The idea of whether abortion should be illegal or allowed is a controversial one since everyone seems to have different ideologies. Judith Thomson, who is in support of pro-choice argues in her article “A Defense of Abortion” main idea towards abortion is stating women should have the right to choose because they have the moral right to decide whether they have to hold life in their body. This idea is presented from her first analogy using the violinist who has a failing kidney and will perish if he does not have someone give him blood immediately. They take you without your permission and plug you into him. She connects this to the idea of the fetus by saying everyone has the right to life and if the fetus is considered a person then it would be wrong to kill an innocent human being, but then says that if the child is harming you then you should not wait until you are dead, he body is the home of the women so she should be allowed to defend herself against …show more content…
By choosing life over death, she is aborting the baby to save her life because she believes that even though the fetus is unintentionally hurting the mother, she does not have to provide the home for the child it’s her being a Good Samaritan because there are no laws against having to be a good one. Like she stated in her analogy with the violinist you do not have to stay connected to the violinist you can have a say and just let him die by unplugging yourself. As a person you do not owe this person anything at all, and he has a right to not be killed unjustly, but by doing something you have a right to you are not doing something that is unjust. No women allows the fetus into their home and by going through an abortion you might be callous, self-centered and indecent, but not unjust because you have the right to choose. In the second article “Putting Women back into Abortion Debate” by Ellen Willis is against abortion and believes that it is more of a feminist movement.
Judith Jarvis Thomson, in "A Defense of Abortion", argues that even if we grant that fetuses have a fundamental right to life, in many cases the rights of the mother override the rights of a fetus. For the sake of argument, Thomson grants the initial contention that the fetus has a right to life at the moment of conception. However, Thomson explains, it is not self-evident that the fetus's right to life will always outweigh the mother's right to determine what goes on in her body. Thomson also contends that just because a woman voluntarily had intercourse, it does not follow that the fetus acquires special rights against the mother. Therefore, abortion is permissible even if the mother knows the risks of having sex. She makes her points with the following illustration. Imagine that you wake up one morning and find that you have been kidnapped, taken to a hospital, and a famous violist has been attached to your circulatory system. You are told that the violinist was ill and you were selected to be the host, in which the violinist will recover in nine months, but will die if disconnected from you before then. Clearly, Thomson argues, you are not morally required to continue being the host. In her essay she answers the question: what is the standard one has to have in order to be granted a right to life? She reflects on two prospects whether the right to life is being given the bare minimum to sustain life or ir the right to life is merely the right not to be killed. Thomson states that if the violinist has more of a right to life then you do, then someone should make you stay hooked up to the violinist with no exceptions. If not, then you should be free to go at a...
In the Judith Jarvis Thomson’s paper, “A Defense of Abortion”, the author argues that even though the fetus has a right to life, there are morally permissible reasons to have an abortion. Of course there are impermissible reasons to have an abortion, but she points out her reasoning why an abortion would be morally permissible. She believes that a woman should have control of her body and what is inside of her body. A person and a fetus’ right to life have a strong role in whether an abortion would be okay. Thomson continuously uses the story of a violinist to get the reader to understand her point of view.
The topic of my paper is abortion. In Judith Jarvis Thomson's paper, “A Defense of Abortion,” she presented a typical anti-abortion argument and tried to prove it false. I believe there is good reason to agree that the argument is sound and Thompson's criticisms of it are false.
In her article Thomson starts off by giving antiabortionists the benefit of the doubt that fetuses are human persons. She adds that all persons have the right to life and that it is wrong to kill any person. Also she states that someone?s right to life is stronger than another person?s autonomy and that the only conflict with a fetuses right to life is a mother?s right to autonomy. Thus the premises make abortion impermissible. Then Thomson precedes to attacks the premise that one?s right to autonomy can be more important to another?s right to life in certain situations. She uses quite an imaginative story to display her point of view. Basically there is a hypothetical situation in which a very famous violinist is dying. Apparently the only way for the violinist to survive is to be ?plugged? into a particular woman, in which he could use her kidneys to continue living. The catch is that the Society of Music Lovers kidnapped this woman in the middle of the night in order to obtain the use of her kidneys. She then woke up and found herself connected to an unconscious violinist. This obviously very closely resembles an unwanted pregnancy. It is assumed that the woman unplugging herself is permissible even though it would kill the violinist. Leading to her point of person?s right to life is not always stronger than another person?s right to have control over their own body. She then reconstructs the initial argument to state that it is morally impermissible to abort a fetus if it has the right to life and has the right to the mother?s body. The fetus has the right to life but only has the right to a ...
Famous author Dr. Seuss states that a “person is a person no matter how small.”
In A Defense of Abortion (Cahn and Markie), Judith Thomson presents an argument that abortion can be morally permissible even if the fetus is considered to be a person. Her primary reason for presenting an argument of this nature is that the abortion argument at the time had effectively come to a standstill. The typical anti-abortion argument was based on the idea that a fetus is a person and since killing a person is wrong, abortion is wrong. The pro-abortion adopts the opposite view: namely, that a fetus is not a person and is thus not entitled to the rights of people and so killing it couldn’t possibly be wrong.
The overall thesis that Thomson presents in “A Defence of Abortion”, is that abortion is permissible no matter the personhood status of the fetus. Their argument addresses various aspects of the issue; the rights of the fetus, the person pregant with the fetus, how those rights interact with each other, third parties and moral obligation. They claim that the rights of a fetus are not any more important than the rights of the person pregnant. However, they also address cases where there would be a sense of moral obligation not to have an abortion. Their discussion about third party participation can be used for other types of necessary third party participation.
Abortion may be one of the most controversial topics in America today. Abortion is defined as “the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus” (cite dictionary). There are really only two sides on people’s opinion on abortion; pro-life which means abortion should be outlawed and pro-choice which means a woman should be able to decide whether she wants to keep her baby. Thousands of protests and riots have begun due to the fact pro-life activists believe abortion should become illegal. Both sides bring valid points to support their decision that could sway any person’s thoughts. The Roe v. Wade law has allowed abortion to be legal in the U.S since 1973 (Chittom & Newton, 2015). The law “gives women total control over first trimester abortions and grants state legislative control over second and third trimester abortions” (Chittom & Newton, 2015). Ever since the law was put in place, millions of people have tried to overturn it and still
...ther’s sovereignty over her body outweigh the right of an unborn child to live. The answers to these questions are very diverse as a result of the diversity of the American society. With the issue of abortion, one’s attitude toward it is going to be based on many things such as religious background and personal morals. There is no black and white answer to the abortion issue. Luckily we live in a country where we are able to decide for ourselves whether something is morally right or wrong. Thus, ultimately, the choice is ours. As with the many other ethical issues which we are faced with in our society, it is hard to come to a concrete answer until we are personally faced with that issue. All we can do is make an effort to know all of the aspects which are involved so that we may be able to make a sound decision if we were faced with this problem in our own lives.
In “A Defense of Abortion”, Judith Jarvis Thomson states the wrong of preventing mothers to abort their unwanted babies by giving multiple analogies that responds to prolife arguments. She begins with how the wrong of abortion lies heavily on how a fetus is a person from the moment of contraception. It is argued that a human’s life is continuous, beginning from contraception to adulthood, thus stating that a fetus is a person 47). Thomson then responds that this argument is a “slippery slope argument”; once we allow something, another will follow. Thomson both agrees and disagrees that a fetus is a person from the moment of contraception. She states that, “a clump of cells is not more a person than an acorn is an oak tree,” and that this statement
In A Defense of Abortion, Judith Thomson argues that abortion is permissible even in cases when a mother’s life is not in danger. Thomson starts her argument by mentioning the classic defenses of abortion which are focused on “drawing the line” of when a fetus can be considered a human. Thomson argues that this argument is weak and oversimplified in arguing the moral rightness of abortion (p.817). She believes that the abortion argument is centered on the fetus’s right to life and a woman’s right to control her own body. She states, “Every person has a right to life. So the fetus has a right to life. No doubt the mother has a right to decide what shall happen in and to her body…” (p.818). However, these two rights conflict when a fetus interferes the woman’s right to her own body. A specific example would be when a woman does not want to carry her fetus to term, or in carrying the unborn fetus, it endangers her life. In considering this, Thomson asks if the fetus’s rights are weightier than the woman’s right to her own body. Thomson concludes that the fetus is not entitled to a woman’s body. Termination of a fetus is not a betrayal of a moral obligation, while carrying a
Abortion is on the brink of becoming one of the most debatable subjects of controversy in the United States, alongside race and war. It is an argument where integrity, law, and emotions clasp. Abortion constitutes a social, moral, and medical dilemma that affects people and makes our country turn into an emotional and vicious atmosphere. People have many views on abortion but the two variations are “pro-life” and “pro-choice”. Someone that is pro-life believes that the fetus is alive; they believe that it is considered murder and that there is a moral responsibility. They truly believe the unborn child has constitutional rights. Someone that is pro-choice believes that the mother should be able to make the decision of abortion with no interference from the state. The unborn child has no rights as a human, since it is not technically living and breathing outside of the uterus.
With the violinist, Thomson attempts to compare the thought process behind an abortion to a violinist receiving a kidney, with a kidnapped person forcibly donating the kidney. Similarly, a person who is pregnant may or may not be 'taken hostage' and forced, in whatever way, to become pregnant, and the idea of 'saving a life' in either the violinists or the pregnant person's case becomes blurry because of the other life being endangered in the process. The point being that the argument boils down to if a life can be saved, anyone else involved in the process of saving the life may not make a decision harming the failing or fledgling life, regardless of situation. The second argument of Henry Fonda suggests that though one thing may provide an
From the first stages of pregnancy to the last, Thomson argues that a human embryo is a person. The basic argument against abortion is that every person has the right to life. If the fetus is a person, the fetus, then has the right to life. Therefore, abortion is not merely permissible. However, Thomson says that the right to life is not to be killed unjustly. Meaning the right to use a woman’s body has not been extended to the fetus; so then abortion wouldn’t be violating the fetuses right to life. Most people look at abortion through the extreme view, which is that abortion is always wrong. However, Thomson looks at abortion through the less extreme view which is, abortion is almost always wrong unless the cause of death or bodily harms are
Abortion has been one of the most talked about topics in society just about anywhere from television, magazines, whether or not it should be the right or wrong thing to do. Abortion is a very sensitive issue to discuss, because of its nature. Many people have said that abortion is a very bad thing to do and it should not even be choice whether or not to abort a living fetus. People think that abortion is committing murder as it is killing the human fetus. However, others feel that a woman should have a voice and have the right to choose to keep the child or not and that it is not murder until the baby is born. Majority of individuals who believe that abortion is bad say that the fetus is human who is partly being formed and to have an abortion is considered to be murder. For the people who think an abortion is ok, say that it’s not considered murder unless the child is born. I believe that abortion should be seen in which the stage the fetus is in. if the fetus is in an early stage of pregnancy it is not considered murder, but if the fetus has already began to develop into a larger fetus then it is indeed considered to be murder. There are times when abortion can be accepted, if the mother is having complications due to pregnancy. For example if the mother is enduring complications in her pregnancy that can harm her, because of the child in that case it is ok to perform an abortion to help save the mother’s life. It is also very important to understand this type of situation. The mother has the right to have an abortion and it is her decision because a mother knows best about her health conditions.