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Ethics and morality of abortion
Ethical dilemmas - abortion
Abortion pros and cons arguments
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Generally, everyone agrees that it is wrong to kill innocent adult human beings in most circumstances. So then let me ask you this, why is it permissible to have an abortion? If it is wrong to kill an innocent adult human being, then why is it not also wrong to kill an innocent fetus through performing an abortion? Now, looking at the two stances one can have on this act: a pro-choice or a pro-life. So then if killing an innocent adult human being is wrong, doesn’t that also make having an abortion morally wrong as well? The pro-choice followers are those in favor with having the right to your own body, making abortions permissible. Every person has the right to control, and make medical decisions about, his or her own body. The second premise …show more content…
In Judith Thompson’s Defence of Abortion, she claims that the fetus is a person from the moment of conception. Thompson’s claim also states, “having a right to life does not guarantee having either a right to be given the use of or a right to be allowed continued use of another person’s body- even if only one needs it for life itself”. Thompson goes more into depth with the argument with her two premises and the final conclusion. The first premise is that no one has the right to the use of another person’s body, unless they have been given the right. The second premise covers that if someone has no right to use your body, then it is permissible to discontinue their use of your body, even if this results in their death. In conclusion to Thompson’s argument, it is permissible for a woman to discontinue a fetus’s use of her body (by having an abortion), unless she has given the fetus the right to the use of her body. Thompson also states in her defense that even the mere fact that a woman gets pregnant through voluntary intercourse doesn’t give the fetus the right to the use of their body. However, I do not
Patrick Lee and Robert P. George’s, “The Wrong of Abortion” is a contentious composition that argues the choice of abortion is objectively unethical. Throughout their composition, Lee and George use credibility and reason to appeal the immorality of abortions. The use of these two methods of persuasion are effective and compels the reader to consider the ethical significance. Lee and George construct their argument by disputing different theories that would justify abortions. They challenge the ontological and evaluation theories of the fetus, as well as the unintentional killing theory. This article was obtained through Google, in the form of a PDF file that is associated with Iowa State University.
As per the thought experiment, Thomson further argues that abortion only deprives the fetus of the use of a woman’s body and nothing else. This disanalogy is often ignored, for it only strengthens Thomson’s argument. Nitpicking between small differences offers no compelling logic to defeat the thought experiment. Similar to how opponents of Thomson’s rationalization carefully attack the smallest details, a distinction cannot be made of what life is more valuable.
Judith Jarvis Thomson makes an interesting argument on the defense of abortion. She uses a libertarian framework believing in the doctrine of free will on a rights based account that a women and the fetus that she carries have equal rights. She makes clear, that “the fetus is a human being, a person, from the moment of conception.” In her specific argument she believes that every person has a right to life, and our obligation to one another as human beings is to not interfere with the rights of others and are not obligated to intervene past that. Her specific argument is convincing.
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...
Thomson starts off her paper by explaining the general premises that a fetus is a person at conception and all persons have the right to life. One of the main premises that Thomson focuses on is the idea that a fetus’ right to life is greater than the mother’s use of her body. Although she believes these premises are arguable, she allows the premises to further her explanation of why abortion could be
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.
In Judith Jarvis Thompson’s article “A Defense of Abortion” she explores the different arguments against abortion presented by Pro –Life activists, and then attempts to refute these notions using different analogies or made up “for instances” to help argue her point that women do have the right to get an abortion. She explains why abortion is morally permissible using different circumstances of becoming pregnant, such as rape or unplanned pregnancy.
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 ...
Mary Anne Warren’s “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion” describes her justification that abortion is not a fundamentally wrong action for a mother to undertake. By forming a distinction between being genetically human and being a fully developed “person” and member of the “moral community” that encompasses humanity, Warren argues that it must be proven that fetuses are human beings in the morally relevant sense in order for their termination to be considered morally wrong. Warren’s rationale of defining moral personhood as showcasing a combination of five qualities such as “consciousness, reasoning, self-motivated activity, capacity of communication, and self-awareness” forms the basis of her argument that a fetus displays none of these elements that would justify its classification as a person and member of the morally relevant community (Timmons 386).
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.
In this paper I will be arguing in favor of Judith Jarvis Thomson view point on abortion. I am defending the use abortion and only in the first trimester. I will consider Don Marquis objections of the practice but ultimately side with Thomson.
Alternatively, one might think that having the right to life means that one has the right not to be killed. Again, though, Thomson thinks that the violinist case shows this to be false; surely one can unplug oneself from the violinist, even though doing so kills him. Pathos were included when she provided the example of the violinist. If one attempts to alter the definition by suggesting instead that having the right to life means having the right not to be killed unjustly, then one has done little to advance the debate on abortion. She states that the third party don’t have the right to have the choice of killing the person. She went with the logos and pathos way when she was trying to explain what was going to happen. It shows how Thompson agrees with how the choice of life is not up to the third party or anybody else. With pathos and logos, Thomson further argues that even if women are partially being usually responsible for the presence of the fetus, because it is a voluntarily by engaging in intercourse with the full knowledge that pregnancy might result, it does not thereby follow that they bear a special moral responsibility toward
However, we have 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 wrong.
This paper will address the ideas presented in Judith Jarvis Thomson’s paper, “A Defense of Abortion,” analyzing the argument involving the violinist and attempting to further emphasize how it justifies the moral permissibility of abortion. I intend to elaborate on the significance of her argument and its flexible parameters, explaining how even the variations have implications on the permissibility of abortion. In addition, I address the claims that Beckwith makes in regards to an unborn entity having “a prima facie right to her mother’s body,” explaining how such a right doesn’t outweigh the mother’s autonomy. Thomson’s argument is as follows: you wake up one morning and find yourself, in bed, hooked up to a famous violinist.
However in my opinion this is a faulty case in both scenarios and in all ten cases since Thompson clearly recognizes that life starts at conception. If life starts at conception as mentioned, how is it to say that a mothers right is greater than the living persons inside of her? Marquis argues every person is entitled the chance of prosperity and opportunity at the start of life and therefore has the right to grow inside the mothers womb unless circumstance of rape of death are involved. At the start of life a fetus begins to think, breathe, kick, and move around all of which indicate thoughts and desires inside of the brain making this a person of desire and though. Of all the cases one thing remains in common: the fetus inside of the mother cannot voice its opinion as the mother can voice hers and because of this pro-abortion states that the woman’s rights become superior and the living fetus no longer matter?