Summary Of Defense Of Abortion By Judith Jarvis Thomson

Roe wanted to terminate her pregnancy through abortion which was prohibited in the state of Texas unless it was to save the life of the pregnant woman. She challenged the law with her attorney Sarah Weddington, used the constitution to make strong argument for her client against the state of Texas concerning abortion. This case went all the way to the Supreme Court where the arguments for each side were heard twice. Weddington, Roe attorney not being strong in her first argument came back in the second argument with a big finish and made history.

There are many instances where Christians and non-Christian will face ethical dilemmas, that could lead to the choice of life or death. How an individual confronts that situation and their overall solution depends on their beliefs about morality and ethics. For instance, Susan faces an ethical dilemma, where she has to choose whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. She is facing the problem that her unborn child will have down syndrome. In 2011, “730,322 abortions were reported to the Centers for Disease control” (Operation Rescue, n.d.). Based off of core beliefs and evaluation through the Christian worldview Susan’s choice could have different results, whether she makes the choice off of what the easy solution is or by what is morally right according to personal beliefs and the Christian worldview.

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

In A Defense of Abortion Thompson presents an argument against the morality of abortion by showing the superiority of women’s rights through several different analogous cases. The case of focus will be case eight, “ A Selfless Brother’s Box of Chocolates.” In scenario one, Thompson argues that an older brother has a box of chocolates while his younger brother has nothing; the question of appeal is does the younger brother automatically have a right to these chocolates? The box of chocolates represents a woman’s body while the younger brother represents the fetus. Although it would be nice for the older brother (mother) to share his box of chocolates (mothers body) he is not obligated to share them with anyone even if he is perceived as a selfish, greedy, or a stingy person. In

This website is sponsored by Google and is used to argue both sides of many controversial issues. It is meant for readers that are for and against abortion or those that have not decided what side to choose. This website provides the pros and cons of abortion, background information, and videos related to the topic. They include that the Supreme Court believes abortion should be a fundamental right to women, however, abortion is also seen as the murder of an innocent, vulnerable, human being yet to be born. Pro-abortionists believe women rights outweigh fetus rights and anti-abortionists believe it causes embryos pain and is unfair to people that

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. Also, while Thomson’s analogy does not truly work, the pro-life position is still not clear, because she is actually correct

According to RRA’s argument, the new statute does not have an exception to allow abortions in cases of rape or incest after the point of fetus viability. But under Casey, a state may prohibit abortion after viability even if the pregnancy was the result of rape and before viability, a state may not place a “substantial obstacle” (impose an undue burden) on obtaining abortion. It is true that the new statute violates the U.S Constitution, by not allowing abortions after the fetus viability. The U.S Supreme Court held that, even after the fetus viability, the states cannot prohibit abortions, necessary to preserve the health or life of the woman. The chances of winning the argument are low for RRA in this point because the U.S constitution has not provided specific requirements in cases of rape, but it is mainly concerned with the maternal health.

First, Marquis talks about anti-abortion and the problems he sees from the pro-choice side, and then he talks about pro-choice and counteracts that with the problems an anti-abortionist would see. He believes abortion is immoral;

Abortion Is Morally Permissible written by Mary Anne Warren, argues for abortion. Warren claims that there are five traits of personhood. Since the fetus doesn’t have any of the five traits, they’re not a person and therefore abortion is permissible. She also mentions that in the case of late term abortion of a pregnancy that may cause inconvenience, it is morally permissible. Also the fetus’s potential right to live doesn’t outweigh the women’s right to an abortion. She argues for abortion because the fetus is not a person in which I would agree with Warren on her views on abortion.

In the United States, abortion laws began to appear in the 1820s, forbidding abortion after the fourth month of pregnancy.

With this burglary example the person having their house broken into purchased the best bars money can buy but the burglar still gets in through a defect in the bars. Similar to a defect in birth control, rare but still happens, is how the author gets her point across to show just how unjust this treatment is to any individual having an unfortunate event like this becoming a moral responsibility. Then the author stretches the hypothetical situation even more by introducing an example where people seeds exist and one can fly into ones house at anytime taking root in their carpet. This is similar to the burglary example except now that person would have to care for the child after no action of theirs caused this unfortunate event. What Thomson is trying to persuade the reader of is that abortion is sometimes permissible in certain situations and says a law that would prohibit “a sick and desperately frightened fourteen-year-old schoolgirl, pregnant due to rape, may of course choose abortion, and that any law which rules this out is an insane

In the article 'A Defense of Abortion' Judith Jarvis Thomson argues that abortion is morally permissible even if the fetus is considered a person. Morally philosophy paper by Judith Jarvis Thomson first published in year 1971, granting for the sake of argument that the fetus has a right to life, she uses thought experiments to argue that the fetus's right to life doesn't trump the pregnant woman's right to control her own body and its life-support functions, and that induced abortion is therefore not morally impermissible. In particular 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, therefore abortion is wrong.

A crucial premise in that argument is that the right to life must be held to a higher degree of importance than any other right. Thomson believes that premise to be false and uses the first of several examples of which she makes use throughout the paper to persuade her readers. These examples are designed to show that there are situations where it is permissible to take an action in order to reason with a person’s own rights even though doing so violates an innocent person right to life. A person must always consider another person’s life before they make a life changing decision. Every person has the right to life. It is possible that a person would have thought that having the right to life means that one has the right to do whatever it takes to sustain their life. Thomson thinks that this must be a mistake, the example of the violinist case shows this. Similarly, a person might think that having the right to life means that one has the right not to be killed. But, Thomson again thinks that the violinist case shows this to be false. Someone could easily unplug themselves from the violinist even though it will kill the person. But, does the person have the right to save their own life at the result. It is comparable to abortion as people feel as if they are saving themselves from having the child by getting an

“Tell me now. I deserve to know if something’s happened to my parents and I can help break all of this to Katie, but it would be good if I knew what was going on before she got here.” David said

Many problems are found in Thomson’s ideas according to Francis Beckwith. He asserts that hesitant father has instinctive responsibility to his progeny in case of an unwanted pregnancy due to the reason that he knew what could be the result of his sexual courtship that is the conception of a human being, no matter if he adopted any precautionary measure . At the same time Beckwith points out Thomson’s views regarding abortion, contradicts family morals, the belief that solely revolve around the idea of a person’s responsibility towards his progeny and that obligation towards his family and offspring is nobody else is going to take on his behalf .He continues in his argument that many men and women would never agree with Thomson’s views as they would find it counter-intuitive because they have experienced love, joy and happiness in children in their family life no matter the idea of family has been shown as domineering towards