by R. Cunningham

Created on: May 16, 2009

When considering the morality of abortion, one must understand the complexities of the facts at hand. Within this very controversial issue, there are so many opposing viewpoints making it an extremely "hot" topic, one that religious, political and economic groups intensely argue. It is one that does not seem have an easy moral answer, making it easy to find facts that support both sides of the morality of the issue. The two central moral issues in the abortion debate are, "Is the fetus a human being with a fundamental right to life?" for the pro-life advocates, and "Does a woman have the right to choose whether or not to a continue a pregnancy?" for the pro-choice advocates. These questions continue to this day, making the abortion debate one of America's most divisive issues.

The morality of the issue lies with two central concepts: does the fetus have a right to live and does the woman have a right to chose whether to continue the pregnancy? Pro-life advocates claim that abortion is morally wrong because killing innocent human beings is wrong, that human life begins at conception and, therefore, the fetus is an innocent human being and thus, killing the fetus is wrong. From this moral reasoning, they derive that abortion is therefore always wrong. They maintain that killing beings with "a future like ours" is wrong, whereas in most cases the fetus, if not aborted, would have a future like ours. They go on to further assert that increasing tolerance of killing is wrong and allowing abortion is legalizing killing. They claim that this will start a "slippery slope" towards other forms of killing like euthanasia or increased murder. However, pro-choice advocates assert that the fetus is not necessarily a "person" with the right to live, that a collection of human cells does not have the right to live just because it is of the human species. They claim that this "collection of human cells," or fetus, only has the right to live by virtue if it has reached a particular stage of development that makes it a moral "person" or it possesses certain properties that make it a moral "person". They state that it is not always wrong to end the life of an innocent person, that there are many cases in which we have to choose which of two innocent people will live and which will die, like conjoined twins, where the operation to separate them may cause one twin to die. They assert the pregnant woman's moral rights, which under some circumstances may override the

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