Abortion Final Draft
Abortion Final Draft
Abortion Final Draft
Kaleo Regalmuto
Is Abortion Morally Permissible?: Based on the moral intuition of the potential mother
When a woman finds out she is pregnant, it can be a life changing moment for her and
her partner. If they decide to do nothing, it is likely they will have a baby in nine months. If they
decide to get an abortion (likely in pill form), their lives won’t change much. Very much like
Blue pill/Red pill scenario in the movie “The Matrix”, the decision or whether or not to have an
abortion is the decision between a life that one knows, and a life that one can only imagine.
Regardless to whether a couple decides to get an abortion or not, there stands the question, “Is
abortion morally permissible?” The people that try to answer this question can be filtered into
three groups: Those that think abortion is morally permissible, those that think it is morally
impermissible, and those that think abortion is morally permissible under certain circumstances.
2. Survey of Arguments
The word abortion is defined as the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy. While
fetuses are human beings it does not necessarily follow that they are moral persons. A human
being is an organism that is biologically human, while a moral person is a being with full moral
central moral aspect concerns whether there is any morally relevant point during the biological
process of the development of the fetus from its beginning as a unicellular zygote to birth itself
that may justify not having an abortion after that point” (Gordon). In other words, If there is
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immorality in the act of aborting a fetus, where exactly does it lie? Or when is it that a fetus
One of the central argument for those that think that abortion is totally morally
This argument and many others rely on the premise that a fetus is a human. To get around this,
Don Marquis, in his paper “Why Abortion is Immoral,” states that a fetus solely because it has a
The Main arguments for those that think that abortion is morally permissible hinge on the
assumption that fetuses are not human beings. For example, in logical form,
Thomson, in attempt to get around this, in her article, “A defense of abortion,” says that even if
2. Thus the concerns of whether or not abortions are morally permissible are up to the
Thomson wants to point out that even if a fetus is a human being, it doesn’t immediately follow
circumstances. We will call this the pragmatic argument. According to John-Stewart Gordon, the
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pragmatic argument argues that there are morally impermissible and morally permissible reasons
to have an abortion. Morally permissible reasons for having an abortion would be, “(i) rape, (ii)
endangerment of the woman’s life, and (iii) a serious mentally or physically disabled fetus.”
Morally impermissible reasons are, “(i) a journey, (ii) career prospects, (iii) by virtue of financial
or social grievances” (Gordon). This Moderate viewpoint straddles the line between the extreme
Your statement of your position is confusing. Your arguments are for the position
that abortion is always morally permissible. Referring to the mother's intuition
does not seem clearly relevant to this position. Are you saying that abortion is only
immoral if the mother chooses to have an abortion even though she has an intuition
that it is immoral? It's unclear. Also, why should the mother's intuition determine
moral truth in this case? It seems arbitrary. We don't generally think that people's
intuitions determine the truth of whether or not they are permitted to kill
something. The moral status of the thing they kill is what determines whether
killing it is permissible or not.
3. My position and Main Argument
If the the moral intuition of the potential mother is in favor of having the child then
abortion is immoral in that case and if her moral intuition is not in favor of having the child then
abortion is moral in that case. The main arguments that support my position are given by
2. Thus the concerns of whether or not abortions are morally permissible are up to the
and
2. Thus nobody is morally required to make large sacrifices, of health, of all other
interests and concerns, of all other duties and commitments, for nine years, or
even for nine months, in order to keep another person alive (Thomson 52).
4. My Developed Argument:
The reasons that I weigh the intuition of the mother over the life of the fetus in my
argument are manyfold. One being that the mother of the child is the one who has to go through
the process of at least having a fetus grow inside her for nine months. Then she must suffer
through childbirth and give herself completely to make sure the child grows up safe and healthy.
If a mother doesn’t want to go through this process it is morally permissible for them to have an
abortion. Yes it may seem cruel and callous to society at large but in the end it isn’t morally
incorrect. The core of my argument lies in Thomson’s telling of the sickly violinist. The
abbreviated story goes like this: “Imagine you wake up in a hospital connected by blood to a
sickly violinist. The reason you both are connected is because a society of music lovers found
out that you had the only blood that would save the violinist and he would die is disconnected
from it. Now in order for the violinist to live you have to be connected to him for 9 months”
(Thomson 49). This analogy assumes that fetus are moral persons but even though they are, that
doesn’t mean that their rights outweigh individual right. In my opinion, it is not ones moral
obligation to forfeit their life in order to save others. It would be incredibly nice but not morally
necessary. The truth is, it would be silly if everyone had to forfeit their lives to save everyone
else from death. This argument holds true in the case of pregnancy by rape. It would be silly if a
victim of a thing as horrible as rape was morally obligated to bear a lifelong burden of raising her
aggressors child.
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Assuming that a fetus is a person, even if it is killed, it is done so to protect the rights of
the females body in question. On the other hand if the potential mother wanted to keep the child
but was forced to abort because of minor genetic defects of the fetus or because she was raped, it
would be wrong to force an abortion on an unwilling mother as well. Thus Abortion based on the
moral intuition of the women holds its own even in the harder cases where the morality of
5. Objections to my Argument:
An objection to women bodily rights over the rights of the fetus is that a woman’s right to
An objection to a the right to pursuit of happiness over a fetus’s right to live would be
that people are morally obligated to save those who are in danger at the expense of themselves.
Objections to a woman right to her body rights over a fetus’s right to live come in many
forms. All of which, when carefully examined are flawed if it is given that a woman has rights to
her body. A conservative objection to a woman’s right to her body over a fetus’s right to live is
that, even if the mother would die from childbirth if an abortion is not performed, it is still
immoral for a third party to perform an abortion. Those in support of this argument argue that the
fetus’s right to live and the mothers right to live are equal because both have a future. Because of
this a third party shouldn’t decide which life is worth more. If they don’t decide, then an abortion
is not performed and the mother dies naturally. If they do decide to abort the fetus then they have
Objections to peoples right to freedom over the right to save others include that it would
be immoral to not go out of your way to save someones life if they were in danger. One might
use the thought experiment Peter Singer gave of saving a child at the expense of ones new shoes
vs. sending money to save children in developing countries (Singer 229-243). One could argue
that it is our moral obligation to save others at the expense of ourselves, after all if we let the
person in need die then we’d be at fault for not saving them.
7. My Rebuttals
The flaw in the argument of a fetus’s right to live over a women’s bodily right is that the
fetus has no claim on the woman’s body. If the woman and the fetus were independent then yes
the fetus’s right to live is stronger than the woman’s right to her body, but because the fetus is
growing inside the woman then it is the mothers decision of if she wants the fetus to be there.
This is because the woman owns her body and her ownership gives her rights to evict unwanted
tenants. Thomson gives an excellent analogy for this when she says, “If Jones has found and
fastened on a certain coat, which he needs to keep him from freezing, but which Smith also
needs to keep him from freezing, then it is not impartiality that says "I cannot choose between
you" when Smith owns the coat” (Thomson 53). What Thomson is pointing out is that women
have entitlement and ownership of their own bodies and therefor are the only people allowed to
make decisions for their bodies. The fetus is a guest in a woman’s body whether welcome or
The flaw to the argument that it is immoral not to save people that are in danger is that in
application to abortion, the woman isn’t just saving the life of the fetus, she is also expected then
to raise and care for it. That sort of commitment at the expense of her own goals and desires is
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far and beyond just saving someones life. While it may be perceived as selfish and callous to
abort a fetus, it is not a moral obligation to sacrifice the next nine years of one’s life to save the
life of a fetus.
8. Sources
Thomson, Judith Jarvis. “A Defense of Abortion.” Philosophy & Public Affairs, vol. 1, no. 1,
1971, pp. 47–66. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2265091.
Marquis, Don. “Why Abortion Is Immoral.” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 86, no. 4, 1989, pp.
183–202. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2026961.
Peter Singer, “Famine, Affluence and Morality,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1972): 229-
243