Do Pregnant Women need a Cooling Period for Abortion?—

Some Reflections from the Caring Point of View

Ms Hsiao-Chi LinGraduate Institute of Philosophy

National Central University, Chungli, ROC

Foreword

Recently Taiwan government is drafting a revision of the bill for abortion and a new condition is introduced that requring pregnant women who want abortion to take a three-day cooling period before it is to be considered.

The policy has two problematic hypotheses：One hypothesis is that pregnant women who want abortion are not making a rational decision.

The second hypothesis is that the pregnant women will make a better decision after three-day cooling period.

The policy brings out several questions which we worth giving some analysis ：

(1) Do pregnant women need a cooling period before they want to abort ？(2) Is it possible and acceptable if the pregnant women could make use the cooling period to get help and protected from external pressure for abortion ？ (3) What attitude should we take in regard to the policy?(4) What the government or society needs to provide to help the pregnant women who have to choose to abort or not before we ask them to make the decision ？

A person ？ or not a person ？Traditionally, there are three different conceptions of the mother-fetus relationship： (1) The mother and the fetus are

individual persons and both have the right to life, thus abortion is regarded as murder. (2) Mother has the right of body integreity and the fetus is but a part of her body and thus she could abort it whenever she likes. (3) Third view takes the development of the fetus into consideration, usually allows early abortion and not late abortion when the fetus is viable, leaving the middle stages as a grey area for negotiation.

The relationship between the pregnant women and her fetus

(1) The single-entity model or the body-part model

According to John Seymour’s analysis, there are three models of relationship between the pregnant women and the fetus ：

(2) The separate-entities model (3) Not-One-But-Not-Two

He emphasizez the inseparable relationship between the pregnant woman and her fetus, but he doesn’t spell out the mutuality and reciprocity relationship and the moral obligation that should be established.

Relationship to be a criterion to judge possess moral obligation or not ？Care ethics argues that we should solve the dispute by the language of caring instead of the langusge of right.

(1) The central concept of the care ethics is relationship.

One caring (the pregnant women)

Cared for (the fetus)

(2) The criterion of the moral obligation is the caring relationship: present relation or potential relation.

That is, if the pregnant woman caring for her fetus, the fetus is joined to loved others through formal chains of caring, so that she has reasons not to destroy it. At the moment, the pregnant woman has moral obligation to her fetus, the pregnant woman’s obligation increases as the fetus develops.

Care ethics stress on the relationship and use it to be a criterion to judge what moral obligation should be established. But this implies that the pregnant woman could choose abortion when she doesn’t care for the fetus or if the fetus is not invited by her.

The improvement of the concept of the unbearable mind

According to Confucianism, the moral rights and obligations are determined by the mutual relationship between the two parties. Family is the basic social relation and bears a much closer relation, and thus more intimate relations. Parents are supposed to bear and bring up their children, and therefore, parents have more moral obligation to their children than to common citizens.

(1) Processor Lee Shui Chuen pointed out that fetus’s moral status and moral rights are assured by the concept of a social person in a moral community. “It means that the fetus could achieve a moral status of a person through the interaction and acknowledgement of the mother. “That is, the moral status of the fetus is basically conferred by its mother.(2) According to the Confucian concept of morality, it is founded upon our unbearable mind, that is, our moral mind which views sufferings of others as unbearable.

(3) For Confucianism, involuntary pregnancy, such as rape, the woman could decide to abort, because she was deeply injured by the pregnancy both physiologically and psychologically.

(4) However, she has the autonomy and the moral responsibility to make the right action as a moral agent.

Comments and SuggestionsIt is sometimes argued that a three-day cooling period is hasty, because a pregnant woman who wants abortion needs time, for she has to take into account of her family members’ feelings, the health conditions of the fetus and herself, the economy, the family and society resources, her life planning and so on. It is unfortunate that the public debate is short-sighted and turns on the right to life of the fetus and woman’s autonomy, but neglects the complicated relationship between the pregnant woman and her fetus.

