On a global scale, the provision of access to safe treatments is considered a morally right option and the healthcare system’s central responsibility, but abortions remain a prominent exception from this perspective. Abortions are broadly defined as the termination of gestation by removing the embryo with the help of expulsion-inducing medications or the fetus via surgical methods (Rich and Rapkin 339). Being a complex political issue, induced miscarriages reveal the conflict between pregnant women’s right to act as the key decision-makers and their hypothetical children’s interests and right to life. The ethicality of treating the woman’s decision-making capacity as more important than the unborn person’s potential desires and allowing abortions represents a decades-long debate with prominent legal consequences.
The pro-life and pro-choice perspectives are diametrically opposed, and the former’s soundness is imperfect. The anti-abortion narrative is largely inspired by the sanctity of life and arguments peculiar to the fetus’s potential. Overall, the view of abortions as morally inappropriate mostly revolves around religious rather than medical ethics and accentuates possibilities and the hypothetical person’s perspectives. The already existing woman’s rights and physical and moral suffering while carrying a pregnancy that is unwanted or even dangerous are, therefore, understated. The pro-choice perspective explains abortions as a morally permissible yet difficult decision that upholds the pregnant woman’s autonomy and supports the right to health by reducing maternal mortality (Rich and Rapkin 340). Access to abortions also benefits economically insecure women (Rich and Rapkin 340). This research paper explores the two perspectives in greater detail and assesses their credibility and relation to empirical findings and healthcare ethics. Based on the available evidence and the considerations of women’s rights, treating abortions as an ethically appropriate procedure seems to be a more reasonable position.
Work Cited
Rich, Natasha, and Rachel Rapkin. “Upholding Medical Ethics Principles by Performing Abortion: A Provider’s Perspective.” Journal of Gynecologic Surgery, vol. 38, no. 5, 2022, pp. 339-343, Web.