Abortion
Abortion is one of the most controversial topics of all times. It has caused countless deaths and several violent confrontations between the two separate parties of opinion. The fight between pro-life and pro-choice supporters has been long and brutal. This is because, despite what several people may believe, abortion is neither right nor wrong. It is the matter of a personal opinion, where, each side can say with certainty that the other one is wrong.
The question remains, should abortion be legal? Though some may disagree on this point, the fact is that legalized abortion is the only way to protect the lives of women around the world. If you look into American history to see the results of prohibiting abortions to women, you will see that no abortion means more women dead. The violence, which occurs today because of the pro-choice/pro-life conflicts is minimal in comparison to the thousands of hopeless women who turned to illegal abortions--either self-inflicted or preformed by the backroom "professionals"-- which resulted in infection, massive blood loss, and death. It is now since the abortion is legal better for women, because they have a place to go to where abortions can be performed in a clean environment and with minimum risks. The legalization of abortion is the only choice, no matter what side one takes in the debate. Women will try to do what they think is necessary to live as they wish, no matter what the risks are. In order to live as she chooses a woman may give up her freedom, her morals, her beliefs, her family, or even her life.
Abortion has been around for many years in every inhabited corner of the world. It has always been accepted as a mean to prevent the suffering of both the woman and her potential child. Abortion has been practiced widely in every society for many reasons including famine, war, poverty, overpopulation, or simply because a woman felt she was not ready for a child (Whitney 40). No one ever questioned a woman's right to this procedure. After all, who but God had the right to judge what a woman did with her own body? This thought process lasted till the 1800's. During the era of change people began to turn their attention in a new direction, the fetus. They began to protest abortion as cruel, inhumane, and murderous. Filled with a new sense of purpose and the glory of a fresh, righteous cause to uphold this new morality swept the countryside enveloping everyone in its wake.
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”.
In other words, Thomson tries to make the connection that there are three other morally relevant factors involved in abortion in certain cases: the fetus depends on the mother’s body for survival, the mother has not consented to the use of her body and pregnancies are demanding on the body and limit what mothers can do. Hence, the violinist has a kidney condition, which he can only survive if he is attached to our body, we are kidnapped and attached to the violinist without consent and we have to lie in bed for nine months. Thus Thomson's reasoning is it that a person may now permissibly unplug them self from the violinist even though this will cause his death. The right to life, Thomson says, does not demand the right to use another person's body, and so by unplugging the violinist you do not violate his right to life but merely deprive him of the use of your body to which he has no ri...
He introduces basic conditions that an act must meet in order to be deemed a perversion. The sexual acts must be unnatural, a fetish or unnatural inclinations (Nagel, 1). Nagel goes further to discuss a basic definition of a normal sexual relationship and he claims that the general basis of that relationship is two people noticing each other. The relationship initiates through one person’s arousal and then the arousal of the other person. Mutual arousal must precede physical contact, these mutual perceptions establish a normal, natural sexual
In this essay, I will hold that the strongest argument in defence of abortion was provided by Judith Jarvis Thompson. She argued that abortion is still morally permissible, regardless if one accepts the premise that the foetus is a person from the moment of conception. In what follows, I agree that abortion is permissible in the ‘extreme case’ whereby the woman’s life is threatened by the foetus. Furthermore, I agree that abortion is permissible to prevent future pain and suffering to the child. However, I do not agree that the ‘violinist’ analogy is reliable when attempting to defend abortion involving involuntary conception cases such as rape, whereby the foetus does not threaten the woman’s health. To achieve this, I will highlight the distinction
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 this experiment, an innocent celebrity is dying of kidney failure and you are the only one with the correct blood type to save them. Therefore, you are kidnapped and your circulatory system is connected to theirs in order to save them. The question Thomson poses is whether you are morally obligated to remain connected to them or not. My intuition is that of course you’re not required to stay connected, regardless of the amount of time required of you. Thomson argues for the same position, with the obvious stipulation that the less that is required of you the more morally degraded you are for refusing to remain connected (184). This thought experiment is meant to prove that abortion in the case of rape is morally permissible. However, this begs the question on whether abortion in the case of conception resulting from consensual intercourse continues to be morally permissible based on the concept that the right to bodily autonomy trumps the right to
The accepted premise for Thomson’s arguments is that a fetus is a person, and even without accepting the premise, there are still valid reasons to abortions being morally permissible. In the violinist case, a person who has perfectly functioning kidneys is kidnapped and hooked up to a machine to save a violinist who is dying
In her essay, “A Defense of Abortion,” Judith Jarvis Thompson outlines the most common arguments that people defend, and explains her views regarding each of these. She shares numerous examples and situations that she believes will support her views. One of her most prominent arguments is that of whether or not a fetus has moral standing as a “person.” She highlights the so called “battle” between an innocent life, the fetus, and the bodily rights of the mother. Within this argument, Judith outlines for us several situations which can provide people with a different outlook regarding abortion. Throughout Judith’s essay, she does not truly give a clear stance, but rather allows her readers to choose for themselves.
Thomson’s main idea is to show why Pro-Life Activists are wrong in their beliefs. She also wants to show that even if the fetus inside a women’s body had the right to life (as argued by Pro – Lifers), this right does not entail the fetus to have whatever it needs to survive – including usage of the woman’s body to stay alive.
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 ...
Abortions occur for all types of reasons, whether it is because the pregnancy was unplanned, rape-induced, or that it holds a life threatening capacity for the woman herself. Pro-lifers believe once one is conceived, he or she are entitled to a right to live. It does not matter whether or not the pro-lifers are able to prove that a fetus consists of personhood. The life of a potential person should not be able to override the right to one’s body. Judith Thomson presents a though experiment where personhood is granted to a fetus, but how that mere fact still fails to override the woman’s right to her body.
Her argument addresses the pro-choice stance through some odd, yet relatable scenarios. Her first scenario is that of you have been kidnapped and are being attached to a “famous unconscious violinist” and you are told that the violinist must stay attached to you in order to survive until his own kidneys can begin to function. If you unplug yourself or someone else unplugs you then the violinist will die. Therefore posing the question if you feel you have a duty to stay plugged in for a certain period of time? In this case she was specific to 9 months, the same amount of time as a typical pregnancy. Again, it is not the question of you being nice to stay plugged in, but do you feel the duty to stay plugged in? This particular scenario is thought to
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
Before Thomson addresses “The Violinist” case, she concedes the point that a fetus is a person and therefore has a right to life. Now, Thomson continues by stating that a woman’s right to her body outweighs the fetus’s right to life. To demonstrate her position, Thomson utilizes a “thought experiment” involving a famous violinist. Suppose you wake up one morning and are attached to an unconscious violinist, one that is respected
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.