What is the ethical dilemma of abortion?
The central ethical question in the abortion debate is over the moral status of the embryo and fetus. Opinions range from the belief that the fetus is a human being with full moral status and rights from conception to the belief that a fetus has no rights, even if it is human in a biological sense.
Does a fetus have moral rights?
Mary Warren holds that a fetus has no moral status independent of its mother, but that the fetus acquires moral status at birth.
What is the moral duty of the nurse in abortion?
PIP: In cases of abortion, as in all cases of nursing care, the nurse has the ethical obligation to provide the best nursing care possible without judging the rightness or wrongness of the patient’s action or behavior.
What defines an ethical dilemma?
An ethical dilemma takes place in a decision-making context where any of the available options requires the agent to violate or compromise on their ethical standards. The agent must be faced with a choice or the need to make a decision. The agent must have more than one course of action available.
What is an example of a moral decision?
You think there is a 50% chance that your daughter could wait for you to return, but know her friend will drown if you leave her. What do you do? This scenario is an example of a moral dilemma. This is when a person is put into a situation where they must make a moral decision.
Why does the moral status of the fetus matter?
But the idea that foetuses acquire significant moral status when they become capable of surviving outside the womb is difficult to sustain. This is largely because whether a foetus could survive depends on variable features of the world around it, such as the available medical technology.
Can a nurse refuse to assist with an abortion?
Nurses should have the right to refuse to take part in an abortion based on moral objection. However, once the pregnancy is terminated, the nurse should no longer be able to refuse care. Doing so is no different than refusing to take care of a patient who was drinking and driving.