Sobre o aborto, uma sugestao de leitura

Como sugestão de leitura, no caso do aborto, segue o livro de

Jeff McMahan: The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life (Oxford University Press, 2003).

Extraio um pedaço pequeno do inicio daquele trabalho.Trata-se de um volume de 540 páginas, com análises teóricas, de caso, etc.

Jornalistas palpiteiros não têm tempo para ler tanta coisa, mesmo porque eles estão sempre ocupados em badalar os poderosos de plantão e caluniar quem foge dos palácios. E além disso, ler e conhecer os vários ângulos de um assunto, é para eles perda de de tempo, "coisa de acadêmicos" sem graça.

Bom mesmo é arrancar do Ego apedeuta, decretos Ad hoc sobre tudo e todos. Ah, depois dos economistas, os piores dogmáticos da modernidade encontram-se nas rodas das redações, dos sites "noticiosos", etc.

Roberto Romano


"The practical issue that I will discuss at greatest length is abortion. As this manuscript (do livro) is being completed (October 2000), it has been announced that the “abortion pill” is soon to be legally available in the United States. To many it may seem that this represents a decisive victory for those who favor the legal permissibility of abortion and that the practice of abortion will become socially invisible and thus eventually cease to be a matter of public controversy. It may therefore seem that to publish a book on abortion at this point is rather like writing on the morality of slavery, an issue that is now primarily of academic interest. But, although I defend the permissibility of abortion and thus welcome the introduction of the abortion pill, I do not believe the debate should end until we have the kind of intellectual and moral certainty about abortion that we have about slavery. It is important to notice that the ostensible victims of abortion—fetuses—are not parties to the debate, while of those who are involved in it, the only ones who have a significant personal interest or stake in the outcome are those who would benefit from the practice. There is therefore a danger that abortion could triumph in the political arena simply because it is favored by self-interest and opposed only by ideals. We should therefore be wary of the possibility of abortion becoming an unreflective practice, like meat eating, simply because it serves the interests of those who have the power to determine whether it is practiced. The arguments in the public debate that focus narrowly, and implausibly, on “choice” reveal a tendency to try to convert abortion from a question of ethics into a question of interests. This book, although it offers a novel, complex, and, I hope, plausible defense of the permissibility of abortion, nevertheless seeks to keep us focused on ethical rather than merely political considerations."