I have the following suggestions:First, we should take a caring stand point towards the woman facing the dilemma. In the relationship of caring, the pregnant women is the cared-for, and her family, the society and the consultants are the ones-caring. As Rosemarie Tong has pointed out that an ethics of care will look at the conditions which cause the pregnant women to abort, for instance, the pregnant woman may have economical pressure because of the incomplete social welfare and policy, or the family members or the communities do not give support for her.

Second, when the pregnant woman could not make a decision, it is possible and acceptable if the cooling period could allow her to use it as a protection and a way so that she could escape the oppression from her family, her husband or the community she lives in and get the resources and help from the society.

That means the government should establish a consultation system and it should consists of the following mechanisms

(1) To help the pregnant woman to analyze the advantage and possible risk of the pregnancy and abortion with professional appraisals, including the conditions of her family, her economic situation, personal inclination, health and so on.(2) To remind her that there are other possibilities that she could choose besides choosing voluntary abortion (3) To inform her the danger and risk of abortion

Third, on the basis of woman’s right of autonomy and their competence, we should respect the pregnant women’s decision if she want abortion after consultation.

The consultants should pay close attention to some of the special conditions of the pregnant woman, such as whether she has informed her husband or partner, so as to help her out of her dilemmas.

Medical professionals should see to that the pregnant woman fully understands the risks and prognosis of the abortion.

Fourth, the Confucian conception of the unbearable mind is helpful for the pregnant women in such considerations. It would suggest to have the child carried to term as the fetus is also a living being; it would request family members to support the pregnant women both psychologically and physically; it requests other citizens to help through public funding for medical, economic supports as well as providing adoption mechanism.

Furthermore, the government should have better policy encouraging woman to carry pregnancy to term, to help local government or regional associations to promote pregnancy health care service and to provide subsidies for pregnant woman.

Business and industries should provide work opportunity to unemployed pregnant women, to give maternity leave and parental leave, and to promote daycare system to help women taking care of their children.

In fact, many pregnant women who know that their fetus may be disabled, very often, they are still willing to give birth to them. It is the moral concern of the mother towards the life of her fetus.In such cases, the government should provide medical treatment information and service, social welfare resource and so on to meet the women’s needs. As Rosemarie Tong has emphasized, a pregnant woman’s ability to care for her fetus is largely dependent upon how the pregnant woman herself being cared for by the community.

Fifth, unless there are strong reasons that the pregnancy will threaten the pregnant woman's health or her life, late abortion in the third-trimester (after 20 weeks) should be banned strictly because the fetus is viable and the fetus’s moral state is equal to a new born.

Conclusion

Pregnancy is not the sole duty of the woman or her family, the government should provide inform her of the social resources accessible, so that she could make decision according to her own will.

The pregnant woman and her fetus are symbiotically related, the best way to preserve the fetus’s interest is to increase the mother’s rights. It means to protect them to have equal opportunities and sufficient medical care; to acquire sufficient information and ability, so they are more likely to take care and give birth to her fetus.

However, we should dispose of the myth of identification of abortion with neglect of human life, and the existence of abortion could help to make the best of every life and to see to that every born life has good care.

Reference

John Seymour, “A Pregnant Woman’s Decision to Decline Treatment ： How Should the Law Respond?” in Tom L. Beauchamp ＆ LeRoy Walters (eds.), Contemporary Issues in Biothics, 6th edition, (Belmont, CA ： Wadsworth-Thomson Learning, 2003), pp.261-267.

Nel Noddings, Caring ： a feminine approach to ethics and moral education, (Berkerly ： University of California Press, 1984).

Rosemarie Tong, “Blessed are the Peacemakers ：Commentary on Making Peace in Gestational Conflicts”, in Thomas A. Mappes ＆ David Degrazia (eds.), Biomedical Ethics, 5th edition, (New York ： The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2001) ， pp.500-504.

Lee Shui Chuen, Confucianism Bioethics, (Taiwan ： E Hu Publish,1999).