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“Killing a fetus deprives it of a valuable future/‘future like ours’. Therefore, abortion is not morally permissible.”
In the media, we often read about or hear about pro-life and pro-choice abortion arguments. Considering the argument is inherently about life and death, it makes abortion one of the most controversial issues to date. In 1971, Judith Jarvis Thomson published a moral philosophy paper by the name “A defense of Abortion.” In her paper, Thomson states that a human embryo, even though an undeveloped person, has a right to life. She declares that the killing of …show more content…
She reiterates a fact that even if the unplugging causes the violinists death, it would be a case of the individual depriving the use of their body as opposed to violating the violinist’s rights to life. Thomson argues that both the individual and violinist are people with equal rights to life. Just because the violinist is famous or important, it does not give him the right to outweigh his life over the individual nor make decisions over the individual’s body. She further claims that by the individual allowing the use of his body it denotes compassion towards the afflicted thus the violinist can make no claims. It is the individual’s right to decide whether to be bedridden alongside the violinist thus effectively putting their lives on hold, as opposed to being forced into it because he is the only one who can save his life.
Thomson uses this thought experience to translate the morality of abortion. She does so by comparing the kidnapped individual to a raped woman who later falls pregnant. She establishes that the raped woman has a right to abortion because she was given no rights, rather was forced into a