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Abortion has been a vastly debated topic. There are many things to consider and two sides to choose from. Does a woman have the right to abortion? The stage at which a fetus becomes a person would justify when abortion is morally accepted. But where do we draw the line?
What factors come into play to determine such a time? Judith Jarvis Thomson, the author of the article A Defense of Abortion, argues that even though a fetus is a person from the moment of conception a woman still has the right to abortion (1. Thomson, CC 2005, p 0046). She gives a hypothetical situation in order to help rethink the morality of abortion.
She uses this hypothetical situation to conclude that aborting a fetus is not murder and it does not follow that it should be in any way be considered murder. Where to draw the line is also a highly debated topic and she states the most people would draw the line at the moment of conception but this conclusion does not follow. She continues on about how the same thing could be said about an acorn turning into an oak tree and that the two things are nothing alike just as an embryo is not a person (2. Thomson, CC 2005, p 0046).
Suppose a normal person was suddenly kidnapped one day and put in a hospital bed where she has been linked to a stranger. She is the only person with right blood type to help. The stranger is a famous violinist who is having kidney failure and needs the kidneys of this innocent woman. If she chooses to save the life of this violinist she must stay in the hospital next to him for nine months. (3.
Thomson, CC 2005, p 0048) Thomson relates this situation to the case of rape. The innocent woman would be the victim of rape and the violinist is the fetus from the result of rape. This puts the woman in the situation of deciding whether or not she should stay in bed for nine months to save this violinist. Pro-life argues that she should stay in bed and save this mans life because she can and it would murder is she unplugged herself from him. Thomson argues the point of obligation. Even though all persons have a right to life, and to decide what happens or does not happen to his / her body.
She is not obligated to save his life because it was not her fault that he has kidney failure so if she were to reject the procedure she shouldnt be blamed for murder. Similar to abortion even though the fetus was a person with a right to life, it wasnt the womans fault or choice for the fetish conception. She has every right to life and control of her own body and feels no connection to this person, stranger, growing inside her and is not obligated to save his life. Also the violinist has no right to use her body to save his simply because she has control over her own body and he cant force her to save him.
However pro-life might argue that hypothetical situations does not follow simply because they are completely different cases. The stranger has no connection whatsoever to the woman while a fetus is part of the woman, growing inside her, sharing half of her genetic code (4. Noonan, CC 2005, p 0182). But Thomson would argue that in the case of rape the woman would not feel any connection to the fetus simply because it was a traumatic experience and a third party has no right to have an opposition to the abortion. The fetus does not have any right to use the womans body to stay alive and if she had an abortion she had not violated anyones right to life because she is not mentally involved in this pregnancy. Her analogies are not solely revolved around rape.
She poses another situation to help rethink the case in which the mothers health or life is in danger because of the fetus. (5. Thomson, CC 2005, p 0049) There are only 2 people involved in this situation, the mother and the fetus. Both are innocent but in this case the fetus is threatening the life of the mother but not by any of their faults. Pro-life would argue to not abort the fetus because it is murder and immoral even though the life of the mother is in danger. That on its own is murder because it could be said that the fetus is murdering the mother.
So Thomson states that third parties, believers in pro-life, should not intervene and it should be the choice of the person being threatened, the mother. However, John Noonan, the author of How to Argue About Abortion, criticizes Thomson's method and other methods as well. He argues that using analogies to reason abortion is unreliable. He states that the correct way to deal with the case of abortion is through perception or sense experience, and that actually experiencing the situation in person is the only way to know what is at stake and what to consider. Through perception all the answers will be clear because it allows people to use their own moral judgment to decide whether abortion is right or wrong. He criticizes Thomson's method in that the victim has no bond to the violinist at all because they are unrelated they are strangers to each other.
It is disgusting to relate a kidnapping and choice of convenience to pregnancy. He interprets her violinist situation as being human does not mean having to respect another persons right to life in the case where it becomes inconvenient. He is appalled that this hypothetical situation could be accepted as an example of how a mother would make a choice. To show a real life situation that he thinks is closer to the situation of a pregnant mother than that of Thomson's he includes in his article a court case. In Nebraska a cattle buyer, Orlando Depue, was invited to dine with a family of farmers, the Flateaus. After dinner he became weak and sick and asked the Flateaus if he could spend the night.
The family refused and left him in the cold after he had fainted from sickness. Depue then sued the family after he had lost some fingers to frost bite. The judge stated that the family was not bound by any legal contract to let De...
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Research essay sample on Save His Life Moment Of Conception
