Ethics Opinion Paper

Shijir Bayarsaikhan

HAP 310-001

Professor Bush

9-13-2016

Mary Moe Opinion Paper

1) What are the issues?

        In this specific case the attention is geared towards the sensitive topic of abortion and

sterilization. Specifically speaking this case is about a 32-year-old woman named Mary

Moe from Massachusetts. Moe suffers from mental disorders such as Schizophrenia and bipolar

disorder which cause major problems for her ability to comprehend and  make

decisions. These diseases fully impact her cognitive functions in a negative manner, which

causes her to lose touch with reality. The ethical issues at hand are, should Mary Moe’s parents

be able to make decisions for her due to her lack of  competency, whether or not an outside party

can restrict her from sexual intercourse if she is not sterilized, and whether or not Moe has the

comprehensibility to make a decision whether or not to have an abortion. These issues have huge

ethical factors and can provide insight into the correlation between consent and abortion.

2) What do you think should be done?

Since this is a fully opinionated paper, the provided information is all personal based and

relies fully on my past experiences and overall thoughts about abortion and consent. Ultimately

from all the factors and information provided I believe that Moe does not have the capability to

consent to abortion. If she does not have the ability to make a fully cognitive decision, then there

is no way the abortion should be conducted. That's how simple as it should be, if the patient at

hand cannot make a decision due to unstable mental illnesses then the planned action should be

frozen or halted in place. The reason is because the action of abortion is such a powerful act that

it has the ability to take lives, and I believe that only the mother of a fetus can make that

decision, so unless she is cognitively able to consent to an abortion, the action should be avoided.

The parents of Moe should not be involved in this situation at all because consent is up to one

person and one person only. In this scenario due to Moe’s lack of competency, no abortion

should be conducted and the baby should be given up for adoption because placing an infant in

the hands of a mentally unstable woman is not the right thing to do. However a system should be

in place where if Moe’s mentally illnesses improve and she finally does have the ability to

comprehend and make decisions, that her child be given back to her. And to address the issue of

sterilization, I think that this process should be ridden of because once conducted you can’t go

back. If anything a program should be in place instead of sterilization where if the patient is

mentally ill, that they are prescribed onto a medical plan which includes their medicine for