The reply from one participant of faith-based teen boys in Singapore provides an
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outstanding answer while I asked the question regarding abortion violating the human dignity of the unborn child. I asked all of the participants of faith-based teen boys:
“Do you know what abortion is? Is abortion violating the human dignity of the unborn child?” He replied “Yes, it’s a life. If you don’t want to have a baby, you can’t actually try to make a baby.” (AF22) All the participants agreed. He is the youngest among them but he is the leader. He age is only 14. When I asked: “How do you think of abortion? What’s the problem that people abort their babies, the unborn children?”
He replied “It’s inhuman.” (AF22). One boy used a metaphor of “It is a selling fish…”
(AF21) indicating those aborted their unborn children. And I kept asked “Why people do things, while they are not ready to have the baby?” While other boys replied that
“The grant parents do not want the grant son.” he replied “No, they are just not ready!
(AF22)”. I asked “But they are adult. Why do they do that?” He finally stated that “It’s about the moral decision.” (AF22)
The core of moral behavior is free will and the social justice. The concept of free will is authentically articulated by Kant. And the concept of social justice is articulated by John Rawls in 1972, which concerned the distributive justice. The libertarian, Robert Nozick, claims that justice require absolute respect for the property right, even if the result in great inequality between the rich and the poor. To the contrary, John Rawls, believe that justice require the maximum equality compatible with the individual incentives needed to promote the economic growth. Unequal treatment of human beings truly need more clear justification both with the law and social settings. Moral consideration requires concrete and reasonable regulations which would be represented in the institutional construction both in governmental, domestic industrial, trans-national industries, and global level (Wenz, 2007). Pro-life is the weak tie both in the social movement and economic world.
In the post-modern world the scientists who work with social movements may find that their relations can become tense and involve complex negotiated settlement.
Some scientists seek to maintain the role of the disinterested researchers who shuns visibility and attempts to produce peer-reviewed knowledge on a controversial issue.
The existence of a social movement has tends to increase the surveillance and levels of suppression of scientists whose work can aid the movement (Martin, 1999). Social movement activists who concern the lay knowledge view their alliances with scientists with ambivalence partly because of independence of the scientists and unpredictability of research generated by scientists (Yearley, 1992). The disclosure system is based on the concept of “right-to-know”. The public have the basic right to access information in the public domain. The power of information could also create a chain reaction of new incentives. The dynamics between how the social movements
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interact with medical science, technology through epistemic and technological change (Eyerman & Jamison, 1991; Jamison, 2001). Justice is a controversial concept.
How does the expertise or scientific knowledge of population makers become twisted while they are making the policy decision? The distinction of public sphere and private sphere become vague in the post-modern digital world. Especially when the intellectual tends to back the idea of economic grow instead of lay opinions, the inequality will happen and the opportunities of lay become scared to participate in the public issue. Who could keep the balance, listen to both sides and encourage the real dialogue? Even though German philosopher J. Habermas has defined modernity as an essentially bourgeois entity, he emphasizes the intellectual participation, the concept of his public sphere is based on 1) the notion of public good which is distinct from private interest; 2) social institutions, like private property, to empower individuals to participate independently in political and social affairs; 3) the forms of private life that prepares individuals to act as autonomous, rational-critical subject (Calhoun, 1992). Hopefully the political entities may listen to the voice from the different sides and not function against people’s common good.
When the world enters into modern stage, the liberty plays as the sword to pierce the heart of faith, to seek the autonomy of human dignity and build a secular world instead of the sacred one. The individual liberty is a central issue in liberal democracy.
The freedom of conscience in the domain of individual liberty has first derived from the concept of human reason, which related to the moral order and obligation in the context of Kantian. John Milton (1608-1674), a Calvinist and a citizen of The British Empire of England, witnessed the Act (1649) declared England to be a Commonwealth (1649-1660). The executive power of the country was entrusted to the council of state. He developed the major concept of modern civil liberty in the context of Utilitarian.
