Pro and Anti-Abortion Arguments: Competing Moral Views
This paper examines the competing moral attitudes and virtues underlying both the pro-abortion and anti-abortion positions. It explores how each side's perception of fetal personhood, religious conviction, individual freedom, and gender equality shapes its ethical stance. The anti-abortion camp emphasizes family unity, religious heritage, and informed decision-making around sexuality, while the pro-abortion position centers on personal freedom, women's autonomy, and protection from unwanted parenthood or marriage. The paper also considers the limited but meaningful common ground both sides have found — particularly around reducing unintended pregnancies through improved sexual education — and the prospects for continued productive dialogue.
- Introduction: Why the Abortion Debate Remains Unresolved: Fetal personhood debate drives moral deadlock
- Core Virtues of the Anti-Abortion Position: Religion, family unity, and reproductive society
- Sexual Responsibility and the Anti-Abortion Argument: Informed sexual decision-making as moral backbone
- Freedom and Autonomy in the Pro-Abortion Position: Personal freedom and protection from unwanted parenthood
- Abortion as a Women's Rights Issue: Gender conflict, consent, and right to choose
- Finding Common Ground: Dialogue and Sexual Education: Shared support for reduced abortions through education
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper presents both sides of a highly polarized issue with genuine balance, resisting the temptation to advocate for either position while still articulating each side's internal moral logic clearly.
- It grounds its analysis in cited academic sources, lending credibility to what could otherwise read as mere opinion, and appropriately attributes key theoretical claims to scholars such as Marquis (1989) and Lake (1984).
- The closing section on constructive dialogue between opposing camps gives the essay a forward-looking, solutions-oriented conclusion that avoids a false stalemate ending.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper models comparative ethical analysis — systematically identifying and contrasting the underlying values (freedom, religious duty, gender equality, reproductive responsibility) that drive each position. This technique shows that policy disagreements often reflect deeper differences in moral frameworks rather than simple factual disputes.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens by framing why the debate is so intractable, then devotes two sections to anti-abortion virtues (family, religion, sexual responsibility) and two sections to pro-abortion virtues (freedom, women's rights). It closes with a brief but important section on a historical conference that achieved limited consensus, ending on a cautiously optimistic note about future dialogue.
Introduction: Why the Abortion Debate Remains Unresolved
This paper explores the particular virtues and morals to which each side of the abortion debate subscribes. This is of particular importance since the pro- and anti-abortion camps each believe that they are morally just while contending that the other is not. According to Marquis (1989), this is the reason why neither position has successfully been able to persuade the other, and both sides have had difficulty compromising and arriving at any middle ground. The basis for such divisiveness stems from differing perceptions of whether a fetus constitutes a human being. While the anti-abortion group believes that a fetus is in fact a living being — such that abortion becomes equated with murder — the pro-abortion camp asserts that a fetus is not yet a human being and so abortion is not a form of murder. Meanwhile, those who are pro-abortion believe that the anti-abortion camp is immoral due to a perceived restriction on women's freedom.
Core Virtues of the Anti-Abortion Position
One of the chief virtues espoused by the anti-abortion camp is the necessity for a unified family. It is believed by this group that abortion results in — or even promotes — sexual promiscuity, since men and women face no consequences for that promiscuity. Moreover, there is a fear that if abortion were to become more culturally acceptable, society would no longer remain sufficiently reproductive and the population would decrease. The emphasis on a reproductive society is particularly central to the anti-abortion argument, since its position is in large part derived from the belief that human beings have descended from God (Lake, 1984). To this end, abortion breaks the reproductive cycle and does not pass God's legacy on to the next generation. Accordingly, it is important to note that a significant segment of the anti-abortion community is staunchly religious. While there are certainly members of the pro-abortion group who are religious, their proportion is dwarfed by that of the opposing camp.
Sexual Responsibility and the Anti-Abortion Argument
Another virtue central to the anti-abortion position is informed decision-making with regard to having sexual intercourse. Specifically, it is believed that because people know they can obtain an abortion should pregnancy result from sexual intercourse, they engage in sex with no regard for the biological consequences. Instead of reserving sexual intimacy for relationships in which both partners are committed to having children, people may engage in promiscuous behavior with little consideration of the outcome. It is this potential for reckless conduct that represents perhaps the backbone of the anti-abortion community's moral case.
Freedom and Autonomy in the Pro-Abortion Position
The pro-abortion community also assents to universal virtues, yet the specific principles differ markedly between the two opposing viewpoints. Perhaps the foremost virtue advocated by the pro-abortion group is freedom and reproductive autonomy. It is believed that with the option for abortion, people are free to engage in sexual relations without the unwanted possible outcome of an unplanned child. Even when people practice safe sexual intercourse and use protection, there remains a small chance that a woman can become pregnant; with abortion available, women have the security of knowing that they retain total autonomy in deciding whether or not to have a child.
For the pro-abortion community, freedom is also expressed in opposition to the Catholic Church and other facets of the anti-abortion movement, which seek to ban contraceptives and some forms of the birth control pill. Those who support abortion as a legal procedure see it as protecting adults not only from unwanted parenthood, but also from unwanted marriage, given the significant social stigma that exists against single parents.
References
Dejanikus, T., & Rylance, M. (1979). Pro & anti-choice dialogue: Cooptation or cooperation? Off Our Backs, 9(3), 4–5, 28.
Lake, R. A. (1984). Order and disorder in anti-abortion rhetoric: A logological view. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70(4), 425–443.
Marquis, D. (1989). Why abortion is immoral. The Journal of Philosophy, 86(4), 183–202.
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