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Rosalind Hursthouse Abortion Case Study

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Rosalind Hursthouse has a very different opinion on abortion and does not relate it to the murder of children or the rights of women. Instead, she justifies it through what a virtuous person would do. In the case study with the Thompson’s, Hursthouse would relate it to the relevance of the familiar biological facts and how pregnancy is a known result of sexual intercourse. The fact that Linda’s fetus is four months old would not be of relevance in Hursthouse’s opinion as clear lines are not visible as to when the fetus is attached and developed. The main focus of Hursthouse would be to question whether the abortion would be a result of a person acting “virtuously or viciously or neither” (Hursthouse 474). The abortion Linda ended up having …show more content…

Callahan would suggest that Lisa continues the pregnancy, as she does not have a right to control this other body that is dependent on her, especially since it is fully developed. The act of terminating the late pregnancy would be, according to Callahan, comparable to murdering a powerless or immature person. Lisa would need to consider herself as not just a single unit and understand that a human is developed within her care. Though it might seem like a quick and “easy” solution to terminate if the fetus was just an embryo, the fact that Lisa is carrying a six-month-old fetus makes it more morally serious and hard. Moreover, Lisa has a moral obligation to take care of this life form. Callahan would also believe that society has taught “women to expect protection from rape,” (Callahan 170) and would possibly blame the incident on Lisa. The idea that she would be put against her offspring is offensive morally, destructive psychologically and politically. Callahan believes that Lisa has an obligation, no matter the fact that no consent was provided in sexual

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Thomson’s Response to This Objection- I think that Thomson’s response to my objection would be that while we are able to see that the pregnancy/violinist analogy does lack a realistic relevance because the situations that are set up are very different. The reader no matter their belief on the pregnancy/violinist case, or whether they agree with the Thomson case or not, provides no real insight on the rape case. I also think that Thomson would point out that her point in providing this analogy in particular was to stress the inference from said person’s right to life to that said person’s right to the use of another’s body.

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In A Defense of Abortion Thompson presents an argument against the morality of abortion by showing the superiority of women’s rights through several different analogous cases. The case of focus will be case eight, “ A Selfless Brother’s Box of Chocolates.” In scenario one, Thompson argues that an older brother has a box of chocolates while his younger brother has nothing; the question of appeal is does the younger brother automatically have a right to these chocolates? The box of chocolates represents a woman’s body while the younger brother represents the fetus. Although it would be nice for the older brother (mother) to share his box of chocolates (mothers body) he is not obligated to share them with anyone even if he is perceived as a selfish, greedy, or a stingy person.

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Rosalind Hursthouse in her paper Virtue Theory and Abortion, handles with the moral standpoint of abortion from a virtue ethics perspective. Her research is directed towards investigating whether or not an abortion is something a virtuous person would do. Hursthouse examines the morally relevant considerations and in so doing, she rejects the standard questions used to determine the morality of an abortion such as the status of the fetus, and the rights of a women. The morally relevant considerations she sees fit to assess the moral legitimacy of an abortion are concerns with family relationship, personal circumstance, and basic biological facts. Through her considerations, Hurthouses account of virtue ethics gives us adequate moral advice in regards to the question of abortion.

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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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Judith Thomson’s A Defense of Abortion is an article defending abortion on the grounds of rights, duties, and justice. Thomson uses various thought experiments to represent different circumstances surrounding a pregnancy and the permissibility of abortion in these circumstances. One such thought experiment that she uses in her argument is the burglar example. If you open a window and a burglar climbs into your house, anti-abortionists would argue that the burglar has a right to stay in your house and you have a duty to shelter him because you are partially responsible for his presence there. Even if you install bars specifically to keep out burglars and the burglar still manages to break in then you are still partially responsible and he still

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In “A Defense of Abortion,” Judith Thomson argues with a unique approach regarding the topic of abortion. For the purpose of the argument, Thomas agrees to go against her belief and constructs an argument based on the idea that the fetus is a person at conception. She then formulates her arguments concerning that the right to life is not an absolute right. There are certain situations where abortion is morally permissible. She believes that the fetus’s right to life does not outweigh the right for the woman to control what happens to her own body.

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Susan Cahill lives in Flathead Valley in Montana and was the only person in the area providing abortions to woman. Since Susan opened her clinic in 1976 she has been harassed by the local populace that do not condone abortions and her building was even burned down once, but she rebuilt it. However, in 2014 Flathead Resident Zachary broke into Susan 's clinic and performed acts of vandalism to the point where the entire clinic needed to be shut down. Since it was the only abortion clinic in Flathead, woman now need to drive to the 120 miles to Missoula just to get an abortion. Susan explains that the teenagers and the underserved population are the ones that lose the most from the clinic being destroyed because most of them can not afford to

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