Many people have opposing views whether abortion is a moral right that should be permissible. Even though that a life is being “taken away” and not giving it a chance to experience said life, the right to life argument is hypocritical and contradicts its own moral beliefs. In this essay, I will first explain what the right to life argument is against abortion, why Judith Jarvis Thomson thinks it fails and then will give my explanation why Thomson’s argument succeeds that abortion is morally permissible even if the fetus has a right to life. I will also consider objections and show why they fail.
The right to life argument believes that abortion is morally wrong because of the simple fact that a life is literally being taken away by force—that it is equivalent to murder. Not only that it is an act of
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Likewise, abortion appears to be morally wrong because of the potential agency account. The potential agency account states that even at the earliest stages of the fetus’s development; a zygote has the potential of having moral rights as an actual person who is fully developed. Ultimately, the right to life argument concludes that even if the mother has a right to life and what to do with her body the right to life will always exceed the mother’s decision if she decides to abort the fetus (Leary 2018). This reason ties up to the prohibitive view which strongly believes that there is no such thing as a “cut off” stage for a developing fetus and that it is declared a person at the moment of conception. Abortion in this sense can be concluded that it is not morally permissible. Regardless of what the right to life arguments states, Judith Jarvis Thomson argues that abortion is morally permissible even if a fetus is granted its right to life. In Thomson’s “In Defense of Abortion” takes apart the right to life argument and finds its hypocrisy because some prohibitive views go against its own belief. She mentions that the right to