Arguments Against Abortion

Improved Essays
I agree with Thomson’s example of a woman wanting to get an abortion to avoid a nuisance being “indecent”, but that is not up to me to decide. Being pro-choice means to be for any decision that someone wants to make regarding their pregnancy, and not for a decision as long as it doesn’t go against what I believe is right. Although in this case, I may not agree that that’s a viable reason to want to get an abortion, because it is not my business or my body, it is not my decision to make. I also know that if I were put in a position of accidentally getting pregnant and not knowing what to do, I would want to have the option to get an abortion, regardless of whether I do it or not. A person wanting to get an abortion may want one because they …show more content…
This kind of argument puts a lot of the blame on the victim. If someone takes all the precautions in trying to prevent getting pregnant but still gets pregnant anyways, that shouldn’t be their fault. This kind of argument is similar to saying “if you don’t want to get in a car accident, don’t drive”, and can be used for any similar context. People have been having sex with no intention of having a baby since the beginning of time; it’s why people had mistresses, why brothels existed, why people pay for the company of sex workers. Someone should not be blamed and ridiculed and ostracized for doing what they want they do and having bad luck in the …show more content…
Although a fetus at this stage is fully formed and could be considered a child, depending on when someone considers a fetus a person, some people, upon hearing that the fetus is fatally impaired, may choose to have an abortion. This would an extremely difficult decision to make, as finding this information would happen around the 20-26-week mark, and by this time, the person pregnant would have already made the decision to have the child, but given the situation, chooses to have a late-term abortion. Now the question here, depending on where you draw the line in defining when from conception does the fetus become a person, is, “Does this fetus not have a right to life?” Although I understand this argument, a parent would want to give their child the best life they possibly could, and if the child is to suffer a short life full of medical issues, why would they want to subject their child to that kind of life? Having a child is also a burden financially, and if the child is to spend its whole life in and out of hospitals, racking up medical bills, only for it to pass away early on because of incurable conditions, why would the parent, or parents, want to subject themselves to that? The right to life, as Thomson indicates, is the “right to be given the bare minimum one needs for continued life” (Thomson, 1971). If this is the case, if the

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Every unborn child should have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the second and third trimester. In 2010, research shows that states indicated that unborn children are considered humans under tort, property and criminal law (Roden, 2010). By these laws shown, a mother shouldn’t get to choose whether the fetus lives or dies. The unborn child is its own person and by a mother aborting her own child should be considered murder. Under law a child is supposed to be born for many different reasons, including being capable of having a legacy (Roden, 2010).…

    • 1331 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    First we must decide if the fetus is indeed a person or not. Munson states, “The claim of the fetus as a person must be given weight and respect in deliberating about any action that would terminate its life” (Munson, p. 456). If we rule that a fetus is a person, then abortion would be a case of unjust killing (Munson, p.456). So, if a fetus is a person it, like all human beings, has the right to life and one without harm. This relates back to cases like that of Tabita Bricci.…

    • 785 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Therefore, the fetus has a right to life. The mother has a right to decide what happens in and to her body.…

    • 835 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A major issue I was confronted with as I was presented with Thomson’s argument is that she says “The fetus, being a person, has a right to life, but as the mother is a person too, so has she a right to life. Presumably they have an equal right to life.” Thomson seems to think that since the right to live for both subjects are equal but the body belongs to the mother, the mother is morally permitted to do as she desires with it and hence, abort the child if necessary. It is here that I sympathize more closely with an idea offered by Don Marquis who argued that the impermissibility of abortion lies in the fact that by killing a child, one is depriving them of the right to live a future life that they else would’ve lived. If we were to sort these two distinct ideas in a way that makes them counterparts to one another, I would argue that the fetus is more justified to their right to life than the mother.…

