An Analysis Of Judith Thomson's Argument On Abortion

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Abortion
In this paper I will explain Judith Thomson’s argument that abortions are not morally wrong under the condition that the fetus is considered a person. By setting this condition, Thomson advances the argument on why abortions are morally permissible by getting past the triviality of whether the fetus is a person or not. I will explain three cases she presents in which she argues that an abortion is morally justified: (1) It is not wrong to abort a pregnancy that resulted from rape (2) It is not wrong to perform an abortion in order to save the mother’s life (3) In many cases, it is not wrong to abort if the pregnancy resulted from protected, consensual sex and does not threaten the mother’s life. Finally I will present an objection …show more content…

In this analogy, Thomson describes a situation involving a really small house, a person, and a rapidly growing child. The child keeps growing and becoming larger and larger; the house cannot support such growth and the person in it is being crushed. Eventually the walls of the house will explode and the person in the house will die. The child, however, will just complete his or her growth and walk out of the house in perfect conditions. The person represents the woman, the house represents her body, and the growing child represents the fetus. From this analogy, it is evident that as the fetus grows and completes his or her nine months of growth, the woman is dying in the process. Thomson does not believe that the woman, knowing that she has a health condition that will kill her if she goes through with the pregnancy, should just sit and wait until the pregnancy kills her based on the fact that it would be immoral for her to abort. According to Thomson, it would be morally permissible for the woman to abort the baby based on her right to self-defense. Although Thomson states that, “in this case there are only two people involved, one whose life is threatened, and one who threatens it. Both are innocent: the one who is threatened is not threatened because of any fault, the one who threatens does not threaten because of any fault” (43), she does not believe that because both the woman and fetus are innocent, this should allow for no action to be taken or that they have equal say in the matter. Thomson believes the woman should exercise her right to protect her life from the fetus threatening it because she is the owner of her body, not the fetus. Once again, this supports her argument that the woman’s right to decide what to do with her body outweighs the fetus’ right to

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