Abortion Debate - Overview

Overview

In ancient times, abortion, along with infanticide, had been considered a matter of family planning, gender selection, population control, and the property rights of the patriarch. Rarely were the rights of the prospective mother, much less the prospective child, taken into consideration. Although generally legal, the morality of abortion, birth control and child abandonment (as a form of infanticide) was sometimes discussed. Then, as now, these discussions often concerned the nature of man, the existence of a soul, when life begins, and the beginning of human personhood.

While the practice of infanticide (as a form of family planning) has largely died out, child abandonment, birth control, and abortion are still practiced; and their morality and legality continues to be debated. While modern debates about abortion retain some of the language of these older debates, the terminology has often acquired new meanings. Reason is now seen as a human ability rather than as a spirit personified.

Any discussion of the putative personhood of the fetus will be complicated by the current legal status of children. They are not full persons at law until they have reached the age of majority and are deemed able to enter into contracts and sue or be sued at law. However, for the past two centuries, they have been treated as persons for the limited purposes of Offence against the person law. Furthermore, as one New Jersey Superior Court judge noted,

If a fetus is a person, it is a person in very special circumstances – it exists entirely within the body of another much larger person and usually cannot be the object of direct action by another person.

This judgement discusses the logistic difficulties of treating the fetus as an "object of direct action".

Opinions in the current debate range from complete prohibition, even if done to save the woman's life, to complete legalization with public funding, as in Canada.