Ethics-Abortion

PRESENTATION AND EVALUATION OF GENSLER'S ANTI-ABORTIONIST POSITION

In this paper, I am going to introduce briefly the anti-abortionist view of Gensler. Then, I am going to evaluate Gensler's position and present some objections with examples, offer some alternative modifications and re-evaluate them.

To begin with, Gensler in the 12th chapter of the text book, while arguing about abortion, presents an overall summary of the ethical concepts discussed throughout the book. Gensler applies these defined ethical concepts to the specific case of abortion. He mentions consequentialism, nonconsequentialism and golden rule. He presents some examples relevant to each and every one of these ethical concepts by using the abortion issue.

What's more, Gensler being an anti-abortionist, presents stealing example and attempts to draw a similarity between stealing example and abortion case with regard to golden rule consistency. It is possible to reduce the so-called Ð'''golden rule consistency'' to a single statement; namely Ð'''Treat others only as you consent to being treated in the same situation''. After that comes the stealing example of Gensler:

If you are consistent and think that stealing is normally permissible, then you'll consent to the idea of others stealing from you in normal circumstances. You don't consent to the idea of others stealing from you in normal circumstances. Therefore, if you are consistent, then you won't think that stealing is normally permissible.Then, Gensler applied the same argument for abortion and claims that since one doesn't consent to the idea of having being aborted under usual or normal circumstances, then if one is consistent, s/he won't think that abortion is normally permissible. Ultimately, Gensler, in his conclusion, states that there may be some fuzzy cases that involve life threat to the child bearing mother, defective baby or the pregnancy caused by rape. He doesn't have definite answers for these situations; but at least in normal circumstances he is against abortion with the arguments he gives (Page, 188).

Gensler reaches his argument by putting the agenda on the society. However, abortion is the special case for the mother. It is the mother's body. The special cases can be as follows: the rape situation, unwed mother, failure of the contraceptive. In these cases one can say that the mother can have abortion since being impregnated is not her choice. This is an unwanted pregnancy. There is no need to talk about society here, this is a special case and out of scope for the society. It only concerns the unwed or raped mother. Nevertheless, Gensler could say here that being unwed or all the other risks can be the responsibility of the mother from the begining. One can say that woman is responsible for getting pregnant in which she voluntarily indulges in intercourse, being aware of the risk of pregnancy. In this case, without doubt, she is responsible for the existence of the unborn child. However, this case is different than rape case. Would Gensler have the same answer to both cases, equate these both cases and say that this is the woman's responsibility. Also, the unborn, worth to live. Thus, it would be better not to abort that unborn even in these cases.

Gensler in his text, talks about the GR consistency, gives examples and arguments with regard to consistency. However, he does not talk about the fuzzy cases in detail. Abortion is not a case like stealing. Abortion is much more complicated than the case of stealing. It would be wrong to reduce the abortion argument to stealing argument. Gensler overlooked the fuzzy cases. Gensler overgeneralizes the golden rule to all cases. Thus, when it