Commenting on the sensitive issue of abortion, philosopher Judith Thomson (1929) argues that, “even if the human fetus is a person, abortion remains morally permissible in a variety of cases in which the mother’s life is not threatened” (Thomson, 1). In defense she offers that in bid to safe his life, a man who finds himself connected to the circulatory system of a another man with fatal kidneys complications against his wishes should rightfully disengage himself from the violinist despite the reality that doing so will kill the violinist.
Again, a man who is closed in an extremely small cubicle with a rapidly growing baby will definitely die if does not kill the baby. In a nutshell, Thomson argues that people should be allowed to rightfully control their own bodies even if it means putting the lives of others at the brink of demise.
Killing an innocent being is not allowed and as such abortion should not be allowed; killing an innocent being is in itself an act of murder and should not be allowed; the morality to avoid killing another person is weightier when compared to the morality to prevent a person from dying, and; that if one is given two chances, one to kill an innocent person and the other to let him die then one should choose letting the person die.
In defense of these objections it can be argued that if, killing an innocent person is murder then a mother who aborts no matter the circumstances commits murder, a thing that should not be allowed; killing an innocent person deprives them of their right to life and should not be encouraged, even to the extreme situation that letting them live endangers the lives of others; a mother who carries out an abortion deprives another person of their right to life a thing is immoral, as such it is more ethical for the mother to wait for her own death – she will neither have killed the unborn baby nor herself, and;
Doing abortion is killing the child, whereas not doing anything to save the life of the mother is not killing but letting her die, as such a mother should not kill her unborn baby intentionally even if it is to safe her own life. Looking at the objections and their defense it can be asserted that they are all biased and hence not true. It should be noted that the right to live is not wholly about the right not to be killed but the right not to be killed unjustly. As such a mother who aborts not because her life is in apparent danger but because she conceived after getting raped is justified.
She acts only to terminate what she did not consent to conceiving – the unborn baby has no right whatsoever to continue living in her womb given the mother did not consent to carrying it and hence killing tit does not deprive it of any right. On the last objection, it is not fair for a mother to seat back and waits for her ultimate death just because abortion kills the innocent baby – the right to life for the mother encompasses the justness in having a full claim to her bodies. In light of this evidence it is clear that indeed Thomson’s argument survives the anti-abortion objections. Work Cited Thomson, Judith J. [Please fill in the details of the abstract article we used in the paper]. 1929.