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Jean Thomson Abortion Rhetorical Analysis

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Jean Thomson Abortion Rhetorical Analysis
The title is somewhat misleading because it's not a complete defense of Abortion it's more of a minimal defense. In Thomson's essay, she states that Abortion is not necessarily morally impermissible which means that there are times when it is permissible and there are times when it is not. She begins the essay by pointing out that people debate on whether or not a fetus is a person. Many people feel that If we had an answer to that then that would make things a whole lot simpler and we would know that if a fetus was a person then it would be morally impermissible to go forth with an abortion and if the fetus wasn't a person that it would be morally permissible to have an abortion. For the sake of argument, she goes on to say that a fetus is a person and even though that may be the case there are still many scenarios in which abortion is morally permissible. …show more content…
Thompson feels that its false. In her first thought experiment, she goes on talk about how one day you just wake up in the hospital with a famous violinist attached to your kidneys, and he needs the use of your kidneys for nine months. You have to keep in mind that every person has a right to life and so the violinist has a right to life so it would be impressionable to unplug the violinist. You also have a right to bodily integrity which trumps a right to life. This example shows us that there are some cases in which abortion is morally permissible. This analogy about a pregnancy that resulted from a

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