Topics Abortion

Question Hello, my name is Conner and I’m a political science major here in Oklahoma. It is my personal opinion that abortion should be illegal except in cases of rape, in which case I call upon Judith Jarvis Thompson’s argument. However, there’s something I was wondering about. Assuming that abortion is acceptable in other areas, would it be in –this- strictly hypothetical situation: A woman, let’s call her Stacy, is physically weak. She wants to have a baby but her body simply doesn’t have the strength to deal with a pregnancy. She and her husband then agree to ask her sister, Brittany, to carry the child for them. Brittany agrees at first and even signs a contract. Some time into the pregnancy, however, she decides that she doesn’t feel like being pregnant anymore and decides to get an abortion. Is she allowed to do so? Should she be allowed to do so? Could a real life case like this be taken to the Supreme Court?

Accepted:
July 22, 2009

Comments

Well, it is just this sort of case that gives surrogacy a bad name, of course. It depends on whether a contract in these circumstances is valid or not, and that is a legal not a moral issue. I suppose it would also be relevant to know what carrying someone else's child actually meant in this case, that is, is this Stacy's child implanted in her sister, or is the mother the sister and the father Stacy's husband, or what. Even advocates of abortion would be a bit disturbed by the idea of the sister deciding to have an abortion because she was a bit bored of being pregnant, especially if she had agreed to carry the fetus. It is a bit like being given a bag of money by someone and agreeing to carry it to the bank because the owner was too weak to do so, and then feeling fatigued and throwing it away en route, perhaps. So I can think of some real problems in abortion here even if in general it is not perceived as being immoral in general.