Different Views on Abortion

Summary Paper: Different Views on Abortion

        In this paper I will be summarizing and analyzing the arguments presented by Judith Thompson and Don Marquis on the problem of abortion. The problem is not whether or not the fetus during pregnancy is or is not a human being, but whether it is morally just or unjust to abort a fetus. This is an important issue due to the fact that many sides of abortion rely solely on the argument of whether the fetus is a human or not. This argument ends in many standoffs and makes it difficult to come to a conclusion because it relies on the arbitrary choice of where the line is drawn during pregnancy to separate a clump of human cells from a human being. Determining whether the death of a fetus is just or unjust helps come to a conclusion by sidestepping this unsolvable argument. In this paper, I will not be determining which side I agree with, but rather laying out both arguments for further evaluation.

        First, it is worth being noted that both Thomson will agree to believe that the fetus is a human being for purposes of setting out on a new argument. Thomson begins her pro-choice argument by granting anti-abortionists that a fetus is a human being. She continues to state that the ‘naïve abortion argument’ says that a fetus is a human, all humans have a right to life, an abortion prevents a fetus from the right to life and therefor it is morally impermissible to have an abortion. Furthermore, every human has a right to his or her own body, but the right to life is more powerful than the right of a human to their own body. Therefor, the fetus cannot be killed or aborted. Thomson sets up her argument on the premises that this last step is false because the fetus’ right to life does not conflict with the mother’s right to her own body. She continues by providing different views and situations of the naïve abortion argument’s step to why abortion is unjust and proving them false or unreasonable. At first, she is careful to take the side of pro-choice, rather declines the credibility of anti-abortion arguments. In setting out to prove the naïve abortion argument false, she will therefor prove that not all cases of abortion are unjust killings of the fetus.

        Marquis takes a different approach in his anti-abortion argument by providing differing views on whether the fetus is a human being or not. After coming to the conclusion that these arguments will always come to a standstill, he offers that abortion morality must rely on a better, solvable question. He then sets out to prove why killing us is immoral and unjust, and why it also proves the same for a fetus. Marquis creates the ‘future-like-ours’ account, which relies on the premise that killing us is wrong because it denies us the value of our future. He then argues that a fetus also contains the value of a future, like ours, and therefor grants them the right to life. His position on the problem is, except under extreme circumstances, that this right to life deems it unjust to abort a fetus.