    • 1170 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Therefore a fetus would have greater right to life, then the women who conserved it. Thomson then goes on to give an analogy about a famous violinist. If this violinist were to be ill and people kidnapped and used you as a living machine to keep him alive, for any given amount of days, months, or years his right to live, would then outweigh your right to your own body. Comparing kidnapping to being raped Thomson claims that rape victims wouldn’t be morally wrong to having an abortion. Moving forward Thomson argues that rape victims alone cannot have the choice to abortion for the reasoning that it would create a rift between who has a right to life, those conceived by rape or…

    • 1897 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    (Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1) This question develops the argument that the fetus should equally fit under the right to life even before it is birthed into the world because it is classified a living person at the time of conception and has the potential to live and create…

    • 703 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Bodily integrity, the idea that the physical body is inviolable, emphasizing the right people have to their own body. This is Judith Thomson’s main argument in the defense of abortion and how it is permissible in some cases. In “ A Defense of Abortion”, by Thomson she claims that abortion is permissible in some cases when using bodily integrity as their defense. She states that the right to life is not an absolute right. Therefore, in some cases abortion is morally permissible.…

    • 883 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The main argument on the issue of abortion has generally come down to a difference over when we ought to envision the original position decision to happen: right now of achieving enough development to really comprehend one's wants, right now of birth, right now of origination, or even before origination (Rawls, 2005). An original position at birth consequently yields an expert decision position, since one has no risk of being aborted; an original position prompts a similar result with the likelihood of even abortion being permissible. On the other hand, an original position at origination generally prompts a substantially better life outcome. Thomson rejects the claim that pregnant women have a right to murder their posterity. She contends for the right of the mother to quit being pregnant, regardless of the possibility that this results in the end of life.…

    • 575 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In 2013 there were approximately 800 women who died due to pregnancy related complications in the USA1. Could some of these deaths been prevented? The answer is simply yes, if some of these pregnancies had been terminated by an abortion those mothers could have lived to fight for this cause today. Abortion is not an easy choice, but it is a choice, something everyone should be entitled to make. Pro-choice means women in extreme poverty don’t have to raise a child in impossible circumstances; pro-choice means women can protect themselves from conditions that could kill them, the fetus, or both; finally pro-choice means a woman can escape the physical proof of a rape and help to heal their mental health.…

    • 1399 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Six Million Jews were murdered in the holocaust during World War II. On September 11th, 2001 almost three thousand people were murdered in a terrorist attack. In the aftermath of these horrific tragedies the world came together as one to bring justice to the victims of these acts. Since 1980, 1.5 billion babies have been murdered worldwide. No one talks about these victims, let alone protests in the streets, or sends troops to bring justice to these babies.…

    • 1120 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    This analogy is challenging the more extreme view held by those in opposition to abortion. This view finds abortion “impermissible even to save the mother’s life.” Imagine a woman has become pregnant and in the same day learns of a newly developed heart disease that will kill her if she carries her baby to term. The baby has a right to life, but so does the woman. Thomson brings up the argument most familiar.…

    • 1953 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    One of the biggest arguments in today's society is the stance on abortion. Abortion, which is the killing of innocent unborn souls is ruthless. Would you be willing to murder a innocent child? What's your stance, pro-life or pro-choice? While most people believe abortion should be legal, others disagree.…

    • 664 Words
    • 3 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

    Abortion is a huge problem that has caused a wide range of controversy all over the United States. There are two sides to the problem, which are people who oppose abortion or support it. Abortion becomes a big deal when trying to decide whether a fetus should be considered a human being already when a woman aborts. In my case I believe that a woman should not be able to abort a child inside her unless there is some type of serious medical issue where the child may not come out alive. When a woman aborts a child, they did not want, it is like the killing of another human being who had no say or ever did anything wrong to deserve it.…

    • 1386 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    A human life begins start at the time of the conception. A children does not deserve to be kill for the irresponsibility of their parent. According to Life Site News, "Abortion is a defining human-rights issue of our time.." (Ricker 1). Everyone stands up for their own human rights, but when it comes to abortion no one stands up for the baby’s human rights.…

    • 1549 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays