Abortion Is Murder ! By Judith Thomson

“Abortion is Murder!” I read that on a protester’s sign almost every day when I drive to school. The protesters are standing outside of a Planed Parenthood Clinic, where abortions are performed. Abortion is a hot-button issue in American politics and media. But are abortions permissible or impermissible? This question is a major topic for many philosophers. Some philosophers, including Don Marquis, view that abortion is mostly impermissible. They find abortion impermissible because it kills and innocent person and denies the fetus of a future of value. Other philosophers, like Judith Thomson, view that abortions are more permissible. They believe that mothers’ rights out-weigh the fetus’s right to life. I will present both sides of the abortion
debate focusing on the views presented by Marquis and Thomson, and then present my own stance on its permissibility. Don Marquis presents a debate against abortion in the paper “Why Abortion is Immoral.” Marquis argues that the greatest loss in death is not physical, but the loss of a future of value. Murder is immoral because you are taking away all of someone’s future experiences and emotions. Because abortion takes away a fetus’s future of value, it is comparable to murder, and therefore impermissible. Marquis believes it would be impermissible to kill a fetus if it would be impermissible to kill an adult in the same situation. Many supporters of abortion argue that a fetus doesn’t have a future of value if it is being born into a low-income or abusive family. Marquis argues against this though, because we don’t kill adults living in poverty, and fetuses and adults have the same future of value, so we shouldn’t kill a fetus just because it is being born into poverty. Marquis’s view is consistent with Deontology. Deontology is an ethical position that judges the morality of an action based on its adherence to a set of rules, it is also known as duty-ethics (Hursthouse). Marquis is consistent with Deontology because he believes that if a woman gets pregnant it is her duty to birth and raise the baby. If a mother gets an abortion she is going against her duty to birth the baby, therefore the abortion is impermissible. He believes that an action is right just in cases it respects other people’s autonomy, including a fetus. Judith Thomson presents the view that abortions are mostly permissible.
In her paper “A Defense of Abortion” she argues that a mother’s rights can sometimes be more important than a fetus’s right to life. Thomson illustrates this argument with a thought experiment involving a famous violinist and a musician society. So a music society kidnaps you and you wake up hooked to a famous violinist. The violinist has a blood disorder, and the only way for him to survive is to keep him hooked up to your kidneys for nine years. You have no moral obligation to keep yourself hooked to the violinist because his right to life isn’t more important than your own life. Your autonomy is more important than the violinist’s right to life because you did not choose to be attached to him. In the case of abortion, a woman’s autonomy to choose to have a baby out-weighs the fetus’s right to life. Thomson emphasizes that when just actions are taken to avoid pregnancy, but pregnancy prevails an abortion is permissible. The abortion is permissible because the mother did not invite the fetus in, and just like your right to detach yourself from the violinist, the mother is right in getting an abortion. Thomson holds a consequentialist view; meaning that she believes the morality of an action depends only on its consequences (Sinnott-Armstrong). If an abortion would cause the greatest amount of happiness, then it would be permissible. If a mother knows that she doesn’t have the finances or lifestyle to
properly raise a child, an abortion would generate the greatest amount of happiness for her, so it would be permissible. ……MORE…….. Although they hold opposite stances, there are many similarities between Marquis and Thomson’s arguments. Both agree that a fetus is a person. Marquis states that life begins at conception, and Thomson concludes that, because a distinction cannot be made during development, a fetus is a person at conception. Both Thomson and Marquis believe that it is permissible for a woman to abort a child in specific situations. Abortion would be permissible if birth would guarantee the death of the mother. Marquis says that abortions are only justified by significant reasons, rape or death being some of those reasons. Thomson believes that when a child is a product of rape the mother didn’t give the unborn child a right to use her body, making an abortion permissible. Marquis and Thomson also agree that in certain situations an abortion would be impermissible. Thomson thinks it would be impermissible to abort a child when it would, “…require only Minimally Decent Samaritanism of the mother…[or]…just to avoid the nuisance of postponing a trip abroad” (Thomson). Neither Marquis nor Thomson concludes that abortions are strictly permissible or impermissible. My beliefs on abortion are consistent with Thomson’s argument. I think a mother’s autonomy can out-weigh a fetus’s right to life. The trolley thought experiment, created by Philippa Foot in 1967, can best describe my view on abortion. Here is a brief summary of the experiment published in the New York Times:
You are walking near a trolley-car track when you notice five people tied to it in a row. The next instant, you see a trolley hurtling toward them, out of control. A signal lever is within your reach; if you pull it, you can divert the runaway trolley down a side track, saving the five — but killing another person, who is tied to that spur. What do you do? (Bakewell)
My answer to this problem would be to pull the lever to save the five people, sacrificing the one.
This resembles my view on abortion; aborting one baby is okay if it generates the greatest amount of happiness. My stance in based on utilitarianism; an ethical idea that states what is permissible is what spreads the most welfare to the greatest number of people (Bakewell). The answer for an anti-abortion supporter would be to do nothing. They conclude that it would be impermissible to pull the spur because people have a duty to not kill; intervening would make them morally responsible for one death, and doing nothing would make them responsible for nothing. Believing that abortion is impermissible would mean one should always let the trolley run over the five people. Saving one person isn’t wrong, but I think it would be more right to save more people. If a single mother becomes pregnant, and she knows that she cannot support another child, it is permissible for her to get an abortion. It is permissible because performing the abortion would spread welfare to the mother and her first child and having another kid would only spread welfare to the second child.
……MORE…….. Is abortion murder? Yes, the protesters are correct, abortion is murder. Are murders always impermissible? No, we know that in some situations, murder can be permissible. Is abortion impermissible? Sometimes, but not always. There is no right or wrong answer to abortion, the individual nuances of each situation determines their permissibility. ……MORE……..