Arguments over Personhood, the Principle of Species and the Right to Life from the Perspective of Ethical Concerns on Abortion

Chang Dong Ik

When it comes to the issue of ethical concerns on abortion, both liberalists and conservatives are urged to clarify their position with which they can grant a right to life because their views have been founded on the rights theory from the duty-centered ethics and moral position of fetus over whether fetuses are given the rights to life or not. If fetuses have a right to life, they should be esteemed to be respectable and not to be killed in any society, or if they do not have it, we don’t need to take care of them from the moral standard. Though liberalists and conservatives have tried to present characteristics and properties which give a right to life to living creatures, they couldn’t come up with offering the proper reasons or grounds for giving a right to life to them. Worst of all, they don’t seem to have much interest in suggesting some reasons. It is so difficult for liberalists and conservatives alike to suggest the characteristics which give a right to life, so they have difficulties in not providing evidence which this characteristics would give a right to life. As long as it is based on the theory of rights, it is even impossible to present some reasons concerning giving a right to life. Both liberalists and conservatives are in the same fate of all positions in relying on the rights theory of morality. In this paper, I will discuss that liberalists and conservatives relying on the rights theory can’t show some reasons why their characteristics give a right to life to living creatures, and I will try to show they have not the capacity to do so because they are based on the rights theory. I will suggest, thus, conservatives and liberalists based on the rights theory would not offer a justifiable solution we can adopt and would not produce a good ethical view in terms of abortion.

KJC Korea
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