Judith Jarvis Thomson's A Defense Of Abortion

Abortion is the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy, most often performed during the first twenty-eight weeks of pregnancy. Many women choose to have an abortion because of the failure of birth control, rape or sadly not wanting the child. However most women who consider this procedure, do not fully understand how it is done or the aftermath. According to the United States government, a baby who is yet to be born is still classified as a human being ("Abortion). An act was founded to protect this from happening in 2004 by President George W. Bush. The act is called the “Unborn Victims of Violence Act” and it states that “whoever engages in conduct that violates any of the provisions of law listed in subsection (b) and thereby causes the death of, or bodily injury (as defined in section 1365) to, a child, who is in utero at the time the conduct takes place, is guilty of a separate offense under this section”.

In Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “A Defense of Abortion”, she indicates that “Most opposition to abortion relies on the premise that the fetus is a human being, a person, from the moment of conception. The premise is argued for, but, as I think, not well. Take, for example, the most common argument. We are asked to notice that the development of a human being from conception through birth into childhood is continuous; then it is said that to draw a line, to choose a point in this development and say "before this point the thing is not a person, after this point it is a person" is to make an arbitrary choice, a choice for which in the nature of things no good reason can be given.” Thomson’s words from “Philosophy & Public Affairs”, were reprinted in the "Intervention and Reflection: Basic Issues in Medical