Partial‐Birth and After‐Birth Abortion

Abortion, partial-birth abortion, and after-birth abortion refer to acts of killing early forms of human life at different stages of development, from the embryonic stage to the newborn stage. Abortion and partial-birth abortion are medical procedures that are decriminalized or legal in some legislations and explicitly prohibited in others. After-birth abortion is a concept that does not refer to any actual medical practice currently used, but which reflects a philosophical claim about the moral equivalence between fetuses and newborns. In this essay we will illustrate, first, the practice and the ethical implications of partial-birth abortion, and, second, the concept of after-birth abortion, its philosophical basis, and the main objections to this notion. Finally, we will describe some analogies and differences between abortion, partial-birth abortion, and after-birth abortion, and present some ethical questions that these analogies and differences raise.