Should The Fetus Be Considered Unjust Murder?

For the sake of the argument, we consider the fetus to be a person and have the right to life. Opposed to Thomson, I believe that aborting the fetus should be considered unjust killing because it is being deprived of the right to use the mother's body. My first and obvious premise are that the mother is causally responsible for the existence of the fetus. By casually responsible I mean to say that the mother partially caused the fetus to exist, while performing sex. Not stating that the mother is morally responsible for the fetus, but instead just a cause of the result. Moral responsibility is the status of morally deserving praise, blame, reward, or punishment for an act or omission, in accordance with one's moral obligations. While causal …show more content…
My second premise is that since the mother is causally responsible for the existence of the fetus, then the fetus should have the right to use the body. I believe this because the fetus was put in a powerless and inevitable situation, so why should it suffer the consequences of other people’s actions? It seems like the fetus was created in a restricted area and when it finally develops and gets accustomed to the body, its life can easily be taken away. As a result, the fetus automatically becomes a part of the body and is granted the same rights as the mother. For instance, as a child, you lived in a house that was owned by your parents but is also considered yours. Even though you did not pay any bills or expenses, you were granted the right to live in that house because of the dependency you had on your parents. So, would it be considered just for your parents to throw you out as a child? Not at all, and in fact the parents will be legally …show more content…
The reason is because when a fetus gets aborted it is suffering irresponsibly and immorally. Unlike the mothers suffering the fetus was not the cause of this situation, so it should only be fair that the burden is put on the parents but most importantly the rapist. One fallacy that I see in Thomson’s analogy on the Henry Fonda example is that Henry Fonda was not causally nor morally responsible for someone’s sickness. Let's say that Henry Fonda knows the possibility of being causally responsible for the sickness of someone and then refuses to cure that person, he would be considered unjust because he is depriving someone of the right to be cured since he knew the possibility of causing that sickness. In this scenario Henry Fonda has two options; to be good Samaritan or a minimally decent Samaritan. A good Samaritan is someone “who goes out their way, at some cost to himself, to help one in need of it” (Thomson, 6). While a minimally decent Samaritan is someone who does the least amount that ought to be done. Consequently, the existence of the fetus is caused by the mother and in doing so, the mother invites the fetus to the body even if she was not willing