A Defense of Abortion is the most famous text by the American researcher in philosophy and ethics, Judith Thomson. It is interesting because Thomson is trying to bridge the gap between supporters of abortion, who believe that the fetus is not a person and a woman has the right to dispose of her own body, and opponents, who, on the contrary, believe that a fetus is a person (even if, perhaps, only in the future), and this right outweighs the right of a woman to dispose of one’s own body. To do this, Thomson suggests an unusual way for this dispute: to assume that opponents of abortion are right that a fetus is a person. She believes that opponents of abortion, based on this premise, make a premature conclusion about the inadmissibility of abortions.
The author draws our attention to the fact that the right to life does not include the right to require anyone to spend any resources or efforts to maintain this life, which is exactly what a pregnant woman does since the fetus is in her body and feeds at her expense. Accordingly, if a woman does not want to have a fetus in her if she does not want to create a new life, and even more so if the fetus threatens her own life and health, then she has every right to get rid of it, and outsiders have the right to help her in this (Thomson, 41-45). Most opponents of abortion proceed from the premise that the fetus is a human being, a person, from the moment of conception. Arguments are given in support of this premise, which, in my opinion, are not entirely convincing.
Opponents of abortion spend most of their time proving that a fetus is a person and practically do not pay attention to the transition from this statement to the inadmissibility of abortions. Perhaps they think this transition is so simple and obvious that it does not require much explanation. Or perhaps they are just economical in their argumentation. Many abortion advocates proceed from the assumption that the fetus is not a person but is just a piece of tissue that will become a person after birth. Whatever the explanation, I believe that the transition under discussion is neither simple nor obvious. It requires closer consideration. By subjecting this transition to such consideration, we will feel its unreliability.
In conclusion, it looks like the abortion debate will not end soon. The public discussion about whether an existing human life is interrupted during an abortion is still relevant at the moment and does not leave modern society indifferent. The positions of both supporters of abortion and opponents of abortion are so rigid that there has been no attempt to reach a consensus. In recent decades, abortion has become one of the most intense and widely discussed issues in the theory of morality. From a moral point of view, abortion is always a difficult and painful moral decision. For example, the church will certainly not back down from its claim that abortion is murder and, therefore, a mortal sin, while abortion advocates argue that having a child should be a choice. In addition, the church and other organizations opposed to abortion should soften their position in some cases, such as rape, which is too traumatic.
Work Cited
Thomson, J. J. A Defense of Abortion. 2018.