| dc.description.abstract | Abortion is an important and difficult moral issue in bioethics, because it involved the moral dilemma between the pregnant women and fetus. This essay is a discussion of the mother-fetus relation, moral status and obligations. It explicates with critical comments the point of view of care ethics on these notions and tries to take a new approach in the reflection of the abortion issue. In the essay, it starts with a review of the
three traditional approaches, namely the conservative, the liberal and the feminist approaches and points out that they all took the mother and the fetus as separate
individuals, paying no attention to the special relationship between them, and thus fell into the dead alley of conflicts between human rights and human values.
Ethics of Care is a different voice from the traditional three main theories, Noddings’ care ethics is employ because it picks up the special emotions and relationship between the mother and the fetus instead of the rights approach. However, personal moral practice is still dependent on the commitment one takes for one’s obligations and relationship. The solution proposed remains controversial.
In this essay, the basic tenets of Confucian bioethics, namely the moral status of the fetus and the mother as a moral agent, and their ethical relationship are introduced to mitigate the dilemma. It proposes a reasonable solution of the dilemma which is extended to an analysis of some of the issues of the new abortion policy of Taiwan. | en_US |