The Moral Choice of Women
The issue of abortion in the U.S. is one that has been politicized for several decades. Prior to the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade (1973), abortion was not legal. The Supreme Court ruled that laws restricting abortion were unconstitutional and since then abortion has been seen as a natural right of women by those who believe that the pro-choice side of the issue is the moral one. The other side of the issue, of course, focuses more on the fact that abortion is the ending of a life, and that the deliberate ending of a life is an immoral action. A third perspective on the matter is that while abortion may be immoral in general there are instances when it may be acceptable, such as when the child is conceived from a rape or when aborting the child will save the mother’s life. This paper will examine these three points of the issue and show why the only moral choice of women is to be totally pro-life no matter what the circumstances are surrounding the pregnancy.

The main reason that the moral choice of women regarding abortion is to be pro-life at all times and under all circumstances is that at the heart of the issue is a life. A while it is true that everyone has a choice at all time and under all circumstances to protect and preserve life or to end life if one should so choose (this is after all the essence of what it means to have a free will), having that choice does not negate the morality of the action. In other words, just because one is free to do a, b or c does not mean that all three of those options are moral. One is free to do what is moral within any ethical framework, whether it is virtue ethics, deontology or utilitarianism (Sandle). One has a choice to do what is right or what is wrong accordingly—but the choice itself does not mean that one is free in the moral sense to do something immoral.

The problem with the argument of those who suggest that the heart of the matter is the woman’s choice rather than the child’s life put the choosing aspect of the issue over the moral aspect. The see the “right” of the woman as the defining element of the issue rather than the life of the person in the womb—and to avoid the element of life, they deny the child its personhood by referring to it in medical or scientific terms as a “fetus” as though this were some alien concept that had nothing whatsoever to do with life—as though it were something growing in a petri dish that could eventually, possibly turn into a human but that outcome is not worth thinking about because the growth is still in such an early stage, and so on. They refuse to consent to the premise that the life growing in the womb is in fact a life and that all life should be protected and preserved. They refuse to consent to this fact because were it to be consented to it would displace their focus on the choosing as being the most important element of the issue. Rather than look at life, they look at the “right”—a politicized element that grew out of the Feminist Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, following the rise of Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem as advocates for women’s rights (Wolbrecht). Their argument is not based on the same starting point as...…generally two camps: the pro-choice camp and the pro-life camp. Usually in an argument there is a pro and a con side. The pro side supports the issue and the con side opposes it. Yet in abortion there are generally two sides and both are pro. How can that be? It can only logically be if the two sides are pro two different things. The anti-abortion side is pro-life. The pro-abortion side is pro-choice. It focuses not on the life of the child because to do so would be to enter into the moral question of whether preserving or protecting life is the ultimate responsibility of the mother. Instead the pro-choice side focuses on the wholly distinct and separate argument of whether a woman’s choice or right to choose should ever be denied her. It is really an argument for suffrage and enfranchisement that is applied to the issue of abortion. It is wrongly applied, however, because it does not in the least address the morality of killing a child in the womb. And so today laws have been passed ensuring that a woman will have the right to “choose” all the way up to the point of birth. This law is now on the books in New York and may soon be on the books in Virginia. One should ask, however, why the right to “choose” ends at birth. Should not the mother have the right to “choose” to kill the child after birth as well? The child that was in the womb is the same as the child that was outside the womb. When one is pro-choice one must decidedly ignore the life of the child and the moral obligation that a mother has to give her life for her child’s.

Works Cited

Jones, E. Michael. Libido…