Elizabeth’s strong pro-choice values along with her parallel stance in Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “Defense of Abortion” are core factors in her belief that abortion can be both morally permissible and impermissible given the circumstances in specific situations. In Elizabeth’s attempt to persuade her husband Tom to agree that terminating the pregnancy is morally permissible, Elizabeth’s best argument would be employ their like-minded beliefs to create justification and highlight her defense. Thomson’s argument that a human being has a right to determine what is does with their own body, even when there is no threat to life, is a direct reflection of Elizabeth’s defense. In explaining her desire to have abortion, Elizabeth can apply Thomson’s violinist analogy to illustrate and align her and her husband’s differing views of morality.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. once used the metaphor of a “magic mirror” to describe the law because it reflects the assumptions, attitudes, and priorities of each generation. In the mirror of the law, he said, “. . . we see reflected, not only our own lives, but the lives of all men that have been. ”The cases Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey played a major role and impacted the foundations of American History allowing rights to women as citizens upon the topic of abortion. The choices of our lives should be a personal choice, not a law, similarly, a woman's right to keep their baby or abort their baby should be a personal choice.
Don Marquis offers the following argument against the moral permissibility of abortion: 1. It is wrong to deprive any determinate individual of having a “future like ours” (FLO), that is, of the future valuable experiences that its future may contain. 2. To have an abortion is to deprive a determine individual (a fetus) of a FLO. ---------------- 3.
Thomson’s Response to This Objection- I think that Thomson’s response to my objection would be that while we are able to see that the pregnancy/violinist analogy does lack a realistic relevance because the situations that are set up are very different. The reader no matter their belief on the pregnancy/violinist case, or whether they agree with the Thomson case or not, provides no real insight on the rape case. I also think that Thomson would point out that her point in providing this analogy in particular was to stress the inference from said person’s right to life to that said person’s right to the use of another’s body.
In her essay, Thomson uses arguments from analogies to support her conclusions that abortion is sometimes morally permissible. As discussed in the lectures, an argument from analogy is an argument based on the similarity of two things – A is similar to B, and since it is morally permissible to do A, it is morally permissible to do B. Thomson presents several cases that she proposes to be morally analogous to different cases of abortion, in the case of rape; where the life of the mother is at risk; and in cases of consensual sex where no contraception was used, and where contraception was used and failed. In her first argument, Thomson uses the story of the violinist as a parallel between a pregnancy that results from rape. Thomson wants the reader to believe that the two things she is comparing are similar and morally equivalent.
Thomson then shifts the argument towards the definition of abortion, according to opposing parties, which is that it is directly killing the child and how it is connected to the woman’s rights and the analogy. This idea leads to the four logical trains of reasoning. The first is that directly killing a human being is always not permissible, then an abortion may not be carried out. The second is that killing a person who is innocent is murder, than abortion may not be performed, and the third is that one should refrain from killing a innocent human is more important than keeping another alive, an abortion should not be done. The fourth is “if one's only options are directly killing an innocent person or letting a person die, one must prefer
Judith Jarvis Thomson and Don Marquis both have extremely strong views on whether or not abortion is permissible. Judith Jarvis Thomson’s pro-choice standpoint defends a woman 's right to do what they want with their body. Don Marquis’s pro-life standpoint defends that a fetus is a person from the time of conception and it has a right to a future. Different situations come into play when it comes to abortion from rape to the mother 's life at risk that affect choices. A woman 's right to choose what to do with her body should absolutely never be taken away.
Women’s rights have been a long struggle in America’s legal system, as well as in the religious world, for many decades and women continue to have challenges, concerns, and struggles today. Fighting for what is best for their bodies such as a woman’s right to contraceptives to control whether she will get pregnant or not was not ideal for religious and personal reasons but would find a worthy advocate in a woman who would dedicate her life for women’s reproductive rights. The right for a woman to have an abortion became a legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Courts in a very well-known case. It has always been a double standard in what was right and wrong, moral or immoral, towards women than men. A man was looked at with respect
Judith Thompson in her analogy of abortion gives a scenario, of someone waking up one morning only to find that they have been plugged into a violinist that has a kidney failure, they are told by doctors that they will have to be plugged into the “famous” violinist for nine months, if they unplug, the violinist dies, if they stay plugged in, the violinist after the nine months recover however that person suffers their right to what happens to their body. The question posed following this analogy is, should the person unplug? There are different aspects to look at it from, let me give my scenario, suppose a lady decides to have sex unprotected because she gains more pleasure from it and in the morning forgets to take her early morning pills and in total forgets to take birth control pills and becomes pregnant. She is the sole cause of the pregnancy and should take responsibility for it; the person plugged into the violinist in Judith Thompson’s analogy isn’t the cause of the failure of the kidney of the violinist so why should they have to take responsibility for it.
An example for a claim such as this one would be that a person wants to be liked or loved by an individual’s acts of kindness and for the person that individual is, not for being liked or loved for looks or monetary expressions (Garrett). I argue that explaining the wrongness of killing by means of rights in which are given or not given to a fetus is unjustifiable because abortion cases still occur in both sides of the debate of whether it is permissible or not. I make this claim because some individuals who agree with the wrongness of killing still resort to abortion methods to either save the mother or because of their financial
Patrick Lee and Robert George assert that abortion is objectively immoral. One of Lee and George’s main reason for coming to this conclusion is that human embryos are living human beings. This essentially validates that abortion is indeed the process of killing a human. Another main point said by the two is a rebuttal to a common argument used in favor of abortion, which states that a potential mother has full parental responsibilities only if she has voluntarily assumed them. The rebuttal to this was that the potential mother does indeed have special responsibilities to raise the child.
Doris Gudino Professor Chounlamountry Political Science 1 27 July 2015 Pro-Choice Anyone? A woman has, undoubtedly, the freedom to procreate, but once a woman chooses to retreat from that freedom, a commotion arises. Abortion is a woman’s choice for many reasons. It’s her body, therefore, no one else can decide for said person.
Judith Thomson’s A Defense of Abortion is an article defending abortion on the grounds of rights, duties, and justice. Thomson uses various thought experiments to represent different circumstances surrounding a pregnancy and the permissibility of abortion in these circumstances. One such thought experiment that she uses in her argument is the burglar example. If you open a window and a burglar climbs into your house, anti-abortionists would argue that the burglar has a right to stay in your house and you have a duty to shelter him because you are partially responsible for his presence there. Even if you install bars specifically to keep out burglars and the burglar still manages to break in then you are still partially responsible and he still
For example, if there is a complication in pregnancy and the mother can suffer because of the child, I think it is ok to do abortion. It is important to understand the various ideas that go behind abortion. The right of an abortion for a mother should be left on her own decision as the mother knows best about her condition. She is going to be the 'host body ' for the baby, even though her own, for nine months and according to Thompson, the mother should have the right to decide if she wants to foster and go through with the ordeal. But still, there are also a strong debate going on about the human rights of the child: