Analysis: A Defense Of Abortion By Judith Jarvis Thompson
1024 Words5 Pages
The right to life. The right to pursue happiness. The right to speak one’s mind. In today’s moral community, every action and consideration is only made after careful deliberation, no matter how brief, evaluating societal viewpoints, virtues, standards, and those very rights. In the case of abortion, many court cases have been won and lost, protests in support of pro-life and pro-choice beliefs have been wrought and many personal lives have been brought together or splintered apart because of this issue. In “A Defense of Abortion”, Judith Jarvis Thompson takes a stand, claiming that abortion is morally permissible in certain cases. This paper will detail the outline of her case and explain why her analogy does not support her conclusion. One morning, a woman wakes up and discovers that not only is she not in her own bed, but also that there is a stranger lying next to her. A few moments…show more content… She quickly learns that she has been kidnapped by the Society of Music Lovers to help save the man next to her, a famous violinist, who is dying of a kidney disorder. They tell her that she would only have to be hooked up to him for nine months to save him and then she could go on her way. Would it be morally permissible under these circumstances for this woman to detach herself from this man, thereby killing him? Thompson uses this analogy to make a parallel to abortion in the case of rape. In both situations, the woman would not have placed herself in a compromising situation that would give someone the right to take advantage of her forcibly. Other vital comparisons include the fact that an outside party made the decision, meaning that both women did not have