In the article, “Killing and Letting Die” by Philippa Foot she argues that Thomson’s argument is invalid. Thomson argues that abortion is sometimes justified because no one has the right to another person’s body and therefore the mother can detach herself from the baby. To highlight on this analogy she presents an example with a violinist. The violinist is in critical condition and in order to be saved he must be attached to a random person. That person is then obligated to be attached to the violinist for if they detach the violinist will surely die. It is true that in both situation there is someone’s life at stake. On violinist case the violinist is simply let die while the abortion case the fetus is killed by the mother. Therefore, I will …show more content…
argue that Thomson’s argument is not valid because the premises are flawed and it is not the same thing to detach from a person who is already ill (violinist) and from someone who is probably healthy (fetus). To begin an individual should not be blame for an action that has already been initiated.
For example, in the case of the violinist, the violinist is already sick and will most likely die. If a person chooses to detach themselves from the violinist they are not killing the violinist, for the violinist was already ill and his condition was not started by the person detaching themselves. The violinist will only be let die and not be killed. As opposed to the fetus, it cannot be said it was going to die if he was in the womb. More than likely the fetus would be born and become a baby. However, if the mother detaches herself from the fetus she is killing it because she is initiating the death. In this case, I would agree with Foot that the analogy from the violinist to abortion is faulty. According to Foot’s statement, which I fully support, “The two must be treated quite differently because one involves the initiation of a fatal sequence and the other the refusal to save a life” (Foot 184). That analogy is faulty making the argument …show more content…
invalid. Another reason why it is invalid is going of the two rescue scenarios.
In the first one, the rescue crew lets a man die because they had to go save 5 other people who were in danger. In the second one the rescue crew must decide whether they want to run over an innocent man in order to save 5 people who are dieing. To an extent the first rescue crew is placed in a situation of how many people they wish to let die. In the second one the rescue crew must decide whether they want to let 5 people die and kill an innocent person in the process. If they choose to save the 5 people then they are starting the individual’s cause of death. Therefore, it is not the same to let someone die and to kill someone. So going back to Thomson’s argument, Thomson believes the person who is refusing to let their body be used by someone else is comparing to the rescue crew number 1. That is at fault because the fetus is not at risk of death for it is just dependent on the parent. Whereas in the first rescue situation both groups of people are at risk of losing their
lives. Thomson can argue that every individual has the right to make decisions with regards to their bodies. Meaning if the woman does not want to allow the fetus to reside in her womb she has the right to abort, for it is her body and she should have the liberty to decide for herself. The fetus would be attached to the mother without her consent and therefore it would be permissible for the mother to abort/ detach herself from the fetus. Going of on that, it is true that a person should have the liberty to decide what happens inside her body and should not be obligated to be attached to someone if they do not want to. That is correct a person should be able to make such decision but only if it will not cause the killing of a person. In the case of the violinist someone can detach themselves and the violinist will die but only because they are already sick and not because the detachment killed him directly. In the case of the fetus the detachment will be a direct killing. The mother will be causing the killing since the fetus was not at risk of dieing before the detachment. Therefore, Thomson’s argument is not valid because her argument is flawed in terms of comparing the detachment of a deathly person and a wellbeing fetus.
The first stanza of “Two Thoughts of Death” by Countee Cullen is pretty straight forward. The narrator explains that when he’s dead, he would not have much of a concern who takes care of his body or who cries for him, after he’s gone. The first impression that the narrator portraits to the reader is of not having compassion for the living or glad for leaving. The first stanza clearly portraits that the topic is death.
According to Thomson, unjust killing comes from the result of depriving someone from a right that they own. In the Henry Fonda case, Fonda was given the magical ability to cure a sickness with just one touch over a fevered brow. So, Fonda has the right to volunteer in touching the fevered brow, but is not obligated to do so because the sick person does not own the right of Henry Fonda’s hand. This analogy is very significant in comparison to Thomson’s argument on justified abortion because it shows that the mother should not be held to any constraints because she has the freedom to her body. Given the fact that the mother has the authority to make any decisions she wants; abortion will always be justified because she is not obligated to give
Fundamentally, in either case, both the violinist and child die. All life is equally valuable, and such distinctions offer no tangible contradictions to trump Thomson’s example. Additionally, an actual pregnancy has vastly different effects on a woman’s physical and psychological condition than simply being attached to a well-known artist. This further justifies having an abortion, a position Thomson firmly stands by, especially during the case of nonconsensual sex. Moreover, a mother does not necessarily have more responsibility towards their offspring than an artificially connected violinist.
