Moral Issue of Abortion

The question whether abortion is morally good or bad presupposes a second question that would answer the first. This second question is, when does human life begin?' If it can be proven that human life begins at some point after conception then abortion could be justified as morally good (assuming that the intention in doing so is for the good of the mother). On the other hand if it could be proven that human life begins right after conception, then abortion is tantamount to murder, therefore it is morally evil.

My personal stance on this issue is that human life begins right away after conception.
Our life is best understood in terms of relationship, e.g. I am my mother's son, I am so and so friends etc. The deeper our connectedness or bonding with a person, the stronger our relationship is.

Now imagine a person closely related to you had passed away, how would you feel? For sure you would find it very painful as if something that is part of yourself has been taken away. But in contrast if someone totally unknown to you dies you would be significantly less affected. In fact some of us would not even be affected even a little bit.

The point being is that both persons who died in the above examples were human being. In other words, whether you are closely related to a person or not, he is always a human being and therefore his life should be preserved at all cost.

Another thing I would like to mention about (persons) relationship is that every relation has different degree. My relationship with my wife is much stronger than with an ordinary friend. And the strength of every relation could either get stronger or weaken.
Now with regards to the relationship between the mother and the unborn person, we could say that it is equal to zero at the beginning (though with a potential to become very strong in the future). This is so because there is not yet a significant relationship or bonding between the two persons.

A mother who wanted to abort her unborn child feels just like anyone's feeling when he or she heard about an unknown person death. The mother sense of loss would be much lesser than when losing a baby who died after being born. A child whom she had already cuddled, talked to and loved.

However with regards to killing a baby either one who is already born and one that is not yet born, there is no difference at all. Thus if general moral standard consider killing (intentionally) as murder, then the same thing applies to abortion.

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