to make informed decisions concerning abortion.
That nursing is based on a moral foundation is recognized Yarling, 1990b, pp. 335 342). That being said, however, there has been discomfort among nursing educators with both the prospect of teaching moral development and determining what to teach in this context (Foulk, 1991, pp. 31 46). Nevertheless, the integration of moral development into nursing education is important because nursing education programs shape the future expectations of the professional nurse.
The professional obligations of nurses demand that professional nurses have a grasp of the ethical bases of their profession (Hussey, 1990, pp. 1377 1382). Increased activism in the nursing profession must be accompanied by moral development, if conflict and chaos are to be avoided.
One issue concerning the integration of moral development into nursing education and nursing practice concerns the efficacy and feasibility of the relating of natural sociology and moral questions in the nursing context (Johnson, 1990, pp. 1358 1362). While the answer to the implied question is affirmative, the task ahead is substantial (Silva, 1991, pp. 29 43).
Law, as well as ethics, affects the role of the professional nurse with respect to abortion (Bayer, 1990, pp. 564 569). The directive issued by Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan in the Bush Administration, as an example, prohibited nurses from providing counsel to clients regarding abortion. Further, attempts to legally define the point at which at fetus will be viable outside the womb hold the potential to make a mockery of both law and medicine (Beller, 1992, pp. 537 540).
The role of nursing in cases of abortion is especially difficult for many individual nurses. While some individual nurses approach the issue in the context that abortion counseling is all a part of the nursing process, many other individual nurses are ambivalent both toward abortion an...