Writing Personal Analysis Of Kantian Deontology

Student’s Name:
Tutor’s Name:
Course/Module
Date of Submission:
Abortion: A Kantian Deontology Review
Introduction
Immanuel Kant was a philosopher living in the eighteenth century. He developed a deontological ethical theory where he esteemed moral law and challenged doers of any action to consider if whatever anything they willed to do would be permissible for everyone else to do it. Thus, for any action to be right, people should be allowed to make it universally, otherwise, the action is wrong and therefore, impermissible. Notably, he described all human beings as people of value who were to be treated as such and not as instruments for others to gain of others. Although Kant never addressed matters of abortion head-on, his works suggest that he appreciates life, and thus, he would not support abortion.
Since time immemorial, there has been the unending social and political debate on whether abortion is a crime or not. Going by Kantian deontology theory, abortion is a crime against humanity. Firstly, it is not universally accepted as a right thing to do. Across the globe, people cannot just seem to agree on whether to legalize the practice of abortion or not. For the few countries that have legalized it, it is mostly on condition that the mother’s life is endangered by carrying the pregnancy to term. Otherwise, it is not explicit that one can abort. There have been referendums aimed to change constitutions to allow the clause, but it has faced similar differences in opinion world over.
People seem to have moved past the question of whether a woman already pregnant can terminate the pregnancy to the debate of whether birth control is moral and legal. The change of focus and people seeking to intervene from the onset is a clear indication of the nullification of the debate whether abortion as we commonly know it is acceptable. Common abortion practices involve deliberate and conscious decisions on whether to keep the baby or not. When it comes to birth control, people have sought to question the very mechanisms applied to eliminate instances of pregnancies. Most birth controls are in the category of abortion mechanisms as they work after conception has happened. The question that lingers still and the source of debate is, “when does life begin?” The proponents of the debate argue that life begin...