Abortion is a widely debated and controversial practice. The practice of abortion can be defined as “the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy”, where the fetus is expelled from its mothers’ uterus. More simply the decision is made by the mother to no longer continue with the pregnancy. Abortion is greatly controversial between its three main view takers; extreme conservatives, extreme liberals and the moderate viewpoint. The controversy stems from the argument of whether abortion is morally justifiable and whether or not the fetus is a human being and therefore has any legal or moral rights. Those who take an extreme conservative viewpoint (a viewpoint backed by the Catholic church) will argue that abortion is immoral in all cases as
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Those who take the extreme liberal point of view state that the act of abortion is morally permissible if the act is performed before the offspring is born, as it is still not yet a consciously aware being. The viewpoint of the moderate’s is one that is neither wholly liberal nor conservative. It takes the opinion that it is morally acceptable to have an abortion before the fetus has reached six months of development as it is possible it could live on its own outside of the mother’s body at this point. The view further states that it is morally reasonable to partake in an abortion if the fetus is a result of involuntary sex/rape or it poses a serious and/or life-threatening risk to the woman’s life. Therefore, it is evidently apparent why abortion is one of the greatest issues both in regard to morality and legality facing …show more content…
One can raise the objection that when a pregnancy is a direct cause of a woman’s victimization due to un-consensual or involuntary sex, forced upon them in a rape like situation, then does abortion not become morally permissible? In the eyes of Judith Jarvis Thomson, the answer is simple, Yes. Taking Thomson’s ‘sick violinist’ argument for example “You wake up in the morning and find yourself next to a famous unconscious violinist. He has a fatal kidney ailment, and it is found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood. [If he is unplugged from you now, he will die; but] in nine months he will have recovered, and can be unplugged from you”. Evidently, this scenario clearly emphasises that it is morally permissible to unplug yourself from the violinist, as his right to life does not allow the use of another being’s body. Thomson’s main argument here is that the unplugging of the violinist would in no way breach his right to life but rather bereave him of the use of your body and in turn no moral or legal rights have been violated. If one takes the same principles and applies them to weather abortion
Those who take the extreme liberal point of view state that the act of abortion is morally permissible if the act is performed before the offspring is born, as it is still not yet a consciously aware being. The viewpoint of the moderate’s is one that is neither wholly liberal nor conservative. It takes the opinion that it is morally acceptable to have an abortion before the fetus has reached six months of development as it is possible it could live on its own outside of the mother’s body at this point. The view further states that it is morally reasonable to partake in an abortion if the fetus is a result of involuntary sex/rape or it poses a serious and/or life-threatening risk to the woman’s life. Therefore, it is evidently apparent why abortion is one of the greatest issues both in regard to morality and legality facing …show more content…
One can raise the objection that when a pregnancy is a direct cause of a woman’s victimization due to un-consensual or involuntary sex, forced upon them in a rape like situation, then does abortion not become morally permissible? In the eyes of Judith Jarvis Thomson, the answer is simple, Yes. Taking Thomson’s ‘sick violinist’ argument for example “You wake up in the morning and find yourself next to a famous unconscious violinist. He has a fatal kidney ailment, and it is found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood. [If he is unplugged from you now, he will die; but] in nine months he will have recovered, and can be unplugged from you”. Evidently, this scenario clearly emphasises that it is morally permissible to unplug yourself from the violinist, as his right to life does not allow the use of another being’s body. Thomson’s main argument here is that the unplugging of the violinist would in no way breach his right to life but rather bereave him of the use of your body and in turn no moral or legal rights have been violated. If one takes the same principles and applies them to weather abortion