CHANGING PERSPECTIVES AND ETHICAL DILEMAS OF ABORTION RIGHTS WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO ABORTION OF DISABLED FETUS
Main Article Content
Abstract
Abortion as a right is still a debatable concern in the realm of medical ethics. Many consider abortion as unethical but with the passage of time and advancement of technology, abortion is considered to be ethical for the reasons to be noted. Ethics is considered as a regulatory analysis of the concept of morality. The principles of ethics and virtue are universal and are to be applied to everyone irrespective of religion, race and various other spiritual beliefs. Therefore, medical ethics have been considered as “trans-cultural, transnational and trans-religious” the realm of ethics can be enlarged to morality, values, etiquette, and responsibility. Can abortion be brought under right to life and personal liberty? Life of a human being is precious and every human has the right to life but whether the fetus also has a right to life is both a legal, moral and ethical issue. There are diverse opinions about abortion rights all over the world. The infamous case of Roe v. Wade, that set a precedent on abortion rights since decades, however has been overturned by the US Supreme Court in the case of Dobbes v. Jackson in 2022. On the other hand, the laws in India are different. Article 21 of the Constitution of India speaks about right to life and personal liberty but doesn’t guarantee abortion as an exclusive fundamental right nor the Indian legislations lack clarity on abortion as a fundamental right. The only aspect related to abortion that citizens are aware is that, under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act 1971, sex of the baby cannot be revealed till birth of the child, due to the existence of a large number of brutal sex selective abortions (female feticide) in many parts of India as a girl child is considered to be a burden. Whether the women are bestowed with the right to choose to abort the baby in light of any such circumstances has always been a heated discussion. This paper aims to discuss the abortion rights of women and the right to life of an unborn disabled child in light of global perspective of women’s rights. The research has been accordingly undertaken to understand the disability abortion and the ethical dilemma around it.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
References
“CURRENT PERIODICAL ARTICLES: PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS.” The Review of Metaphysics 66, no. 2 (2012): 395–424. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23597900.
Macleod, Catriona Ida, and Tracey Feltham-King. “Representations of the Subject ‘woman’ and the Politics of Abortion: An Analysis of South African Newspaper Articles from 1978 to 2005.” Culture, Health & Sexuality 14, no. 7/8 (2012): 737–52. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23265764
Baker John, “Philosophy and the Morality of Abortion.”Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol. 2, No. 2 (1985), pp. 261-270 (10 pages), Published By: Wileyhttps://www.jstor.org/stable/24353453
de Londras, F., Cleeve, A., Rodriguez, M.I. et al. The impact of provider restrictions on abortion-related outcomes: a synthesis of legal and health evidence. Reprod Health 19, 95 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12978-022-01405-x
Warren, Mary Anne, 'Abortion and Human Rights' Moral Status: Obligations to Persons and Other Living Things, Issues in Biomedical Ethics (Oxford, 2000; online edn, Oxford Academic, 3 Oct. 2011), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198250401.003.0009, accessed 24 Jan. 2023
Robinson, Christina. 2021. “The Ethical Dilemma of Abortion”. Journal of Student Research at Indiana University East 3 (1):10-19. https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/jsriue/article/view/31847.
Bok, Sissela, Bernard N. Nathanson, David C. Nathan, and Leroy Walters. “Case Studies in Bioethics: The Unwanted Child: Caring for the Fetus Born Alive after an Abortion.” The Hastings Center Report 6, no. 5 (1976): 10–15. https://doi.org/10.2307/3561251.
Hussein, Julia. “A Round-up of Articles in 2020.” Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters 28, no. 1 (2020): 4–6. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48617593.