7.5 Be Vigilant
The difference between contraception and abortion seems to be mixed among the advocators though it has been well known from ancient world. The famous Ephesus doctor Soranus had explained the difference. ‘A contraceptive differs from an abortive, for the first dose not let conception take place, while the latter destroys what has been conceived. Let us therefore, call the one “abortive” (phthorion) and the other
“contraceptive” (ekbolion). ’(Soranus, 1956:62) More cross-national study to investigate the strength of national Family Planning programs and the fertility change have assessed within 1982-1989. In 1982, 100 developing countries, and in 1989, 98 such countries were rated according to the strength of their family planning program
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efforts; 88 were rated both at dates. Countries were scored on 30 items that are grouped into four descriptive purposes: policies and stage-setting activities; service and service-related activities; record keeping and evaluation; and availability of contraceptive method (Mauldin and Ross, 1991). And actually the first undertake of the evaluating efforts and results of Family Planning programs were also initiated by Mauldin and Lapham (1972). They developed 15 inputs measures and applied them to 20 countries. Then 46 countries were applied to be evaluated by Freedman and Berelson (1976). How do the mix-use of abortion and contraception happen which needs further investigation, though Family Planning programs provided the information and services of contraception have seen as the most direct route to achieve the goal of fertility reduction (Seltzer, 2002). Why the advocators mixed the contraception and abortion worth further investigation.
Furthermore, the institutional policy setting about pre-abortion counseling of The United Kingdom was first issued in 1977. British feminists from liberal legislation strongly question that abortion law considering of setting pre-abortion counselling.
They articulate that the requirement of two doctors’ agreement refers to deprived of women’s freedom to determine the pregnancy. The feminists argue that the disparity between regulation and provision of abortion law (Lee, 2003). Some scholars indicate that counseling is a duty or an option as a procedural provision or the third party review for different countries. From the side of supporting the human dignity of unborn child would much favor the institutional settings of restriction such as:
pre-abortion counseling or waiting period. Both are helpful to examine the demographic policy between the tension of human dignity of the unborn child and women who seek to abortion. There are different types of regulatory model for abortion, such as prohibition model, indication model to provide safe abortion and to mitigate the punishment (Eser & Koch, 2005) and worth to do further research in the context of medical sociology.
The term of ‘pro-choice’ is largely used by some feminists who take the position of supporting abortion vs. the other side of ‘pro-life’ who make the voice for the unborn.
Some scholars limited the issues among three agents: a pregnant woman, medical advisor or physician, and her fetus / the unborn (Mason, 2007). Some radical feminists justify abortions as reproductive health while a pregnant woman labeled her fetus as an ‘unwanted pregnancy’. They proclaimed that women have the reproductive right and free choice to make their own abortive decisions. But how does the choice come from and what does it mean? Even the authentic pro-choice organization, National Abortion and Reproductive Right Actions League (NARAL) fails to articulate any academic interpretation about the meaning of choice. No wonder the
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pro-life advocators call those supporters of pro-choice as ‘poor choice’, to denote how poor the choice they made: to kill their own babies.
Dose the choice help woman’s health? What are the well-beings for women? It is a central issue for the feminists. They use the term of reproductive health to justify abortion. Moreover, they call it as the reproductive right or abortion right. Some radical feminists even take the ‘infanticide’ in ancient Egypt, Greek, and Rome that was practiced to legitimate the rationality of abortion. The main debate in the feminist movement is whether the abortion is a ‘crime’. Instead, they claim that is normal in history, like Greek preferred pennyroyal, which contains pulegone, a natural aborti-facient, Egypt texts mentioned acacia, recognized today as a spermicide.
They indicate that abortion is a simply one of the many ways in which women dealt with gynecological and obstetric matters. (Hull and Hoffer, 2001) Ironically, when the radical feminists advocate the abortion as one of the reproductive rights but the consequence is the mortality female are higher than boy in South Asia also reveals the absurd cruelty of abortion. A number of studies of have found such sex bias/discrimination of selecting gender. But it is regret that some researches limit their studies in founding poorer food and nutrition given to girl than to boy (Cutpa, 1987).
