Abortion
Part A
In his article “How to Argue about Abortion,”, John Noonan defended the method of perception and sense experience claiming that it is a reliable method for reaching moral decisions regarding abortions. He claims that his method works because it is balancing nonquantitative values, scrutinizing overlooked factors and responding to every aspect of human experiences. (Noonan, CC2008, p 005)
According to Noonan, there are many values needed to be taken into consideration when passing a moral judgment on abortion because it is an act in the social context that bases on a person to person (mother to fetus) relation. We simply cannot focus on only one value from one aspect (namely the mother’s obligation or lack thereof) and overlook all other values (such as the fetus’s right to life). (Noonan, CC2008, p 0005) Noonan suggested that to single mindedly focus on one value, such as a mother’s right to autonomy as Thomson has suggested, would result in nothing more than infanticide. The reason is because if something is good, it will cause us to want more; thus, one must limit one value and learn to consider and maintain other values in order to balance them. (Noonan, CC2008, p 0009)
The other value he mentioned and proposed is the fact that the fetus enters personhood upon the moment of conception. Many people draw the line of personhood at different stages that are convenient to them but Noonan argued that the fetus grows in a continuous stage so you cannot possibly indicate a specific time where it is a person. There are also those who draw the line at viability but with today’s progressing technology, two babies at two different hospitals could have different developmental stages depending on the technologies they own. Thus, the best way is to draw the line at conception. (Noonan, CC2008, p 010)
In his article, Noonan introduced the idea of perception and argued that it is the foundation of moral life. According to him, perception is...
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