Abortion Should Not Be Legalized

Abortion should be illegal in the United States of America. Since abortion was made legal in 1973, almost 57 million babies have been murdered by abortion. At the rate of 2,900 babies aborted a day, or 1,058,500 a year, the death toll is averaging almost double the deaths caused by the “leading cause of death” in the U.S., heart disease. These are 57 million people, who could've grown up to cure cancer, or found a reliable and abundant clean source of energy. Also, women who have had abortions almost always are psychologically affected in some form or another. These affects include, but are not limited to; regret, anger, guilt, shame, sense of loneliness or isolation, anxiety and depression, and suicidal thoughts or feelings/actions. In fact,

In the article, “A Defense of Abortion” by Thomson, the author states the two points that contradict the most the right of a fetus and the right of a mother. The authors main stance, is there are abortions that are morally permissible and impermissible under certain circumstances. Thomson, makes the assumption that a fetus is a person so she can prove abortion is permissible in some situations. The author states, under three cases abortion is permissible and she further elaborates on the premise with analogies she presents. The first case is rape. She proposes an analogy, that you have been kidnapped and wake up in the hospital and they plugged you in with a violinist because it needs a kidney for nine months and if you decide to unplug it,

While parts of both may be true, both cannot stand side by side as completely true when discussing abortion. As they stand today, fetus rights and female rights are incompatible in arena of abortion. Even the “other side” agrees that the two cannot stand shoulder to shoulder. In a chapter entitled “Abortion Does Not Violate Human Rights”, Christian Beenfeldt quotes Brian McKinely when claiming that female rights have a higher precedence than fetus rights: “It’s actually quite simple. You cannot have two entities with equal rights occupying one body. One will automatically have veto power over the other.” So one question remains, which more important, fetus rights or female rights? The winner of this question can be decided by one simple factor: is the fetus to be considered a true, living human being at the point of conception, or does true human life not begin until after birth? A clarification should be made here, however. In this paper it will be assumed that everyone involved in this debate considers a newborn child to be a human being. That is, at the moment of birth, a child either becomes a human being or continues to be a human being; regardless of the fetus’s life state before birth, it will be assumed that all agree that birth “confirms”, so to speak, the life and human existence of the newborn.

The topic of abortion is quite a controversial one, many people are both for and against the motion: “Should abortion be legal in the U.S.?”. The main arguments for this topic are “You are taking a child’s life when aborting.” but others may say “Women deserve the right to their own health decisions.” Many people are also in the grey spot with this topic, many believe under certain circumstances such as medical complications, that abortion should be legal.

Thomson brings up the standard anti-abortion argument. Every person has a right to life. A fetus is a person. Which means a fetus has a right to life. Therefore abortion is wrong. Thomson does not understand the jump from a fetus having a right to life to abortion being wrong. She believes that the fetus being a person or not is irrelevant to the argument. And abortion is based more on the rights of the woman, fetus, and who has more of the right of ownership of the woman’s body (Thomson 47-48).

The debate about the legality of abortion involves debating the legal status of the fetus. If the fetus is a person, anti-choice activists argue, then abortion is murder and should be illegal. Even if the fetus is a person, though, abortion may have justified as necessary to women’s body self-govern but that wouldn’t mean that abortion is automatically ethical. Perhaps the state can’t force women to carry pregnancies to term, but it could argue that it is the most ethical choice.

A way Thomson would respond to this argument brings me to my third point. Thomson would say that undoubtedly that the mother and the fetus both have a right to life, but not an equal one. “It

The right of a women to control her reproductive decision is highly debated in the US because of the idea that abortions, to some people, are considered murder. A woman’s ability to make reproductive choices is a fundamental right protected by the

In her article, A Defense of Abortion, American moral philosopher and metaphysician Judith Jarvis Thomson uses analogies to explain scenarios in which abortion is morally permissible, even when the fetus is granted personhood at conception. She addresses the argument that every person has a right to life, the fetus is a person, and therefore the fetus has a right to life; and the mother has a right to choose what happens with her body, but the mother’s right to decide what happens is not as strong as a person’s right to life and therefore, abortion is morally impermissible. She believes this to be incorrect based on the definition of the right to life-which she defines as the right

The author argues that abortion can be done to save a mother’s life. For example, if a mother has a health problem that will not allow her to carry the pregnancy then abortion should be done in order to save her life (Feinberg and Shafer-Landau 28, 29). Furthermore, she argues that even though abortion is presumed as killing a child, the refusal to perform an abortion to an ill mother similarly results in the death of the mother. So it is unfair to the mother as both of them have equal rights to life and no one is inferior to the other (Feinberg and Shafer-Landau 642). In addition, the author states that the extreme view that abortion is killing/murdering an unborn child is false (Feinberg and Shafer-Landau 30). In a like manner, if a pregnancy poses a death risk to a mother, she has the right to defend herself even if in doing so involves killing the unborn child.

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

Performing the abortion would be directly killing the fetus whereas continuing with the pregnancy would only be letting her die. Thomson argues that if the mother and fetus have an equal right to life and the mother has the right to decide what happens in and to her body, then the sum of the mother’s rights then outweigh the fetus’ right to

Thomson’s argues that abortion is morally permissible. She grants, for the sake of the argument, that it is indeed the case that every fetus is a person and subsequently possesses a right to life. However, she also states that she finds these arguments ultimately insufficient to constitute abortion, in its

Judith Jarvis Thomson has argued that a woman surely can defend her life against the threat to it posed by an unborn child, even if doing so involves its death. In her view, it cannot seriously be thought to be murder if the mother performs an abortion on herself to save her life. I will be explaining how Thomson’s arguments for this view are not compelling. I will defend the extreme view, the view that abortion is impermissible even to save the mother's life, by demonstrating that there are key points, which undermine her house analogy and by introducing concepts that are lacking in her ownership thesis. I will argue these points assuming that a fetus is a person, every person has a right to life, and therefore a fetus has a right to life.

Abortion rights are one of the most heatedly debates in society. There are many arguments for and against abortion. Each woman has the right to an abortion and the right to have a child. Women have the resources, rights, and respect to make reproductive health decisions that are best for themselves. (“Women’s”) We live in a free country and women should continue to have the choice to do whatever with their body, concerning women’s rights, health issues, and religious reasons.