Jane english and the Analogy of the Hypnotized Attackers

For our next paper I plan on discussing

abortion as a social issue. I want to do this in

the form of a critical paper This seems to be a

very sticky subject and is one of the topics we

had in our class that was very interesting to me

with a lot of room for interpretation as to when

it is or is not o.k. to abort the fetus if it

should ever be done at all. The argument I plan to

discuss is Jane English's analogy of the

hypnotized attackers which was not one of our

readings, but one I came across in some research I

did for this upcoming paper. This analogy has to

do with a mad scientist who abducts people,

hypnotizes them and has them attack innocent

passerbys. A major part of the analogy is

realizing that these people who are attacking

innocents are themselves innocent and would not be

committing the acts of violence that they are

guilty of if they were not hypnotized and were

able to act on their own volition. They are acting

on the will of the mad scientist. He is the only

bad person in this whole scenario. The innocent

hypnotized attackers are representative of the

fetus and the helpless attackee is representative

of the woman or women who are victims of the

unwanted pregnancy. The analogy is to determine

the measure of force that can that can be used by

the attacker to protect one'sself from the

undesired attack of an undesirable pregnancy

depending on what kind of damage the pregnancy may

cause. I think that this analogy does a good job

in deciding how to deal with the burden of

pregnancy during more than just the moment of

attack. Her narrative can grasp or deal with a

lot of possible situations.

Jane English argues that if a fetus is a

person, abortion is still justifiable in many

cases and if a fetus is not a person, killing it

is still wrong in many cases (pg. 4). When I

first read this , or heard, this passage I felt

that it was fairly wishy- washy. I felt that her

argument really did not have a stand, but how can

you when you are not truly pro- choice or

pro-life. She seems to be saying that there must

be a good reason to end a life and not just for

the sheer convenience of it. I completely agree.

Also, with this argument came the concept of

personhood. This concept seems to be what liberals

and

conservatives are trying to define because it can

be stated at that exact moment when a fetus

becomes a person and therefore when abortion