a pregnancy involves much soul-searching, anguish, and may include personal torment. This, at least since Roe v. Wade, is because discussion of abortion "concerns the morality of abortion rather than the question of permissible legislation in a just society" (Hursthouse, 1991, p. 234).
As Hursthouse (1991) points out, controversy over the morality of abortion has been reduced to "just two considerations . . . the status of the fetus and whether or not it is the sort of thing that may or may not be innocuously or justifiably killed; and second . . . women's rights." This quite naturally has resulted in the black-and-white, no-room-for-compromise, diametrically-opposed positions which have reduced a highly complex issue (Meier and McFarlane, 1993, note 1) into something which can be digested on the nightly news.
If we choose to limit discussion only to these two "considerations," to the exclusion of any or all others, the result will be nothing more than the endless philosophical exchange we already endure. Shall we, then, discuss the issue in terms of
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