Table of Contents
Introduction
It is hard to imagine a more controversial branch of philosophy than that of ethics. Although one should clearly know the borderline between right and wrong in order to be considered sane, it is striking that many people actually fall outside this circle. Morality has always changed in accordance with the historical context. To a great extent moral principles change as new ideas emerge. Things that have been forbidden in the past could become allowed afterwards as political and social changes occur. The spirit of the time changes together with its values. A careful examination of the subject would make possible the construction of an imaginary timeline which would show all those changes throughout the ages. However, no matter how many times we go back and forth along this line, one thing becomes evident at all points. This is the existence of something transcendent and totally unsubmissive to human reason.
Philosophy and religion often clash fiercely over various ethical issues but they both acknowledge the absolute authority of the moral code expressed in the ten commandments. All ethical dilemmas that could possibly arise are at best derivatives of the truths that are held in that nucleus and as such, far inferior to them. A question about the benefits of social altruism belongs to discussion because it is far from the stem of the moral code. However, there can be no talk of relativism in considering an act of murder. It is wrong by definition because it claims something that has no value. Death penalty should be also categorically rejected as an option because it doesn't lead to justice. It offers something of no value in exchange for something else of no value. People have no value becuse they are ends in themselves. That means that they schould be regarded as transcendent entities and not as pure physical objects. Means, on the other hand, processes or tools directed at serving the end and they could be given a specific value. A broken object can be replaced because what has been damaged is its material dimension which has no other purpose to serve. However, a stolen object can not be replaced because in this case its transcendent nature has been corrupted. The act of stealing can not be compensated in any way physically because it is an affront to the man from whom something has been taken. Conclusively, murder is not only a criminal deed which must be condemned by society but it is also a deeply immoral from philosophical point of view as well. The next step is to prove that abortion is an act of murder and therefore a criminal deed.
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Abortion
The first and perhaps most popular argument favoring the legal practice of abortion is that unborn babies do not share the same social status as fully grown individuals. This is an absurd claim because with conception begins the process of development which is unstoppable until the natural,accidental or criminally induced death of the organism. Just as killing somebody at the age of 40 means intervention in his natural lifespan, artificially stopping the process that would have otherwise continued without our involvement, so is killing the embryo at the second week of conception. Embryo should not be regarded as a potential future person but as a person already. Although its organism has not been fully developed yet, this will happen with the same degree of certainty as the fact that a man in the peak of his physical strength will one day reach older age. Attempts have been also made to compare the embryo to an individual sperm or egg cell. The inadequacy of such an idea is obvious at first sight because the embryo is like neither one. It forms only when the two haploid cells merge their chromosomes into a diploid zygote. Each one is an independent but dysfunctional in itself building block that needs the other to create a living whole. Sex cells are simply cells or objects of no transcendent value. However, the zygote is no longer a simple cell but a growing organism with its right to live. It does not possess the values of its constituents but is rather something much more, just like man isn’t equal in value to his hair or skin cells. Moreover the combination of chromosomes renders each embryo unique. Therefore by making an abortion, we kill something that could only come once. It is not certain that the next pregnancy woud bring a child with healthier combination of genes.
Other defendants of abortion base their logic on the post-natal relationship between the baby and the parents. Couples from the lowest social classes could do abortions because it would be better for the baby not be born in poverty or any other kind of unpleasant or even harmful athmosphere. In this instance where is the voice of the person who is to be born? The baby is used as means and not as an end. Its transcendent value is not being recognized but is rather turned into a tool serving as the pleasure or displeasure of the parents. At the same the parents pretend to be treated as ends and not as means; they realize the uniqueness of each living being and yet they don't respect the right of others. Depriving values of their true meaning is a very dangerous game. On the long run, this process could lead to a catastrophy with undescribable implications.Once started however, it will speed up and the loss of moral principles will appear more and more.The exercise of power will becme increasingly arbitrary leading to the point of anarchy, not too far in future. If abortion is accepted by society, the next step would be to justify murder of grown and socially active individuals. The delusion that human life bears a specific value that could assume a material equivalent will bring destruction to any society. In fact such events have actually happened in the past and the best example to illustrate this disaster is communism. Its doctrine did exactly what modern society does by defending abortion. It represents man as a simple building block of society in which he must dissolve on behalf of the common good. He is no more than a tool in the hands of those who can control him. The result of this order speaks enough of itself, millions of people killed or send to labor camps to pay for their sins against the state. Unfortunately, modern democracies are also on the same track although those features are not as sharply expressed. The commercialization of life also kills the true value of man and leads to his ruthless exploitation. The United States which pretends to be the most democratic country bears many characteristics that are far from being democratic. The police and the CIA are the security organs of the state. They have such an unprecedented access to personal details that suppression, not only psychological but also physical is a matter of time.
Conclusion
Abortions done as policy against overpopulation is a crime against humanity, a brutal act of mass murder. The people who make such decisions have no right to decide. If overpopulation is the problem than it would be much more rational but of course monstrous to kill old and sickly people and not babies because the former possess less potential to develop and help society to advance. China with its one-child policy is a clear instance of mass terrorism but that can be explained by the communist regime that has long ceased to treat its subordinates as ends in themselves.
Abortion is an act of murder. It can not be justified in any way simply because it does not belong to debate. It is condemned right at the outset because it challenges values that stand far beyond the reach of human authority. Those values remain unaltered neither by space nor by time. The universe is infinite and everything changes from place to place. Maybe there are somewhere planets made of gold and diamonds and society is very different. But wherever we go, there is always that same voice forbidding ten things, one of which is to kill.