Summary Of Marquis Arguments On Abortion

Marquis’ argument on abortion solely rests on the claim that the fetus is a person and therefore has a right to live. Thomson, on the other hand, tries to convey the point that this type of argument against abortion is an inadequate account of the morality of abortion. To begin with, Thomson explains her points through a series of thought experiments that she used as analogies to different situations where a woman could be pregnant but wishes to terminate her pregnancy. Thomson’s analogies are unique because she does not mention the personhood-factor—argument on which antiabortion is entirely based. Even though throughout her arguments she never does agree that a fetus is in fact a person, she still grants the probability that they are a person and

She states that if every person has a right to live and a fetus is in fact a person, then as a result the fetus has a right to a life and the threat of abortion violates their rights—the unwilling mother, whose rights are also being violated, has also a right to her own body. According to Thomson, abortion is permissible when the pregnancy is the result of a rape—presented by the violinist experiment, a threat to the life of the mother is present—growing baby/small house experiment, and any cases in which attempts to prevent a pregnancy were made—burglar and seeds experiment. It should be pointed out that none of her arguments applies to a pregnancy in which no effort to prevent the pregnancy was made—or in other words, voluntary and conscious sex was involved. Thomson concluded that because her experiments, in her opinion, covered all possible cases of pregnancy and she proved the moral permissibility of abortion in all, then as a result abortion is never immoral, unless done for pointless and superficial reasons in which case it would be considered indecent, questionable, and