Morality of Egoism

It would be nice to have morality play a big part in what is legal and what is not. The very nature of the United States being a country filled with every imaginable culture makes that difficult, though. Something may be immoral in one culture, but completely morally acceptable in another.

The topic of abortion is a controversial one. As far as legality goes, the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision made on January 22, 1973 made abortions legal in every state. It invalidated all state laws that had been in place up to that point which limited a woman’s access to abortion during the first trimester of her pregnancy. It also made second trimester abortions available to women under certain conditions such as protecting the health of the mother. (Lewis, J. J., 2017).

The morality of abortion is where a lot of the controversy comes in. There are generally two “sides” recognized in the abortion debate: pro-choice and pro-life. Pro-choice being the side that supports a woman’s right to have an abortion, pro-life being anti-abortion. Personally I feel that I fall somewhere in the middle, with the morality of abortion dependent on the situation. My opinion is that the morality, and therefore the legality, of abortion should be limited to cases of rape, incest, the health of the mother being at serious risk, etc. In cases where someone was irresponsible in attempting to avoid pregnancy, it seems immoral to take away another person’s chance at life.