Is Abortion Morally Permissible

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When the Trump Administration was asked about the topic of abortion, Donald Trump responded: “There has to be some form of punishment for the mother who aborted her child”. The Trump administration’s statement is not the only opinion on whether abortion is morally permissible in American society. Today, America encounters a division amongst those questioning if and when abortion is morally permissible. Unfortunately, the concept of abortion is not black and white, there are many social factors and definitions of what it means to be a person that is argued in the debate. For the purpose of this paper, abortion will be defined as the deliberate termination of a pregnancy. In this paper, I am going to argue that abortion is always morally permissible. …show more content…

During pregnancy, a woman’s body acts as a vessel that holds the fetus, causing the woman’s body to be its main source of life support. However, because on being has the right, does not give the being permitted to use another’s resources in order to stay alive. Thompson displays this in her work as she gives the example of a violinist. The example Thompson uses asks if a woman was to awake with a world-famous violinist attached to her body in order to survive, would it be wrong for her to detach herself to continue her life? The answer is no, because the violinist, though he has a right to life, has no right to the cohabitate the body of the woman. Let us apply this to abortion, the fetus limits on the right to life of the mother, and so by aborting the fetus, it limits its access to the mother’s body. Using a Utilitarian model on the levels of pleasure, by aborting the fetus the woman’s right of her body is secured, knowing that another person will not threaten her right over her body leading to the highest level of the pleasure of …show more content…

There are times where a fetus is the product of unprotected and forced intercourse between the mother and another individual. Thompson elaborates this concept in her people seed example, imagining a world where seeds traveled the air and when they land they grow into people. If a woman has a people seed enter her home, even though she did not want the seed to enter her home and did what she could to keep it out, should she be responsible to let the seed grow and raise the person? The answer is no because the woman did not consent for the seed to enter the home it doesn’t have rights to, after all, it is the woman’s home. Applying this idea to the topic of abortion, to abort a fetus is morally permissible because the woman did not consent the fetus to enter her body and use her for life support. Adding on a Utilitarian methodology to the idea of consent, the woman would experience an extreme amount of secure pleasure knowing her body is her own to control, rather than having the responsibility to let the uninvited fetus to use her for life

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