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the ethics of abortion
abortion as a moral and ethical dilemma
permissibility of abortion
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Abortion is “the act of extracting the unborn human being from the womb”. (Lee and George, 2005, 37-51) Some people consider abortions to be completely immoral while others support abortion and like to ensure the privileges of women rather than an unborn child. Numerous tests can be made to choose for coveted characteristics, for example, deafness in an unborn child. Would it be morally wrong for a listening to couple to choose against deafness or for a hard of hearing couple to choose for deafness? In The Moral Permissibility of Abortion, Margaret Olivia Little argues that abortion is often morally permissible. (Little 2005, 51) I will argue against Margaret Olivia Little who believes that both couples have a decent reason for abortion because …show more content…
Although some people including philosopher Mary Anne Warren acknowledge that human development is a progressive methodology, and that it is nearly impossible to mark a specific moment at which a fetus becomes biologically distinct in its ability to classify as a person. (Warren, 1973, 43-61) Warren proposes that we should assign personhood at the moment of birth rather than the moment of conception, based on the theory that the establishment of social bonds begins at this point. (Warren, 1973, 43-61) However, I believe that numerous hopeful mothers already form a mental bond with their unborn child where they would cooperate with the child in the utero. For instance, a study of women who had gone through a miscarriage showed that they were 18% more depressed, 31% more nervous, and 17% more prone to nervous breakdowns. (Neville, 2005) This not only shows that women are able to develop strong emotional bonds with their fetus, but they may suffer psychological trauma once in the event that it is gone. On the other hand, Singer says that it is wrong to kill an innocent human being (Singer, 1986, 125-134). He argues that in the initial eighteen weeks of pregnancy, where the being cannot even be esteemed conscious, a fetus nor a newborn have the key attributes required for personhood: rationality, self-consciousness, awareness, autonomy, pleasure and pain (Singer, 1986, 125-134). However, I disagree with …show more content…
Consider Thomson’s thought experiment: “you wake up in the hospital to find yourself connected to a violinist with fatal kidney ailment. In fact, you were kidnapped to provide life to the violinist for the next nine months” (Little, 2005, 51-62). You have a choice to unplug the cord that would kill the violinist, or to endure the nine months. This example strongly illustrates that it is perfectly acceptable for the person to detach himself because the violinist has an absolute right to live since he is alive and is not at fault. The connected person has no indebtedness to remain connected for nine months because it was not a voluntary choice and the violinist has no right to use another person’s body (Little, 2005, 51-62). Thomson uses this example to argue that a mother has no obligation to carry a child in her womb for the full nine months if she has not assumed responsibility for it. No one is morally required to make large sacrifices for nine months in order to keep another person alive. In contrast, gestation period is something that a couple planned and even if it is not, all individuals sexually active are mindful of the conceivable results. Due to this, the fetus number into an obligation and the pregnancy spell into
Thomson’s argument is presented in three components. The first section deals with the now famous violinist thought experiment. This experiment presents a situation in which you wake up one morning and discover you have been kidnapped and hooked up to an ailing violinist so that his body would have the use of your kidneys for the next nine months. The intuitive and instinctive reaction to this situation is that you have no moral duty to remain hooked up to the violinist, and more, that he (or the people who kidnapped you) does not have the right to demand the use of your body for this period. From a deontological point of view, it can be seen that in a conflict between the right of life of the fetus and the right to bodily integrity of the mother, the mother’s rights will trump those of the fetus. Thomson distills this by saying “the right to life consists not in the right not to be killed, but rather in the right not to be killed unjustly”.
Judith Jarvis Thomson, a 20th century philosopher, offers her argument defending abortion in her paper, “A Defense of Abortion”. She states initially that the fetus has a right to life, although contrary to her argument, she uses it as a premise to develop her thoughts. In short, Thomson says that the fetus’s right to life does not outweigh the woman’s right to control her body. She forces readers to participate in a thought experiment as she gives an odd example about a violinist suffering from kidney failure. The violist is facing death and in order to prevent it, he needs your help. Because you are the only one with his blood type, you are the only hope for him. You have been kidnapped by the Society of Music lovers and, without your consent, hooked up to him and you are filtering his blood and keeping him alive. In order to save his life, you must remain connected to him and support him for nine whole months. Thomson then asks if it is morally wrong to disagree to remain connected to the violinist. It is quite noble to agree to save the man’s life but should his right to life automatically force you to sacrifice nine months of yours?
