Analysis Of Abortion And The Politics Of Motherhood By Kristin Luker

Improved Essays
In the book Abortion & the Politics of Motherhood, Kristin Luker investigates the reasons where the abortion debate originates and why it has caused so much conflict between pro-life activists and pro-choice activists. After holding interviews of supporters in both groups, Luker’s experiment has shown that both groups possess contrasting motives based on their different and world views and beliefs. The pro-life and pro-choice activists have opposing views on abortion, especially concerning the roles of men and women in family, sex, and parenthood. Luker begins by discussing the world view of pro-life activists. Due to the biological distinctions between man and women, pro-life supporters believe that men and women has specific roles in society. …show more content…
In Luker’s readings, pro-choice women tend to have higher levels of education and generate a better income compared to pro-life women (10, Luker, A&OM 1985 p. 0184). When evaluating the work of Thomson, she is viewed as a pro-choice activist; Thomson is a well educated woman who defends the right for an abortion despite a fetus’s right to life. After analyzing the sick violinist example, it is concluded that she does not perceive motherhood as a woman’s primary role in life, but a potential job that she can offer. Both pro-choice and pro-life activists as different passions and interests concerning the morality of abortion; women become most satisfied with given set of values. Similar to pro-choice activists, Glover recognizes the right of women and freedom to terminate a pregnancy and wants equality for both men and women. Women should be allowed to postpone a pregnancy or marriage if it conflicts with future goals, thus giving her control of her own body (11, Luker, A&OM 1985 p. 0199). When analyzing the holistic moral opinion of Noonan, it is shown that he cherishes the birth of a fetus and sees motherhood as an obligation. He believes that there is no distinction of when a fetus is viable, thus it is better to assume a fetus is a human being upon conception (12, Noonan, CC 2015 p.

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    Abortion has been a great topic of debate for many years, both in terms of law/rights and in morality/religion. The constant debate has split people into two sides: Pro-Choice and Pro-Life. Those who are Pro-Choice believe that women have a right to decide the fate of their body, health, and life. They personally may not get an abortion, but they feel that it is still the right of the mother to choose. Abortion prevents unsafe pregnancies, protects women 's right to choose, liberates women from patriarchal control over women 's sexual and reproductive lives, and allows the mother to choose whether, when, and how often to have a child.…

    • 1600 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The argument: Prochoice or no choice In the article from The Huffington Post “No Guilt”, Margret Klaw discusses a very controversial topic, abortion. She argues that women should be allowed to be in control of their pregnancy and not the politicians running this country. She describes her experience working with women as a family law attorney and claims that she has never encountered a woman that was “traumatized” by the procedure. Kraw defends that it is a woman’s right whether or not she would like to have an abortion. The article ends very strongly by calling for the women who have had an abortion to speak up and try to save the prochoice movement.…

    • 759 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Abortion is a growing controversial issue in the world today, mainly in the United States. “Abortion is one the most common medical performed in the United States each year” (Suzann, 1). The issue has become more prominent as years’ progress for a variety of reasons, to include the fact that the “traditional” family’s existence is fading. Abortion became legalized during the Roe v Wade case in 1973, now a little over one million abortions are performed each year. Women are becoming undesirably pregnant at alarming rates, many who feel they are unable to effectively take care of a child.…

    • 1554 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The topic of abortion has always been a controversial issue. There are, and will always be, many different views concerning the ethical acceptability, social stigma, and morality of abortion. While there had already been attempts to properly emphasize women’s civil rights in society, it wasn’t until the emergence of a case like Roe v. Wade that brought to the public eye the legal issue of a woman’s right to receive an abortion, as well as her rights as a person and citizen. Even though this case was based more on the legality and right to privacy and personal freedoms, the legal issues surrounding a woman’s right to abortion was the true start of the women’s liberation movement. The Supreme Court’s decision of Roe v. Wade to legalize abortion…

    • 1353 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In today’s society, abortion is known as one of the most controversial issues in America. Currently, abortion is legal and America, and many pro-choice activists believe that is should remain legal. Pro-choice activists are individuals who believe a woman should have the legal right to an “elective abortion,” meaning the legal right to terminate pregnancy. However, there are individuals who disagree, knows as, pro-life activist who are opposed to legalized abortion and are persuading Congress to pass laws that will determine an abortion illegal.…

