The ethics of abortion is a topic that establishes arguments that attempt to argue if abortion is morally justified or not. Philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson wrote a pro- choice piece called “A Defense of Abortion.” In this paper, she presents various arguments that attempt to defend abortion by relating it to the woman carrying the fetus and her right in controlling her body. On the other side of the spectrum, philosopher Don Marquis wrote a pro- life paper called “Why Abortion Is Immoral.” Ultimately, Marquis argues that abortion is immoral with rare exceptions because it is resulting in the deprivation of the fetus’s valuable future. He supports his paper by creating the future-like-ours argument that compares the future of a fetus to the …show more content…
Adams’s unwanted pregnancy, I will use their arguments to see if her decision to have an abortion is morally justified. Through Thomson’s use of the violinist analogy and burglar and people-seeds analogy, I will show that Mrs. Adams’s abortion is morally justified because Mrs. Adams got pregnant despite the use of contraception; showing that the fetus’s right to life and its potential is not equal to the use of her body since she did not consent to the fetus’s use of her body. In Thomson’s “A Defense on Abortion,” she presents her pro-choice argument which is mainly supported by analogies called the violinist analogy, burglar analogy and the people seeds analogy. Firstly, she begins her argument with speaking about whether or not a fetus is a person from conception. This is the use of a pro- life argument that relates to a fetus being a person and how killing a person is wrong; therefore, killing a fetus is wrong. She willingly admits why she partially agrees with the premise of the fetus being a person. It is a belief that a human being has a right to life and if the fetus is a human being that means that the fetus also has a right to life. In Thomson’s argument, she is not arguing to disprove …show more content…
His main argument is the future-like-ours argument and why killing a fetus is wrong. His major argument is all about how there are very rare exceptions in which abortion isn’t morally wrong. He initially started his argument by showing the various points of the intellectual battles between people who are pro- choice and pro- lifers. He speaks about the “it look like a baby” idea and how it causes a standoff which makes it difficult for the arguments to be successfully emphasized. The arguments are not successfully emphasized since they do not meet in the middle because they are either too broad or too narrow. Marquis speaks about how anti- abortionists would claim that because a fetus looks like a baby at a certain point and how they find it sufficient enough information to support their pro- life stance. He also speaks about how those who were pro- choice would claim because the fetus “looks like a baby” doesn’t necessarily mean that it is one, which means that the abortion wouldn’t be wrongful (Marquis, 447). He mentions that these arguments seem to be spoken as if they are sufficient to determine whether or not it is morally right to abort a fetus. Marquis decides to drift from the path that has been paved by other pro- lifers before him and he decides to make his own. Marquis decides to start with human beings, more specifically, adults
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.
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.
...t,” or the second consideration, is that there is no empirical way of deducing what the fetus’s future existence will be like, and we are back to working under the same sort of broad assumptions he considers a problem with the current pro-choice/anti-abortionist paradigm. I do agree that Marquis is correct when he says that these broad and narrow assumptions bring us difficulty in solving the problem; I do not agree with the solution that he proposes. He has, however, managed to provide a much less problematic approach to the entire situation as his method of deductive reason produces a more logically valid response than either side of the divide with the current abortion argument, but it is only slightly more epistemologically respectable than the current arguments, as they all utilize internal knowledge in place of empiricism at some point or another (Chisolm 3).
In this paper I will argue that except in the case where the conception was happened unwillingly such as rape, and pregnancy which might harm the mother of the fetus, abortion is morally wrong and thus should not be allowed. In the following paragraph of this paper, I will discuss, evaluate, and raise an objection to Don Marquis’s main argument of his essay “Why Abortion is Immoral”.
How is it decided on who lives? The opposing side says no abortion because that’s killing a person, whereas you can do nothing and let the mother’s death take its toll. Thomson creates a similar scenario of a growing child in a very small house. The mother will be crushed if she does nothing or she can act out in self-defense to protect herself. She claims that the mother shouldn’t have to be forced to wait there and be crushed, she can do something about it, just as with a life- threatening pregnancy. Then she argues that not all abortions are unjust killings. Some pregnancies are not planned, yet every way to avoid it, birth control, condoms, etc., was used. The mother should have a choice about her body on whether or not she wants to house this child. Thomson compares this to a burglar coming into your house. If you leave windows open and a burglar comes in, is it justified that he has to
In “A defense of abortion” (Thomson, 1971, p. 47-66), instead of engaging in the usual debate about the moral status, Thomson grants ‘for sake of argument’ (Thomson, 1971, p. 48) that a human embryo is a person as she believes that personhood does not have any relations with the permissibility of abortion. In investigating this, Thomson attempts to define the rights of a woman in regards to her autonomy in controlling what happens to her body in comparison to the right to life of a fetus. The first thought experiment proposes a scenario involving an innocent person being kidnapped and attached to a sick violinist. In order to sav...
