Ethics of Abortion

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ing for the fetus. This would seem to be a definite point against abortion, though not, a dominant one.
The second party that we should consider is the parents and other family, and guardians if the alternative to abortion is adoption. According to some studies, having a baby appears to decrease the happiness in a relationship - even in those cases where the pregnancy is desired. But again, this need not be considered too much, it is not a dominant consideration. As is the case with many issues in a utilitarian system, the rightness or wrongness of the act in question turns mainly not on the effects of the act on the agent, nor on the beings directly affected by the act, but on the less direct effects on the community at large. That means that the issue of abortion actually becomes one of the desirable of increasing or decreasing the population. Given that there must be some population size that can be regarded as the ““perfect”” size, if we are allowed to place it this way for a society, it is clear that Utility will ban new births above this amount while below this population size Utility will prescribe reproduction.
So the utilitarian, who suggests that the future happiness of the child, combined with the estimated value of the effects on others, is such that Utility...