Business ethics direct operations to ethically correct paths. While maximizing profits is the ultimate goal of doing business, business ethics aim to protect consumers and the society. Examples are taxes on alcohols and limits on sugary-drink sales.
Business ethics also take part in complicated issues such as drug dealing or armament smuggling. Abortion, of course, counts as one of them. So how do business ethics intervene in abortion and is the results satisfying?
Pro-abortionists argue that, unwanted children burden their family and will probably not contribute much to the society. In the U.S, an anti-abortion super bowl ad by football player Tim Tebow cost as much as “$2.5 to $2.8 million”, and as if challenging it, in 2015, a company called Planned Parenthood opened 16 abortion clinics in the country.
Abortion has become a justified business operation; it leaves huge impacts on the economy and is controversial at the same time. For these reasons, it is understandable why business ethics feel the need to step in.
An article titled Responding to Economic Arguments for Abortion explains how children stipulate economic growth. Their demands on goods and services lead to market enlargement and employments, said the article. Economist Julian Simon also pointed out children’s capability of “being a positive return on the investment in them” when approaching their early middle-years. Laura Antkowiak, author of the article, especially stressed the importance of the possible “talents and the creativity” of the unborn.
Just as what we learnt, individual household is the fundamental unit of our community. Under this knowledge, I come to understand why countries, such as the U.S., put efforts in outlawing abortion. The Supreme Court had put down Abortion-Business regulations of Texas, and abortion had become a felony in Oklahoma — there have to be utilitarian reasons acting as pillars to any moral justifications.
However, I think of anti-abortion movements not as wise as it is efficient. Concrete evidences show that overpopulation does lead to poor living standards and environmental issues. “Yes or no” answers to abortion issues cannot function well because thinking at margin applies to policy makings as well as decision makings. Maybe it is the reason why China opens up the second-child policy but does not go beyond that.
Wind, Rebecca. Digital image. Abortion Patients More Likely to Be Poor in 2014 than in 2008. Guttmacher Institute, n.d. Web.
Business ethics on abortion have room for improvements. Scales that measure the necessity of abortion should be helpful. For example, a middle-class family with two working parents have privilege to abortion as oppose a wealthy family with one parent staying home; parents already having children can go for abortion while those who have none cannot… Organizations that plan for adoptions prior to the childbirth also eliminate wastes on human resources.
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By Laura Antkowiak, NRL Research Assistant. “Responding to Economic Arguments for Abortion.” Abortion. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Sept. 2016.
NEWS, By CNA/EWTN. “Supreme Court Strikes Down Texas Abortion-Business Regulations.” National Catholic Register. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Sept. 2016.
Monkovic, Toni. “Should CBS Have Allowed the Tebow Ad?” The New York Times. The New York Times, 2010. Web. 10 Sept. 2016.
“America’s Biggest Abortion Business: Planned Parenthood Opens 16 Abortion Clinics in 2015 | LifeNews.com.” LifeNews.com. N.p., 2015. Web. 10 Sept. 2016.