EXPLORING THE IMPACT OF A CONFUCIAN FAMILY-BASED VIRTUE ETHICS ON CHINESE TEENAGE GIRLS’ DECISION-MAKING IN CASE OF UNPLANNED PREGNANCY
Keywords:
Abortion, Confucian Ethics,, Family, Harmony, Teenage Girls,, VirtueAbstract
Confucian Family-based ethics of virtue is founded on three important virtues “he” (和) or harmony, “ren” （仁）which can be defined as benevolence, love or humanity and the practice of “li” （裡) or rituals. Besides, the meaning and applications of this theory have received special attention in the past few decades due to the increasing global interest in Chinese culture and thoughts. In this paper, we will explore the basic internal dynamic framework of traditional and modern
Chinese families in order to build a new framework of interpersonal dynamics. We will proceed by engaging Reconstructionist Confucianism, the work of Fan Rui Ping, in order to explore how these virtues, as seen from the traditional Confucian family, may affect freedom of choice in decision-making. We will work through comparison of the current situation of an ordinary Chinese family’s interpersonal dynamics and their possible implications on the decision-making process of young college teenage girls facing the consequences of terminating an unplanned pregnancy. We will contend that, in undermining the freedom of decision-making, the popular understanding of the traditional Confucian family’s demands on each family member is responsible for the increasing number of abortions among teenage girls.
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