A Defense of Abortion by Judith Jarvis

Thomson's use of the dying violinist case suggests that she believes that spontaneous spontaneous abortion opponents would fend for an abortion in the stylised insemination case as well, eve though the woman never consented to the act that made her pregnant. In fact, never even knew it was occurring. miscarriage opponents would oppose the abortion in her case because their basic parameter is that the fetus's right to life takes precedence over the fuck off's right to support her body. In other words, any person's fundamental right to come through outweighs the right not to be uncomfortable. Thus, the fetus's right just to cut through being a person outweighs the gravel's right not to be uncomfortable with or inconvenienced by a pregnancy. For the abortion opponents, how a woman becomes pregnant is not relevant, or seemingly even related, to the fetus's right to life

The question then arises between 'competing' rights to life. Thomson discusses the case where continue a pregnancy threatens the mother's life. Whose right to life takes precedence in such a case? Thomson notes that, for the anti-abortionists, the artless fetus cannot be directly killed because to do so would be murder. If not playing to kill the fetus results in the death of the mother, then that is something little than murder in the mother's case and is permissible (

Thomson argues here that the mother can perform an abortion when the pregnancy threatens her life because both she and the fetus are innocent victims of the threat posed by the pregnancy and the woman has a right to defend her own life (1971, p. 243). moreover her defending team of the anti-abortionists' argument that one should let "nature take its caterpillar tread" does not seemed based on any particular logic other than the mother has the power to end the fetus's life to present her own, a power the fetus does not look at. But to arrest that argument, Thomson must assume that abortion opponents believe it is permissible for a person to kill another when the other threatens their life without hostility or intent.

Thomson's refutation does not work if people who oppose abortions oppose direct killing in solely cases, or at least in cases where the threat is not poisonous or intentional.

These arguments by Thomson only seem to suggest that she agrees that at that place are cases where the fetus's right to life supercedes the mother's right to dictation her body. But Thomson makes these arguments from the position that the fetus is a person from the moment of conception. She, therefore, seems to be arguing that, if the fetus is a person, then the fetus and the mother have competing rights that would allow a mother to have an abortion in many but not all cases. On the other hand, if Thomson had not conceded that original position - that the fetus is a person from conception - then her argument that the woman's right to control her body controls her right to have an abortion in all cases would likely seem ultimately more consistent.

Toward the end of her argument, when she discusses minimally Decent Samaritans versus Good Samaritans, Thomson seems to slip into weighing the right to have an abortion based on the degree to which the pregnancy imposes upon the mother (1971, p. 250). These arguments weaken her position that the right to have an abortion depends on the mother's right to control her body and s
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