Abortion: A Question of Rights and Personhood

1271 Words3 Pages

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. In Judith Thomson’s thought experiment, you are to imagine that you had been kidnapped by the Society for Music Lovers and attached to the kidney of a famous violinist. You need to be attached for nine months or else he will die. After the nine months, his kidney will be able to function without your help. Since …show more content…

As mentioned before, you might be overwhelmed by guilt, but the violinist was a stranger and you also were not acquainted with the fans who actually kidnapped you. You would probably feel relieved that you are safe and sound and away from those who went against your consent to use you for their own selfish reasons. On the other hand, a fetus does not come into existence, selfishly as a robber of your resources. It comes to be because it comes to be and for the mere reason that it is in our DNA for us humans to reproduce. In this case, this specific fetus is someone that has half of your genetic information and would not exist without you. Women do feel a sense of relief, but sadness takes over soon after and it becomes a cycle of thoughts like “what made me so relieved also made me sadder than I’ve ever been and what made me sadder than I’ve ever been actually gave me

Show More
Related

  • Rhetoric In A Defense Of Abortion By Judith Thomson

    1163 Words  | 3 Pages

    Judith Thomson’s “A Defense of Abortion” is an essay where Thomson argues that abortion is not impermissible. To be even more precise, she argues for abortion should also be sometimes permissible, but she also grants that there are certain situations in which getting an abortion would be immoral. “Most opposition to abortion relies on the premise that the fetus is a human being, a person, from the moment of conception.” (Thomson, 48). She uses the rhetorical triangle to help her achieve her argument about abortion. Which uses ethos, pathos, and logos to influence her providing the argument surrounding abortion.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of A Defense For Abortion By Judy Jarvis Thomson

    1206 Words  | 3 Pages

    The committed organization has thus kidnapped you and attached his circulatory system to yours through various technological means in order to extract poisons from his blood. If you were to disconnect, or unplug yourself from the violinist, he would immediately die, but in nine months he would have recovered and could be safely detached. Thomson concludes that a person’s right to life does not trump the right to use another person’s body. Thus, if you disconnect from the violinist, you will merely deprive him of your body- to which he has no right. However, if you continue to stay connected to the artist, you will only be doing a kindness on your part, not an obligation.

    Read More

  • Judith Jarvis Thompson And Judith Berry's Argument In Defense Of Abortion

    1822 Words  | 4 Pages

    In this essay, I will hold that the strongest argument in defence of abortion was provided by Judith Jarvis Thompson. She argued that abortion is still morally permissible, regardless if one accepts the premise that the foetus is a person from the moment of conception. In what follows, I agree that abortion is permissible in the ‘extreme case’ whereby the woman’s life is threatened by the foetus. Furthermore, I agree that abortion is permissible to prevent future pain and suffering to the child. However, I do not agree that the ‘violinist’ analogy is reliable when attempting to defend abortion involving involuntary conception cases such as rape, whereby the foetus does not threaten the woman’s health. To achieve this, I will highlight the distinction

    Read More

  • Thought Experiments In Judith Thomson's A Defense Of Abortion

    1135 Words  | 3 Pages

    In her essay, “A Defense of Abortion”, Judith Thomson argues that abortion is morally permissible in most cases even when the fetus is considered a person. She does this by claiming that the right to bodily autonomy supersedes the right to life in almost every case and that the intention of the mother is important in defining when an abortion is permissible. Through multiple thought experiments she shows that the Western perspective often places more importance on the right to autonomy than the right to life even though it is claimed otherwise, and that if a mother does not intend to become pregnant she is not morally obligated to carry the fetus to term in most cases. I will examine these thought experiments and their implications in Thomson’s argument, present a rebuttal and speculate on her response.

    Read More

  • A Defense Of Abortion By Judith Jarvis Thomson

    1303 Words  | 3 Pages

    The topic of my paper is abortion. In Judith Jarvis Thomson's paper, “A Defense of Abortion,” she presented a typical anti-abortion argument and tried to prove it false. I believe there is good reason to agree that the argument is sound and Thompson's criticisms of it are false.

