and they considered an artificial abortion. Both children were born with the condition, but it made me think deeply about why one child would be blamed for having an artificial abortion and the other would not. Down syndrome is now well supported and there are no major obstacles to living with it. Recently, there are even women who have overcome Down syndrome and become models. However, people with EB live in pain every second of their lives from the moment they are born and die shortly afterward. It is very different from children born with Down syndrome, who are born with the same disease, but rarely see the light of day and learn only pain and suffering. It’s an unbearable pain for parents who can only watch. However, people with Down syndrome are also born with disabilities and have many inconveniences. Some conditions are worth living with, so the line between when parents can and cannot have an artificial abortion is very blurry and difficult.
Nowadays, there are different procedures that are suitable for different gestation periods, and there are cases in which artificial abortion is allowed by law, so it is no longer an absolute no-no in our society. In the case of EB and Down syndrome, there are many factors to consider before making the decision to have an artificial abortion. The mother, the fetus, the value of life at birth, and so much more. We can never say that abortion is just right or wrong. There are too many grays in between to make it black and white.