Why is people against abortion

Please support our research with a financial contribution. It organizes the public into nine distinct groups, based on an analysis of their attitudes and values. Even in a polarized era, the survey reveals deep divisions in both partisan coalitions. Use this tool to compare the groups on some key topics and their demographics. Pew Research Center now uses as the last birth year for Millennials in our work.

President Michael Dimock explains why. About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. Claims that abortion increases the risk of cancer are not credible, a position supported by bodies worldwide, including the WHO, the National Cancer Institute, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

Yet the ABC myth is still a potent weapon in the arsenal of anti-abortion campaigners. In , Canadian anti-abortion protesters put up posters alleging a cover-up by national cancer bodies. Even today , some US state legislation demands physicians warn women about the risk despite the complete absence of a reason to suspect there is one.

The suggestion that abortion can damage fertility is understandably terrifying, but based on out-dated understanding of abortion techniques. However, this technique is obsolete , replaced with a much safer and effective suction method in the early s. In the 21st century, the WHO recommend a suction-based technique for surgical abortion, rendering the risk to future fertility negligible. On top of this, across most of Europe the majority of abortions now take place early in the pregnancy , below 9 weeks.

Abortions at this early stage are medical in nature, using compounds such as mifepristone RU which induce miscarriage. There is no evidence that either medical or modern surgical abortion impacts future fertility.

One of the most inflammatory arguments against abortion is rooted in the assertion that the foetus can feel pain, and that termination is therefore a brutal affair. This is extremely unlikely to be true.

A foetus in the early stages of development lacks the developed nervous system and brain to feel pain or even be aware of their surroundings. The neuroanatomical apparatus required for pain and sensation is not complete until about 26 weeks into pregnancy.

As the upper limit worldwide for termination is 24 weeks, and the vast majority of pregnancies are terminated well before this most in the first 9 weeks in the UK , the question of foetal pain is a complete red herring. Legal or clinical mandates for interventions to prevent such pain are scientifically unsound and may expose women to inappropriate interventions, risks, and distress.

They say that if women couldn't have abortions so easily, governments would have to invest more money in supporting mothers. Others oppose abortion because it provides a way of side-stepping other real issues that should be addressed. One writer put it like this:. There are women who are raped and become pregnant; the problem is that they were raped, not that they are pregnant.

There are women who are starving who become pregnant; the problem is that they are starving, not that they are pregnant. There are women in abusive relationships who become pregnant; the problem is that they are in abusive relationships, not that they are pregnant.

Some people oppose abortion because it can damage the long-term physical and emotional health of women who have an abortion. Some feminists oppose all forms of violence, including abortion, because they are inconsistent with the core feminist principles of justice, non-violence and non-discrimination.

We believe in a woman's right to control her body, and she deserves this right no matter where she lives, even if she's still living inside her mother's womb. Yet another group object to abortion because they see it as a male plot. This point can be supported by an analogy with which any pro-choicer will agree. There are plainly good reasons to treat with care and consideration the fetuses we intend to keep.

This is quite compatible with aborting those fetuses we intend to discard. Thus, Feinberg's account of the wrongness of infanticide is inadequate. Accordingly, we can see that a contractarian defense of the pro-choice personhood syllogism fails. The problem arises because the contractarian cannot account for our duties to individuals who are not persons, whether these individuals are animals or infants. Because the pro-choicer wishes to adopt a narrow criterion for the right to life so that fetuses will not be included, the scope of her major premise is too narrow.

Her problem is the opposite of the problem the classic opponent of abortion faces. The argument of this section has attempted to establish, albeit briefly, that the classic anti-abortion argument and the pro-choice argument favored by most philosophers both face problems that are mirror images of one another.

A stand-off results. The abortion debate requires a different strategy. Why do the standard arguments in the abortion debate fail to resolve the issue? The general principles to which partisans in the debate appeal are either truisms most persons would affirm in the absence of much reflection, or very general moral theories.

All are subject to major problems. A different approach is needed. Opponents of abortion claim that abortion is wrong because abortion involves killing someone like us, a human being who just happens to be very young. Supporters of choice claim that ending the life of a fetus is not in the same moral category as ending the life of an adult human being. Surely this controversy cannot be resolved in the absence of an account of what it is about killing us that makes killing us wrong.

On the one hand, if we know what property we possess that makes killing us wrong, then we can ask whether fetuses have the same property. On the other hand, suppose that we do not know what it is about us that makes killing us wrong. If this. Surely, we will not understand the ethics of killing fetuses, for if we do not understand easy cases, then we will not understand hard cases.

