A Defense Of Abortion By Judith Jarvis Thomson

Abortion has been one of the most controversial political topics worldwide throughout history. One of the biggest, if not the most significant argument in the longing debate of abortion versus morality. Deep diving into Judith Jarvis Thomson's A Defense of Abortion, I will be breaking down and evaluating her analogies regarding abortion of why I agree she succeeds in showing what she intended for the defense of pro-choice abortion.

First and foremost Thomson states right off the bat for the sake of argument despite her disagreement with the premise, she is going to agree that yes a fetus is a person from the moment of conception (Thomson 48). I feel it is essential to acknowledge this because in most instances this would make arguing a pro-choice

For Christmas, a pair of brothers were gifted a box of chocolates with the intent of the box being shared between the two, but to the younger brother's dismay, the older brother unjustly takes all of the chocolate for himself (Thomson 56). Thomson now brings in the difference between ought and right. Yes, the brother taking all of the chocolate for himself makes him “greedy, stingy, and callous”, but not unjust, because the brother ought to share the chocolate, he ought to be nice, but he does not have to (Thomson 60). Again from my understanding, this ties into the idea that when a woman gets pregnant out of the “selfish” ways, she ought to care for the baby, she ought to provide for the baby, she ought to take all the necessary measurements for prenatal care, but she doesn’t have to. If this fetus has uprooted this woman's life, the woman is not unjust for deciding it doesn’t have the right to be there. Thomson's idea of the difference between ought and right truthfully resonated with me the most while reading both Thomson and Marquis's articles because it is something that I have personally never heard or thought of. It is a much more concise way of looking at things through a moral lens. The biggest issue most pro-life advocates face with internal debates is the marginal cases of unwanted pregnancy such as rape, molestation, etc. of deciding what is morally right in those instances when traditionally all pro-life advocates see abortion as murder, impermissible, and unjust. Typically, you hear people give a pass on abortion in those instances because the woman did nothing to deserve such pregnancy, but when thought about from an ought/right perspective all of these different analogies fall together. A person ought to close their window in case of a burglar comes in, but the burglar has no right to be there as a