Philosophy of Abortion

Erin Jennings

Abortion

Introduction:

Judith Jarvis Thomson has given us one of the strongest arguments in defense of abortion. Abortion can be defined as the removal of a fetus from the uterus in order to end a pregnancy. In this paper, we seek to analyze arguments both for and against abortion, in order to come to a better understanding and overall philosophical analysis of Thomson’s argument. Thomson states that abortion is morally permissible under certain circumstances, specifically, in the case where pregnancy results from a woman being raped. She argues this point using an analogy as the fundamental base to her argument, helping us better understand the philosophy behind it. We will find that even though Thomson holds a very strong argument for the moral permissibility of abortion, criticisms come into play that she may or may not be able to properly defend her argument against.

The conclusion that Thomson reaches is, in its most basic form, that abortion is permissible in certain circumstances. However, there are many arguments that seek to prove that under no circumstances is abortion morally permissible. One of the stronger of these arguments is as follows. First, although it has been heavily debated as reason for or against abortion, we consider that the fetus is a person, and as a person it has a right to life. However, there are certain circumstances in which one can relinquish their right to life. These circumstances include where one willfully and intentionally harms another person or attempts to inflict such harm, and only if a person has done so is it morally permissible to kill that person. Because fetuses are incapable of willfully and intentionally harming others, every fetus retains a right to life, and to not be killed. Lastly, to abort a fetus is to kill it, and therefore abortion is never, under any circumstance, morally permissible. One of the biggest and most sought after arguments for abortion has been based around whether or not the fetus is actually a person, and the implications surrounding it. However Thomson, although she may not actually agree and therefore only for the sake of her argument, accepts that the fetus to be a person and seeks to prove abortion can still be morally permissible in certain circumstances. In particular, Thompson argues that abortion is morally permissible when the woman becomes pregnant as a result of being raped.

The basis to Thomson’s case is what is known as an “argument from analogy.” An argument from analogy is a type of argument which assumes that like cases are to be treated with the same scrutiny, and if a point of disanalogy cannot be found between these two cases than it would be irrational to believe something to be moral in one case and not in the other. Specifically, Thomson compares a woman who has been raped to a person who has been taken against their will and attached to an ailing violinist in order to keep the musician alive. She states that the violinist is suffering from a fatal disease of the kidneys, and to survive this disease must be connected to your body for the next nine months. Thomson goes on to state that because you have been taken against your will and attached to this violinist, who you have no responsibility to whatsoever, that it is morally permissible to disconnect yourself from the violinist at any time, even if it leads to his foreseeable death. She then compares this to a woman who has been impregnated as a result of rape. The crucial association between the two cases is that a fetus has been created inside of the woman against her will, much like the person has been attached to the violinist against their will, and therefore the woman with fetus, much like the person with the violinist, has no responsibility to keep the other person alive. Therefore, it is morally permissible to abort the fetus, even if it has not relinquished its right to life.