The fact of ‘Aborting baby girl’ remains a taboo in this domain. The related researches in Sub-Saharan Africa reveal the truth that married women rarely feel pressure when they have large families and the modern methods ‘abortion and sterilization’ confront their religious value system. The main method of attempting abortion was to swallow ergot-based pills which imported from England and said to be “for female hygiene” and often in excess of the recommended dosage. But the demographic behaviors become more acceptable in European-settled areas though the in some countries, for example in Nigeria, where the over 90 per cent of population are Christians or Muslims, the religious reasons remained strong resistance (Caldwell and Caldwell, 1987).
We need to be vigilant against the hubris that human beings are basically the political beings (Hindess, 2004). The sociologist Peter Berger has noticed that many American Christians felt they were faced with a choice between flag-burning and flag-waving. The former indicates the basic altitude of liberalist and the latter identifies the opposing groups of radical liberalists. While Malthus concerned the
‘over population’ problem he still had a faith in the ability of people to control their sexual behavior. His argument on this part was usually neglected by the demographists. For Malthus, the reproductive ability was confined in ‘conjugal love’
which needed prudential control. He articulated that the anti-natural procreative urge would sink into ‘mere animal desire’ should be tempered by reason and morality
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(Quine, 1996). Abortion become the main method to terminate the unwanted pregnancy and some recorded history reported that women have resorted to induced abortion regardless of legal sanction and risk of health and well-being (David, 1981;
Devereaux, 1955, 1967, 1976). Many demographists were familiar with applying Darwinian ideas to social phenomena. The analogies between genetics and cultural transmission have prompted Dawkins (1989) suggests the analysis of culture change a unit of cultural inheritance which is analogous to that of genes in genetic transmission.
The term ‘evolutionary’ and ‘Darwinian’ are used virtually inter-changeable.
The Pro-choice’ deeply linked with feminists, especially those who promoted abortion. Feminist theories strive to explain how women lack of awareness of their own oppression, what feminists called it the problem of consciousness. The choice needs to be made by any independent person, not an agent or actor. The choice reveals the identity. And identity reveals the autonomy of a person of his /her selfness.
Feminists argue that women are long oppressed in the context of male authority. The University professor and expert in constitutional law of America, Ruth Colker, illustrated this linkage by criticizing the feminists Alison Jaggar’s viewpoint which disregarded religious or socialist dimension. But the ‘religious and existential concept of women’s liberation…The Second Sex, published in 1949 by the existentialist Simone de Beauvoir, must be considered a forerunner of the contemporary women of liberation movement…’ remained plausible. (Colker, 1992)
If we adopt the concept of liberty we will find that Mill emphasized that ‘individual liberty is not involved in the doctrine of Free Trade’. He took ‘drunkenness’ as example to illustrate how to apply the principle of individual liberty which ‘is not a fit subject for legislative interference; but I should deem it perfectly legitimated that person, who had once convinced of any act of violence to others under the influence of drink, should place under a special legal restriction, personal to himself; that if he were afterward found drunk, he should be liable to a penalty, and that if when in that state he committed another offence, the punishment to which he would be liable for that other offence should be increased in severity.’ In general ‘No harm to others’ is the highest applicable principle for individual.
Human dignity are the basic ground for the individual persons and as defend against the power of the states. The historical roots of individual basic rights could be traced to Kant referring to the principle of private law that one person’s freedom should be reconciled with another’s. Based on Kant’s idea, the protection of the freedom that a human being naturally enjoyed to pursue and increase his own well-being without harming the rights of another. Carl von Rotteck inherited this
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tradition and indicated that the state as a legal institution must ‘respect and protect the freedom which its subjects enjoy in every sphere of activities simply by virtue of being human beings’. (Starck, 2001:100). In this sense, the individual life, health, freedom, honor and property must be respected during the course of daily dealing in the modern state. This basic conception of human rights underpins that Constitution and the German Basic Law not only provide the foundation for the basic rights in the relationship between citizens and the states, but also the basis upon which norms of private law rests. The State is refrained from violating human dignity and imposed a duty to protect that dignity in Article 1 (1) ‘Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.’ (Starck, 2001:103)
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