Understanding Abortion: Definition and Context
Abortion is the process of ending a pregnancy such that the fetus or embryo is removed from the uterus. Abortion is a personal, frequently challenging decision that is influenced by a wide range of elements, including social, economic, and medical considerations. There are various arguments that either support abortion and encourage legalizing it across countries or oppose the procedure and want it to be prohibited. This essay will consider two claims – for and against the morality of abortion, respectively.
Don Marquis’s “Future-Like-Ours” Argument and Its Practical Application
Usually, the foremost popular argument in the social debate about abortion is that a woman undergoing it is killing a living person. Don Marquis (1989) explains the argument in a way that killing a person deprives them of their future gains. When a mother wishes to terminate her unborn child for non-medical reasons during a healthy pregnancy, this argument may be persuasive. Therefore, this argument implies that abortion could cause a loss of future gains to a single person or the whole community.
Judith Jarvis Thomson’s Argument and Its Real-World Relevance
Judith Jarvis Thomson (2004) had a standpoint of supporting the idea of abortion. She created a hypothetical situation that included one’s life being endangered by a famous unconscious violinist. In this context, one is to share life with a musical celebrity for nine months to save him: similar to pregnancy, the person is forced to maintain the well-being of another person at the expense of one’s time and health. Throughout her argument, Thomson makes various adjustments to the situation, linking it to the different consequences related to pregnancy, examples of which include pregnancy by rape or pregnancy that can cause the death of the woman. This argument might be viable in the instance of rape or incest that brought pregnancy.
Applying Marquis’s and Thomson’s Arguments to Nursing Practice
Finally, it should be noted that the subject of abortion is a hotly contested and complicated matter that is influenced by many different variables. The justifications for and against abortion’s morality are based on a variety of moral, societal, and medical issues. Supporters of abortion stress the significance of a woman’s right to govern her own body.
In contrast, opponents of abortion contend that it is tantamount to killing a living person and robbing them of their future benefits. Both arguments are applicable in nursing: using Marquis’s claim, nurses should provide counseling to the patient wanting to do an abortion; however, if the pregnancy is an outcome of rape or incest, as in Thomson’s claim, nurses should offer emotional support.
References
Marquis, D. (1989). Why abortion is immoral. The journal of philosophy, 86(4), 183-202. Web.
Thomson, J. J. (2004). A defense of abortion. In Ethics (pp. 267-274). Routledge.