More handpicked essays just for you.
Judith Jarvis Thomson “A Defense of Abortion”
Judith Jarvis Thomson “A Defense of Abortion”
Judith Jarvis Thomson “A Defense of Abortion”
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
In this paper I will be arguing in favor of Judith Jarvis Thomson view point on abortion. I am defending the use abortion and only in the first trimester. I will consider Don Marquis objections of the practice but ultimately side with Thomson. 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. (1) The fetus is a person (or moral equivalent) (2) It is wrong to kill persons (C) It is wrong to have an abortion. But there is a suppressed premise needed to make the argument work because the mother also has a right to her own body (bodily integrity). As it stands the …show more content…
But in another one of her arguments, Jarvis says that it seems like it is not morally permissible to kill a child. Take one of her thought experiments, called the violinist case; You wake up in a hospital with a famous violinist attached to your kidneys, and he needs use of your kidneys for nine months. (1) Every person has a right to life. (2) The violinist is a person. (3) Therefore the violinist has a right to life. (C) It is impermissible to unplug the violinist. This is an analogy towards rape. The violinist is the baby and the music society is the …show more content…
There are other factors in determining what rights a person has in a given circumstance. None of her arguments apply to pregnancy in which sex was voluntary and no effort was made to prevent pregnancy. She argues that abortion is permissible in three types of cases: (1) Rape (violinist experiment), (2) Threat to mothers’ life (death), (3) Cases where attempts were made to prevent the pregnancy (failure of contraception). At the end of her paper she says we must not fall below the standard of minimally decent Samaritans (MDS). However, she doesn’t really says what that standard
First I will prove premise 1, “Every fetus is a person,” true. The definition of person according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary is "a human being." Now surely no one would regard a fetus as anything other than human such as a primate or dog. But some still might say, "Well, it isn't aliv...
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.
No doubt the mother has a right to decide what happens in and to her body. But surely a person’s right to life is stronger than the mother’s right to decide what shall happen to her body, and so outweighs it. So the foetus may not be killed and an abortion may not be performed (Thomson, 1971) In response to this argument, Thomson uses her Violinist analogy. You have been kidnapped by the Society of Music Lovers, and upon waking have found that your circulatory system has been plugged into a famous violinist who is suffering from kidney failure.
“A Defense of Abortion” by Judith Jarvis Thomson gives several different scenarios of abortion for her reader to examine. All of her arguments agree, for arguments sake, upon the fact that the fetus has a right to life from the moment of conception. However; the mother has as equal right to life and the mother’s right to decide what happens to and in her body could possibly be taken into consideration to outweigh the fetus’ right to life. Although, she makes it decently clear she doesn’t whole heartedly agree that the fetus has an equal right to life. Thomson takes the abortion debate passed just simply establishing that the fetus is a person, and since all people have a right to life, abortion is immoral. She also changes the argument by not using the go to defense of abortion by trying to define a timeline of when the fetus actually becomes a person. I agree with Thomson in almost all of her arguments and think she gives sound reasoning and her position is easily defended but I believe that she has one idea that cannot be morally justified with the reasoning that she provides, if it can be justified with any amount of reasoning.
She again uses a thought experiment where she presents a situation where if a mother were to carry her fetus to term that it would kill her. She states “we are told that performing the abortion would be directly killing the child, whereas doing nothing would not be killing the mother, but only letting her die,” which opens up an argument of the difference over killing a person and just letting them die when in this situation the mother could live if she was able to abort the pregnancy. She presents four scenarios to which this situation could end. The first is that killing an innocent is impermissible, so an abortion cannot take place. The second is killing an innocent is equivalent to murder, and murder is never okay so therefore an abortion can not take place. The third is, killing an innocent is worse then letting a person die therefore an abortion may not be performed. Finally, the fourth scenario is that if you have to choose between killing a person and letting them die you have to choose letting someone die and an abortion may not take place. She goes on to say that all of the scenarios are all false, but then only provides a reasoning for the second scenario saying that if the mother performed an abortion to save her own life that it could not
The following essay will examine the morality of abortion with specific reference to the writings of Don Marquis, Judith Jarvis Thompson, Peter Singer and Mary Anne Warren. I will begin by assessing the strength of the argument provided by Marquis which claims that abortion is impermissible because it deprives a being of a potential “future like ours,” and then go on to consider the writings of Singer, Thomson and Warren to both refute Marquis claims and support my assertion that abortion is morally permissible primarily because of the threat to the freedom and bodily autonomy of women extending the right to life to a foetus in utero would pose.
...ther’s sovereignty over her body outweigh the right of an unborn child to live. The answers to these questions are very diverse as a result of the diversity of the American society. With the issue of abortion, one’s attitude toward it is going to be based on many things such as religious background and personal morals. There is no black and white answer to the abortion issue. Luckily we live in a country where we are able to decide for ourselves whether something is morally right or wrong. Thus, ultimately, the choice is ours. As with the many other ethical issues which we are faced with in our society, it is hard to come to a concrete answer until we are personally faced with that issue. All we can do is make an effort to know all of the aspects which are involved so that we may be able to make a sound decision if we were faced with this problem in our own lives.
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...
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
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.
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.
Many people are familiar with the term abortion and its popular controversy in society today. Anyone who is familiar with the term should also be familiar with the two groups that form the controversy of abortion: pro-life and pro-choice. The article I chose is written by Terry O’Neill and is titled, “Legal Abortion Can Be a Lifeline”. The article was published on January 22, 2013, to U.S. News. It argues that abortion saves lives rather than taking them. O’Neill’s claim “abortion is a lifeline” rests upon the questionable assumption that a baby inside a womb is not considered life.
...e open to all women at any point of pregnancy, and that the woman reserves the right as a fully conscious member of the moral community to choose to carry the child or not. She argues that fetuses are not persons or members of the moral community because they don’t fulfill the five qualities of personhood she has fashioned. Warren’s arguments are valid, mostly sound, and cover just about all aspects of the overall topic. However much she was inconsistent on the topic of infanticide, her overall writing was well done and consistent. Warren rejects emotional appeal in a very Vulcan like manner; devout to reason and logic and in doing so has created a well-written paper based solely on this rational mindset.
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
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