`` A Defense Of Abortion `` By Judith Jarvis Essay

The goal of Judith Jarvis Thomson in her defense of abortion is to sway the ideas of those who are against abortion by challenging the arguments they give for thinking so. She begins by stating a premise. “For the sake of the argument” a human embryo is a person. This premise is one of the arguments most opponents of abortion use, but as she points out, isn’t much of an argument at all. These people spend a lot of their time dwelling on the fact that the fetus is a person and hardly any time explaining how the fetus being a person has anything to with abortion being impermissible. In the same breath, she states that those who agree with abortion spend a lot of their time

In the article "A Defense of Abortion" Judith Jarvis Thomson argues that abortion is morally permissible even if the fetus is considered a person. In this paper I will give a fairly detailed description of Thomson main arguments for abortion. In particular I will take a close look at her famous "violinist" argument. Following will be objections to the argumentative story focused on the reasoning that one person's right to life outweighs another person's right to autonomy. Then appropriate responses to these objections. Concluding the paper I will argue that Thomson's "violinist" argument supporting the idea of a mother's right to autonomy outweighing a fetus' right to life does not make abortion permissible.

Second, the author uses her “expanding child” example. “Trapped in a tiny house with a growing child and you are up against a wall, and in a few minutes, you will be crushed, on the other hand the child won’t be crushed. The only thing that will save her life is to kill the child. Is abortion permissible to save the pregnant woman’s life? Because the mother being compared to that of the house, this brings up the idea that the mother should be able to do as she pleases with her body, and that her body carries more significance than the fetus’ right to life. This brings in the argument of a third-party intervention, such as a doctor. If a doctor did not agree to perform an abortion, to save this mother, then the mother would be denied her rights, and the right to decide what is done with her body. If a woman doesn’t have a right to their body, then you should not be unplugged, thus, save the violinists life. This reasoning is concluded with two smart statements, “It seems to me that to treat the matter in this very way (refuse abortion for the mother’s health) is to refuse to grant the very status of person which is so firmly insisted on for the fetus by anti-abortion advocates. (243) and “a fetus who existence is due to rape” has no right to use their mother’s bodies, and aborting them is not depriving them of anything they had a

In Judith A. Thomson’s article, ‘A defense of abortion’ Thomson defends her view that in some cases abortion is morally permissible. She takes this stance even with the premise that fetuses upon the moment of conception are in fact regarded as persons. However one criticism of her argument would be that there is a biological relationship between mother and fetus however there is no biological relationship between you and the violinist. Having this biological relationship therefore entails special responsibility upon the mother however there is no responsibility in the case of the violinist. Thomson argues against those who are opposed to abortion with her violinist thought experiment.

In this paper I will discus and examine Judith Jarvis Thomson’s view upon abortion as stated in her argument “A Defense of Abortion”. I will explain her view on the issue and look deeper into her supporting arguments she included in her essay. I will also explain whether I agree with her statements. I would also discuss whether the person can agree with my statements and reason why having an abortion make you in moral.

With Thomson’s violinist analogy she shows that although disconnecting him would result in death, it would not be morally incorrect. This argument can be applied to a woman’s pregnancy, suggesting that if you accept the prior statement and can find no reasonable difference between the violinist and the fetus occupying the woman’s body, then you should accept that abortion can be acceptable. Thomson

In Thomson’s defence of abortion she argues that abortion is permissible when a mother’s life is not at risk. Working on her interpretation of the secular conservative argument, she first assumes that the premise of a foetus being a person is true, then moves onto the second premise, that a person has the right to life. Analysing what the right to life means, she first looks at the idea that the right to life is the right to have the bare minimum a person needs in order to survive. She quickly rebuts this by providing the Henry Fonda analogy and the violinist analogy. Both of these show that just because a person needs something to survive, like Henry Fonda’s cool hand or another person’s kidneys, a person doesn’t have the right to take it. With this in mind she modifies the argument so that the right to life is the right not to be killed. This she rebuffs with the violin analogy, noting that by pulling the plugs you would in effect be killing the violinist. While the violinist didn’t have the right to your kidneys, it could be argued that he does have the right for you not to intervene. However these are your kidneys, and you should not be forced to allow him continued use. Having ascertained that the right to life is not the right to the bare minimum needed to survive, nor the right not to be killed, she concludes that the right to life is the right not to be killed unjustly, or the

In the “Violinist Analogy,” Thomson argues that in cases of rape and other ways in which a woman might become pregnant without making the decision to have sex, it is not immoral to have an abortion. She makes this argument through the analogy that you are hooked up to a “famous unconscious violinist” and if you unplug yourself you are causing the death of that violinist. This point works very well in the argument that it seems as though abortion is allowable in cases of rape.

