Why do some people disagree taking abortion? Why do they add a stigma on it? You probably think that because life is sacred and precious or that no one could take away the right for the innocent embryo to grow up. However, you should ponder that what is a life and that whether an embryo could have rights before protesting abortion strongly. The book« Life’s Dominion» which is written by Ronald Dworkin, pointed out many questions about taking abortion.
Ronald Dworkin is a law scholar and also a philosopher. He devoted himself to interpreting law and morality, and he wanted to find a way to solve the disputative issue about life by analyzing constitution, cases, and human belief. He divided those who object to taking abortion into two parts- one is derivative objection which means they think taking abortion is to deprive babies’ rights and benefits, while the other is detached objection, which means they believe that life is sacred and valuable.
From many surveys and cases, Dworkin proposed the contradiction to the two parts. First, how to define a start of a life? It depends. Some people’s answer is when the ovum got fertilized, and some people’s answer is several weeks after the ovum got fertilized. According to a public announcement of a priest of Jew, David Feldman, it said: “In Jew’s laws, an embryo is not a human. Until it quits the womb and comes to the world, it will become a human.” There is no clear and exact timing to define the start of life, how can you regard taking abortion as a murder? Women should not live in the nightmare of killing human and the stigma.
The next problem is whether an embryo has rights. Dworkin said that: “Only if something owns, or has already had some forms of senses, and that is a kind of mental and physical body life; otherwise, it will be meaningless to suppose something has its own rights.” He even took Dr. Frankenstein for example. “If he could make the body come alive, then the stop of this experiment would be also seen as a way to take away its right. However, no one thinks that it is unfair to the body or that the body has rights. Therefore, the derivative objection is facing the contradiction.”
Dworkin thought that detached objection could make sense, but it also faced challenges. He mentioned that people think it is acceptable for a mother to take abortion when the pregnancy is threatening her life or the pregnancy is resulted from a rape and an incest. However, if you ask a girl not to take abortion because life is precious, then is the life resulted from a rape or an incest not also precious and valuable? Why does the former have to be blame, while the latter is acceptable? Is it fair that girls who want to take abortion have to shoulder the moral stress?
To sum up, people who object to abortion could add stigmas on it, and form an overwhelming stress to women on the basis of unclear reasons. For those young girls who do not want babies, if taking abortion could release their pressure from money and responsibility or the environment which is not prepared for the coming baby, then it is cruel and unfair that you call those pregnant women as murderers.
Source: Dworkin, R. (2002). Life’s dominion: an argument about abortion, euthanasia, and individual freedom (Ya-Ru Chen,Zhen-Ling Guo, Trans.). Republic of China: Business Weekly Publications.
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