Application
to Abortion
Pro-Life advocates – with a few exceptions –
argue that the human being is a person with a right to life from the moment it
comes into being at conception. This is because the unborn human being has a
personal nature with intrinsic capacities and powers that naturally and innately
flow from its nature. When the unborn human being is able to actively exercise
these capacities, its nature is being perfected. So essentially, being a
human person is more of a matter of having a human nature than having an
ability or property that’s more typically associated with mature
human beings than less developed human beings.
Carol Kahn does briefly interact with the
pro-life understanding regarding the moral permissibility of abortion when she
says, “The fetus is regarded, at least in the early and middle stages of
gestational life, as something less than a fully functional human being, and
unless one believes that the fetus has an immortal soul that is being
destroyed, no other conclusion is logical.” (P. 17). It is true that the fetus
in those stages is not as developed as a newborn or infant, but she assumes
that level of development is essential to personhood or having a right to life
without giving any or adequate reasons. Second, secular arguments generally
used by religious and non-religious pro-life advocates do not necessarily focus
on the existence of the soul as crucial in determining the unborn’s moral
status. The Pro-Life position, while it most often touches on abortion than
other issues, is certainly not confined to the abortion issue. These arguments
and issues impact our understanding about embryonic stem cell research,
cloning, physician-assisted suicide, euthanasia, and lastly abortion.
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