Question

State your chosen topic. Abortion?

What is one specific legal issue related to your chosen topic?

What is one specific ethical issues related to your chosen topic?

Share a court case related to your chosen topic. Why did you choose this case? Roe v wade?

Answer 1

Ans) Abortion is the ending of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus before it can survive outside the uterus. An abortion that occurs without intervention is known as a miscarriage or spontaneous abortion.

Legal issues:

- Abortion is a medical procedure which has significant social and legal connotations.

- More than any other medical procedure, abortion raises significant questions concerning the origin of human life, and the degree of freedom a woman should have over the consequences of intercourse and conception.

- Abortion impacts on the social significance of fertility and the birth rate in a particular country. The role of the physician varies.

- Depending upon the laws in effect, the physician may be properly serving the health needs of a patient, or may be circumventing laws prohibiting abortion enacted by a particular country.

Ethical issues :

- Abortion is one of the controversial issues discussed in medical ethics. Abortion is advocated by the persons who have
themselves been born.

- Abortion is a human right issue because human beings have a right to life. When does a person begin to exist is a moral issue.

- By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception. First step in the evolution of ethics is the solidarity with the other human being. In this article, principalisms of medical ethics
are discussed. Ethics concerning medical termination of pregnancy are analyzed. Dilemmas of aborting a malformed fetus are
explored.

- In the system of human rights against each other, the right to the life of the mother and the same right of the fetus.

- Ethical issues are identified and framed through a ‘naturalized bioethics’ approach. This approach critiques traditional bioethics and gives attention to everyday ethics and the social, economic and political context within which ethical problems exist.

- Moral problems of healthcare extend well-beyond the issues that interest the media and ethical experts.

- Expanding our concept of an ethical problem to include the moral problems of everyday life strengthens the moral imagination we need to create ‘good’ obstetric care.

- The central court decision that created current abortion law in the U.S. is Roe v. Wade. In this
1973 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that women had a constitutional right to abortion, and that this right was based on an implied right to personal privacy emanating from the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments.

- In Roe v. Wade the Court said that a fetus is not a person but "potential life," and thus does not have constitutional rights of its own. The Court also set up a framework in which the woman's right to abortion and the state's right to protect potential life shift: during the first trimester of pregnancy, a woman's privacy right is strongest and the state may not regulate abortion for any reason; during the second trimester, the state may regulate abortion only to protect the health of the woman; during the third trimester, the state may regulate or prohibit abortion to promote its interest in the potential life of the fetus, except where abortion is necessary to preserve the woman's life or health.