The chapter enquires into the pros and cons of abortion under five themes, viz., the sanctity of life, prohibitions against the termination of pregnancy, personhood, moral dilemmas and the right of the woman concerned.
Authors
Purushottama Bilimoria, Professor, Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana, India; Ashoka University Delhi-NCR, India; University of Melbourne, Australia; Oxford Center for Hindu Studies, United Kingdom; Cal State University, San Francisco, Long Beach, CA, United States; University of California, United States; University of San Francisco, United States; University of Melbourne, Australia.
M. K. Sridhar, SVYASA Yoga University, India; SVYASA Online University, India.
Arvind Sharma, School of Religious Studies, McGill University, Montréal, Canada.
Summary
The chapter enquires into the pros and cons of abortion under five themes, viz., the sanctity of life, prohibitions against the termination of pregnancy, personhood, moral dilemmas and the right of the woman concerned. We draw here on the status of the unborn child in Hinduism to illustrate the interplay of the religious and moral dimensions as they bear on ethical decision-making within it.
The religious perspective is developed in the first part, and the moral in the second. Their interaction in contemporary India is analysed in the third, with references also to practices in other traditions and perspectives or debates in the modern West, particularly the United States, in light of the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade (1973).
Published in: The Routledge Companion to Indian Ethics: Women, Justice, Bioethics and Ecology, Pages 108 – 120
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