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A Defense Of Abortion By Judith Jarvis Thomson

1898 Words8 Pages

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 …show more content…

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 …show more content…

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

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There is no need to risk a woman’s health and livelihood by taking away her choice; only the mother-to-be can know her own situation thoroughly enough to make the best possible decision about her future. This is further supported by the nation’s judicial system during the Roe vs. Wade case in 1973 where Harry Blackmun stated that the “fundamental right of single women and married persons to choose whether or not to have children is protected by the Ninth Amendment, through the Fourteenth Amendment.” This court ruling made abortions decidedly legal in the United States, but many women are still being denied the right to terminate their pregnancies. When the ability to choose a safe and legal option is taken away, women that still seek an abortion

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From this decision, the United States Supreme Court declared that having an abortion was far safer than a natural child birth. In that court room, it was also determined that the word “person” did not include an unborn fetus (Kaplan). The country was completely divided on the Roe v. Wade decisions. Many American’s were angered by the fact that the United States no longer legally considered an unborn fetus to be a person. However, it was a huge relief for many young women across the country.

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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.

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When it comes to abortion, a lot can be said. More specifically, author and philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson takes her own stand on abortion, saying it is morally permissible to get abortions. Morally, I disagree with her stance on this. The reason I think this way is because I feel that there were other options open to us, than the main one being abortion. These other options, I feel are better and have better outcomes for the child than abortion.

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The Keynote Address: Untying the Moral Knot of Abortion, was given by Caitlin E. Borgmann at the Washington and Lee School of law on November 8, 2014. Borgmann’s main goal of her address was to bring back to attention that abortion should be seen as a woman’s own right in making decisions regarding her own body. She talks about how people have become so focused on the morality of the fetus that they have lost sight of the real reason that abortion should be legal. Borgmann feels that it is the woman’s right to have a choice and freedom over their body and the freedom to choose whether or not to have an abortion. The speaker asks why people question the age and status of the fetus, but do not concern themselves to question the rights of the woman that carries the fetus.

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A pressing women’s right issue that has divided the nation for the last 40 years is Abortion. It’s a procedure in which a woman medically terminates her pregnancy, this option to terminate a pregnancy has come under great fire due to moral permissibility and ethical concern. The right to abortion was granted on a constitutional basis under the landmark decision by the supreme court case, “Roe Vs. Wade” but has been attacked and attempted to be dismantled by sweltering opposition by several special-interests groups.

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By challenging the widely held premise that a fetus, considered a human being from conception, possesses an absolute and unassailable right to life, Thomson invites readers to reconsider their perspectives on this divisive issue. This analysis will delve into the intricacies of her argument, examining key premises, the ultimate conclusion, and evaluating the validity and soundness of Thomson's rationale. Premises: The Fetus as a Person: Thomson begins by acknowledging the prevalent belief that every person possesses an inherent right to life. However, she adopts, for the sake of argument, the assumption that a fetus is a person, setting the foundation for a nuanced examination of the implications of this right. The pervasive belief in the absolute right to life for a fetus becomes a focal point of Thomson's scrutiny.

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As humans, we are given different rights that are meant to provide us with a chance at a good life. However, these rights can become compromised when it comes to conflicts between a pregnant woman and her fetus. The right of the fetus to live is seen as inferior to the right of the mother to have an abortion. Although each of the rights is different, it is not appropriate to say that one citizen’s rights are more superior than another citizen’s rights.

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Before Roe v. wade the number of deaths from illegal abortions was around 5000 and in the 50s and 60s the number of illegal abortions ranged from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year. These illegal abortions pose major health risks to the life of the woman including damage to the bladder, intestines as well as rupturing of the uterus. The choice to become a mother must be given to the woman most importantly because it’s her body, her health, and she will be taking on a great responsibility. A woman’s choice to choose abortion should not be restricted by anyone; there are multiple reasons why abortion will be the more sensible decision for the female.

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A women’s right to personally decide what she wants done to her body in any medical situation has been something they have fought for many years. On January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court set a precedent that gave women that right. Along with this right to decide came the legalization of medical abortions. This is a subject that affects all American citizens nowadays, both men and women, because of the recent protests such as the Women’s March on Washington. As citizens of the United States, men and women alike, we know the historical past of what women have fought for and what rights they have been given due to that fight.

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Abortion Regulations In today’s society a woman’s private choice has never been so public. In the United States, abortion was illegal for most of the 20th century; however, in the 1960s, when the women’s rights movement began to grow, abortion was argued, by feminists, as a women’s control of her body (“Abortion.”). Whose choice is it now? Is it the governments’, the politician’s, the president’s?

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After that it is shown, in Warren’s article, that a fetus does not resemble a human, it is then up to the mother to make her own decision about her body and what she wants to do with it. The mother has the right to make these calls, which shows that rights-based theory relates to this issue on

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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

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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.

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Janet Harris wrote in her piece, shared by Washington Post, that when she was faced with the decision to get an abortion “it wasn’t “Should I or shouldn’t I?” but “How quickly can I get this over with?””(Harris). Where have a woman 's values and morals gone if she can knowingly make the decision to kill a child that is a part of her own body? Statements like these are prime examples of why abortion shouldn’t just be an option women can chose whether or not to receive . Janet’s reasoning is that when it was time for her to make this “decision” in her life it “was in the mid-1980s, when abortion was about women having control not just over their bodies but over their destinies” (Harris).

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