AUTONOMY

Autonomy



Autonomy

The Meaning of Autonomy

The English word autonomy is a compound of the Greek word autos meaning “self” or ”own,” and nomos, meaning “law.” Thus, in the original Greek, autonomy has the sense of (to give to) oneself one's laws, or perhaps, to make one's laws knowing that one is doing so. Contemporary usage of the word autonomy emerged in the eighteenth century, retaining a relation to the original Greek meaning but diverging in significant ways. Autonomy in concurrent usage used synonymously with concepts such as freedom, liberty, and independence and contrasted with concepts such as un-freedom, dependence, and heteronomy (Benhabib, 2007).

The Autonomy of Abortion

Under the 14th Amendment's "personal liberty", women given, the right to obtain an abortion. Almost 50% of all pregnancies in this country are unintended, and over half of all unplanned pregnancies end in abortion. Improved access to contraception would address the source causes of unintended pregnancy and would diminish the need for abortion, but not abolish the choice. As only women can get pregnant, and, therefore, only women have abortions, a male legislator has no right to vote on an abortion related law. Abortion is about autonomy, and every woman has the right to decide over her own body and, to deny a woman the rights to have an abortion is undeniably telling her that she does not own her body. The concept of autonomy, however, has been the target of various feminist, post-structuralism, and feminist poststructuralist critiques. Notably, feminists have challenged autonomy for its seeming reliance on the idea of an independent and atomistic self, which they argue masks and derogates inevitable relations of dependence. Post-structural thought has more deeply challenged autonomy because of the idea that selves produced or socially constructed. On this view, the self brought into being by social forces and apparatuses of power and autonomy is problematic because it bound up with the idea that the self who governs must be in some sense authentic or pre-social.

Why do women have an abortion?

The criminalization of abortion is a violation of the principle of dignity, autonomy and freedom of women. In the past, two decades have opened a strong debate on the inexhaustible subject of abortion, whether it should be routed to or not penalized, and if so in which cases may be legal and that no cases. This makes use of ethics to examine whether this act is morally right, where mainly the right to confront life and the right to freedom of women. Throughout the history abortion practiced in diverse cultures, but only since the nineteenth century penalized. In some ancient peoples such as China, Persia and India, abortion not considered a crime, just as the Hebrews and the Egyptians allowed abortion. In republican Rome, volunteer abortion of pregnant women was not considered illegal, and that their laws and philosophy, mainly Stoic was not consider that the fetus had its own life and the woman who aborted only was acting under the autonomy and control over their own ...