In “A Defense of Abortion” by Judith Jarvis Thompson, Thompson works to argue that even if a human fetus is considered a person, abortion is still often morally permissible. This paper will work to explain Thompson’s positions on the different accounts of the right to life, and to provide an evaluation of them and explain why they are not plausible, specifically regarding three of the analogies on-which she based her entire argument: the violinist, the coat, and the case of Kitty Genovese, as well as to explore a logical counterargument and explain why it’s stance is impermissible.

In the article 'A Defense of Abortion' Judith Jarvis Thomson argues that abortion is morally permissible even if the fetus is considered a person. In this paper I will give a fairly detailed description of Thomson main arguments for abortion. In particular I will take a close look at her famous 'violinist' argument. Following will be objections to the argumentative story focused on the reasoning that one person's right to life outweighs another person's right to autonomy. Then appropriate responses to these objections. Concluding the paper I will argue that Thomson's 'violinist' argument supporting the idea of a mother's right to autonomy outweighing a fetus' right to life does not

In her article “A Defense Against Abortion,” Judith Jarvis Thomson explores the permissibility of abortion through both the rights of a fetus and of a woman, and further argues that abortion is sometimes permissible under circumstantial situations. Thomson offers multiple thought-experiments, but the one I am focusing on in my paper is her burglar-based argument. In short, this situation involves you leaving your window open, knowingly increasing the risk of a burglar entering your home. She further adds that you have implemented bars on the windows with the specific intent to keep burglars out, but the bars are defective and allow the burglar to make his way in. This situation is analogous to a woman intentionally having sexual

Judith Jarvis Thomson proposes her argument in her article, A Defense of Abortion. There, she explains to her readers during what circumstances is abortion justifiable. Thomson uses the argument by analogy strategy to explain to her readers her argument. She tries to reach her conclusion by comparing it to similar cases. The point she is trying to make is to tell her readers that abortion is morally permissible only in some cases, like when the mother has been a victim of rape, when contraception has failed or when the pregnancy is of danger to the mother. She explains to her readers that abortion is justifiable only in some cases, not all. Thomson uses the case of a violinist to show her readers that abortion is morally permissible when a woman has been victim of rape. She also uses the people seeds story as an analogy to explain that abortion is morally acceptable when contraception has failed. Thomson also mentions the right to life in her article. She uses the right to life to explain to us that it is morally justifiable for the mother to abort the fetus when the fetus is endangering the mother’s life. In order to help her readers understand the notion of right to life she is trying to propose to us, she does so by using the Henry Fonda example. In my point of view, I find most of Thomson’s analogies irrelevant to the argument she is trying to make. I will explain to my readers why I find Thomson’s analogies irrelevant.

In A Defense of Abortion, Thomson states at the very beginning “it is concluded that the fetus is a person from the moment of conception” (Thomson 449). She then goes in to comparing it to the acorn and the oak tree reference. She uses these two ideas to show that the fetus is already a part of you. It may not be a human at that point, but it is still growing in the stomach of the mother. Thomson then goes into using examples of a violinist who has fatal kidney problems, so your kidneys get hooked to his in order to save his life. Once he gets unhooked from his lifeline, he will die. This example is used to really help understand abortion. Much like the violinist, if the fetus gets unattached to its lifeline, it will die. Thomson then goes into describing the extremist view of a mother letting the fetus become a baby, even though it might very well kill her. She expresses her opinion, “The fetus, being a person, has a right to life, but as the mother is a person too, so has she a right to life” (Thomson 451). She realizes that even though the fetus has been conceived, because it is not a human, the mother should have just as much a life as the

Judith Jarvis Thomson wrote an essay in Philosophy & Public Affairs, in 1971, titled, “A Defense of Abortion” which spells out her ethical theory. Thomson is pro-choice; he believes that women always have the right to have an abortion. A standard anti-abortion argument is that every person has a right to life, including, fetuses. It is also argued that although a mother does have a right to decide what happens with her own body, the right of a person’s life is stronger and more inflexible, so this exceeds the right to her decision on what happens to her body. But she argues that the right of a life does not justify the use of another’s life against their will.

Abortion is one of the hottest topics discussed today. Everyone has an opinion on it. Some people say that it’s immoral; others say that it isn’t. The purpose behind this paper is to expose the reader to both sides of the “Is abortion a moral or immoral act?” argument, using moral theories to back up the arguments. This gives the reader a different view of both sides of the argument. I will also give my opinion at the end. Everyone and their mother has heard the traditional “Abortion is wrong because the bible says so” argument. Being able to see arguments stemming from a range of recognized theories might help clear up the controversial topic that is abortion.