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Abortion; Pro-Life or Pro-Choice

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ABORTION; PRO-LIFE OR PRO-CHOICE

Some people believe that abortion is immoral and some people don’t. Morality is an interpersonal conflict over a decision between right and wrong (“Morality”). The question is what reasons people have for their beliefs for and against abortion and whether those reasons are reasonable or not? There are two main groups of people in the case of abortion, pro-life supporters and pro-choice supporters. On the one hand, pro-life supporters, those who think abortion is not right, consider a fertilized human egg a human being from the moment of conception. Therefore, they refer to abortion as murder. On the other hand, the pro-choice supporters, those in favor of abortion, have a different perspective. They believe that a fetus is a human only after birth. The moral difference between these groups encompasses one issue. That is “At what stage is a fertilized egg considered a human being?” According to Peter Singer, there are four general stages that the pro-lifers and the pro-choicers argue about in terms of the standing of a fetus. They are: “birth, viability, quickening and the onset of consciousness” (138). The arguments made by the two groups for and against each of these stages causes the standing of an embryo to be upgraded to that of a child in the long run, as Singer suggests (138). Thus, this paper will examine and analyze the four moral junctures for the status of the fetus -“birth, viability, quickening and the onset of consciousness”- considered by anti-abortionists and pro-abortionists.
Birth is the first stage debated by pro-life and pro-choice supporters.
Some pro-abortionists believe that an embryo is a human being once it is born and before that time it should not have the same rights to life as a child does. In contrast, Singer credits anti-abortiionists with the idea that,

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