An Article About Abortion Which Called A Defense Of Abortion

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.

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,

In her opening statement she first starts of stating a fetus is consider to be a human being or a person from the moment of conception. They have the right to life just like any other person does. In lines 1-10 “Most opposition to abortion relies on the premise that the fetus is a human being, a person, from the moment of conception.”(“Thomson, Judith Jarvis. “A Defense of Abortion.” Judith Jarvis Thomson: A Defense of Abortion, Oct. 1991,spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm.”) Thomson is drawing a line between what we consider to be a person meaning a human being or an adult, to what makes us a human being or an adult. In her first example she talks about an acorn falling from an oak tree automatically being consider to be an oak tree or to be still labeled as an acorn. In lines 10 -14“Similar things might be said about the development of an acorn into an oak trees, and it does not follow that acorns are oak trees, or that we had better say they are.”(“Thomson, Judith Jarvis. “A Defense of Abortion.” Judith Jarvis Thomson: A Defense of

In today society, the topic about abortion is so popular because of the people that are either pro-life or pro-choice. I am pro-choice because of certain reason by me being and Christian it look like I am being and “Hypocrite” but, I have things I believe and do not let my religion take full control on my personal thought when it comes to certain things in my life. The question was asked why Thomson assumes that a fetus is a person with a right to life in her argument. In the article, “A defense of Abortion”, by Judith Jarvis Thomson, says” I think that the premise is false, that the fetus is not a person from the moment of conception.

In §2, I will introduce Judith Jarvis Thomson's argument that abortion is all right even when the fetus is considered a person. In §3, I will object to her argument about the matter. In §4, I will give an explanation of a response Thomson could have concerning my objection to her argument. In §5, I will explain how my objection succeeds by having support from another stance.

Thomson begins her defense of abortion unconventionally with the acceptance of the opposing assumption that the fetus is an innocent person from the moment of conception “for the sake of argument.” (47) By adopting the primary argument against abortion, Thomson avoids the conundrum of having to prove whether a fetus is a person with rights to life, something that Mary Anne Warren’s essay “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion” struggles to clarify. By assuming a fetus is indeed an innocent person that has a right to life, Thomson can proceed with her arguments without the inherent weakness in arbitrarily defining personhood.

In “A Defense of Abortion", Judith Jarvis Thomson argues that a life is a life regardless if it was still in the fetus. Possibly the best argument that was made by Thomson was that a fetus has already been a human person long before birth. In this Paper, I will argue that this argument fails because a life should be consider living when it is “conscious”.

Thomson presents the conservative argument, which states the fetus is a person from the moment of conception, every person has a right to life, hence the fetus has a right to life, every person has the right to control his or her body, but the right to life always outweighs the right to control one’s body, therefore, abortion is always morally wrong. (Thomson ,1) Firstly, The big question is when is a fetus a person? Many will have different ideas and timeline of this event, but I believe that a fetus is a person from the

Judith Jarvis Thomson article “A Defense of Abortion” is different than most debates over abortion. In her article she says fetus have a right, but puts her argument she is making in the mothers perspective for her readers to see. Thomson believes that the mother has a right to her own body more than a fetus has a right to be classifies as a person. She test the theory by giving a few stories to make it easier to understand. To explain that if “All person have right to life” she gives the example of a sick mother who knows she will die if the baby is carried full term (p.242). Thomson states that if they both have a right to life and the decision of whether whose right can outweigh the others comes into play. This is just one of many ways she points out her view of abortion and

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.

However, the pro-choice or the activists for abortions, argue that if a family is in a state of financial trouble, then abortion should be a practical option. Otherwise, the child would be born into a life of suffering, and inadequate living conditions. The pro-choice believers, bases their beliefs, upon the fact that having an abortion is the inalienable right of women. They believe that by outlawing abortions, women aren’t allowed to practice their freedom of privacy. In a way, women are being denied their constitutional rights. Many pro-choice activists also state that abortion is justifiable, because at the time of fertilization the ensuing embryo is not yet a human being. It is not a human being, but a potential one. Therefore, its death does not constitute a murder. Pro-choice activists’

When faced with the choice of life or death, most people would choose to live. In fact, most would not want someone else making that decision for them. They would claim that as a living and independent entity it is solely their choice as to whether they continue to live or not. While this concept may seem fairly straightforward, there seems to be some great debate when it is applied to abortion. For many, they will maintain that the fetus has the right to life no matter the situation. There are some who will argue that abortion is morally permissible in specific circumstances and there are even those that will claim that abortion is always permissible. Why is there such a great divide? A major factor that plays a part in this is whether abortion involves more than one life. Because determining the beginning point of life is such a complex and emotional debate, there will be the same allowance in this paper as there was in Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “A Defense of Abortion”. As she eloquently put it “I propose then, that we grant that the fetus is a person from the moment of conception” (p. 721). This will allow for a look into the moral debate of abortion from a more grounded stage. As discussed early in Thomson’s paper, most of the debate on abortion rests on whether the fetus is alive or not. Whereas the focus should be on the many other aspects of pregnancies that may lead to a mother wanting an abortion.

Another assertion made by abortionfact.com is pregnancy is not a horrid, undignified and devastating situation. A women can continue to go to school, work and choose a life style, within reason, while pregnant. Together with medical science and the past experiences of women the depressing and perverse depiction of pregnancy can be said to be a falsehood. On the other had Thomson makes the assertion, using the same analogy as before, that a women is immobilized by the

Abortion is always argued with different cases and play a main role in medical ethics (blackwell.,p291).It is evidently reasonable for some to argue that in moral situation, abortion is a murder and it should be illegal, while others may claim that abortion is woman’s right when concerning on autonomy ( The abortion debate in Australia). Opponents of making abortion legal claim that abortion is a kind of murder on extend of moral situation. It is always regarded as a sin to kill a person who is no aggressor in most moral communities (new ethics 1). Fetus is a biologically human as it is not just a part of the mothers, such as a lung or a kidney. On the contrary, it is obvious that fetus is human due to he or she has genetic code of human and human parents as well (abortion myth p5). Moreover, it has potentiality to be a person with primary moral worth (text book p210-211). As Gillion (new ethics) pointed out, every person has his right to life, especially he is not an aggressor. This point is also been pointed by (Rebecca and john,Blackwell p204), “embryos has a right to life” .The fetus is innocent and

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