Abortion and human rights: Towards an ethics of compassion

Abstract

Abortion simply refers to a situation where the foetus is killed and forcefully removed from the womb. Owing to its effects, it constitutes primarily an ethical or moral problem, and secondarily, a legal problem. For the anti-abortionists the effect of abortion is emotionally and physically traumatising, though pro-abortionists may think otherwise. Given this picture there are debates or arguments for abortion and there are, of course,, arguments against it. This paper contends that abortion is not easy nor safe as the pro-abortionists and medical experts woul want us believe. Given the natue of this work, we employed the analytic and existential method of philosophizing to draw a conclusion that, as humans we should always have compassion for the weakest member of the society – the helpless and innocent unborn human infant; hence, our call for an ethics of compassion.