Both pro-choicer and anti-abortionist agree that it is obvious that it is wrong to kill us. Thus, a discussion of what it is about us that makes killing us not only wrong, but seriously wrong, seems to be the right place to begin a discussion of the abortion issue.

Who is primarily wronged by a killing? The wrong of killing is not primarily explained in terms of the loss to the family and friends of the victim. Perhaps the victim is a hermit. Perhaps one's friends find it easy to make new friends. The wrong of killing is not primarily explained in terms of the brutalization of the killer. The great wrong to the victim explains the brutalization, not the other way around.

The wrongness of killing us is understood in terms of what killing does to us. Killing us imposes on us the misfortune of premature death. That misfortune underlies the wrongness. Premature death is a misfortune because when one is dead, one has been deprived of life.

This misfortune can be more precisely specified. Premature death cannot deprive me of my past life.

That part of my life is already gone. If I die tomorrow or if I live thirty more years my past life will be no different. It has occurred on either alternative. Rather than my past, my death deprives me of my future, of the life that I would have lived if I had lived out my natural life span. The loss of a future biological life does not explain the misfortune of death.

Compare two scenarios: In the former I now fall into a coma from which I do not recover until my death in thirty years. In the latter I die now. The latter scenario does not seem to describe a greater misfortune than the former. The loss of our future conscious life is what underlies the misfortune of premature death.

Not any future conscious life qualifies, however. Suppose that I am terminally ill with cancer. Suppose also that pain and suffering would dominate my future conscious life.

Thus, the misfortune of premature death consists of the loss to us of the future goods of consciousness. What are these goods? Much can be said about this issue, but a simple answer will do for the purposes of this essay. The goods of life are whatever we get out of life. The goods of life are those items toward which we take a "pro" attitude.

They are completed projects of which we are proud, the pursuit of our goals, aesthetic enjoyments, friendships, intellectual pursuits, and physical pleasures of various sorts. The goods of life are what makes life worth living. In general, what makes life worth living for one person will not be the same as what makes life worth living for another. Nevertheless, the list of goods in each of our lives will overlap. The lists are usually different in different stages of our lives.

What makes the goods of my future good for me? One possible, but wrong, answer is my desire for those goods now. This answer does not account for those aspects of my future life that I now believe I will later value, but about which I am wrong. Neither does it account for those aspects of my future that I will come to value, but which I don't value now.

What is valuable to the young may not be valuable to the middle-aged. What is valuable to the middle-aged may not be valuable to the old. Some of life's values for the elderly are best appreciated by the elderly. Thus it is wrong to say that the value of my future to me is just what I value now.

What makes my future valuable to me are those aspects of my future that I will or would value when I will or would experience them, whether I value them now or not. It follows that a person can believe that she will have a valuable future and be wrong. Furthermore, a person can believe that he will not have a valuable future and also be wrong.

This is confirmed by our attitude toward many of the suicidal. We attempt to save the lives of the suicidal and to convince them that they have made an error in judgment. This does not mean that the future of an individual obtains value from the value that others confer on it.

It means that, in some cases, others can make a clearer judgment of the value of a person's future to that person than the person herself. This often happens when one's judgment concerning the value of one's own future is clouded by personal tragedy. Compare the views of McInerney, , and Shirley, Premature death is a misfortune. Premature death is a misfortune, in general, because it deprives an individual of a future of value.

An individual's future will be valuable to that individual if that individual will come, or would come, to value it. We know that killing us is wrong. What makes killing us wrong, in general, is that it deprives us of a future of value. Thus, killing someone is wrong, in general, when it deprives her of a future like ours. I shall call this "an FLO. At least four arguments support this FLO account of the wrongness of killing. The FLO account of the wrongness of killing is correct because it fits with our considered judgment concerning the nature of the misfortune of death.

The analysis of the previous section is an exposition of the nature of this considered judgment. This judgment can be confirmed. If one were to ask individuals with AIDS or with incurable cancer about the nature of their misfortune, I believe that they would say or imply that their impending loss of an FLO makes their premature death a misfortune.

If they would not, then the FLO account would plainly be wrong. The FLO account of the wrongness of killing is correct because it explains why we believe that killing is one of the worst of crimes.

My being killed deprives me of more than does my being robbed or beaten or harmed in some other way because my being killed deprives me of all of the value of my future, not merely part of it.