Philosophy - Ethical Dilemma (Essay Sample)

Philosophy: Ethical Dilemma
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Philosophy: Ethical Dilemma
Ethical dilemma refers to a situation in which an individual faces a mental conflict between moral imperatives where one has to choose between two or more moral standards and making one choice ends up transgressing the other choice(s) (Mazzei, 2009). For many years, the decision to procure abortion has many a difficult decision even for the highest courts in the land. In many cases, supreme courts have landed in two ethical positions. These are pro-life and prochoice. Several decisions made on cases across the world have resulted to granting the women the right to choose whether or not to procure abortions. This has resulted to the improvisation of several methods that can be used to procure abortion. Some of the most commonly methods include partial birth abortion, prostaglandin chemical, suction aspiration, dilation and evacuation, dilation and curettage, hysterectomy, saline injection, and RU-486 (Mazzei, 2009). Some people argue that abortion is not right; others say it is rarely right, others say it is sometimes right while others say it is right. In its right, the Bible categorically prohibits abortion in the sense that procuring abortion would be killing. However, it does not state the difference between a person’s state before and after birth. In many other situations, arguments relating to pregnancies facing fatal handicaps, pregnancies caused by rape and incest and pregnancies that put mothers’ health at risk have been advanced to go for abortion thus setting up a dilemma for deciding on which way to go (Mazzei, 2009).
Rape is one of the most humiliating experience a woman would undergo (Mazzei, 2009). It brings a sense of rejection and dishonor for a woman’s life. Some women even undergo trauma and depression as a result of deep wounds inflicted during rape. A worse experience comes up when a woman gets pregnant from rape. Many questions usually arise on the legitimacy of pregnancies that result from rape (Johnston, 2003). Some women would consider such pregnancies as untimely depending on the timing, some would call them uncalled for, and others would call them ungodly while others would take them as any other pregnancy. It therefore sets in to be a dilemma for a woman who gets pregnant out of rape, whether to keep it or abort the child. A woman would consider several methods to resolve this dilemma. Jane, a local small-scale trader, underwent an ordeal under the hands of a rapist on her way home. Unfortunately, she got pregnant. She had conflicting ideas of whether to keep the pregnancy since it is a sin to kill according to the bible, and to abort the pregnancy since it was untimely and uncalled for. Besides, her husband would not support the pregnancy (Johnston, 2003).
After a few days of critical consideration, Jane came up with a resolution. She decided to keep the pregnancy, not to abort. She considered various issues before resulting to her resolution. Jane is a stern Christian and thus an act like abortion would be highly castigated by her clergy. In addition, she reads the Bible more often and thus she is aware that it is a sin to commit murder especially to an innocent child (Mazzei, 2009). The community in which Jane lives believes in that to kill is an abomination not only to the procurer’s family but also to the whole community. Therefore, Jane would be considered an outcome by aborting her child. Jane also considered how procuring abortion would affect her relation with family members. She would regularly be put off because of her actions. However, she had a difficult moment explaining to her husband how such an act would ruin her image. During her resolutions, Jane majorly focused on the consequences that procuring an abortion would have. She considered death for her unborn child or herself, poor health, ruined family and community relationship, and damaged uterus for her future pregnancies (Johnston, 2003).
In deciding on whether to procure an abortion or not, Jane considered the ethical theory of consequentialism. In this theory, the consequences of an action usually build the bases of the rightness of an action (Shafer-Landau, 2012). For in...