CA31 The Ethics of Abortion



Can abortion be morally justified? We know that Christians generally think it’s abhorrent. But once we’ve left religion behind, how should we draw a conclusion about such a contentious moral issue? Independent moral reasoning is something atheists, naturalists, and skeptics can’t avoid, so we shouldn’t shy away from intra-group discussion about one of the most important moral issues of our time.

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2014 Abortion Data [cdc.gov]

Fetal Pain: A Systematic, Multidisciplinary Review of the Evidence [Journal of the American Medical Association]

Can Fetuses Feel Pain? [British Medical Journal]

Utilitarianism [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime — Donohue-Levitt Hypothesis [PDF – Quarterly Journal of Economics]

Freakonomics — Abortion and Crime [Freakonomics]

The Trolley Problem — Massimo Pigliucci [YouTube]

“But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.” — J.S. Mill