Abortion is a major debate in society today and has been an impassioned topic for decades. At issue is whether or not abortion should be permissible. Generally I support the idea of abortion given specific circumstances. If a woman becomes pregnant due to rape, she has no moral obligation to carry the baby to full term. It is a gross expectation for society to think a woman should give birth to a baby conceived from rape and to take care of the child as her own. In this discussion I will argue that abortion is permissible if the mother was a victim of rape. Judith Thomson is a philosopher that supports abortion. Judith starts off with her debate stating that “a fetus is no more a human than an acorn is a tree”. When does an acorn become an oak (Thomson 37-56)? The answer is that no one truly knows, there is no direct moment when one thing becomes another, it is the same way as a fetus. When does a fetus become a baby? Thomson uses the “famous violinist” analogy. In this analogy you are kidnapped, when you wake up in the morning you learn that you are connected to a famous violist who needs your kidneys for nine months. It is stated the violinist is an innocent person with a right to life whereas separating yourself from the violinist would kill him/her (Thomson 37-56). I believe in this case it would be moral to unplug yourself from the violinist, even if it means his/hers death. You did not consent to supporting the violinist for nine months and therefore you do not have an obligation to do so. This scenario can be used to support the victim who has been raped. If you have been raped you did not consent to sex or make a conscience decision to accept the ramifications from forced actions of copulation. Furthermore y...
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... unjust aggressor who has violated the woman's dignity. Rape is an act of force and violence, unlike the conjugal love in marriage whereby both spouses give freely of themselves in an act of love. The woman who was raped is not responsible for the action, and thereby has the right to prevent the pregnancy or even stop the pregnancy through abortion. However, I agree with any arguments that state killing is wrong. I do agree that killing is wrong from the time the fetus becomes a human being, up to any age of an adult. People should not be allowed to take the life of another person as this is a crime. I believe that abortion should stay legal for several reasons; because women should have the right to make decisions regarding their own body and especially if they are a rape victim, and because they have the autonomy to exercise that right regardless of state laws.
Abortion has been the topic of controversy for many decades. Many people believe that when a woman terminates a pregnancy, she is committing murder and others argue that a woman has the right to choose life or abortion. There are different procedures to choose when having an abortion, depending on the gestational age and the woman 's health a pill form abortion may be used up to 9 weeks gestation (mifepristone and misoprostol), but for women who are over 12-weeks gestation (late-term abortion), surgical abortion is used (Berer 25). In 1973, the supreme court ruled that abortion was to be legalized, Roe vs. Wade. Women were given the legal right to choose to terminate their pregnancies and make the correct arrangements for their decisions. Different states have different restrictions to accessing abortion procedures, making the woman 's choice to terminate pregnancy less accessible. Restricting a woman 's access to appropriate abortion clinics limits her right to choose.
To help argue her point, Thomson first begins with an analogy comparing an acorn of an oak tree to the fetus in a woman’s body. She begins by giving the view of the Pro – Lifers; “It is concluded that the fetus is…a person from the moment of conception” (page 113). She then goes on to say, “similar things might be said about the development of an acorn into an oak tree, and it does not follow that acorns are Oak trees…” (Page 113). This analogy helps illustrate how much she disagrees with this Pro –life argument. She calls it a “slippery- slope argument” and goes to say, “…it is dismaying that opponents of abortion rely on them so heavily and uncritically” (page 113). Although Thomson makes it clear that she disagrees with the notion that a fetus is a person (…I think the premise is false, that the fetus is not a person from th...
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
Over the course of the last century, abortion in the Western hemisphere has become a largely controversial topic that affects every human being. In the United States, at current rates, one in three women will have had an abortion by the time they reach the age of 45. The questions surrounding the laws are of moral, social, and medical dilemmas that rely upon the most fundamental principles of ethics and philosophy. At the center of the argument is the not so clear cut lines dictating what life is, or is not, and where a fetus finds itself amongst its meaning. In an effort to answer the question, lawmakers are establishing public policies dictating what a woman may or may not do with regard to her reproductive rights.
How would you feel if someone decided that you should never get a chance at life? That
As one knows, some unwanted pregnancies could often be harmful and distressing for a woman. Women should have the right over their body to choose to sustain the fetus or not. In the past decades, women did not have their freedom of abortion in many countries of the world. There have always been controversies going on about abortion. Each individual has dissimilar views on the legality of abortion. Some people are against abortion for personal religious purposes and beliefs. For those who don’t believe in abortion, it is because they see it as killing a fetus, which is a human being. Others support abortion because they believe in women’s rights. Laws of abortion vary in each country, and abortion is not legal all over the world. It is illegal under any conditions but only permitted to save woman’s life if in countries such as Brazil, Nigeria, United Arab Emirates, and Ireland. However, abortion is legal without any restrictions in countries like Canada, Albania, and Italy. It the past decades Abortion was considered as criminal act in Canada. “If an abortion was carried out without such approval, the woman was liable for imprisonment for 2 years, an...
