Abortion Ethical Dilemmas

Abortion is the voluntary termination of pregnancy by killing the fetus or embryo. Establishment of anti-abortion law was a way to suppress women to their traditional roles of child bearing and rearing. Women started aborting themselves using several methods like inserting coat hangers into their vagina and uterus. These practices are deadly and thus many women were hospitalized due to complications from self-induced abortions. They either ended up infertile for the rest of their lives or had to deal with chronic illnesses. According to U.S. Abortion Law, in 1973 Roe a pregnant woman was denied the right to abort according to Texas law. She filed a lawsuit and claimed that her right to exercise privacy was thus restricted. Federal law as
Taking a life is against the ethical principle of nurses which is nonmaleficence, where they would not prefer taking care of that particular patient or might assist the patient with resentment which in turn hinder the nurse from providing a quality care to the patient. Secondly abortion could cause a lot of physical complications to the patient later in life. According to Gaufberg (2014) post abortion complications include uterine perforation, bowel and bladder injury, failed abortion, septic abortion, cervical shock and disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC). Abortion could lead to miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy later in life. Thus the nurse would be breaking the ethical principle “beneficence” by assisting patient with abortion This is another example where ethical principles clash and lead to ethical problems in clinical settings. Thirdly there could be a clash of the value systems of both the nurse and the patient. For example, nurse could be an ultimate adversary of abortion unless the mother or child could have complications from it. A patient coming into the hospital to abort a child just because she did not use contraceptives could cause an ethical dilemma considering the nurse are obligated to respect autonomy of the patient. Thus autonomy takes control over all other ethical principles in cases of
A nurse must also respect the decisions made by the patient but do not necessarily have to agree with it (ANA, 2015, pg 1). Code of Ethics also discusses about the right to self-determination and thus based on that “Patients have the moral and legal right to determine what will be done with and to their own person” (ANA, 2015, pg 2). As per provision 2.2 in ANA Code of Ethics, a nurse should handle these situations of ethical crisis with professional integrity without endangering the patient safety. Thus even if the nurse have a different value system than the patient as a professional she/he must learn to keep the discrepancies aside and maintain respect for the person and their decisions. Patient’s decision is respected by health care professional as long as patient made the choice non coercively, autonomous and had mentally competent decision making capacity (Masters, 2005, pg 234). Since not all abortions are done as a method of contraception, nurse should value the patient’s decision to terminate the pregnancy. Thus as a future nurse I would protect my patient’s autonomy and guide them with unbiased teaching and