In this paper, I will defend the view that abortion is not permissible. I will argue that Marquis’ argument, that abortion is impermissible, is sound. I will do this through multiple steps. First, I will present and explain Marquis’ views of why killing is wrong. Next, I will present and explain his argument that abortion is impermissible. Finally, I will criticize Marquis’ argument and provide a response to the criticism.
The goal of this essay is to summarize Peter Singer’s opinion on the moral approach of abortion, which is describes in his book Practical Ethics. His goal is to clarify and provide a clear-cut answer to what is generally thought as a moral debate with no solution. To him, the subject of abortion is far from being so, as the ethical problem has wrongly been approached.
However, after reading “Sensationalized Philosophy: A reply to Marquis’s ‘Why Abortion is Immoral’” and putting more thought into the topic, I still wholeheartedly support pro-choice. One excerpt from Cudd’s article solidified my standing. The excerpt stated that a pro-life argument would only make sense if, “it [was] as if fetuses were things growing out in the garden, and the question of abortion were whether one may decide to till them under rather than let them come to fruition… abortion inextricably involves (at least) two lives” (Cudd 262). Abortion is not only about the fetus but also the woman who carries it. If abortion only had to do with the fetus then a pro-life stance would make sense and the future-like-ours argument would matter. A fetus is not growing on its own like a flower “out in the garden”. The woman who carries the fetus must sacrifice her own freedom and future for something that is not even alive yet and that she is obligated to spend nine months carrying and eighteen years caring for if she does not choose the route of adoption. But even so, adoption is a tough process and there are deeper emotional and physical complications involved. All of which would also devastate the woman’s
Volume 1. She declares that abortion should be a provided choice because the mother has a right to her own body. She also believes that abortion should be morally permissible due to instances in which the future mother is placed under force and is unable to control the production of a child. Lastly, she further defends her position by asserting that a woman may be at risk of having a child when having sex due to defective contraceptives. After analyzing Thomson’s argument, this document will examine the ways in which her argument is specious and how she follows feminist
Marquis believes abortion to be extremely immoral. However he mentions that there are exceptions in rare but certain circumstances where abortion is acceptable. We can infer that these instances would include situations that would put the mother or child at serious risk by keeping the fetus. He is frustrated that this idea has received minimal support recently. As a result he wants to influence change in society in hopes of receiving the support and publicity this topic deserves. Marquis’ primary argument stems from the idea of killing in general. He explains it is immoral to kill an adult because it prematurely deprives the human of something they may have valued at the time they were killed, as well as something they may had valued in the future. Although the victim may not realize it at the time of their death, they certainly had a valuable future ahead of them to experience which has been cut short. We are the only ones who can decide what is valuable to them; in this case we value some things more than others, and this concept differs from person to person. For example, in the present I value the life I am given and the opportunity I have to earn my degree at Villanova University while also valuing my future as well knowing that I have a chance to be successful in the future. Although I have not succeeded yet, I still value that opportunity I have and the life I’m capable of achieving through earning a degree. Therefore, he connects this same theory to the life of a fetus. By killing the fetus the result is the same, we are depriving it of its futur...
In the Judith Jarvis Thomson’s paper, “A Defense of Abortion”, the author argues that even though the fetus has a right to life, there are morally permissible reasons to have an abortion. Of course there are impermissible reasons to have an abortion, but she points out her reasoning why an abortion would be morally permissible. She believes that a woman should have control of her body and what is inside of her body. A person and a fetus’ right to life have a strong role in whether an abortion would be okay. Thomson continuously uses the story of a violinist to get the reader to understand her point of view.
Thirdly, Marquis concludes from the last two premises and says that if you kill a fetus then it is prima facie seriously morally wrong of you. By killing off a human being’s potential values it is cruel, especially to children because they are defenseless. Then, Marquis asserts that if fetuses and adults are in the same moral categories then the fetus can only be aborted if there is a serious moral concern. In the beginning, Marquis proclaims that there are special cases like rape and the mom’s life being threatened that it would override the “moral wrongness” of abortion. So if the premises that Marquis stated above are all true then we ought to accept his conclusion. The first premise expresses that if you kill someone then one is taking away from his or her future like ours. Marquis statement on the first premise is one we ought to accept because obviously if the person is dead they cannot have a future like ours. The
Marquis’s argument that it is immoral to kill, and abortion is wrong because it deprives one of a valuable future has a lot of problems in my eyes that does not make his view on anti-abortion solid. The lack of arguments that do not raise questions that seem to go unanswered make it hard to be persuaded to change a pro-abortionist mind or even be open to understanding where Marquis’s arguments lead. His “what if” argument leaves room for anyone opposing to “what if” in any direction which is not grounds for an effective argument and hurts Marquis’s because a lot of the questions go unanswered in his essay.
According to Marquis, abortion is immoral since it involves the killing of the fetus and “the loss of the future to a standard fetus” (194). Abortion can only be justified in some circumstances, for example, the life of the pregnant woman is in danger, or “the loss consequent on failing to abort would be at least as great”(Marquis 194). In order to strongly support the statement that killing a fetus is seriously wrong, Marquis offers two accounts as demonstration. One is