The_Questionable_Permissability_of_Abortion

It is not easy to completely approve or disapprove of abortion. Judith Jarvis Thomson and I both believe abortion is morally permissible in some cases, where it is immoral in others. This is the argument that Thomson makes in “A Defense of Abortion.” She makes many comparisons to prove her points in different situations. Though she does not believe that a fetus is a human being from the moment of conception [“A newly fertilized ovum, a newly implanted clump of cells, is no more a person than an acorn is an oak tree” (48)], she allows this premise for the sake of argument. Thomson believes that abortion is morally permissible if a woman decides to have one in the early stages of pregnancy. What makes some abortions morally permissible' If it is not always morally permissible, should it be prohibited for those cases' Each woman that considers abortion has different circumstances, and those affect the morality of the situation. Thomson says that if the woman was raped, abortion is morally permissible because she had no choice in getting pregnant. Thomson compares it to being kidnapped and having your circulatory system hooked up to a violinist’s. The violinist has a fatal kidney disease and you are the only person with the same blood type, so the Society of Music Lovers decides to use your kidneys for nine months to take out the poisons from his blood. You had no choice in this situation, and you did not give the violinist permission to use your kidneys (49). It is insane to expect you to save the violinist because he is not your responsibility; likewise, a woman who was raped cannot be expected to keep the baby. It would be nice to save the violinist like it would be nice for the woman to keep the baby, but the violinist does not have the right to use your body. Imagine that you accidentally drop your checkbook on the street. A homeless woman picks it up. Your money would provide enough for her to live comfortably for years. If she gives the checkbook back to you, she would most likely die of hunger. Because your money would save her life and she has the right to live, does she have the right to your money' You did not decide to give her your checkbook, so she does not have the right to use it. A woman that was raped never decided to have a child, so it is morally permissible for her to have an abortion. If a woman voluntarily has sex without any form of birth control knowing that she could get pregnant, Thomson believes it is morally impermissible for her to have an abortion: “[D]oing so would be depriving [the child] of what it does have a right to, and thus would be doing it an injustice” (58). The woman knew the possible consequences of her actions, so it is her responsibility to deal with them. For instance, if you promise your friend that they can borrow your CD, you have given them the right to borrow your CD. You will have to lend that CD to your friend as a result. If you made that promise and were planning on it falling through, you would be doing your friend an injustice. The woman could have used birth control, and you could have told your friend that he could not borrow the CD if you did not want to deal with the consequences. However, when a woman voluntarily has sex while she is using birth control, Thomson believes it is morally permissible to have an abortion. She compares the situation to barring up your windows and having a burglar come in your house anyway (59). This is obviously not your fault; you did everything you could to prevent burglary. Say that a woman believes she is taking birth control, but her birth control has actually been replaced with a placebo. Both of these situations show that the woman did what she could to prevent pregnancy. The woman attempted to prevent pregnancy, but she got pregnant anyway. She did nothing to cause the pregnancy, so it is morally permissible for her to have an abortion. In Thomson’s conclusion, though, she reminds her readers that she does not actually believe that the fetus is a human from the moment of conception. According to her, an abortion is permissible under any circumstances if it takes place early in the pregnancy: “A very early abortion is surely not the killing of a person, and so is not dealt with by anything I have said here” (66). Maybe that “clump of cells” is not a human being, but that does not change the fact that it will become one. A woman that has an abortion after voluntarily having sex without any kind of birth control is selfish. Even if she does not have the financial means to take care of a child, adoption is the unselfish choice she could make. The woman did not think about her actions, and the baby that she carries is supposed to become a real person. Real people make a difference in many lives. Every person grows up to be something: a friend, a teacher, a spouse; no matter how a person grows up, he or she will make a difference in at least one person’s life. Why does this careless woman have the right to decide that her child should not live, should not make a difference in anyone’s life' She chose to have sex without birth control; she should take responsibility for what she did. For example, imagine that someone finds a cure for cancer. He does not want to give it away because he wants more money than any hospital can offer. It is selfish and immoral to keep the medicine when it could change many lives, just like it is immoral for a woman that voluntarily had sex without birth control to ruin her unborn child’s chance to live and to change other people’s lives. This argument could be made for every case, but other factors outweigh it in some cases. The reason the mother should morally have the baby when she voluntarily had sex without birth control is that she did not think about her actions and their consequences. If she did not want to get pregnant, she should have been more cautious. When she chose to have sex without birth control, she gave the baby the right to live. In the case where a woman uses birth control (which fails) and gets pregnant, she did not make a choice that would allow her to get pregnant. The same goes for a woman who was raped. The morality of abortion depends on the woman’s intent. Involuntarily having sex or having birth control fail is no fault of the woman’s. She never planned to get pregnant and made the choice to prevent pregnancy, so it is morally permissible to have an abortion in these cases. When a woman does not use birth control and voluntarily has sex, though, it is not moral to have an abortion. She did not make the choice to prevent pregnancy, so she should deal with the outcome. Like Thomson explains, abortion can be morally permissible or immoral depending on the specific situation. Works Cited Judith Jarvis Thomson, “A Defense of Abortion”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Autumn), 1971, 47-66.