Hursthouse Virtue Theory and Abortion Response

Hursthouse says that there are often cases of abortion when a woman says, “‘ I am not ready for parenthood yet’” (242). These cases Hurthouse says are sometimes this way simply because the woman cares only about perfection. The woman does not feel financially secure with taking care of the baby in the sense that it would not be the perfect life she dreamed of. When going against this perfect life idea, I agree with Hursthouse that chasing a perfect life is nearly impossible because there are a lot of obstacles that come in the way which from “living the dream”. As an example, if you are looking for the perfect husband and you keep dating and dating other guys, but you keep dumping them because none of them are perfect, you lose out on a happy life. This can cause you to be unhappy all the time.

However in the case of going through with an abortion out of genuine fear and not out of cowardice, I believe that it is still not the right decision to go through with the abortion. This is because if the person cares about the “soon to be child” then she would do all that she ought to do to be able to bear the child and take care for it. I believe that anyone who puts in the effort can succeed in whatever they want. Rather than being worried about the consequences she should be worried about the amount of energy she is willing to spend on baby. Since this is also a case of lacking virtuous character when having the baby, I believe that it is not enough to just have guilt over the decision. It would not be deemed virtuous to abort the child because the virtuous idea would be to work harder in order to take care of the baby.