This final synthesis chapter tries to promote a more unified understanding of the views that we've studied and what difference they make. It does this by applying the views to the controversial topic of abortion.Nonconsequentialist argumentsThese questions are about Chapter 12 of Harry Gensler's Ethics: A Contemporary Introduction (London and New York, Routledge: 1998). These materials are copyrighted (c) 1998 by Harry J. Gensler; but they may be distributed freely.
Some argue that abortion must be seriously wrong -- since a fetus is innocent human life and it's seriously wrong to kill innocent human life.Web resources -- click below forBut "human" has various senses; a fetus is "human" in some of these senses, but not in others. The real issue is what sense of "human" we should use when we say "Killing innocent human life is seriously wrong." Depending on how we take "human," we get different principles -- with different implications about when it's seriously wrong to kill.
Some pro-abortion links: Prochoice.org | NOWSome anti-abortion links: Ohio Life | NRLC | Prochoice.com | Schwarz book