    • 191 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    About 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year (Pubmed.gov). Each year thousands of woman are traumatized and haunted by their experience and on top of that, are pregnant with the child of the man who caused it. Abortion is a controversial subject that everyone has an opinion on. Abortion is the termination of early pregnancy, and must be done within the first twenty eight weeks of pregnancy. Two groups of people who have a strong opinion on abortion were formed; Pro-life and Pro-choice.…

    • 985 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Introduction (45) In this paper, I will argue that Judith Thomson is right to claim that, even if a fetus is a person, abortion is still permissible if the pregnancy was unwilling (i.e rape) or if the pregnancy is a threat to the mother’s health/life. Exposition (492) In Thomson’s paper, she discusses abortion considering the following is true: The human embryo is a person. And so my exposition and my argument will follow the same premise.…

    • 1639 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Abortion is to deliberately terminate your pregnancy. There is 50 million abortions a year and up to 125,000 a day. Women have three options when pregnant, to plan an adoption, be a parent or have an abortion. Most women who have an abortion are not married and have no social support. Planned parent hood is changing the way society sees abortion.…

    • 1525 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Cynara Collins Phil 230 02/04/2018 Abortion is a serious issue that has been going on for years, many people don’t fully understand abortion, and why people choose to do it. Abortion is the ending of pregnancy by removing a fetus or embryo before it can survive outside the uterus. This usually is performed during the first 28 weeks of pregnancy. There are different views on abortion, some agree and some don’t. abortions take place every single day, and yet public opinion remains at a standstill as to whether abortion is ethical or not.…

    • 827 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    What is abortion? it is a deliberate termination of a pregnancy. Removing the fetus from the mother before it is fully form. Is this something that we should consider as permissible. According to Judith J. Thomson in “A Defense of abortion”, she believes it is permissible.…

    • 1073 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Brilliant Essays

    She suggests that because a pregnancy is such a great sacrifice, that, while women should carry a child to term after becoming pregnant, we cannot require them to do so. This argument also requires that the fetus’ right to life is subject to the mother’s whim and does not carry as much weight as the first two arguments. Thomson concludes the article by saying that she is not attempting to delineate the circumstances in which a pregnancy might be morally permissible and those in which it isn’t, but rather to make it clear that even if we consider a fetus to be a person, that abortion can still be morally permissible. This weakens her argument a great deal, instead of providing a proscriptive criterion to base the morality of abortion on, she simply provides what may be a series of fringe cases to establish that while abortion is normally wrong, it isn’t always so. Thomson’s argument on abortion is fundamentally deontological.…

    • 1880 Words
    • 8 Pages
    • 1 Works Cited
    Brilliant Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In today’s societies around the world, there is currently two factions of the highly controversial topic of abortion and whether it should be allowed or outlawed. These two factions on opposite sides are pro-choice and pro-life. Pro-choice supporters in essence believes a woman has the right to an abortion if she decides to do so. On the other hand, pro-life supporters believe the fetus is its own human being and has the right to live, thus an abortion cannot be performed on the woman. Judith Jarvis Thomson, a philosophy professor supports the right to an abortion in her paper, “A defense of Abortion” (186).…

    • 1134 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Both supporters and critics of abortion-restricting regulation claim protecting health and safety of a woman, although the means of achieving this goal are dialectically opposite. What does the conscience of “pro-lifers” tells them about their backing of this intrusive law is probably quite different, from how abortion rights advocates view this issue. They see a surge in passing antiabortion rights measures as an attempt to control women, not to promote safety, whereas their opponents view a fetus, an inseparable part of a pregnant woman’s body, as a “human being” and an “innocent life lost” if an abortion performed. What makes the supporters of the legislation feel good about their decision is a distorted perception of what is right and what is wrong and biased vision of the issue, which oftentimes goes against the doctrine of separation of the church and state. Devastating long time repercussions of the ruling would inevitably lay on the shoulders of scores of Texas women.…

    • 1254 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Is Abortion A Woman ’s Right? A very controversial topic in the world, still today, is abortion.…

    • 1113 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    “There will be over 3,500 killed in the USA today from abortion. No flags lowered, no presidents crying. No media hyperventilating. Normal Day,” –Matt Drudge. Abortion is a very serious and controversial topic.…

    • 1560 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays