Abortion

Blog 5 - How did the second contemporary issue effect your principles? Are you better able to see areas where your principles need adjusting? What adjustments need to be made? Which philosopher's position was least consistent with your own principles and why?

The second contemporary issue of abortion did not negatively effect my personal principles. I think that the mother's rights outweigh the fetus's because the woman is a full person. This fits into my social principle of natural born rights and a person being able to do what they want without the law hindering his or her decision. A woman can do what she wants with her body according the Locke and I agree with this as well.

The only area where my principles need adjusting is in a case where the mother wants to terminate the fetus past the point where the fetus is pretty far along in development. I think that even if the woman wants the abortion, the baby has rights once is developed. This goes against my principle of libertarianism being that the law is hindering the woman's choice. However, once the fetus can be counted as a human, I think the baby's rights are more important than the mother's.

John Noonan's position was least consistent with my own principles because I think that abortion should not be outlawed with just the exception of self-defense. I think that a woman should be able to abort her fetus, while it still counts as a fetus and not a person. I disagree with his view that the fetus is just an unnamed "it" until birth. I believe that the fetus is not an "it" once it reaches the point in development where it can still live if taken out of the womb, not until after it is born.

I commented on this blog: http://evangerry.blogspot.com/

Cloning

How did the first contemporary issue effect your principles? Did it challenge them? Were your principles helpful in working out your response to the issue? Which philosopher's position was most consistent with your own principles and why?


The first contemporary issue actually did effect my principles. The idea of cloning and stem cell research certainly challenged my social principles that I discussed in my last blog. In my last blog, I stated that everybody should have the right to what they want. However, I am not sure that that is the case when dealing with cloning. I believe that cloning is unnatural and despite the benefits for a happier, healthier life, I think that cloning would hurt society. Yes, the world is progressing in such a way that cloning may very well be possible in the future, but in my opinion, it is immoral because of the psychological reasonings. Say one person wants the clone, but then that clone could feel inferior and lacking in uniqueness because of being a clone. This causes psychological distress to that person that is unnecessary and immoral because that clone had no choice in becoming someone else's clone. 


My principles were helpful by challenging the issue of cloning because I was able to see that there are flaws and exceptions to my social principles and the other principles I developed. I agreed with Locke's principle of natural born rights, but then after addressing the idea of cloning, my principles had to shift to allow my distaste for cloning, even when I thought a person should have the right to do what they please. My principles worked out my response to this issue because I realized there were more exceptions to my principles, when regarding the humanity of others. 


Kass's argument is more consistent with my own principles. He says that cloning violates human individuality and that the idea of cloning is immoral. His ideas relate to my own because my principles shows a similar opinion to his in that the individuality of a person is taken away, which I think could cause predisposed psychological damage to the clone. The whole idea of cloning, to me, scares me, even after reading about the advantages and benefits cloning may have to humans. It's just not natural. 




I commented on Catherine's blog:  http://catherinedba.blogspot.com/