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Thomson's Arguments Against Abortion

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Abortion is a delicate subject to discuss with any individual because the intentional termination of a pregnancy is not widely accepted or rejected by all. The various backgrounds of all individuals such as, political parties, religion and culture affect whether or not the individual believes abortion is morally permissible or acceptable. Thomson’s argument defends abortion because of the mental state of a fetus. All things considered, Thomson’s defense of abortion argument has logical foundation behind it considering the fetus does not have a moral right to use the mother’s body without her consent.
Political ideologies help encourage the stance or view of abortion; Conservatives hold the life of the fetus close but only until it affects …show more content…

Development of the fetus from conception to birth is continuous; which implies that the fetus turns into a person at whichever point between the conception and birth is arbitrary. With this “logical” thinking, it should be sufficient reasoning to consider the fetus a person at the time of conception. They would also argue that every person has a right to life and even though the mother has a right to decide what happens “in and to her body” (Pg64), this right is not as prioritized as someone else’s right to life, concluding that abortion is not permissible. In a Thought experiment, this setting should be morally relevant and should be treated with the same mindset; “You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the …show more content…

Thomson believes the woman should have no obligation to go through with the pregnancy if she chooses not to. It is morally permissible for the woman to get an abortion if the pregnancy occurs without her consent; in cases like rape or defective contraception. Even if the fetus was granted to be considered a person with full moral status, the fetus does not have a moral right to use the mother’s body without her consent. Hence, abortion is permissible whenever the pregnancy happens without the woman’s

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Thomson asserts that it would be admissible to unplug it since you were kidnapped and suddenly bestowed with this liability without your consent. She connects this situation with a rape-induced pregnancy. By making the readers imagine themself in a similar situation, she is successful in her argument. Although we cannot fathom what a woman who got pregnant due to sexual assault is experiencing, the readers are able to attain a glimpse through Thomson's representation. Because it was involuntary, aborting the fetus will not be unjust.

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Rhetorical Analysis Essay On Don Marquis

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On the opposite side of the level headed discussion, Thomson's contention is effective and greatly convincing. She has spent more exertion persuading the perusers of her new meaning of the privilege to-life idea rather than simply assaulting all the option choices like Marquis did. Thomson's utilization of test musings was a superb technique to pass on her contemplations without the limitation and uneasiness regularly connected with a delicate, sensitive subject like fetus

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By failing to define the terms ‘fetus’ and ‘standard fetus’, he leaves open for interpretation not only the moral significance of the terms, but also their strength in relation to his argument. Marquis assumes that the fetus has a future that is just as valuable as that of an adult yet fails to grant the fetus the same moral status as an adult. This lack of consistency along with the falsity of his claims weakens his argument and leaves a large piece of the abortion question unanswered. Because many of his premises are false, I altered them to be correct which in turn resulted in an illogical sequence of evidence for Marquis’ original conclusion; rendering his argument invalid. After altering the conclusion to follow the revised premises, it only gave a suitable claim for some abortions, rather than the overwhelming majority of abortions.

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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

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This same way of thinking means that a fetus has no choice or ability to make decision when it comes to whose womb they inhabit as a result of failed contraception. Again, I am not arguing that abortion would not be morally permissible in the case of failed contraception but I am saying that there are key differences in intent and rational capacities between a malicious burglar and an unknowing fetus that weaken this analogy. Thomson also says that a burglar who breaks in should not have a right to stay in your house. While this is true, there are very few cases where a burglar will stay in your house if there intent is to steal something and get away. Staying in the house would be irrational if they want to get away with the crime.

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In “A Defense of Abortion” Judith Jarvis Thomson argues that abortion is not always immoral, even when we assume for the sake of argument that a fetus is an innocent person. In cases of rape and even some cases of protected consensual sex, Thomson says it is not immoral for a woman to kill a fetus by denying it use of her body. There are two pieces to Thompson’s argument. First, she rejects the common assumption that to kill an innocent person is always morally wrong. And she uses a clever counterexample (the violinist) to show that even aside from the case where you would need to kill an innocent person to save your own life, it is not always morally wrong to kill someone by denying him use of your body when he needs it to live.

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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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The permissibility of abortion is a topic of popular debate. The discussions presented by Judith Jarvis Thomson and Rosalind Hursthouse provide two unique viewpoints on the matter. In her essay “A Defense of Abortion”, Thomson presents an argument for the moral permissibility of abortion even if the fetus is granted the right to life, and provides the famous violinist scenario, to illustrate that the right to life does not come with the right to use someone else’s body in order to survive. On the other hand, in the chapter “Women's Rights and Wrongs”, Hursthouse focuses on the concept of virtue and how it applies to the decision to have an abortion. Hursthouse believes Thomson fails to address ways in which abortion is permissible because she

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An evaluation of Marquis’ “Why Abortion Is Immoral” (Marquis 1989, 183-202) is in demand. Mostly, the article is presumably unbiased in representation of the contrasting stances, of pro-choice and anti-abortion viewpoints. However, Marquis easily eludes further depictions of certain criteria, as to this being on purpose, simply a mere convenience, or accidental, not all of the argumentative views are very strong. To explicate, several of the countless debates on abortion, Marquis’ article “Why Abortion Is Immoral” (183-202) gives a mostly neutral perspective, to the endless opposing sides of the arguments.

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Abortion is a topic that has been widely disputed and has long been considered whether it should be permissible. Even though it has been 30 years since abortion in Canada has been fully legalized, it is a topic that has remained taboo and many who choose to get an abortion are still heavily judged by society (Long, 2006). Judith Jarvis Thomson, in her piece, ‘A Defense of Abortion’, argues that abortion is morally permissible in most circumstances (Thomson, 1971). Thomson states how people should be Minimally Decent Samaritans, in that even if someone has no right to their assistance, they should save that person’s life if it doesn’t require significant sacrifice, and that this should be a standard we aim to stay above (Thomson, 1971). This

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Most abortion arguments discussed today revolve around the premise that a fetus is a human being at conception. In Judith Thomson’s essay, “A Defense to Abortion”, she argues on the topic of abortions. She defends the mother’s right to choose what happens to her body on the assumption that a baby becomes a human at conception. In the argument, she gives the famous Violinist analogy. I will argue in this essay that her argumentative analogy is not sound because of the difference in social importance.

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1373 Words | 6 Pages

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