Abortion=Murder?

The question of the morality of abortion continues to divide the human race, and remains tough to answer philosophically. I will attempt to take a stab at it.

So, is abortion murder? This question cannot be definitely answered - it depends on your set of a-priori beliefs. If you believe human life begins at the moment of inception (a belief that usually stems from a religious belief in the existence of a soul, which enters the body at that moment), then it is murder. If, on the other hand, you believe that human life begins only when consciousness is formed, then the notion that a cluster of cells can be perceived as a living human is ridiculous to you, and you will not see it as murder. And since we cannot prove or disprove any of these metaphysics, the debate is pointless.

But let's look at it from a moral perspective. Here we have to ask ourselves: why is murder immoral? There are, I think, two reasons.

First, each one of us has self-awareness, and knows that he or she constitutes an entire world, which wants to continue to exist. The thought that we will cease to exist horrifies us, and thus we perceive the act of terminating a person, an entire world, as morally heinous. What about abortion? Well, a fetus is not yet a self-aware consciousness, not yet a world that wants to continue to exist. Therefore, aborting it is not a moral crime.

You might claim that denying the fetus the opportunity to develop and become a consciousness is immoral. But this argument would be true only if existence was essentially a good thing, and existence, in essence, is neither good nor bad - it just is. Life can be either good or bad, so denying someone the possibility to be born into them is not immoral. Actually, a person born to parents who don't want him will most probably end up having a bad existence, so it could be argued that allowing him to be born is the immoral act.

The second moral crime involved in murder is the insufferable agony it wreaks on the people who loved the victim. Is abortion a crime, according to this criterion? Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. Parents often develop emotional attachment to their unborn child early on, and already dream of their shared future. But other times they feel nothing towards the fetus save the desire to get rid of it. The moral question should be decided on these grounds.

Let's take a hypothetical case: a woman finds out she's pregnant, feels joy about it, and starts to plan her life as a mother. But someone doesn't want her to have that child, and forces her to abort it. I consider this case to be a murder like any other murder.

On the other hand, when no one wants the child, there is no suffering involved, and therefore no crime against morality.

Bottom line: abortion isn't inherently immoral, but might be in certain cases.