abortion

Abortion
Abortion is a very touchy topic. There are so many different views on the issue. We will cover the views of two major ethical authors, R.M. Hare and Judith Jarvis Thomson. Also you will get to my opinions and views on the issue as well.
In R.M. Hare’s essay he raises the question that all philosophers long the answer to, “ Is the fetus a person?”, Hare states that in most cases that question leads to a dead end. What we do know however, is that the potentiality of the fetus becoming a human adult is great. Many aspects of the fetus can simply not however be know, from an example Hare gave on page 585 of our text book “The Moral life, 2e” , we do not know if the fetus, at a late stage has conscience experiencing, which includes pain and suffering. We can however, be fairly certain that the fetus cannot feel pain in the early stages of the pregnancy. Hare argues that when someone proposed the question “Is the fetus a person?”, the definition of a person is always unclear. Does one mean, “Is the potential of the fetus becoming a person there?” or does one mean there is already a person in the womb. Hare states that there is a clear sense of the fetus not being a person. He continues to say, that the fetus is way too different from what you and I instantly recognize as a person.
Judith Jarvis Thomson does not exactly disagree with Hare, but she also does not completely agree with him either. Thomson does however state that a fetus can acquire human characteristics by the tenth week of the pregnancy. She says the fetus will already have a face, arms,legs,fingers, and toes. The fetus also has internal organs, and brain activity is found, although the brain is not near fully developed.
Another point Hare makes in his essay i...

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...on what I have just state by saying that just because the fetus looks like a human doesn't mean it has human characteristics, to which I would reply, with recent technology and 3D sonograms doctors can vividly see that baby do simple tasks like sucking their thumb, yawning, and stretching. Arent these simple human characteristic and tasks that we do everyday? Just because the baby hasn't physically been born yet, doesn't mean it is any less of a human being.
I hope this paper has given you a better understanding of the different viewpoints there are on abortion. Rather it be R.M. Hare’s viewpoint that a fetus is not a person, or Judith Thomas’s viewpoint that abortion is permissible in certain circumstance. Or maybe you agree with me that the fetus is a baby and by having an abortion you are ultimately killing a human being. Either way it is your decision to make.