3 9 7W e i g h i n g fa c t o r sAbORTION^4
by Mary Anne Warreni Introduction
Do women have the right to abort unwanted pregnancies? Or is the state
entitled (or perhaps ethically required) to prohibit deliberate abortion? Should
some abortions be permitted and others not? Does the proper legal status of
abortion follow directly from its moral status? Or should abortion be legal,
even if it is sometimes or always morally wrong?
Such questions have aroused intense debate during the past two dec-
ades. Interestingly enough, in most of the industrialized world abortion
was not a criminal offence until a series of anti-abortion laws were passed
during the second half of the nineteenth century. At that time, proponents
of the prohibition of abortion generally stressed the medical dangers of
abortion. It was also sometimes argued that fetuses are human beings from
conception onward, and that deliberate abortion is therefore a form of
homicide. Now that improved techniques have made properly performed
abortions much safer than childbirth, the medical argument has lost what-
ever force it may once have had. Consequently, the focus of anti-abortion
arguments has shifted from the physical safety of women to the moral
value of fetal life.
Advocates of women’s right to choose abortion have responded to the
anti-abortion argument in several ways. I shall examine three lines of argu-
ment for the pro-choice view: (1) that abortion should be permitted, because
the prohibition of abortion leads to highly undesirable consequences; (2) that
women have a moral right to choose abortion; and (3) that fetuses are not yet
persons and thus do not yet have a substantial right to life.ii Consequentialist Arguments for Abortion
If actions are to be morally evaluated by their consequences, then a strong
case can be made that the prohibition of abortion is wrong. Throughout
history women have paid a terrible price for the absence of safe and legal
contraception and abortion. Forced to bear many children, at excessively
short intervals, they were often physically debilitated and died young — a
common fate in most pre-twentieth-century societies and much of the Third
World today. Involuntary childbearing aggravates poverty, increases infant
and child death rates, and places severe strains upon the resources of fami-
lies and states.
Improved methods of contraception have somewhat alleviated these prob-
lems. Yet no form of contraception is 100 per cent effective. Moreover, many
women lack access to contraception, e.g. because they cannot afford it, or it is
unavailable where they live, or unavailable to minors without parental per-
mission. In most of the world, paid work has become an economic necessity97364_ch19_ptg01_383-422.indd 397 11/15/13 5:45 PM
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