Perspectives on Abortion

Otis Latin ENGL1301. 17 Mrs. Marcom Abortion Title: Perspectives on Abortion: Pro-Choice, Pro-Life, and What Lies in between Author: Raquel Lopez This essay is a very deep and descriptive essay about abortions and the history behind it. There are two different perspectives discussed in this essay and they are, Pro-Life, and Pro-Choice. The essay talks about the historical perspectives of abortion, pro-life perspectives, moral relativism, philosophical considerations, the church’s views on abortion, pro-choice perspectives, abortion relationship with crime, and the politics of abortion.
The author’s main idea is that pro-life and pro-choice perspectives are all based on the person’s emotions and often fail to make logical sense. As the author states, Pro-Life has two main approaches: moral perspectives and religious perspectives. Sometimes these two perspectives intertwine and have some similarities but in many ways they do the complete opposite. “The religious perspective has very little to be debated considering it embraces the belief in a supernatural almighty entity; and there is, in fact, very little literature discussing the logics of religion”(512).
The author is saying that the religious perspective is saying abortion is wrong based on their beliefs of the importance of a life. “Critics of abortion attack the fact that despite cultural background, abortion is wrong just as killing is wrong and stealing is wrong in any society, regardless of cultural values”(513). The moral perspective is saying that abortion is wrong just like stealing and killing is wrong. The author disagrees because everything people say is right isn’t necessarily right. This helps prove the author’s thesis that your perspective is based off of emotion and not fact.

On the other hand there is the Pro-choice perspective of abortion. This means that the people believe in having the choice to have an abortion or not. This essay discusses the history of women as caregivers and nurturers. In these roles they were very close to their children and highly unlikeable for them to think of abortion. Now that times have changed the essay talks about how the change in behavior of women affects the children mentally and physically. For example the article says lack of attention can lead to: low self-esteem, anger problems, attention deficit behavioral issues, child molestation, and verbal abuse (514).
The author’s intended audience was to everyone who has debates or assumptions on abortions. The author addresses pro-life and pro-choice perspective by comparing and contrasting all arguments and backing it up with facts. The author does not make any assumptions, and he clearly backed up his argument. While the author’s thesis focused on the use of emotion and abortion perspective, he ends by showing his own personal view. In his conclusion, the author discusses how unfair it is for many children to be forced into poor homes.
The author believes that this is a result decision based on emotion. Why Abortion is Immoral Don Marquis This essay is telling the reasons why abortion is considered immoral. The author suggests that abortion is in the same moral category as killing a human being. The author also states that he does not want to base the article off of religion like most anti-abortionist point of views. He does however want to base it on morality and ethics. By doing this the author will cover the non religious people’s perspective of abortion. In an essay like this writing strategies are really important.
With this being said his writing strategies help him prove a point that isn’t very popular. The author uses several writing strategies to get his point achieve this goal. He starts by comparing and contrasting anti abortionist and pro-choice perspectives. In his compare and contrast he gives examples of typical pro-choice and anti abortionist views. The author states that “Passions in the abortion debate run high. There are both plausibilities and difficulties with the standard positions”(188). After comparing and contrasting the two perspectives, the author points out the issues of each point of view.
For every point the author makes he list several examples to support his main idea. Basically this entire essay is the author’s argument that abortion is equal to killing a young child. One of the most persuasive strategies is that the author describes opposite viewpoints, and then says why they are wrong. This is why the author talks a lot about “symmetry between the accounts”(197). One example of this symmetry is when the author talks about some beliefs that “fetuses lack of property that is essential for the value-of-a-future ”(198). Many people might disagree with this point.
In fact, this point goes against the author’s perspective that abortion is immoral. He still talks about this in his essay though because it gives him an opportunity to say why the person that holds this belief is wrong. The author believes that people that hold this view are wrong because if a fetus lacks value and doesn’t deserve to live then the same must be said for plants and people in comas (199). Overall the author does a good job of getting his point across. He uses compare and contrast, he describes different examples of different viewpoints and he makes a strong case that abortion is immoral.
His purpose was to show an anti abortion view that was based on morality and ethics and not “irrational religious dogma” (183) or a “confused philosophical argument” (183) and he succeeded. This essay shows that religion is not the only reason why people might be opposed to abortion. Not looking at religion some people may still believe that abortion is similar to killing an innocent man or woman who didn’t deserve to die. Bibliography Lopez, Raquel. Perspectives on Abortion: Pro-Choice, Pro-Life, and What Lies in between: EuroJournals Publishing, Inc. 2012 Marquis, Don. Why Abortion is Immoral: Journal of Philosophy, Inc. 1989