Judith Jarvis Thomson, in "A Defense of Abortion", argues that even if we grant that fetuses have a fundamental right to life, in many cases the rights of the mother override the rights of a fetus. For the sake of argument, Thomson grants the initial contention that the fetus has a right to life at the moment of conception. However, Thomson explains, it is not self-evident that the fetus's right to life will always outweigh the mother's right to determine what goes on in her body. Thomson also contends that just because a woman voluntarily had intercourse, it does not follow that the fetus acquires special rights against the mother. Therefore, abortion is permissible even if the mother knows the risks of having sex. She makes her points with the following illustration. Imagine that you wake up one morning and find that you have been kidnapped, taken to a hospital, and a famous violist has been attached to your circulatory system. You are told that the violinist was ill and you were selected to be the host, in which the violinist will recover in nine months, but will die if disconnected from you before then. Clearly, Thomson argues, you are not morally required to continue being the host. In her essay she answers the question: what is the standard one has to have in order to be granted a right to life? She reflects on two prospects whether the right to life is being given the bare minimum to sustain life or ir the right to life is merely the right not to be killed. Thomson states that if the violinist has more of a right to life then you do, then someone should make you stay hooked up to the violinist with no exceptions. If not, then you should be free to go at a...
The pro-life feminist believes that the autonomy of one’s body does not generalize if a fetus is present. In the case study involving Bob and Linda Thompson, a married couple with two children who end up pregnant after the failure of an IUD, the pro-life husband is thrilled by the news and informs the children, whereas the wife wants an immediate abortion of the four-month-old fetus in order to continue her career. Callahan would agree with the husband and believe Linda should continue the pregnancy as the right to control her body does not give her the right to control the body of her child. This fetus is immature and powerless, and though it is not yet a person, it is developing into one. Callahan believes that “women can never achieve the fulfillment of feminist goals in a society permissive toward abortion,” (Callahan 161) and disagrees with the views of philosophers Harrison and Petchesky. Furthermore, though Linda believes that it is her body and she has control over what she does with it, Callahan disagrees as another body will result from this 266-day pregnancy, and the process is genetically ordered. The abortion of the fetus is not like an organ donation as the development of the fetus is a continuing process, and Callahan finds it hard to differentiate the point after conception where the immature life
The criterion for personhood is widely accepted to consist of consciousness (ability to feel pain), reasoning, self-motivation, communication and self-awareness. When Mary Anne Warren states her ideas on this topic she says that it is not imperative that a person meet all of these requirements, the first two would be sufficient. We can be led to believe then that not all human beings will be considered persons. When we apply this criterion to the human beings around us, it’s obvious that most of us are part of the moral community. Although when this criterion is applied to fetuses, they are merely genetic human beings. Fetuses, because they are genetically human, are not included in the moral community and therefore it is not necessary to treat them as if they have moral rights. (Disputed Moral Issues, p.187). This idea is true because being in the moral community goes hand in hand w...
In Thomson’s article, “A Defense of Abortion,” Thomson argues that abortion is not impermis-sible because she agrees with the fact that fetus has already become a human person well before birth, from the moment of conception (Thomson, 268 & 269). Besides that, she also claims that every person has a right to live, does so a fetus, because a fetus is a person who has a right to live.
Abortions occur for all types of reasons, whether it is because the pregnancy was unplanned, rape-induced, or that it holds a life threatening capacity for the woman herself. Pro-lifers believe once one is conceived, he or she are entitled to a right to live. It does not matter whether or not the pro-lifers are able to prove that a fetus consists of personhood. The life of a potential person should not be able to override the right to one’s body. Judith Thomson presents a though experiment where personhood is granted to a fetus, but how that mere fact still fails to override the woman’s right to her body.
