What is an argumentative passage analysis?
In a passage analysis, you take some piece of written prose which contains an argument and extract the argument from it. In order to do this, you must identify the conclusion of the argument, as well as any premises that support the conclusion, and structure them in such a way that the argument is clearly valid (if indeed it is valid in the passage).
Here is an example of an argumentative passage:
Socrates is a man, and all men are mortal. As such, Socrates is mortal.
Properly analysed, this passage could be put into premise-conclusion form as follows:
Socrates is a man.
All men are mortal.
∴ Socrates is mortal.
That was an easy example. Sometimes it’s more difficult to tell which claim is the conclusion and which are the premises. Consider:
But of course, this argument is terribly misguided. After all, by any reasonable definition of the word “human,” an unborn child of any age is as much a human as you or me. That is why abortion is never permissible. The aforementioned argument is right to say that it is never permissible to kill humans, but wrong to say that fetuses are not humans.
This passage is much more difficult to formalize. The first problem we encounter is that it’s not clear which sentence contains the thesis. We may be tempted to look towards the first and last sentences for a clue, but it seems unlikely that either of these is the main point being argued by the author. At the very least, those do not seem to be the
Human life begins at conception and so abortion is murder. God created every human being in his own image and with
Abortion has been one of the most popular and argumentative topics that has still yet to be settled. Ultimately the question we can ask when trying to solve this issue is whether or not pregnant women should have the right to kill an unborn baby. Abortion is the ending of a pregnancy before birth takes place and is a moral wrong. Can we as a society call ourselves human if we allow the deaths of unborn babies to take place? Those who take the side of pro-choice or as also known as pro-abortion often use statements concerning life, humanity, human rights and freedom to support their claims. I believe abortion should be illegal because we as a society must protect the human lives that are in danger whether or not they are in their first
What is this world coming to? Some people truly believe it is right to kill an innocent fetus. Mothers’ who are old enough to conceive are old enough to support a baby, whether they are barely a teenager or coming to the end of their “golden years.” Regardless of the circumstance, a baby should never be aborted.
One of the most important moves academic writers can master is the art of analysis. This assignment will help you to develop the skills necessary to determine the meaning found within a text.
What was the author’s main thesis in this chapter? How well he or she support it in terms of sources? How compelling was the author’s argument?
Most people would agree that killing a person is extremely wrong. Even though killing someone no matter the age is considered wrong, Thomson makes a compelling argument that killing a person is okay if it is in the case of abortion. Thomson does not believe a fetus is a person, “I think that the premise is false, that the fetus is not a person from the moment of conception” (Shafer-Landau 334). Though Thomson does not agree with her argument, she is using the “fetus is a person” standpoint to persuade others, who believe the premise is true, that abortion is okay even though the fetus is a person.
Thou shalt not kill; one-tenth of what may arguably be the most famous guidelines of morality in the western culture, and also the main driving force for pro-life advocates. The argument supporting their beliefs typically starts with the premises that a fetus is a person, and to destroy or to kill a person is unethical. Therefore abortion, the premeditated destruction of a human being, is murder, and consequently unethical. I deny the fact that the fetus, what I will refer to as an embryo up to 22 weeks old, has the right to live. The opposing argument is invalid because a fetus, although perhaps a part of human species, is not formally a person. This leaves it simply to be a part of the woman?s body, whose fate lies solely in the
"Not a person" is a decidedly unscientific argument: it has nothing to do with science and everything to do with someone's own moral or political philosophy, though that someone may not readily admit it. Here is a good time to recite the scientific proofs, and maybe make a philosophical point of your own: We're either persons or property; and even the staunchest abortion defender will be reluctant to call a human child a piece of property.The "classic" arguments from the other side are collapsing under the weight of science. "No one knows when life begins" and "It's a blob of tissue" are frankly on the wane, especially in the context of surgical abortion, which is how the vast majority of abortions are done today. Many say that life begins as soon as conception occurs. At that time though there is just a egg and a sperm, the fetus is nowhere near fully developed and is a zygote. By contrast, while a mere collection of human cells may carry on the activities of cellular life, it will not exhibit coordinated interactions directed towards a higher level of organization. Thus, the scientific evidence is quite plain: at the moment of fusion of human sperm and egg, a new entity comes into existence which is distinctly human, alive, and an individual organism - a living, and fully human, being. Others may suggest "humanness" depends on something
Many people bring up science about the babies being a fetus, not an actual person. But eventually, the babies are no longer a fetus, they are an actual human being. According to Daniel Mills, a PhD student at the University of Southern Denmark, you have to have oxygen to survive. A baby can only breathe to absorb the oxygen. So this means that the baby has to be living if it is inside the mother’s womb. If it is living, and we abort it, we have killed it. This shows that abortion is murder, and we aren’t doing about
By saying that, it is okay to kill a human fetus, you are saying it is not a person and therefore has no rights, which is not the case. Even if you believe that a fetus isn’t a true person, it is a living being. In our society, even though animals and pets are not humans, they have immense worth because they are living. So why should it be any different for a fetus.
Within the pro-choice world there are many issues that are discussed like abortion, the instant where life begins and the use of contraceptives. This article will focus on not only the issue of using of contraceptives, but specifically the distribution of oral contraceptives (“the pill”) to teenage girls without their parent’s consent.
“A living human person begins to exist at the moment of conception, even though only as a cell.” The road to human life may begin at conception, but to call abortion murder is ludicrous and a large exaggeration. Murder is described as the killing of a human being, and an unborn fetus should not be considered a living human being. A fetus is a group of cells that are completely dependent on its mother that cannot live on its own, therefore it should not be considered a human. One of the most popular arguments on the topic of abortion was the supreme court case Roe V. Wade. This case was about a pregnant single women (Roe) challenging the constitutionality of Texas abortion laws. The winning argument in the case Roe v. Wade, states that the “word ‘person’ as used in the Fourteenth Amendment does not include the unborn,” putting this argument to
Abortion is the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy that is often performed during the first 28 weeks of pregnancy. As life begins at conception, unborn babies are human beings and thus have the right to life. The federal Unborn Victim Of Violence Act that was made to protect unborn babies from murder states that anybody intentionally killing an unborn baby should be punished for killing a human being. Abortion is a murder because it is taking away someone’s life. Even though the baby isn’t born yet, the fetus in the mother’s womb still feels pain while being aborted. No person, not even a mother, has the right to hurt someone. To keep a child, who can’t even speak, from growing and from living is a murder.
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
Abortion also in some eyes was a sin according to the bible it says “thou shall not kill” thus prohibiting people from harming others and their selves. But arguments in accordance with the preceding quote argue the question when does life actually begin? Some argue that life begins at conception while others argue that life does not exist until the fetus lives outside of the mother. Also if we go as far as to say a fetus is a human, then we mine as well call the sperm or an egg a human, so should we ban birth control all together since we are killing a “human” (abortion 3) ? When one makes a statement that abortion is murder they usually argue that by time most women decide to do the abortion the fetus already has a heart, brain, circulation, and other body arts that a “human being” has outside of the womb. Another arguing point is that how can society accept the death penalty which is a sentence of punishment by death, but be opposed to abortion, that is hypocrisy.