There are many factors that are taken into consideration when determining if abortion is morally permissible, or wrong including; sentience of the fetus, the fetuses right to life, the difference between adult human beings and fetuses, the autonomy of the pregnant woman, and the legality of abortion. Don Marquis argues that abortion is always morally wrong, excluding cases in which the woman is threatened by pregnancy, or abortion after rape, because fetuses have a valuable future. Mary Anne Warren contends that late term abortions are morally permissible because birth is the most significant event for a fetus, and a woman’s autonomy should never be suspended.
There are many limitations valued when it comes to the right of abortion. The news media still outlines the pros and cons of anti-abortion rights in certain-states-to soon, the entire country. My perspectives on the issue of abortion have been entitled from it to never be banned among citizen’s rights. The reproduction of pregnancy has been emphasized heavily on a mother’s decision to abort their child, but the father of the child plays an active role since he considers to that particular title. Through this current issue, majority of the people against abortion do not seem to have an open mind to how much it primarily affects the decision of the mother amongst her own views of considering abortion.
Did you know that in the United States an abortion occurs every 25 seconds? This equates to 137 abortions per hour or 3,300 abortions every day, which is more that 1.3 million abortions every year! Abortion has always been a controversial topic and even more so since the 1973 Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court ruling. Most people have very strong opinions about abortion and inadvertently form their opinions without knowing all of the facts. Abortion should be abolished because it is killing innocent human beings, causes health risks in women, and defies the religious and ethical standards of our country.
The issue that this essay is dedicated to assist to this never ending battle of abortion. This essay will be written from the point of a pro-abortion utilitarian however I must also consider the argument against abortion to get a full understanding of how serious this issue is, the against argument is of a deontological stand-point. First while I argue that abortion is not impermissible, I do not argue that I is always permissible. It allows for and supports our sense, for an example, that Ms Judith Jarvis Thompson states in her A Defence of Abortion, “a sick and frightened teenaged school girl who is pregnant due to being raped may choose abortion and it should be morally permissible however choosing to terminate your pregnancy when you are
Are you giving it a label to convince me that killing the fetus is not wrong, or are you convincing yourself? This is a mostly ethical point of view on abortion. If a woman is pregnant, she should accept the responsibility of having the child and if she doesn’t want the child, to give it up for adoption. You say it is your right to have control over your body, but where was that control when the child was conceived? As for rape, well, I have a story to tell about the ability to love that child.
Abortion is a very controversial issue in our society. However, people tend to feel differently about abortions for rape victims. The contriversy over the abortion issue is that if a woman is responsible enough to go through the actions to become pregnant, she should be able to have the child. Churches believe that abortion is murder. However, if a woman is raped, she did not give her consent to have sexual intercourse with the offender. According to Schuman and Scott, although there are many people that have mixed feelings about abortion, in other words they believe that it is okay at some times, but at other times they feel that it is wrong, the most extreme pro-life people still believe that abortion is wrong “when pregnancy results from rape or incest.” (Schuman and Scott 786) In these situations, however, pro-choice believe that women have as much right to choose what happens to their body. According to Kimmel, in some states abortion is only legal in “cases of rape or of a threat to the mother’s health” (Kimmel 255).
Abortion in the United States is a legal form of murder. Each and every year over a million babies are murdered and it must be stopped now before it will continue to get out of hand each and every day. We have discussed in this essay that a fetus is a living humans and not something that can just be thrown away. An unborn child is still a child and he or she needs an opportunity to grow and live a long successful life just like the rest of us have gotten the privilege to do. Abortion cannot go on any longer. More and more live are lost every day.
Abortion Taking out the trash, or taking a human life? That is what most the argument is with abortion, some believe that abortion is okay because the fetus is not yet a person, and that the fetus will be nothing but trouble. On the other side people believe that even all the way down to the zygote (when sperm meets the egg and earliest stage of pregnancy) there is a human growing in you. A growing boy or girl, with their own little fingers, and toes, their own cute as can be toothless smile, and their functioning organs. To them one day that zygote will turn into someone great, a person just like you and I that needs love just as you and I, a person that deserves to not get taken from our world before it even has a chance to take its first breath.
Abortions have always been a very controversial topic. Over the years we continue to fight for or against it. One can say that is one of the most talked and argued topic in the United States. An abortion is when a woman terminates her pregnancy before the fetus is viable using various of methods. Some argue that abortions should be illegal and considered murder, while others, from a religious point of view, say that no one has the right to take away the life of a person, in this case the fetus. However, others insist, that abortions are a basic women’s right.