“I argue that it is personhood, and not genetic humanity, which is the fundamental basis for membership in the moral community” (133). This is the central idea in Mary Anne Warren’s argument on the personhood of a fetus. She argues that in order for a genetic human being to be considered a person, he or she would have to possess all of the six criteria’s of personhood which include sentience, ability to reason and emotionality. In order to determine the viability of the personhood of a fetus she argues two things. Firstly, Warren argues that even on the surmise that a fetus has a strong right to life, abortion can still be seen as morally permissible. Warren demonstrates this by using Judith Johnson’s Violinist analogy, which asks the basic
Thomson believes that the abortion issue cannot be decided strictly by determining whether or not the fetus has a right to life. She argues that even if we grant that the fetus is a moral person (has the right to life), it is not always the case that abortion is morally impermissible (S. Morris ThomsonHO). She understands that even if a fetus has a right to life, that does not necessarily outweigh the mother's right to do with her body as she sees fit. Therefore, the fetus' right to life is not absolute. Thomson uses the example that in order to save the mother's life due to a cardiac condition, she will die if she carries the baby to term. 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. An argument for this case is by having an abortion, you are directly killing the fetus, whereas if the mother were to die by giving birth, she is not being directly killed, just simply letting her die. If the mother were to perform the abortion on herself in order to save her own life, it would not be considered a murder (Thomson p41-42). "Everyone has a right to life, so the unborn person has a right to life" (Thomson p43). In certain cases (rape) she indeed believes that it is permissible to abort the fetus, but not always. If it is
Thomson sets out to show that the foetus does not have a right to the mother’s body and that it would be not unjust to perform an abortion when the mother’s life is not threatened.
To conclude, Marquis’s argument that abortion is wrong is incorrect. Thomson gives many examples of why Marquis is wrong, including that the mother’s right to her body
Thomson provides the example of being hooked up for nine months to provide dialysis to an ailing violinist to expose how a fetus’s right to life does not supersede a mother’s right to make medical decisions about her body (48-49). I find that this thought experiment especially helpful in understanding how even though a fetus does have a right to life, because the continuation of their life hinges on the consent of their mother to use her body, it falls to the mother to choose whether or not to allow the fetus to develop to term.
Singer first points out that the different opinions on abortion come from the debate on when a human life actually begins. He formulates the common argument against abortion as follows: it is wrong to kill an innocent human being; a human fetus is an innocent human being; therefore, it is wrong to kill a human fetus. It is because killing a human being is undoubtedly wrong and immoral that the opposition instead attempts to deny the second part of the argument “a human fetus is an innocent human being”. By doing so, critics argue that the fetus does not have the status of a human being. This debate results in focusing on whether, or when, the fetus can be considered a human being, and therefore given the same rights against being killed as another human being. Singer however claims that it is difficult to find a moral dividing line between a fetus and a human being because the development of the human egg to a child is gradual. To prove his point, he describes four commonly proposed moral lines (birth, viability, quickening, and consciousness), which he then denies with strong arguments.
In Dan Marquis’ article, “Why Abortion is Immoral”, he argues that aborting a fetus is like killing a human being already been born and it deprives them of their future. Marquis leaves out the possible exceptions of abortion that includes: a threat to the mom’s life, contraceptives, and pregnancy by rape. First, I will explain Marquis’ pro-life argument in detail about his statements of why abortion is morally wrong. Like in many societies, killing an innocent human being is considered morally wrong just like in the United States. Second, I will state my objection to Marquis’ argument through examining the difference between a human being already born future compared to a potential fetus’s future. Thus, Marquis’ argument for his pro-life
Why should any woman be denied the choice to do what she wants with her own body? Women should have the control to decide what is best for their own body without the interference of the government’s laws. Making abortion legal can save and protect the lives of the pregnant woman and unborn fetus. The abortion procedure can help a woman’s life by saving her from financial stress, difficult responsibilities, risky health concerns, emotional disturbances and it also corresponds with the law . The procedure helps the unborn fetus by preventing an irregular health, emotional, and social development.