Summary Of Judith Thomson's Defense Of Abortion

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. My thesis is that Thomson argues that abortion is permissible is some cases, however, her examples provided, do not always properly support her argument. Thomson makes a variety of arguments during Defense of Abortion that mostly combat the view that all abortion is morally impermissible. She believes that in most cases people decisions of whether abortion is morally permissible versus impermissible is dependent on whether a person believes that an embryo is a person. This suggests that since the embryo is a person then it has a right to life., one that may or may not trump the mothers right to life. She states that the problems with this argument is that many people try to base whether an embryo is a human on the amount of weeks it has been in the womb, according to her to make this choice, “is to make an arbitrary choice, a choice for which nature of things no good reason can be given” (3). In addition, she provides an example where a person is unwillingly supplying blood to a violinist to help save their circulatory system from poisons. The idea is that because the person was unwillingly kidnapped, and connected to the violinist the person should have the right to decide whether to allow the person to die or stay connected until he is healed in nine months. The next example she provides talks about being trapped in a tiny house with a growing child, and in a few minutes you will be crushed to death if nothing is. This is another argument she makes to conclude her argument that the fetus’s right to life is not as simplistic as the extremist views of abortion make it seem. Thomson’s examples are insufficient support for her arguments, I will start with the example about the violinist. This violinist is a person with which she has no relation, or has had prior contact with before the kidnapping incidence. Thomson uses this example in hopes that his audience would apply it to a case were a woman is kidnapped and raped, forced to carry a baby that is not hers and that she did not consent for. One of the major problems with this example is that Thomson assumes that the violinist and a fetus are equal or of the same value to the women who was kidnapped. She states that the violinist is famous, does this add value to the person’s life? It sounds like an attempt to help establish the value of the violinist in comparison with the fetus she is relating it too. In addition, one might argue that the emotional connections to a stranger, and that of a child inside of you is completely different. Its common theory that the mother’s connection, and love for her children starts while in the wound nurturing it for months. The argument Thomson makes assumes that because someone …show more content…
In the case of the violinist she neglects to address the age difference between a fetus and the violinist, fails to make the fetus equal with that which represents it in story, and does not take into account the different emotional connections that take place with a stranger versus a fetus. Thomson’s case about Henry ford did not accurately represent the choices that the mother makes in an abortion oversimplifying, and adding details that lead the reader to be less sympathetic towards one side. Although she did not cover all bases on those tow arguments the chocolate box argument was a great example to support her idea that the right to life is not just about being killed, but contrarily in the right to not be killed in an unjust