CHAPTER 2. TESTING APPROACHES
2.2 Steady-State Approach
Although, anti-abortion arguments are in the main valued-based or deontological in nature nevertheless, sometimes in order to meet their opponents on their own grounds, pro-lifers also adopt utilitarian reasoning to demonstrate the immorality of abortion.
The arguments generally use either the negative impacts of allowing or the positive outcomes of disallowing abortion on individuals and society to support their call for anti-abortion legislation.
One of such negative arguments is that abortion procedures, especially the surgical ones, no matter how safe we wish to claim that technology has made them still poses some degree of real danger to the mother‘s health and life. According to Ekwutosi some of these risks include, ―a perforated uterus, perforated bowel, sterility, and death.‖ He maintains that:
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The risk of complication can increase depending on how far pregnancy has progressed. The risk is also dependent upon the skill and experience of the practitioner;
maternal age, health, pre-existing conditions, methods and instruments used, medications used; the skill and experience of those assisting the practitioner and quality of recovery and follow-up care.93
Although, Ekwutosi is ready to concede that:
In some societies where abortion is illegal the risks are even higher due to quack and unsafe method used.
Unsafe abortion methods (e.g. use of certain drugs, herbs, or insertion of non-surgical objects in the uterus) are potentially dangerous, carrying a significantly elevated risk for permanent injury or death, as compared to abortion done by professionals.94
The point he particularly intends to underline is that abortion is never free from risks.
In that regards, he argues that it is safer and more beneficial to women and society if abortion is avoided altogether.
Louise-Kennedy also makes similar point when he argues that:
Induced abortion involves risks. Repeated abortion by dilation and curettage for instance, weakens and damages the cervix. This often leads to premature delivery or spontaneous abortion in subsequent pregnancies. Again, the cavity of the uterus may be damaged leading to the formation of scar tissue and consequently secondary infertility. Even when the abortion is procured by suction, the womb may be displace from its natural position. When the womb is not in its proper position, conception may take place in the fallopian tube but the zygote cannot be nourished by the wall of the uterus. As a result of this, the zygote dies away. In some women, frequent abdominal pain occurs.
Abdominal pains are not conducive for pregnancy and miscarriage may occur. In the case of some young girls it is even worst. Some of them also suffers from psychological disturbances and attracts aspersions to themselves. Not only do the moral consequences of their
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act weight them down, their social relationship too is marred. They may need good counselling and other kinds of asylum, confidence and self-esteem.95
Another utilitarian reason pro-lifers use to justify their anti-abortion stance is that granted that pregnancy can be very burdensome, however, there are good alternatives short of abortion that can take care of unwanted pregnancy. Analyzing this position, Ekwutosi explains that a woman put in the family way through rape etc. who feels it would be difficult for her to show love to the child or a mother who feels she has many children and therefore does not want to have the child, should hand it over for adoption or to motherless homes instead of aborting it. His reason for advocating this alternative is that there are many childless couples willing to adopt children.
Now the overall logic underpinning this advocacy lies in the utilitarian principle that emphasizes the primacy of utility. Going back to Ekwutosi‘s contention above, if the child is adopted instead of aborted, the child whose life is spared, the mother, who is saved from the moral and psychological burden of abortion, the childless couple who adopt the child and the society itself stand to gain much more than it would have if the child is aborted. Considering these utilitarian categories within the framework of utility calculus, the average pro-lifer believes that it is more beneficial to society as well as individuals to disallow abortion. On the whole, pro-life-utilitarian arguments like all arguments by pro-lifers aim at a single purpose: to rationally explain the immorality of abortion and hence explain why it should not be permitted.
As noted at the beginning of this dissertation, the dominant group on the abortion debate in Nigeria is the pro-life advocates. The group has on many occasions gone on
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activism to protests and condemn attempts−whether real or rumoured−by the state to legalization of abortion. Their latest actions as at the time of writing this dissertation is the condemnation and protests that trail the rumours that Rochas Okorocha, the Executive Governor of Imo State has legalized abortion. Whether the rumour is true or false, this researcher cannot verify. What is evident is that at a point the protests and condemnation becomes too unbearable that the Governor himself had to come out to debunk the rumour and to tell the enraged Christian community, especially Catholics that there was no element of truth in the alleged abortion legislation in the State.96
However, in the end, the ethical dilemma of abortion hinges on two main issues: the moral standing of the unborn, and the conflict of mother-foetus rights to self-determination. Therefore, most moral theories on abortion usually take a stance only on either of the two. Pro-life advocates have a general tendency to dwell on the moral standing of the unborn. Said moral standing is claimed to result from the possession of personhood (actual or potential), or from the claim that a God-given soul inhabits the unborn from the time of conception. In either case, this moral standing ascribes an inalienable right to life. Pro-choice activists are more prone to insist on women‘s rights. The debate, then, is more about conflicting rights, between the pregnant woman who has no right to kill, and the embryo/foetus that has no right to occupancy of the uterus.
Finally, the pro-choice and pro-life positions as our analyses in this chapter have shown have their merits. Nonetheless, their demerits are what undermine their
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suitability as ideal solutions to the abortion controversy. The next chapter presents the principle of identity and the doctrine of double effect as more suitable solutions to the problem of the morality of abortion.
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Endnotes
1. Quoted in W.T., Jones, F., Sontag, M.O., Beckner, RJ. Fogelin, Approaches to Ethics:
Representative Selections from Classical Times to the Present. 2nd Ed., (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1996), p. 21.
2. Quoted in M. Tooley Abortion and Infanticide, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), p.
103.
3. J. Laird, The Idea of the Soul. Freeport, (NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1970), p. 8.
4. M. N. Ford, When did I begin? Conception of the Human Individual in History, Philosophy and Science. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991), p. 39.
5. Ibid.
6. A. Long, Stoic Studies. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 233.
7. Ibid. p. 226.
8. B. Rothman, Redefining Abortion, in H Lafollette (Ed.), Ethics in Practice. An Anthology, (Oxford: Blackwell 1997), p. 104.
9. R. C. Solomon, & K.M. Higgins, K.M. 1996. A Short History of Philosophy. Oxford
& New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1996), p. 12.
10. M. N. Ford, Op. Cit. 39.
11. E. Tivnan, The Moral Imagination. Confronting Ethical Issues of our Day. New York: Simons & Chuster, 1995), p.34.
12. J. Rachels, The Right Thing to Do: Basic Readings in Moral Philosophy, (New York:
Random House, 1989), p.59.
13. J. Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy. z= Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993), p.115.
14. W. T. Jones et al.
15. H. Jonas, Mortality and Morality: A Search for the Good after Auschwitz, (Evanston, Ill.: North-western University. Press, 1996), p. 59.
16. R. Gordon, The Alarming History of Medicine. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1993), p.
9.
17. M. N. Ford, Op. Cit. p. 47.
18. Ibid. p. 48.
19. G.E. Pence, Classic Cases in Medical Ethics. 2nd Ed., (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995), p. 147.
20. Ibid. p. 148.
21. B. Duden, Op. Cit. p. 82.
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22. K. Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. Berkeley: University California Press, 1984).
23. B. Bilger, The Secret Garden. The Sciences 38 No 1 (1998), p. 38.
24. Rachels The Right Thing to Do: Basic Readings in Moral Philosophy, p. 115.
25. J. Feinberg, & B.B. Levenbook, Abortion, in T. Regan (Ed.), Matters of Life and Death. New Introductory Essays in Moral Philosophy. 3rd Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill (1993), p. 195.
26. B. Duden, Disembodying Women: Perspectives on Pregnancy and the Unborn, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 82.
27. E. Tivnan, Op. Cit. p 12.
28. J. Oakley, Applied Ethics, in J. V. Canfield (Ed.), Routledge History of Philosophy, Volume X Philosophy of Meaning, Knowledge and Value in the 20th Century, (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 364-396.
29. R. Gordon, Op. Cit. p.151.
30. G. Annas, Judging Medicine, (Clifton, New Jersey: Humana Press, 1998), p. 144.
31. J. Rachels, The Right Thing to Do, p. 115.
32. G. Annas, Op. Cit. p. 145.
33. B. Rothman Op. Cit. p. 108.
34. E. Tivnan, Op. Cit. p. 16.
35. G.E. Pence, p. 172.
36. J. Feinberg, & B.B. Levenbook, Op. Cit. p. 196.
37. Rothman, Op. Cit. p. 111.
38. S. Sherwin, Abortion: A Feminist Perspective, in HJ. Curzer (Ed.), Ethical Theory and Moral Problems, (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1999), pp 492-492
39. M. Ralston and E. Podrebarac ―Abortion Laws Around the World‖, www.peforum.org (27/10/2017).
40. United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, ―Unsafe abortion is still killing tens of thousands women around the world—UN experts warn,‖ press release(September27,2016).http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNew s.aspx?NewsID=20600&LangID=E; ((27/10/2017).
41. M. O. Izunwa, ―Right to Life and Abortion Debate in Nigeria: A Case for the Legislation of the Principle of Double-Effect‖, in Nnamdi Azikiwe University Journal of International Law and Jurisprudence, Vol. 2, (2001), p. 115.
42. McSweeny, Sex and Conception, (Ibadan, African University Press, 1979), p. 15.
43. Michael Tooley, Abortion and Infanticide in S. Dwyer & 1. Feinberg (eds.), The Prob/em of Abortion, 3rd Ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1997), pp 40-58.
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44. Michael Tooley, In Defense of Abortion and Infanticide, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), p. 303.
45. Ibid. pp. 372-407.
46. Quoted in M. O. Izunwa, ―Right to Life and Abortion Debate in Nigeria, p. 115.
47. Loc. Cit.
48. Loc. Cit.
49. Louis-Jacques Van Bogaert, Abortion, Sentience and Moral Standing: A Neuro-philosophical Appraisal (Dissertation presented for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Stellenbosch, 2002), p. 170.
50. J. Donceel, Immediate Animation and Delayed Hominization. Theological Studies 31(1970), pp. 76-105.
51. W. L. Sumner, Toward a Credible View of Abortion. Canadian Journal of Philosophy A 1, (1974), p. 101.
52. Singer, P. 1993. Animals and the Value of Life, in T. Regan (Ed.), Matters of Life and Death. New Introductory Essays in Moral Philosophy, 3rd Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill: 280-319.
53. M. O. Izunwa, ―Right to Life and Abortion Debate in Nigeria, p. 117.
54. Justice Harry Blackmun, ―The 1973 Supreme Court Decisions on State Abortion Laws: Excerpts from Opinion in Roe v. Wade,‖ in The Problem of Abortion, 2d ed., ed. Joel Feinberg (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1984), p.195
55. Ibid. p. 196.
56. Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, United States Law Review 57 (22 July 1989), pp. 5044-45.
57. Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, ―Reproductive Choice: Basic to Justice for Women,‖
Christian Scholar‟s Review 17 (March 1988), p. 291.
58. C. M. Ekwutosi, Bioethics: History and Contemporary Issues, (Akwa: Rex Charles and Patrick, 2008), pp. 63-64.
59. Ibid. p. 62.
60. Andrew Varga, The Main Issues in Bioethics, Rev. Ed. (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), pp. 67-68. Varga himself, however, does not believe that abortion is morally justified in the cases of rape and incest.
61. J. Thomson, ―A Defense of Abortion‖. Philosophy and Public Affairs 1:1 (Autumn 1971), p. 63
62. Ibid. p. 52.
63. Ibid. p. 53.
64. Ibid. p. 54.
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65. Walter E. Block, ―Abortion, Woman and Fetus: Rights in Conflict?‖ Reason, (April, pp, 1979), pp. 18–25.
66. Ibid.
67. T. L. Beauchamp, & J. F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 340.
68. Loc. Cit.
69. S. I. Stumpf, Philosophy; History and Problems, 5th ed., (N.Y: McGraw-Hill Inc, 1994), p. 709.
70. Louis-Kennedy Osinachi Ilobinso, ―Policy on Abortion in the Nigerian Society:
Ethical Considerations‖, (Master‟s Thesis in Applied Ethics Centre for Applied Ethics Linkopings Universitet, 2007), p. 6.
71. Loc. Cit.
72. Ibid. p. 47.
73. Ibid. p. 48.
74. Loc. Cit.
75. John J. Donohue III and Steven D. Levitt, ―The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime,‖ The Quarterly Journal of Economics (May 2001), Vol. 116, Issue 2: 379-420.
76. Ibid. p. 414.
77. Alexander Stille, ―Abortion Affects Crime Rates? Pariah Theory Now Considered,‖
New York Times, April 17, 2001.
78. John J. Donohue III and Steven D. Levitt, ―Legalized Abortion and Crime,‖ Working Paper No. 1 (6/24/99), p. 14.
79. Barbara J. Syska, Thomas W. Hilgers, M.D., and Dennis O‘Hare, ―An Objective Model for Estimating Criminal Abortions and Its Implications for Public Policy,‖ in New Perspectives on Human Abortion, eds. Thomas Hilgers, M.D., Dennis J. Horan, and David Mall (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1981), p. 178.
80. J. Matt, Abortion Methods: An Over View‖,
http://www.wellspentjourney.wordpress.org/evidence-for-christianity (20/03/2016).
81. Ronald Dworkin, Abortion and the Sanctity of Life, in S. Dwyer & J. Feinberg (Eds.), The Problem of Abortion. 3 rd ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1997), p. 131.
82. J. Matt, Abortion, Op. Cit.
83. S. Blackburn, Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 256.
84. Don Marquis, ―Why Abortion is Immoral‖, The Journal of Philosophy86 (4) (1989), pp. 183-189.
85. Peter Kreeft, “Human Personhood Begins at Conception,”
htt://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/0898707218/ref=nosim/caatholiceduca-20
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86. J.P. Moreland, ―Humanness, Personhood, and the Right to Die,‖ Faith and Philosophy 12.1 (January 1995).
87. J. Matt, Abortion, Op. Cit.
88. H. J. Curzer, Ethical Theory and Moral Problems, (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1999) p. 435.
89. J. Noonan, Jr., An almost absolute Value in History, in J.D Arras & N.K. Rhoden (Eds.), Ethical Issues in Modern Medicine, 3rd Ed, (Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 1989).
90. J. Matt, Abortion, Op. Cit.
91.
92. Ibid.
93. C. M. Ekwutosi, Bioethics: History and Contemporary Issues, p. 66.
94. Ibid. p. 67.
95. Louis-Kennedy Osinachi Ilobinso, ―Policy on Abortion in the Nigerian Society:
Ethical Considerations‖, p. 28.
96. Chidi Nkwopara, ―We‘ve not Legalised Abortion in Imo – Okorocha‖, htt/www.vanguard.com (30/05/17).
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CHAPTER FIVE: TOWARDS A RESOLUTION OF THE ABORTION DEBATE