Tính kế thừa của đạo đức phản ánh "những luật lệ đơn giản và cơ bản của bất kì cộng đồng người nào" (Lênin). Đó là những yêu cầu đạo đức liên quan đến những hình thức liên hệ đơn giản nhất giữa người với người. | 9 Abortion and Human Rights The morality of abortion is often discussed as though it were entirely a matter of the correct moral status to ascribe to the human foetus. Conservative abortion opponents maintain that once a human ovum has been fertilized the conceptus is a human being with the same right to life as any other. From this they conclude that the intentional termination of a human pregnancy is a form of homicide and thus generally impermissible. Some would permit abortion when the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest or when the woman would otherwise die others would permit no such Moderates argue that a foetus does not have an equal right to life until it has passed some developmental milestone such as the first occurrence of detectable brain activity 1 2 the emergence of sentience 3 or viability the capacity to survive if born immediately. In their view abortion is morally permissible before that stage but not thereafter except perhaps under special circumstances such as when the pregnancy threatens the woman s life or health or the foetus is severely abnormal. And liberals argue that it is only at birth or possibly somewhat later that a human individual begins to have a strong right to life and that therefore abortion can be morally permissible even in the later stages of There are two weaknesses inherent in approaches to the ethics of abortion that focus exclusively upon the nature of the foetus and the moral status this is thought to imply. In the first place the moral status of embryos and foetuses cannot be determined solely through 1 John Noonan An Almost Absolute Value in Human History in Joel Feinberg ed. The Problem of Abortion Belmont Calif. Wadsworth 1984 9-14. 2 See Baruch Brody Abortion and the Sanctity of Human Life Cambridge Mass. MIT Press 1975 . 3 See Sumner Abortion and Moral Theory and Steinbock Life Before Birth. 4 See Tooley Abortion and Infanticide and Mary Anne Warren On the Moral and Legal Status of .