    Read More

  • Pro-Life And Pro Choice: The Pros And Cons Of Abortion

    1034 Words  | 3 Pages

    As to any argument, there are two opposing sides when it comes to the matter of abortions. These two opposers usually refer to themselves as “pro-life” and “pro choice”. Pro-life supporters maintain that abortion is wrong and pro-choice believe that it is a woman’s freedom to choose her pregnancy decisions. When it comes to the topic of abortions, most of us will readily agree that it’s a woman’s choice to decide what her reproductive decisions are, i.e. pro-choice. Where this agreement usually ends, however, is in the question of whether or not abortion is a fundamental right granted to women by the Constitution. Whereas some are convinced that a fetus is considered alive at conception, usually citing the word of God, others maintain that

    Read More

  • Analysis of Thompson's Article, A Defense of Abortion

    1773 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Argument Of Judith Jarvis Thomson's View On Abortion

    1113 Words  | 3 Pages

    The standard argument against abortion claims that the fetus is a person and therefore has a right to life. Thomson shows why this standard argument against abortion is a somewhat inadequate account of the morality of abortion.

    Read More

  • Judith Jarvis Thomson A Defense Of Abortion Analysis

    860 Words  | 2 Pages

    This essay examines and critiques Judith Jarvis Thomson’s, A Defense of Abortion (1971). Thomson sets out to show that the foetus does not have a right to the mother’s body and that it would not be unjust to perform an abortion when the mother’s life is not threatened. For the sake of the argument, Thomson adopts the conservative view that the foetus is a person from the moment of conception. The conservative argument asserts that every person has a right to life. The foetus has a right to life.

    Read More

  • Abortion, Public Policy, & Texas

    1028 Words  | 3 Pages

    Over the duration 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 consideration to her reproductive rights. The drawback, however, is that there is no agreement upon when life begins and at which point one crosses the line from unalienable rights to murder.

    Read More

  • Judith Jarvis Thomson's Argument On The Defense Of Abortion

    1143 Words  | 3 Pages

    Thomson defends her argument with a thought experiment about a violinist who suffered from a fatal kidney ailment and had their circulatory system plugged into

    Read More

  • Summary Of A Defense Of Abortion By Judith Jarvis Thomson

    1559 Words  | 4 Pages

    Thomson starts off her paper by explaining the general premises that a fetus is a person at conception and all persons have the right to life. One of the main premises that Thomson focuses on is the idea that a fetus’ right to life is greater than the mother’s use of her body. Although she believes these premises are arguable, she allows the premises to further her explanation of why abortion could be

    Read More

  • A Defense of Abortion by Judith Jarvis Thomson

    1081 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • A Critique of Judith Thomson’s A Defense of Abortion

    1883 Words  | 4 Pages

    In A Defense of Abortion (Cahn and Markie), Judith Thomson presents an argument that abortion can be morally permissible even if the fetus is considered to be a person. Her primary reason for presenting an argument of this nature is that the abortion argument at the time had effectively come to a standstill. The typical anti-abortion argument was based on the idea that a fetus is a person and since killing a person is wrong, abortion is wrong. The pro-abortion adopts the opposite view: namely, that a fetus is not a person and is thus not entitled to the rights of people and so killing it couldn’t possibly be wrong.

    Read More

  • Abortion : Abortion And Abortion

    1443 Words  | 3 Pages

    This paper will argue that those who advocate abortion do not actually advocate the termination of life, and in the near future artificial wombs could end the current moral debate on abortion. In order to understand this argument we need to break down the concept of abortion, or the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy, into two currently linked yet intrinsically distinct concepts－extraction and termination. The right to abortion can be accepted as the right to not be pregnant, or the right to extraction. On the contrary, abortion rights could also imply the right to terminate the pregnancy, but also the right to abort the fetus. While these two concepts are distinct, they are for the moment linked. The majority of those who defend abortion do not defend termination. If science creates a safe and affordable method of extracting the fetus into an artificial womb, then in regards to the majority of arguments in favor abortion, this method would be obligatory. This would end the current debate on abortion.

    Read More

More about Abortion: A Question of Rights and Personhood

Open Document