Abstract
We have finally come round to the ethical issue of abortion, and because the ethical context by which we can make some sense of the literature has now been developed, we are in a much better position to examine this hard question. There are two principal issues to get clear about when discussing abortion:
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(1)
There must be a clear analysis of killing, specifically homicide, its connection with human worth, and the question of special status for human beings in relation to the rest of the biosphere.
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(2)
There must be a clear analysis of the different levels of interest and complexity involved in the abortion issue. These levels generate, not new ontological entities (e.g., forests) different from those on the lowest level (e.g., trees), but more complex aspects of combined entities, with emergent characteristics to be pragmatically handled “as if” we were dealing with new entities. The entities are functionally new and functionally significantly differ from those on the reductive level.
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References
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Clements, C.D. (1982). Selective Abortion. In: Medical Genetics Casebook. Contemporary Issues in Biomedicine, Ethics, and Society. Humana Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-5820-9_6
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