A Defense Of Abortion By Judith Jarvis Thomson

Legalizing Abortions: A woman’s choice for control

Judith Jarvis Thomson made a revolutionary essay towards women’s rights and their rights to their own bodies in A Defense of Abortion featured in Philosophy & Public Affairs of Fall 1971. Many philosophers will go into detail upon detail about the morality of abortions whether the fetus should be considered a human being or more so if the fetus should have the same rights as a human being, the right most important, the right to life. Thomson goes to the extreme and states even if the fetus were to be looked at with the same rights as a born person, it gives no right to the fetus to use the body of the mother without the mother’s permission. Thomson made the male audience adopt the perspective

Abortion as much as any other “woman problem” is quite controversial, “[t]he effective implementation of human rights norms has a significant collective dimension, but group or solidarity rights have always been controversial” (Politics and Practice, 24). Nevertheless, controversial, or not the right to freedom of expressions or freedom of speech trumps many laws. This brings me to my next argument, the control of belief. Belief, knowledge, and wisdom all come down to control. The control over what you may choose to believe in is one of the many benefits of freedom of speech or freedom of expression, this can also be called “Doxastic voluntarism” a philosophical doctrine, in which persons have voluntary control over their beliefs (IEP, 2022). This translates over to the level of power that controls decision-making has on society, Allison Jaggar argues that in societies where mothers bear the responsibility for pregnancy, birth and child-rearing, women should control abortion decisions. Places of decisions where members are both sexes and share such responsibilities cannot claim the right with the same force. The strength of a woman says about whether to abort or not, then should be relative to the amount of

Pro-lifers frequently use the claim of this fetal personhood, arguing that we should give ‘persons’ in the womb the same rights as a person outside of it. However, when these opponents of abortion couple this belief with the facts about the prevalence of miscarriage, they are faced with a dilemma (Berg 2017, 1219). Treating miscarriages as if it is one in the same as the death of a born person is an argument that will not be made by pro-lifers, as it would show their hypocrisy. A different argument that has some traction is one to do with animal rights, a perfect, well-thought-out essay on this claim is Dilemmas in Social Philosophy: Abortion and Animal Rights written by Kathie Jenni in the Social Theory & Practice, vol. 20 spring collection from 1994. Within the essay Jenni mentions Carol Adams who also addressed fetal sentence but embraced a pro-choice