Likewise, Thompson holds that a pregnant woman possesses the right to defend herself against her attacker. No matter if the invader is a rapist attempting to harm her from outside or a foetus that may harm her from the inside. The woman still has a moral liberty to repel her attacker by killing the intruder. Killing a person and abolishing their ‘right to life’ cannot be named as immoral when performed in self-defence. Therefore, an abortion is permissible in the ‘extreme case’ whereby continuing with the pregnancy may result in serious injury or death of the woman. However, it can be argued that although it is permissible to act in self-defence against an invader, the foetus is no such invader and should not be treated like one. Unlike the violinist who was artificially attached to you, the foetus is surviving due to the mother’s biological organs and by the natural processes of reproduction and this yields a special relationship. Therefore, this appears to be a crucial difference between the violinist and the foetus. The natural environment of the violinist is not your body, whereas the natural environment of the foetus is within the mother’s womb. Furthermore, the violinist is trespassing because your body is not their natural environment whereas a foetus cannot
“As I Lay Dying, read as the dramatic confrontation of words and actions, presents Faulkner’s allegory of the limits of talent” (Jacobi). William Faulkner uses many different themes that make this novel a great book. Faulkner shows his talent by uses different scenarios, which makes the book not only comedic but informational on the human mind. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner is a great book that illustrates great themes and examples. Faulkner illustrates different character and theme dynamics throughout the entire novel, which makes the book a humorous yet emotional roller coaster. Faulkner illustrates the sense of identity, alienation, and the results of physical and mental death to show what he thinks of the human mind.
The typical anti-abortion argument is as follows: 1. Every fetus is a person, 2. Every person has the right to life, 3. Every fetus has the right to life [1,2], 4. Everything that has the right to life may not be killed, 5. Every fetus may not be killed [3,4]. Premise 1 is taken from page 297 in our book when Thompson states, “Most opposition to abortion relies on the premise that the fetus is a human being, a person…” Premise 2 and conclusion 3 are taken from page 298 when Thomson says “Every person has a right to life. So the fetus has a right to life.” Premise 4 is taken from page 298 when Thomson states “So the fetus may not be killed.” She does not explicitly state the premise, "Everything that has the right to life may not be killed," but we can infer this since in the previous premises she stated that every fetus is a person and every person has the right to life. So since that is true then we can substitute fetus for everything that has the right to life, therefore stating everything that has the right to life may not be killed. Conclusion 5 is also not stated directly in Thomson’s paper, but follows directly from the premises that are stated in her paper.
The mother-son case illustrates that there are more factors in play than just the two that Thomson presents in her thesis. Thomson’s conditions by themselves cannot explain every situation. The relationship between the people involved can also affect whether a decision is morally permissible or not. If that relationship entails that one person is emotionally bound and ethically responsible for the security and well-being of the other, the first cannot knowingly contribute to the death of the second. Thomson’s thesis must be modified to include this condition as well.
To help argue her point, Thomson first begins with an analogy comparing an acorn of an oak tree to the fetus in a woman’s body. She begins by giving the view of the Pro – Lifers; “It is concluded that the fetus is…a person from the moment of conception” (page 113). She then goes on to say, “similar things might be said about the development of an acorn into an oak tree, and it does not follow that acorns are Oak trees…” (Page 113). This analogy helps illustrate how much she disagrees with this Pro –life argument. She calls it a “slippery- slope argument” and goes to say, “…it is dismaying that opponents of abortion rely on them so heavily and uncritically” (page 113). Although Thomson makes it clear that she disagrees with the notion that a fetus is a person (…I think the premise is false, that the fetus is not a person from th...
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 ...
