Judith Thomson Arguments Against Abortion

The abortion debate is an ongoing argument involving the legal, moral, and religious status of an induced abortion, an abortion sought with the intent of terminating one’s pregnancy. Typically, abortion arguments are made based on the “pro-choice” or “pro-life” movements. Those who fight for the “pro-choice” movement, state that pregnant women have the right to choose whether they carry the fetus to term or not; whereas, those who argue for the “pro-life” movement, state that the fetus has a right to life and should be carried to term. What about the gray space, the space where perhaps women do not have a choice in the matter? If a woman’s life is at risk or if the pregnancy was the result of rape, then she should have the option of abortion

In Judith Thomson’s article, A Defense of Abortion, she takes this viewpoint of support by stating that “...unborn persons whose existence is due to rape have no right to the use of their mother’s bodies, and thus that aborting them is not depriving them of anything they have a right to and hence is not unjust killing.” This would not apply in the event where the mother wants an abortion from an intended pregnancy. For example, a mother in her sixth month of pregnancy requests to terminate her pregnancy to avoid inconvenience. This would be beyond indecent for a mother to want to abort her pregnancy, one that she willingly let happen, just to avoid incontinence. “...give the unborn person a right to its mother’s body only if her pregnancy resulted from a voluntary act, undertaken in full knowledge of the chance a pregnancy might result from it” argued

A key component to deciding whether a pregnancy was intentional or not is the practice of contraception. The use of contraception shows that a couple is taking preventive action to pregnancy. Contraception can be measures taken by either women or men and both, in the event of preventing pregnancy, it would be most effective if both the woman and man took a form of contraception. Even in the case of rape, if contraception was used and the woman became pregnant, this would still be considered a plausible case for abortion. In this situation, the woman did not consent to intercourse thus did not intend a pregnancy. The permissibility of abortion falls on the claim that the fetus has a right to the mother’s body if she intended to get pregnant or had consensual intercourse without any preventative contraception. No woman who gets pregnant as the result of rape intended to get pregnant thus abortion is