Thomson’s argument is presented in three components. The first section deals with the now famous violinist thought experiment. This experiment presents a situation in which you wake up one morning and discover you have been kidnapped and hooked up to an ailing violinist so that his body would have the use of your kidneys for the next nine months. The intuitive and instinctive reaction to this situation is that you have no moral duty to remain hooked up to the violinist, and more, that he (or the people who kidnapped you) does not have the right to demand the use of your body for this period. From a deontological point of view, it can be seen that in a conflict between the right of life of the fetus and the right to bodily integrity of the mother, the mother’s rights will trump those of the fetus. Thomson distills this by saying “the right to life consists not in the right not to be killed, but rather in the right not to be killed unjustly”.
But in another one of her arguments, Jarvis says that it seems like it is not morally permissible to kill a child. Take one of her thought experiments, called the violinist case; You wake up in a hospital with a famous violinist attached to your kidneys, and he needs use of your kidneys for nine months. (1) Every person has a right to life. (2) The violinist is a person. (3) Therefore the violinist has a right to life. (C) It is impermissible to unplug the violinist. This is an analogy towards rape. The violinist is the baby and the music society is the
The argument for the moral rights of the unborn child against abortion still holds true because the child cannot be viewed as a virus that abortion presents a cure because the rights of a fetus is reserves in its identity as a member of the Homo sapien community. Therefore, any acts against an unborn child( or fetus), although presently legal, should be considered as morally unjust, which is equal to the act of murder because what is killed in an abortion is not simply, a housing of organ but a human being equal to any other. Furthermore, the idea of justifying an abortion, which essentially should be viewed as the forceful and unnatural death, of an unborn child based on the assumption that he or she cannot express thoughts, or desires therefore rendering their members to full moral rights . Thus, it negates the feeling of pain and hardships that are experience by a fetus as it is forcefully yank out the worm of his
Thomson’s essay was created as a strong, convincing essay. Thomson uses pathos when explaining the example for the mother and child situation. Thomson states “Some won’t even make an exception for a case in which continuation of the pregnancy is likely to shorten the mother’s life; they regard abortion as impermissible even to save the mother’s life.” (Thomson, 50) that even when the mother’s life is endangered, they still regard abortion as impermissible. However the case stated before is extremely rare and many people who are against abortion doesn’t believe in the extreme view. She states that “The extreme view could of course be weakened to say that while abortion is permissible to save the mother’s life, it may not be performed by a third party but only by the mother’s life.” (Thomson) the mother and child share the same body so it should be left in her hands to control the situation. Most up till now mostly showed a mixture of logos and pathos, but it did include the least amount of ethos. She gave an example “Suppose a woman has become pregnant, and learns that she has a cardiac condition such that she will die if she carries the baby to term. What may be done for him? And also if the fetus has the right to live, but as the mother is a person too, so has a right to life, but as the mother is a person
Thomson concludes that there are no cases where the person pregnant does not have the right to chose an abortion. Thomson considers the right to life of the pregnant person by presenting the case of a pregnant person dying as a result from their pregnancy. In this case, the right of the pregnant person to decide what happens to their body outweighs both the fetus and the pregnant person 's right to life. The right to life of the fetus is not the same as the pregnant person having to die, so as not to infringe on the right of the fetus. In the case of the violinist, their necessity for your body for life is not the same as their right over the use of your body. Thomson argues that having the right to life is not equal to having the right to use the body of another person. They argue that this is also the case, even if the the pregnant person knowingly participated in intercourse and knew of the possibility of pregnancy. In this case it would seem that abortion would not be permissible since the pregnancy was not by force. However, we are reverted back to the case of rape. If a fetus conceived voluntarily has the right not to be aborted due to how it was conceived, then the fetus conceived from rape should also have that same right. Instead of creating a distinction of cases where the fetus has a right to use the body of a pregnant person, Thomson instead makes a distinction of when abortion would be morally
Yet, I have clearly shown that the fetus is a separate person with its own heart, lungs, brain, and all different body organs. The oppositions would say that it is the woman’s right to terminate her own pregnancies. Yet, in the eyes of the law two charges are filed when someone kills a woman and her fetus, so how is it her right to kill another human being? A woman doesn’t have four arms, four legs, two heads, four kidneys, two hearts, and two brains… so how is it only her body?